Truth About the Gym, International Women's Day, and Other Tales

So, it's been about two weeks; I think another post is long overdue by this time. Thankfully, I have some things that I need to mention in here.

First of all, I want to bring up the gym again. I knew when I paid for the first month that it was a lot. Possibly, insane, in fact. However, I also figured that, like they do in the United States, since I only paid for a month, I was paying more than the people who buy a year membership or whatever. Also, I thought that they were taking advantage of my poor understanding of the Russian language and thought it'd be easy to steal my money.

However, when I looked at the brochure of all the services that gym offers and what it costs, I was astounded. First, I was surprised because what I'm paying is one of the "cheaper" services. Second, I had no idea how they figured out what the actual price of anything was because I was paying 3.3 times the amount listed. Why would the gym use a 3.3 x conversion for anything, and what did it mean? I was completely baffled until I realized that the Euro Dollar equals approximately 33 rubles. So then, I realized that their prices were in Euros...kind of...they were actually in Euros with an extra zero at the end. Yeah. And that was also when I realized that everyone who goes there pays the same price. My hozyaika earns less money a month at her primary job than I pay for that gym. The only reason I'm willing to pay is that it's only going to be 2 or 3 months that I'll go, and there's no way I'd ever consider paying for it, even as a "rich American" for any kind of extended period. How do they afford it??

Anyway, next topic. How many people in America actually realize that there is a "holiday" called "International Women's Day?" Probably not many. However, in Russia, it is a HUGE holiday, and it was last Thursday. They sell tons of flowers on the streets, everyone says "S prazdnikom" to every girl with whom they talk, and many places, including schools (and the university) are closed. It felt almost like Christmas, but without the fake Santas and greedy storeowners trying to guilt you into buying things.

Even better was that, since we had no school, the four West Point guys that were there that week (one took spring break to St. Petersburg last week) decided to cook for all the girls. Not just the cadet girls, but the two other Americans here (who are from Texas), the British girl, and the French girl. It was amazing. We walked in the door and were immediately greeted with a rose and told to sit down and stay OUT of the kitchen. In a couple of minutes, they brought out a bowl of salad, and the "feast," as it was so-named, commenced. It was a spinach salad with fried potatoes (try it sometime because it is good...). Next, or rather, kind of with the salad, were grilled cheese sandwiches. Yes. Then, spaghetti with an awesome homemade meat sauce, omelettes, and finally desert. Two cakes and two kinds of ice cream. Along with all this, the six girls managed to finish two bottles of wine and two bottles of champagne. That was an awesome day off of school, I thought, although I ate waaayyyy too much food and couldn't move.

Various other odds and ends:

Rinoks are way better than stores--I bought a pair of shoes that I saw in a store for about 1500 rubles for only 650 ($25.19, if I use an exchage rate of 26 rubles per dollar...), and I also bought 8 movies for 60 rubles, total...yeah. Everything else is about the same. Plus, it's not bad quality at all.

My Russian is getting better, yay! I can actually have logical conversations at times, even though I speak extremely slowly and probably sound like a two-year-old.

Updating this blog costs me somewhere around 40 rubles a week because it takes me an hour to get everything done, especially if I put pictures up.

And I can't think of anything else right now.