Sunday, June 22

bears, beets, battlestar galactica

After a lovely week at camp, Susan and I were invited to spend the weekend with our new friend Vera. She and I were co-counselors with group 6 (boys and girls ages 9-11). Her english is excellent. Friday was my birthday, and her parents prepared a special Russian meal with beautiful vegetables from her mother's garden. We even had cake! After dinner we played UNO for hours. It was great practice for learning our Russian numbers and colors. Vera's parents understand a lot of English, but speak very little. There was a moment when I looked up at the evening sky (which was oddly still very light even late in the evening) and thought about how beautiful this scene was. What a beautiful gift: a portrait of peace between two countries that have been enemies for most of the last century. I remember a lot from the evening, mostly laughter, but I do not remember feeling the presence of any kind of language barrier.

Today we spent some time with our friend Rusilia. We had lunch at her house: Borsht. It was delicious. We also saw a lot of Yoshkar-Ola. It is a nice city. There are trolley buses and lots of wonderful food. Our professor told us that we would probably lose weight here, but we doubt it. We've been eating a lot.

I've enjoyed this weekend of rest, but I must confess that I am ready to get back to camp. One of my other co-counselors, Katya, is also studying speech therapy. It should be interesting to see how our relationship works out since she speaks even less english than I speak Russian. Our other co-counsleor's name is Andre Georgovich. He speaks a substantial amount of english, so that is helpful.

Camp has already become a second home for me, and despite the mosquitos, I am ready to get back. Hopefully I will be able to write more soon!

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