Birthdays in Russia

I have pictures of this but not with me, so they'll have to wait a couple of days.

However, for now, a verbal description will have to do. On Sunday, 18 March, my hozyain had his 67th birthday, and my hozyaika spent all last week preparing for it. Saturday night (St. Patrick's Day), I helped her with the table set up and folded napkins. Then on Sunday morning after I got back from the gym, the table (actually two tables pushed together with 18 chairs around them) was COVERED with food and champagne and vodka. I have never seen so much food at once like that. Well, probably, yes, I have, but it was still a lot of food.

Anyway, people started showing up at 3, and by 8:30 at night, we were still sitting at the table when Vera (my hozyaika) said she was going to bring out mashed potatoes and chicken...I didn't know how to eat anymore.

Everyone at the table stood up to give a toast at one point during the meal, going all the way around the table, so you can probably imagine that it wasn't too difficult for 20+ people to go through 8 bottles of various types of alcohol in a few hours. However, there are some interesting customs that go along with this toasting, like the first toast was obviously to my hozyain (Vladimir) and his wife said that one. The next was to his parents, then to Vera, and then various other toasts. One person gave a toast to Vera's parents, who both have died, at which point I realized another very important custom. You don't "clink glasses" or whatever you want to call it when a person mentioned in a toast has died. Guess how I found that out. Jessica and I definitely figured that out the hard way, and I felt like a horrible person. Oops. Oh well, nobody dwelled on it, which was good, and the party went on.

Sometime along in all this festivity, one of my teachers from school began to play the piano and everyone sang along. We sang so many Russian songs. Unfortunately, I am uncultured enough only to have known one of them. Moreover, since this teacher of mine and his wife lived in England for a while, they knew some English songs--not American English, but British English--and they sang them too. The distinction between British and American is important because I did not know those songs either, the words, at least. And people kept asking me why I wasn't singing when the words were in my own native language...as they all sang along. Yeah. However, I am proud to say that I did know the words to "Yesterday," "Yellow Submarine," and the one Spanish sonng we sang "La Bamba." Yes. We did. And people danced. It was really a big huge happy party. And it was awesome. I can't believe we don't do that kind of stuff in the US. People need to sing in groups like that.

That was seriously a fun party.