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Honey for tea! Look how much honey I have! |
... life could not be better. I absolutely love honey - on bread, in tea, basically anything you can do with honey. So I was thrilled to find out that Bashkortostan is super famous for their honey! And of course, the place to get the right honey as at the market, so on Saturday a few of us met up to go to the Orthodox Church and the Center Market. It turns out that at the market, you can either buy really small amounts of honey, or enormous amounts, so I got the enormous amount and I am enjoying it in my tea as I write. It is really delicious honey. By the way, Russians drink so much tea, mostly only black tea and sometimes with really strange fruity flavors. Even though it is almost 90 degrees here and like 75% humidity, my host mom must put on the kettle for tea at least 5 times a day. I love tea, but black tea not so much, and I sort of miss coffee, but I am adapting. I got some green tea (which the honey tastes delicious in) instead of the strawberry/blackberry stuff my host mom drinks, which I think is a bit gross, but so long as I am drinking tea, she doesn't care. Unfortunately, my host mom cannot share my passion for the honey. I came home and showed her the jar, explaining how much I liked the honey and that she was welcome to have as much as she wanted because I bought so much. Just as my luck goes, she says "I'm allergic." So I'll be coming home with a lot of honey in August.
I really like going to the market - you see all kinds of new stuff and its usually very inexpensive. Sometimes you can bargain to get lower prices too, but I'm not much for that - getting something like 15 rubles cheaper (like 50 cents) isn't usually worth the effort and the risk of making it even more obvious that I'm a total foreigner. Each neighborhood has its own market (rynok in Russian) and they're usually in big warehouse style buildings or set up as shops on an alley. There is a meat and fish room, which always stinks, but my favorite is the baked goods. You can get croissants with a little cheese on them or sweet poppy seed rolls for like 20 cents! My host mom buys her meat, produce (and by produce I mean her cabbage, cucumbers, and tomatoes), and eggs at the market. The other stuff you can get in grocery stores. By the way, in most grocery stores here everything is behind a counter and you have to tell an employee what you want. This is because of rationing in Soviet times and problems with stealing in the 90s. I kind of like it because I just get more practice speaking, but I have ended up with the wrong item before because of the language barrier. Because Ufa is such a big city, there are a lot of western style grocery stores though, which is easier if I'm buying a lot of stuff.
Besides going to the market, we also went to the ornate Orthodox Church. Whereas the mosques we visited have an understated beauty - soft colors, simple decoration - this church is probably more richly decorated than any cathedral I've been in. The building isn't very large, but it is stunning. The first thing you see is an enormous golden chandelier in front of a golden alter covered in icons. Walking in from the hot, loud street was a bit surreal. A priest chanting and the strong incense used in the church made it seems worlds away from the rest of the city. There are icons everywhere, you can even see them on the chandelier in the picture. I did notice that there aren't very many places to sit there, which made me wonder how the services are. I believe that instead of having one large mass once a week, prayers are led at certain times each day. There were a lot of people coming and going from the church while we were there, just saying their prayers and leaving. And headscarves are mandatory here as well.
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The interior of the church- it seemed like icons covered everything. |
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A mural of the last czar - Nicholas - and his family (remember the Disney movie Anastasia? That family, the ones that were brutally murdered). They are saints in the Orthodox Church (maybe only the Russian Orthodox Church, I'm not sure) and I guess that there is a mural like this in many churches. |
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From the outside- I didn't take this, since I couldn't get a good shot because of all the traffic. |
After our adventures to the church and the market, we walked around the city some more and ended up at "the old Muslim graveyard," to see a spectacular view over the city. The graveyard is a bit out of the way and in disrepair in some places. It was interesting to see the crescent moon symbol juxtaposed with the Soviet red star. Also, as per Russian custom, many of the headstones display pictures of the person buried there.
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The old graveyard |
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View from the top of the graveyard overlooking the city - you can see the Belaya River in left edge. |
In other news, it has been a long week. We went to the Bashkiri National Museum, which was interesting, but I had a very hard time following the guide - he mumbled. There was a lot of history, mostly on the role Bashkortostan has played in Russian history in general, from pre-imperial Russia until after World War II. Sort of a lot for me to process in just an hour. There was also an exhibit on cosmonauts! Russia's passion for Yuri Gargarin (the first person in space) is fabulous. Belka and Strelka, the first dogs to survive space flight, have a special place in my heart as well.
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Belka and Strelka were pretty cute! |
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The way is open for people!! (since Belka and Strelka survived) |
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Bashkiri military dress. |
On Friday, we went to a contemporary art gallery, where the curator showed us pieces focusing on the different cultures and history of Russia. I actually really enjoyed the talk and some of the pieces really stuck in my head. I also understood the curator very well - whether or not I enjoy our excursions seems contingent on whether or not I can understand the discussion.
Overall though, it was a tough week. The heat has been really getting to me - sitting in stuffy classrooms and traipsing around the city everyday in 85 degrees and humidity is not for me. Who'd have thought I'd be complaining about the heat in Russia? I've also been having a hard time sleeping, which makes it that much harder to process and absorb everything people say to me so that I can communicate and learn. I'm a bit frustrated with some parts of the academic program right now too, but as a group we've discussed that with the teachers and did a survey for the CLS program, so hopefully that will improve soon.
On the plus side, we're going to a lake next weekend, so I should be able to go swimming, which would be a huge relief in this weather! And, everybody is pumped to celebrate the 4th of July tomorrow!
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