The smell of rain

This morning I woke up with my alarm at 6:55 AM, and the first thing I noticed was the smell of rain from outside. I jumped out of bed and looked out onto the street nine floors below. Sure enough, the streets were damp, and a light morning drizzle was underway. Now for those of you reading back home in Ohio, rain probably doesn't seem that exciting, as we seem to have it all the time, but here, rain is one of the things that I have missed the most. Ever since the snow started falling at the end of October, I have been waiting for the next time that I would see rain again. As we got deeper into winter, and the frost and layers of ice on the street got deeper and deeper, I just wished for a spring rain. So I had a long time to wait, but they told me that spring will be here in the end of March or so. Ok, that's a little longer than back home, but not to worry.

However, I found out that this year Russia had one of the longest on snowiest winters on record for a long time. When I returned to Vladivostok from Moscow (where it was +20 and already blooming), I was reminded of this fact. April 13 in Vladivostok, it snowed. The middle of April is too late for winter, even by Russian standards.

Within two days, I boarded a train and took it all the way back to Blagoveshchensk by myself. This was an okay experience; I traveled in a coupé (a room with four bunks and a table) with an older couple from Blagoveshchensk, and some other random guy that didn't really talk much. Except for the stuffiness of the train by the end of the 34-hour journey, it was a pleasant experience. It was nice that they trusted me enough and thought that I was able enough to travel by myself on the train. It is almost a compliment that they know my language skills are good enough to cope with traveling alone for that distance. It's over 900 miles from Vladivostok to Blagoveshchensk by train, which would be like traveling from Cleveland, OH to New Orleans, LA. On the way to Blagoveshchensk, the train stopped in Khabarovsk for an hour and 15 minutes, and a couple of my friends from the Rotaract Club of Khabarovsk came to meet me at the train station. They brought me balloons, and we walked around a little and talked. I would love to come back to Khabarovsk in June to visit for a few days, as I've heard that it is a very beautiful and interesting city. As I boarded the train again, my friends danced for me (and the rest of the amused passengers on the train) for a full ten minutes before the train finally pulled away. The conductor in our wagon told me "What fun friends you have!"

So I arrived in Blagoveshchensk on a Thursday morning. I had been gone from my city for over a month (since March 11), and I didn't know what I should expect. My host mom met me at the station, and drove me back to our apartment. As we drove through the streets that I had not seen for such a long time, I (to my relief) saw that there was no more snow or ice on the ground here. That being said, it was still cold (like around freezing). Spring hadn't started yet, nothing was growing, and the whole city was just brown. Brown, leafless trees, brown dirt and sand in the streets left over from winter, brown grass. Not quite what I had hoped, but nonetheless better than all white (although that might have been cleaner).

With the melting of the snow and 3-inch layers of ice also came the unveiling of all the stuff that had been covered and frozen in time for the last six months since the beginning of winter. Beer bottles, shards of broken glass, melted piles of dog poop, used needles, and thousands upon thousands of cigarette butts appeared on the street. And it's still laying there. Sometimes I notice that someone has swept some of the trash into a pile, but the wind just scatters it again, and people keep adding their collection of fresh cigarette butts to the ground.

I have started back in with my choir group at the university. These are the times that I really look forward to all week. When I start at Georgetown next fall, I have decided that I want to join an a cappella group do some singing as a side thing. I have also continued with my piano lessons and have recently been learning all the different chords and how to do harmony.

Since I have been back, I have also been to a couple concerts/performances. I went with my host mom to a performance of a local, but very talented dancing ensemble. It was an amazing performance. I also went to an "International Youth Concert" which featured singers, dancers, rappers, and other performing groups from Russia, Azerbaijan, China, and Israel. They all performed traditional dances and songs, and it was amazing to see a collection of all these different cultures. There was even a French rapper who performed.

Last weekend I went with my second host family to their "dacha" or summer cottage, outside the city. It is a small shed and plot of land where they grow fruits and vegetables, grill "shashlik", and relax. Even though it wasn't green yet, it was a warm, sunny day, and it was almost like paradise to relax out in nature, do some raking and yard work, and eat delicious food. We ate grilled meat, drank tea brewed over an open fire, and also ate "ukha" (with the stress on the last syllable - ukha with the stress on the first syllable means "ear", and we certainly didn’t eat that) Anyway ukha is a type of soup made out of fish, but not quite. They asked me if I knew what ukha was, and I said "yeah, it's soup made with fish." But they said "No, soup made with fish is soup made with fish. Ukha is ukha" I didn't really see the difference, so they explained it to me, and from what I understood, ukha is soup made with fish cooked in a vat over an open fire at your dacha. So there it is.

So that brings me back to today. It's raining. But it's really only a drizzle. And while most people would say this with disdain and go outside with an umbrella. I am walking in the rain, getting wet, and being as happy as can be.