A day in the life....

так (so), you want to know a normal school day for me? Here goes!
Every morning I wake up between 6:30 and 6:45, pick out my clothes for the day, and go into the far bathroom in the house to shower. Julia and Arthur like to use the bathroom right by my room. It is smaller, so I think the only reason it is used is out of convenience. I get out of the bathroom (clean and in my clothes for the day) at around 7. I then go into my room, put my dirty clothes somewhere, and go into the bathroom to brush my teeth. After this, I go into my room and do my makeup.
Around this time it is 7:15, so I go into the kitchen and eat breakfast. This is usually bread slices with fried salami-like meat and cheese. Almost a sandwich. Or it can be Bliny, which are very similar to Swedish Pancakes.  At 7:45 I leave for school, usually throwing everything in my bag in some kind of whirlwind manner, slip on my shoes, almost forget my keys (grab them really quickly when I am halfway out the door), and walk to school. It is around 15 minutes until I get to school, at which I frantically (inside- I try to maintain a stoic demeanor on the outside) look for one of my schoolmates also arriving to school. If I don't see anyone, I go into the coat room and put up my coat and scarf. Usually by then I spot someone and follow them to my first class. I will never be able to navigate around my school or be able to know the schedule- it is different every day with consistencies lying within weeks and not days.
If math class is first (many times it is) I try to understand what is going on, because the teacher has actually given me the tests (but it isn't frequent). I never understand what is happening, but I do try. The rest of the day I follow the other students (or walk with friends) to the next class. In the classes I study Russian vocabulary or just listen to the teacher speak the intimidating version of Russian. It is almost Germanic sometimes! :) In English I just do the work fairly quickly or am excused from it all together, because I really don't need to learn the English language any more than I do (at least for this teacher's standards- I am sure that some people in Southern Oregon would beg to differ). It is really funny to be in this class because the teacher is enthralled with my English and the students are taught the Queen's English. This is actually much different than my American English. The teacher actually has this weird hybrid accent between British and Russian. She also kind of talks between the languages, echoing her sentences with the translation into the other language.

Then, at the end of the day, I walk home. Usually I walk with a girl named Lena. She has really awesome English. I think she has a knack for it. I never get the feeling that she is just agreeing with me because she doesn't understand what I am saying. Her apartment building is near mine, but we get to mine first so I don't really know for sure. 

I then have to use this metal-magnet key thing (almost like a hotel key) to get into my building. Once inside, I walk up about 7 stairs and round a corner to the elevator. I ride it to the 8th floor (but I have to press the "7" in the elevator because the buttons start at "0"), unlock the door the the apartment (3 keys, different amount of times I must turn each), put my things down by the door, and take the dog outside to go to the bathroom. When we return I wash her feet, take off my shoes, and put my things away. I never have any homework from my school, at least that is how much I do. I can never understand it if they do say in class what work to do at home. :/ Unless it is homework from the University, but those days (twice a week) look completely different from a normal school day. Usually I study my vocab a little more, eat lunch (I get home around 1:30 or 2), read/write emails, and watch an American movie dubbed over in Russian on the TV. Or I watch some old kung fu movie dubbed over into Russian. Yesterday I watched a very old Jackie Chan movie this way. 
My Мама gets home at 5 or 6, and so that is when I turn off the TV and computer and visit with her. When she gets home she always changes out of her work clothes into "house" clothes. After she changes I sit at the kitchen table while she is doing different things. Sometimes we chat, while other times I ask about different Russian traditions. I usually have to keep the computer on (located on the kitchen table) and open Google Translate. Come to think about it, I should just start doing this automatically when she gets home. We talk and she prepares dinner (I offer to help periodically, and am told "I am a MOTHER! I am used to doing these things!"), and usually are able to eat before Arthur gets home. He can get home anywhere between 7:45 and 9.

