"Cheese of Philadelphia"

Well, I lasted almost two weeks in Russia without being sick. On the bright side, I don’t feel like doing much of anything besides writing a blog post!

This weekend, we had an excursion to the island of Valaam. We took a ship overnight on Lake Lagoda (the largest lake in Europe) to the islands. Here is the view of the lake from my window.

What an incredible place! First, we went on a tour of the sketes and then took a smaller boat to the island with the monastery. The tour was more like a hike through the woods, and we would come upon a church or a farm or a monk’s living quarters almost out of nowhere. I would love to live somewhere like this one day.

This is the iconostasis of the Church of the Resurrection on the first island. 

This is one of the buildings that housed monks. There were flower beds all around!

All of our tours were in Russian, and I barely understood what our tour guide was saying unless she was explaining something extremely simple. It proved to be extremely frustrating because I was very interested in the details.  I had heard of Valaam all my life but never realized how special of a place it is. We weren’t allowed to take pictures inside the monastery, but I took a quick picture of the outside.

 The main church was incredible! The basement church had beautiful icons including the Valaam icon of the Mother of God.  The Upstairs Church was covered in stunning light frescos. It felt a little like Jordanville, which was so nice. I think the overall feeling of tranquility and calmness on the island is captured in this snapshot of a monk that I took as we were leaving.

 It was a refreshing and relaxing trip in general, and it was wonderful to get away from the city and the cigarette smoke for a few days. 

In other news, I have officially been here for two weeks! For almost half of that time, my host family has been at the dacha (usually a little hut or house in the countryside). However, they never told me they were going. But when food was left on the table mysteriously for me and I heard snoring every morning, I realized that one of the brothers was still at home. There is a chance they told me they were going, and I just didn’t understand. My host mom will talk to me for hours on end about her friends, her family’s history, and her back problems. However, since I only understand a minimal amount I do a lot of smiling and mimicking of her emotions and then zone out for a few minutes at a time. However, I am really glad she talks with me because any exposure to the language is good. 

Since I am under the weather, I tried to find some comfort food to make myself feel better and was surprisingly successful! If you know me at all, you know that my absolute favorite food is a bagel with cream cheese and lox. Yesterday, I found a restaurant that sold blini with lox and cream cheese (cream cheese is IMPOSSIBLE to find in Russia). The cream cheese was called “cheese of Philadelphia”, and I was immediately overjoyed. Oh, the little things I miss. Most things that I can’t find I have just learned to live without. Unfortunately, there is one thing I am having trouble without and that is looseleaf, college rule paper. It sounds silly, but it is impossible to find. All my notebooks are tiny (pamphlet sized) and have graphing paper inside. I sat down to do my homework and memorize my vocabulary and did not know what to do without paper. I think I will just buy printer paper, but it isn’t the same. Considering  that this is the biggest thing I have to complain about, life is pretty good! :)