Thanksgiving Eve....

It's snowing really beautifully outside right now. I took some pictures of it while walking home just now after helping to prepare pie crusts, vegetarian stuffing and cranberry sauce from scratch (THANK YOU VERY MUCH, I am not completely hopeless in the kitchen after all, so there). It's the big sticky flakes that are falling very slowly but clinging like hell to everything. They got all over my coat and eyelashes when I stopped to take pictures.

I didn't go to class today. Maybe I shouldn't be publicizing this in my blog, especially as apparently four out of eight of us didn't go to СМИ today and Elena Nikolaivna, who, by the way, had a heart attack this morning (THOUGH NOT BECAUSE OF US), called to raise hell about this later.... while in the hospital I presume?? But, I just really couldn't go. I needed a personal day. I never skip class. Usually. And it was just too beautiful. There was sun for the first time in a week, and sun and snow might be one of the most beautiful photographic combinations in the world. So I walked around instead. I walked around Юсуповский сад (the park where Emma, Grace & I sat that one day after we got so horribly lost), where, apparently, every Russian child under the age of five, bundled in a snowsuit so adorable I felt my teeth rot from the sweetness of it all, was sledding like mad. I even had a little Russian language conversation practice when an elderly man tried to get me to take pictures of his 86 year old wife (she did not look pleased when he told me her age) who was feeding pigeons from her hand. He talked to me for a while, I understood about 10% of what he said because men mumble like hell in this country, plus I think he was speaking nearly entirely in idioms, and he criticized my pronunciation of the soft "L" and told me I say "ny" and "ahh" too much when I speak and that next I should learn Chinese and then I can go into business.

I walked more. It got overcast. I drank coffee and warmed up. I did homework. I went home and napped. I attempted to be domestic and cook things. And tomorrow is Thanksgiving.

It really doesn't feel like Thanksgiving as a) we have no break from school, b) I am in Russia and no one else is celebrating, and c) I'm not with my family. It's just kind of surreal.... like we are celebrating Christmas in July kind of thing.... this isn't the actual holiday, we are just pretending. But then you see how everyone else's Facebook statuses are things like "... is helping Mom prepare pies!" or "... is so glad to be home for the week!" or "... is already sick of her family!" and then it seems more real. Just far removed.

Anyway, now it's almost 1am, so I guess it's technically Thanksgiving.

So. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone, all the way from Russia.