Arrival

Backlog, 6/13 9am: After a long two days in Washington D.C., followed by a sleepless ten-hour flight to Moscow, a seven-hour layover, then another two-hour flight, I arrived in Ufa yesterday evening. The representatives for the CLS program in Ufa, that is the trip organizer and a few of the teachers met us in the airport. Then we were all loaded in to taxis and sent off to our host families. The taxi ride was great, since we had landed just before sunset, so the view over the river as we drove into the city was beautiful. And it was my first chance to really break out my Russian, besides ordering food in the airport. My driver pointed out sights - the city center, the statue to regional hero Salavat Yulaev (I'm not sure why he's famous yet, but I'm sure I'll find out soon). I asked the driver what kind of food he recommended that I eat and what was absolutely worth seeing in the city and, much to my delight, he told me that he is Bashkir and grew up in a town about 100 kilometers outside of Ufa. The Bashkir are a Muslim ethnic group who live mostly in the Bashkortostan state, which Ufa is the capital of. I'm hoping maybe to learn a little bit of the Bashkir language while I'm here, which is Turkic, so not at all related to Russian. He told me to try some Bashkiri food and gave me the name of a restaurant. He also was really insistant that if I had a free weekend, I should go out to the countryside and see the towns around the city (especially his hometown, of course). Also, he was really surprised that I was wearing a seatbelt and told me that I didn't need to because the taxi had special shades on the windows so that the police wouldn't notice if I wasn't wearing one.

My host mom, a retired teacher, seems like a force of nature. She has a lot to say and speaks very quickly, so I can't really keep up with her yet. My host brother, Roman, on the other hand, didn't have much to say, but we had fun looking up the translation for 'peanut butter' and he thought it was funny that I liked the cookies they served us on the airplane. The apartment is small, but comfortable - standard Russian living arrangements, I think. There is a family of pigeons outside my window, which I listened to all morning, because I was awake at like 6am Ufa-time, even thought that is like 8pm EST. Luckily, I think that I hear everybody else waking up, so I'm going to venture out for my breakfast and see how we're going to celebrate the today's holiday, Russia Day! Tomorrow I'll go to the university to take more placement tests and begin classes.