As soon as Arthur walks in the building (there is an alarm that tells us when he uses a code to get in), Julia or I go to the door, unlock it, and crack it. When the elevator doors open Belka (the dog) runs to the door, opening it all the way with her nose (I am always impressed, as it is a big heavy door and she is on the smaller side) and then starts jumping on Arthur. He is in a really nice expensive suit, so he is always lifting his briefcase and waving his arms at the dog, trying to not let her touch him but still trying to get her to go away. He is always quietly shouting BELKA (to not disturb the neighbors, but it is still so stern sounding it feels like he is shouting) as he does this. Then Julia or I rescue him and call the dog and hold her by the collar until he is in the house with his shoes off. He then goes and changes into his house clothes and then comes to the kitchen table to eat dinner. After he eats there is usually some kind of hidden last course that one of them brings out, like grapes or a melon. I am always super full at the end of the meal, and then Arthur usually makes me eat some of this last course, so when I go to bed at around 9-9:30, I am stuffed! 

A Note From Grandma

Granted, this is a little girl holding one flower. But I added a visual aid.

I recieved an email from my Grandma about how she was visiting my cousins on their ranch. Something precious happened with the 3rd youngest (Jeremiah) that was too sweet not to share. This is what she told me:
" We were sitting on the front porch watching the various kids ride motorcycles and he  picked 2 little flowers and gave them to me. When he gave me the first one he said 'this one is for you' and then when he gave me the second one he said 'this one is for Arielle when she comes back.'"
Isn't that so pickin' adorable? My mother will probably post other things, like what I have emailed her about my exchange, but I wanted to share that with you all. I think that even though it didn't exactly happen to me, you would all like to read about it. It made my day as well as gave me a serious case of the warm fuzzies; hope some pass on to you!

Riding the train to Barnaul

The train was basically like a plane ride that took forever; but I could lay down, so it is okay. We had a layover in Novosabeirsk (idk, but that is what it sounds like to me). It was 4 hours. Julia told me that we would leave the train and walk around a little bit in the city, but we weren't able to. We just sat there in the unmoving car. The city was huge, with over 3 million people in it. When the train finally pulled out of the station it seemed like the city just went on and on.
The toilet on the train was also really interesting. At first when I was on the train, I wondered why the US doesn't have passenger trains as much, because they are really practical. If we wanted to go to Yellowstone, we could just go in the train for a couple days or so and get there for less than it would cost to drive. And then I used the toilet and realized why the US doesn't have them. The toilet is normal(ish, as in you could sit on it if you wanted to and there was toilet paper as well as water in the bowl), but when you flush it it just opens up to the rail road. How unsanitary! I felt such guilt every time I used it for littering on the rail road.

I didn't really take too many pictures today of the stuff I should have. I mean, the scheduled orientation I took pictures of, but the barbeque get together at a rotarian's huge house I took no pics. They always say something when you bring out your camera and are less willing to do interesting things around you.

One kind of weird thing is that over and over again different people assume I speak Russian. Even the Russians that speak English sometimes try to speak Russian to me. They always tell me that it is because I don't look foreign. Not that I look Russian, but not American. I look very European- or so I have been told a few times. This makes me happy.But is also makes me wonder what an American looks like. By people's reactions when I ask them to describe to me a typical American, it is not a pretty thing. No one ever does describe one though, so I can't know for sure.

Learning Russian...with some help from a new friend

At the University there is one Chinese girl that decided that she really likes me, and wants to be my friend even though she has very little English and even less Russian. Her name is Yu-Yuting, and she is very sweet. She tends to do very well in the Russian class, even though some of the Phonetics are pretty much impossible for the Chinese palate (particularly words ending in hard consonants and the Russian letter р, which is like the Spanish rr). Today she came into class late, and when she sat down and pulled all of her papers out, she gave me a piece of paper. On it, in English, was a guide on how to conjugate Russian verbs. I was so shocked. She said they haven't covered this in class yet. Still, most people seem to know how to conjugate and it will be good to study now. I couldn't believe she did that for me. It must have taken forever to translate, put in a cognitive order, and write examples, too. I couldn't thank her enough, and she was thrilled that I was so happy and just THANKFUL! I am excited to study this sheet of paper, as it even has the exceptions (grr, why can't there ever be just a solid rule?) and how to properly conjugate those.  I never would have expected anyone to go out of their way like that and do that for me. She even printed all of the Russian, because I told her that I can't read the cursive yet.