Баня! (Russian baths)

So on Friday I was naked with a group of Rotarians. Hmm... maybe not the best phrasing. What I meant to say was that on Friday, I went to the Russian Banya with some rotarians, and it was awesome! Of course, when you go in, you are not wearing any clothes. This is probably the sole reason that we don't have bath houses in America... because Americans don't like to get naked in front of other people. But once you get past that, it is really great. We first sat in a hot steamroom for a while, then we went into the dry sauna, then we went into a warm pool and cooled of there for a while. We kept going back and forth between the warm pool and the hot sauna. Sometimes you would jump in a really cold pool really quickly, and then go back into the sauna. Also, in the sauna, someone would take branches with leaves soaked in hot water and beat you with them. It was all really nice, and after 2 hours of that, you feel really refreshed. Pictures soon! (Haha just kidding!)

What else did I do this week? Teachers' Day was this week, so there were a lot of presentations and concerts this week. We had our concert on Wednesday. As we were setting up, there was a grand piano (the Russians call it a рояль "royal") on the stage, and if you know me, you know that I can't resist stting down and playing when there is a beautiful piano sitting there. So I did. And then my teacher heard me play, and said that I would be performing a piao piece during the concert that was in 20 minutes. So I did. And everyone liked it. I think. In fact, they liked it so much that the next day, the dean of music (or something like that) came into our class and pulled me out so I could play piano for her. She listened, and then asked me some questions which I didn't understand. Unfortunately, I think she took my puzzled look as saying "no" to whatever she was asking, but I'm trying to figure out if maybe I can take some lessons.

Also, I might be changing schools soon. The university started asking for money (40,000 rubles) for my first semester of Russian language. I guess the classes I was taking were not the free ones, so I might be moving to study at Secondary School #5, which would be fine too, but just kind of unexpected. I will find out this next week what will happen.

On Friday, I also lived with my 3rd host family (Andrei and Irina Bakumenko) for a day, which was nice. So now, I only have not met my second host family, the Murzakovas.

Everything here is still going well. There is always something new happening, and things here tend to happen more unpredictably and spontaniously than in the US, which is kind of a nice change from the strict rigidity of the scheduled American life.