Nic Gregg - 15 декабря 2008 г. 18:57:20

Hey everyone sorry it's been a while. So here is the latest news: on December 29th I am going with my host Family to Findland for a week for vacation. There we will relax, ski, and try the sport curling. We are staying in a resort town outside of Helsinki so it whould be so much fun I will take alot of pictures. I won't upload picturest his time but I will soon. The wether here is just starting to get really cold and we don't have snow yet which is really odd, but soon we will. Next week it should be about -20 celcius and it could get to -40 so that will be fun. Not much else is happening though. I have finally gone ice skating which was really fun. School is pretty cool everyone all my friends are pretty funny. I visited the cities Tula, Yasnaya Polyana (Leo Tolstoy's home), Cheboksariy, and soon we're going to the city Arzamas. I am still pretty busy here. After school I either have soccer practice, a Russian Lesson or hang out with friends. Here in Russia they have what's called Russian Banya which is like a sauna but it is extremely hot. I can only stay in for about 3-4 minutes at a time. It's always really fun though. The languge is coming along too.  study 4 hours a week ith a University Professor so that is really helping.

As for Christmas, here it is celebrated on New Year's with Old New Year being celebrated on January 7th. Everyone here has xmas trees too but they are all artificial.

The food here is good but it is really heavy. It's true a lot of potatoes and meat are used. Also alot of mayo is used which is really hard sometimes. A "salad" here is often chopped vegetables and mayo mixed. Don't worry I haven't gained weight. But some stuff is really good like blini (like Swedsh pancakes) and pelmeni, which are like meat dumplings (with mayo, of course). I hven't heard a real American speak in a long time which is weird. Here in school they study British-English.

Some other interesting stuff is in every store there is a security guard. Also, thre are a ton of little stores like 7-11 but all the food is behing a counter and you have to tell them what you want. The clothes style is reallydifferent. For guys the mullet is very popular. Not really a huge mullet but most guys have the hair on the back of the head a little longer. The most popular brands are sports brands like adidas, reebok, puma, etc. They like really shiny clothes too like gold and silver, and jeans with zipper-pockets are really popular here. Techno is also very popular music and almost every store and restaurant is playing it.  

Ok that's all for now. Message me if you have some questions. I hope everyone has a Merry X-mas!