Getting Sick in Russia

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Everyone seems to be sick now. I think most people became sick after the overnight train ride.
My host family seems to have very different ideas about what sick people should do than in the U.S. I've been sick since last week and every time I leave the home to go outside my host mom shakes her head and asks me why I'm going outside when I'm sick.
One nice thing about being sick is that I get to have soup for dinner every night. My host mom makes the best soups. Unfortunatley she thinks that sour cream is an integral part of every soup and so I always get lectures for not wanting any in my soup.
Classes are going well though. I decided to take all my classes in Russian. I could have taken History in English, but the professor's English is terrible. I have an easier time understanding the lectures in Russian than his lecture in English. His vocabulary is extensive but he uses words incorrectly most of the time. His syllabus reminded me of a paper I wrote in 7th grade in which I decided to look up every word in the thesauraus so it would look like I had a huge vocabulary.
So now I'm taking Russian grammer, Russian speech, Russian film, and Russian literature. Russian literature is the hardest. We're reading Pushkin now entirely in Russian. It took me hours just to read five pages. So my new strategy is to look up the English translation online and then read the Russian passage. Pushkin used a lot of phrases which are no longer used in Russian, so I sometimes can't even find the definitions in the dictionary.

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Photos

Russian Food
Russian Buffet at the Matroyshka Restaurant

Comments

[Aunt Sue]

Feeling Better ?
Hi Genna, I hope that this message finds you in better health than when you wrote your last entry. Your courses must be quite challenging, but I imagine interesting and passionate! I imagine you love but get frustrated with the level of difficulty. Your parents have asked me to stay with Geoff while they are off visiting you! I said of course I would. Hey, are you able to get pictures on this site? I have just been so curious to see the things you talk about! Take care. Lots of soup should help that cold go away! Love, Aunt Sue

[Genna]

Pictures
I'll try to get pictures online asap. However, I'm going to have to wait until someone lets me use their computer. None of the computers in the University's computer lab or in the internet cafe have working USB ports. So I may not even be able to put pictures online until my mom brings me my computer