Sure Shot

A few mini-adventures to relate:

Fellow Fulbrightnitsa Katherine came from Tiumen.  We spent the time - what else - eating, drinking and seeing the major sites of Ekaterinburg.  I have a local friend who majored in tourism (a popular department throughout Russia) who gave us a historico-cultural tour of the city.  We learned so much, including that the Russian word for factory "zavod" comes from the fact that early factories had to be near the water, in Russian that's "za vodou."  Cool!  We also had my colleague's family over for dinner, which was my first time entertaining a whole family (mother, father, 14-year old son and 2-year old daughter).  It was a great success, especially when I won the little girl over by pretending I had a sleeping gnome in my teapot.  On Katherine's last day, we saw the new computer-animated movie "Monsters Versus Aliens" in 3-D.  It was an awesome experience, and refreshing to see a movie in Russian and understand everything.

Yesterday I had the day off so I went to the local Natural History Museum.  It was full of rocks, prehistoric skeletons and taxidermied animals.  It turns out there's a huge variety of owls in this region, including one called the Ural Owl.  Usually I'm scared of those action-posed dead animals, but this museum was just so rinky-dink, it was hard to feel any way but bemused.

Tonight I went to see the women's basketball team take on the Novosibirsk team.  First of all, we kicked ass!  Second of all, at half-time, a stranger with an American accent remarked on the fact that my friend and I were speaking English.  He didn't look like a missionary, so I asked where he was from.  Chicago!  Imagine meeting another midwesterner there at the Palace of Sport.  He's visiting his cousin who plays on the Ekaterinburg team.  So we chatted for a minute about Lebron and our favorite musicians from each other's cities (his-Bone Thugs, mine-R.Kelly).  I gotta say, it just about made my day.

Well that's just about it for now.  A week from today my dear sweet Jessie will be here, direct from Boston.  I'll try to post again before that, because once she's here I'll be too busy having the best time of my Russian life.

One love.