Entry 17: September 14, 2011
Yes, I know. The alliteration is back. I'm sorry, but I'm currently out of creative titles. The wonderful internet connection which I finally obtained on Monday has decided to stop working today. However it was raining earlier this morning, so I don't know if it's a weather issue or an issue of pure spite towards me. Hopefully, it will change it's mind and begin to work again for me later today.
After LUNN on Wednesday, I had been invited over to Olya's house to make muffins with her and Anya. Olya and Anya are third year tourism students, and they were the MCs for last week's Freshman Party. They're a bundle of fun. Olya lives pretty close to the elementary school, but luckily she's on a slightly different bus line so we could breathe during the ride there. Her family has a very nice apartment. We had tea and did some youtubing before the muffin making began. I was very curious to find out what muffins are like in Russia. The word for muffin is “кекс” (pronounced like “keeks”). Anya looked up disney songs to listen to while Olya worked on the muffins. They were cherry muffins, with small cherries grown by Olya's family...and they were delicious. The muffin tin was different than our muffin tins. The muffin sections were taller and thinner. The shape reminded me of pudding cups that are connected together. When the muffins were baking, Olya made lattes. I was very happy.
When the muffins were done we migrated to the living room to play a game of Munchkin Quest. If you've never heard of or played Munchkin before, I'm not going to try to explain it because it's ridiculously complicated. All you need to know is that each card tends to have about a paragraph of information. In Munchkin Quest, you also create a game board, where each piece has another paragraph on it. The result it a whole lot of Russian very quickly, using unfamiliar vocabulary. Despite this, I still had fun, and I somehow ended up winning. After that, it was nearly nine so I took a bus home.
Confession: I started writing this sometime last week, but I was tired of writing and busy so I put it off. Therefore, I'm going to give you a quick run down of the last few days and will attempt to not go into much detail.
While I was working on some homework during the day on Thursday, Olya and Anya showed up with a few other people and a simpler, but still complicated, version of Munchkin to play. We played for a while, but then they had to go to class so we didn't finish. Olya and Anya said they'd come back on Friday so we could play.
The idioms for last week were as follows:
_ 1. To have a cow
__ 2. To be out of the loop
__ 3. Like trying to nail jell-o to the wall
__ 4. A Catch-22 (situation)
__ 5. To get cracking
__ 6. To get the ball rolling
__ 7. (To be caught) between a rock and a hard place
__ 8. Great minds (think alike)
__ 9. Something is like pulling teeth
__ 10. Fly off the handle
__ 11. Birds of a feather (flock together)
__ 12. Be home free
__ 13. To be kept / left in the dark
__ 14. Something is no mean feat
__ 15. Be downhill from here
__ 16. Be on the same page/wavelength
If in reading these you thought to yourself, “Self, it seems that many of these have the same general meaning!” You and yourself would be absolutely correct. The task for this week was to match each of the 16 idioms to 7 different general definitions. Once we had done that, I explained some of the minute differences between them. For example, with “to be home free” and “to be downhill from here” we talked about how a person or a group can be home free, but you can't be downhill from here. “It” is really the only thing that can be downhill, but you have to have a definite person or group of people to be home free.
The fun history for the week that I learned from these idioms was in regards to “keep the ball rolling.” As it turns out, in the 1840 election when President Martin Van Buren ran for reelection against General William Henry Harrison, Harrison had ten-foot high “victory balls” created with his name on them which were rolled from city to city, as far as 300 miles. The slogan associated with these balls was “let's keep the ball rolling.” This seems fitting as usually we tend to employ this particular idiom in a business meeting-type setting.
Three people ended up getting 12 of the 16 correct, and Anya was one of those three, so they all got Alaska postcards. Anya had me write a birthday message to her on hers.
On Friday, Ludmila and I finally figured out a topic for me to speak on at the teacher's meeting on Monday. October 18th is Alaska Day, the day that we purchased Alaska from Russia. The teacher's meeting was on the 17th. Due to the time difference, you could basically argue that either day is Alaska Day, so that's what we did. I planned to prepare a short slideshow with pictures to say a few things about my wonderful state. :)
Olya and Anya showed up sometime in the early afternoon and we played two games of Munchkin. I won one, and Olya won the other. Olya invited me to a Festival of Lights with Japanese lanterns on Saturday evening, but I had also made some plans with Katya, so I said I didn't quite know what I was going to do yet.
When I talked to Katya later that day we decided to go to a museum she had mentioned before and were debating between going to the theatre or the festival in the evening. We decided it would depend on the weather.
Alright, I lied. The next part of the weekend was eventful enough to warrant it's own entry. I tried the quick run down, and failed.
5 weeks down, 5 more to go. I've past the half way point now, and I expect the next few weeks are going to fly by.
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