I am pleasantly exhausted after a great weekend. Wanna hear everything I did? If not, then you’re on the wrong site. Incidentally, we’ve finally started to get some snow here, though not much. I can’t help but think of Jessie, and how during the winter in the Hudson Valley she so disdained the time-intensive processes of bundling and unbundling, to the point where she would sometimes just stay in. This is my first Russian winter and I don’t intend to hibernate. Hope Yuss knows it will still be cold when she comes to visit in March...
Friday night, my friend Yulia invited me to go to a student theater festival at the Ural State University in the center of the city. After navigating through the labyrinthine campus for about forty minutes, we found the performance hall. By now we were about an hour late, pretty bad even by Russian standards of punctuality, but I didn’t think it warranted what happened: some jerk student slammed the door in our faces. It was humiliating! We stood around for a while longer, weighing our options of sneaking in at intermission or saying to hell with it all. Ultimately we chose the latter. Bummersville, but I had to go home and bake cookies (more on which follows) anyway. So instead of student theater, I started watching The Sopranos from the very beginning. Can’t say I regret my choice. (“It’s not about mistakes Mother. It’s about choices. And I’ve chosen to make a mistake.”)
Saturday I went to temple as usual. After a few weeks of really sad and gruesome Torah portions, we finally had a happy one this week: the reunion of Jacob and Esau. I’m learning so much Russian from these weekly services. Not the kind of language I use in everyday conversation, but beautiful nonetheless. I had lunch with the Israelis and Chaia told a very cute anecdote (in the Russian sense, meaning jokey story). Two beggars, a Jew and a gentile, are invited to a Passover Seder. The Jew tells his colleague that it will be a great feast, so the gentile arrives at dinnertime, hungry as the dickens. First they wash their hands, then tell the story of the exodus, drink four glasses of wine and eat everything off the Seder plate. When they get up to wash their hands again, the starving gentile stalks out of the house. Later, he meets his Jewish friend, full to bursting, who explains that if he had waited just a little longer, he would’ve had the best meal of his life. The moral of the story is to be patient in waiting for the Messiah. But I, always ready with a glib response, said, “That man should’ve come to my family’s Seder, because we always start with soup and gefilte fish!”
I came home and baked more cookies (explanation forthcoming, I promise). Then was the highlight of my weekend: I got to video-chat with my precious 5-year old cousin/best friend Molly. She looks the same, gorgeous, and it was so amazing to hear her sweet voice. At first she was shy, but then she warmed up and even tried to squeeze herself through the computer, saying, “You forgot to bring me to Russia!” I wonder what she pictures when she says “Russia.” We did a little call-and-response with her favorite Springsteen and Beatles songs; that girl’s repertoire is astonishing. When it was time for me to go, I had such a hard time saying goodbye. How could I close the screen when it was full of her beautiful face? And I guess she felt the same way, because my mom tried to get her out of the room, but she wanted to “stay with Abbie.” Awww. Warmed the very cockles of my heart, whatever those are...
Saturday night I went out with my friend Veronika to a couple bars. She works at the American Center and is studying to be a journalist. So of course she is super-smart and interesting, and one of the friendliest people I’ve met in Russia. Being so cool, she also has really cool friends. So we went to a couple different places, and by the end of the night, I was totally ripped. It felt so good, not to get drunk but to go out and dance. The “DJ” played mostly cheesy American pop, which was fine by me (except for one thing: I love Queen, but I really don’t need to hear “We are the Champions” three times in one night). Technically this place is a pub, not a club, but there was a lot of action on the dance floor, kind of like the Black Swan. The biggest difference between this place and American bars was that the DJ regularly played slow songs, at which point gentlemen ask ladies to dance. They even dance properly, not like we do at Bar Mitzvah parties. I danced with only one boy who I thought was pretty cute, but it might have just been his tie-cardigan combo making him look like a mod. At the end of the night, my cabdriver couldn’t make quite enough change from my 500 ruble note, but I was too drunk and tired to fight. Besides I’ve taken a few rabbit (free) rides, so it’s just karma. I got into bed, ate a bowl of popcorn, watched the first 10 minutes of Big Lebowski and passed the fuck out.
So, what’s up with all those cookies? The vice-consulate’s wife Melody invited me to a Christmas cookie exchange. Being a big Jewface, this was new to me, but here’s the deal: you bake a ton of cookies, bring them over and then get to take a bunch from everyone else. Melody is a regular Martha Stewart, except glamorous, beautiful and sweet instead of pure evil. She made the most delicious enchiladas for lunch and served hot apple cider. Most of the other guests were her friends from church (including a missionary who brought her little daughter, probably the only other Abbie in Russia) or the consulate. The whole event was absolutely lovely and elegant. I only made one indiscretion. We were talking about vinegar (more interesting than it sounds) and I told a story of how I once reached for a bottle of beer and wound up with a mouthful of balsamic. The missionary looked uncomfortable, but I got a laugh out of the consulate IT specialist. Much better received was the story of Luke’s double-life. Here’s the cookie list: my lemon drop butter, or as Lucia calls them, sun cookies, chocolate chip, double ginger snaps, chocolate crinkles, chocolate rum balls, snickerdoodles and some incredibly elegant South American caramel sandwich cookies. Not too shabby! I thought about bringing them to my class pot-luck on Friday, but we’ll see how many survive until then. The prognosis for those double ginger snaps is grim... As I was walking out, a truck driver leaned out his window and asked what I was carrying, something delicious, could he try it? I finally experienced the full meaning of the Russian phrase Да нет, “Yes, NO!”
Now I’ve got to relax, rehydrate and build up my strength for work tomorrow. I feel I’ve had a weekend like those lyrics of the only band that matters, the Clash, “48 hours means 48 thrills!”
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