Painted Garages

I haven't had much opportunity to go out and take pictures lately. Even when A and I go for a walk it's usually in the same places we've walked a million times before or I'm waiting for the snow to melt to take better pictures of the buildings around the city. As I was scrolling through my catalogue in Lightroom I couldn't believe I hadn't posted these pictures before. Maybe I just assumed I had because I have a similar picture to the one above on Instagram.

My Russian Language Progress

"How did you know that?" said A to me, shocked.

We were in line at the check out, and one woman asked if I had a card for the store. I said, "Yes," and handed her my card. A couldn't believe it. Just moments before the cashier asked if I had the same card and A answered for me, "No," until I told him, "Yes, I do have it." He couldn't believe that I understood the question. Truth is, I still can't hold a conversation in Russian. I can barely form a sentence, but after living here for a year and a half you learn things about language acquisition that you wouldn't think possible. Here are a few things I learned about language learning and the Russian language in general.

Thawing Out

This winter was a strange one for me. I just had no motivation to do anything but go to work and come home. People would always try to make plans with me but I'd just cancel, or in some cases it was just to late to go out. I used to get extremely terrible seasonal depression when I was younger, but this didn't feel like that. It could have been slight seasonal depression, but I just didn't want to do anything. I wasn't homesick either. It felt more like I wanted to recover from something. As the days are getting longer and the temperature getting higher I feel my mood changing.

Last Saturday was just what I needed to kick start my spring. I finally felt more motivated to go out after 7 pm, and more willing to meet with people. Sorry to any of those people who want to meet up! It's not you, it's me! I met Elizabeth around 4 because we wanted to get together and she's always willing to go on photo hunts with me. I had intentions of taking photos of an old building only to find that it was covered in some kind of tarp, so the only photo I managed to get was the one above. We walked a bit when I started to get hungry so we decided to get dinner. We chose Cafe Barashki because neither of us had been there since my birthday, and they have really great food.. During dinner my friend called me to see if I wanted to meet at a pub that night. I haven't seen her since August, so I agreed to go. After dinner Elizabeth and I walked home where I waited a little bit to go back out. It was so great to see my friend, Elmira, and meet her family. I even got to meet another friend who has constantly been inviting me to the pub, but I've always been to tired to go. The night starts so late here in Russia, and I'm seriously an old women who likes to be in bed by 10 pm.

All in all, it was a good weekend to recharge and get me ready for spring. How was your weekend? Any plans this weekend?

Happy Women's Day

Can you believe it's my second Women's Day celebration in Ufa? It feels like just yesterday that I celebrated with my class and A and I went to the abandoned observatory. Last year Women's Day was on a Tuesday, so we had Monday and Tuesday off of work. This year we only had today off so I wanted to make the most of it. If you saw my Instagram post yesterday you saw that A bought me flowers. It's so sweet when he does that, but I was going to tell him not to buy me anything because I'd rather he save his money. It's like he can read my mind and decided to buy me flowers the day before. One of my students also got me Dove chocolates which was so stinking cute, and I almost ate the whole box. Oops.

Churches of Ufa V.1

Last summer (as you can tell from the lack of snow) I took these photos with the intention of doing one big post of churches in Ufa. It's really no surprise that I love the Orthodox churches. Even if you aren't a religious person I think you can agree that they are beautiful. I forgot about these photos, and the other day it hit me that they were still on my hard drive waiting to be edited. I decided to post these two because there are a lot of churches in Ufa, and one post will be too long. Plus, I'm really slow at going out to find them so it will take a while for the next ones to come.