Week 2 Day 4
On Thursday, I was (unfortunately) running a bit late. Despite the fact that I didn’t get up until almost half an hour past my alarm and left for the bus ten minutes later than usual, I still managed to get to class on time.
In class, most of the day was spent reviewing grammar for the test that was scheduled for the next day. In our phonetics class, our teacher Galina called on us randomly to recite a text we had for homework the night before. She then wrote our grades on the board. Here, instead of percentages, they grade us on a scale from 1 to 10 (ten being the best). I got a 9/10, which I was fine with since I had been the first to go and definitely could have spent more time reviewing the exact wording of the text at home.
After class, we had three and a half hours before our afternoon activity, which was a cooking class. We split into a few groups, and I went over to Pushkin street with Devin, Amaya and Greg to get some food to go, which we ate in the Central Park. We talked for a while about the different places we live in the U.S.: Amaya is from the D.C. area, like me; Greg lives in Manhattan, KANSAS (we tease him constantly about that); and Devin comes from what he calls a “small town” in Oregon, but we call a village, because the population is really only around 300.
By the time we finished our food, we still had around two and a half hours of free time, so Greg suggested that we visit a soviet monument located outside of the city center. We took two buses to get there, which took about half an hour, and then we looked around the memorial for a while.
It appeared to be a memorial for World War II, but none of us were entirely sure, since everything was in Russian or Romanian, and it wasn’t a touristy enough location to have translations.
At about 3:30, we decided we should leave, especially since Elliott had said that the cooking studio was hard to find. Unfortunately, busses 9 and 13 (which were the only ones we could take to get back into the city) were only arriving every 8-12 minutes, so that set us back by a bit. It took us two busses to get to the city, and another one to get us to the university. We had to wait at that bus stop for a while, so Devin and I decided to buy cold water (it was sweltering) from one of the kiosks by the bus stop. As a result of my exceedingly poor Russian, I accidentally ordered some carbonated water (which I HATE), but I was so hot that I managed to consume half a bottle of it. Since carbonated water is not available everywhere in the U.S., I was unprepared for such a simple task.
It took around 5-10 minutes for bus 21 to arrive, and in that time it rapidly began to rain pretty heavily. I had my rain jacket, but there was only one umbrella between the four of us, and since all of us had schoolbags with us, it was hard to fit us all underneath.
When we got off the bus, we had to look for a while along the back roads to find the cooking studio, and in the process we ended up getting drenched. Eventually we found it, and we were only two minutes late (Elliott was not thrilled about this, but in the end it was fine).
First we started out by chopping a bunch of vegetables, chicken, and peeling and grating carrots. We also hollowed out a zucchini, since we were going to make stuffed zucchini. We cooked the chicken and vegetables together in a sauce and then filled the zucchini, and while they were in the oven, we also made stuffed apples. We hollowed them our and filled them with chopped nuts, honey, and raisins, before putting them, too, in the oven. While we were waiting, we roasted some potatoes.
What was great about the cooking class was that a lot of the tasks didn’t require our full attention, so we were still able to talk to each other while doing them. We talked about college, figure skating (Evgenia deserved better!) and Les Miz and also handed out random recommendations for TV shows.
Since the cooking class ended pretty late, we all headed home to do some homework and squeeze in some last-minute homework/studying so we could get to bed early enough.
In class, most of the day was spent reviewing grammar for the test that was scheduled for the next day. In our phonetics class, our teacher Galina called on us randomly to recite a text we had for homework the night before. She then wrote our grades on the board. Here, instead of percentages, they grade us on a scale from 1 to 10 (ten being the best). I got a 9/10, which I was fine with since I had been the first to go and definitely could have spent more time reviewing the exact wording of the text at home.
After class, we had three and a half hours before our afternoon activity, which was a cooking class. We split into a few groups, and I went over to Pushkin street with Devin, Amaya and Greg to get some food to go, which we ate in the Central Park. We talked for a while about the different places we live in the U.S.: Amaya is from the D.C. area, like me; Greg lives in Manhattan, KANSAS (we tease him constantly about that); and Devin comes from what he calls a “small town” in Oregon, but we call a village, because the population is really only around 300.
By the time we finished our food, we still had around two and a half hours of free time, so Greg suggested that we visit a soviet monument located outside of the city center. We took two buses to get there, which took about half an hour, and then we looked around the memorial for a while.
A (bad) picture of the memorial.
It appeared to be a memorial for World War II, but none of us were entirely sure, since everything was in Russian or Romanian, and it wasn’t a touristy enough location to have translations.
At about 3:30, we decided we should leave, especially since Elliott had said that the cooking studio was hard to find. Unfortunately, busses 9 and 13 (which were the only ones we could take to get back into the city) were only arriving every 8-12 minutes, so that set us back by a bit. It took us two busses to get to the city, and another one to get us to the university. We had to wait at that bus stop for a while, so Devin and I decided to buy cold water (it was sweltering) from one of the kiosks by the bus stop. As a result of my exceedingly poor Russian, I accidentally ordered some carbonated water (which I HATE), but I was so hot that I managed to consume half a bottle of it. Since carbonated water is not available everywhere in the U.S., I was unprepared for such a simple task.
It took around 5-10 minutes for bus 21 to arrive, and in that time it rapidly began to rain pretty heavily. I had my rain jacket, but there was only one umbrella between the four of us, and since all of us had schoolbags with us, it was hard to fit us all underneath.
When we got off the bus, we had to look for a while along the back roads to find the cooking studio, and in the process we ended up getting drenched. Eventually we found it, and we were only two minutes late (Elliott was not thrilled about this, but in the end it was fine).
First we started out by chopping a bunch of vegetables, chicken, and peeling and grating carrots. We also hollowed out a zucchini, since we were going to make stuffed zucchini. We cooked the chicken and vegetables together in a sauce and then filled the zucchini, and while they were in the oven, we also made stuffed apples. We hollowed them our and filled them with chopped nuts, honey, and raisins, before putting them, too, in the oven. While we were waiting, we roasted some potatoes.
What was great about the cooking class was that a lot of the tasks didn’t require our full attention, so we were still able to talk to each other while doing them. We talked about college, figure skating (Evgenia deserved better!) and Les Miz and also handed out random recommendations for TV shows.
My stuffed zucchini and roasted potatoes.
My baked apple, topped with cinnamon and powdered sugar.
Since the cooking class ended pretty late, we all headed home to do some homework and squeeze in some last-minute homework/studying so we could get to bed early enough.
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