Kazan — summer 2012

Another day starting with administration. I attended all the final oral presentations of the second year students. I'm so proud of them. There isn't a one that hasn't made major progress in the last four weeks. If I had to pick one today who particularly impressed me, it would be Amanda. At only 19 years of age she has an excellent mind, good study habits, and to the best I can tell is a young woman of excellent character. Oh, and she is lovely beyond words. Though I am a teacher per se, I feel an avuncular pride in students like this. I'm often stunned by the privilege of being able to see some part of their lives. I will never have children, but I hope that some small virtue might pass from me to students like these.

I met with one of the Institute's vice-presidents today to begin discussions about bids for next year's program. I personally want to come back to Kazan, but I think we will have bids from Kiev and Petersburg as well.

After that two more students did their OPI-c exams, and then I visited more host families.

After that I was free for the evening, so I headed to the Osipovs'. Flyura decided to feed us, and she just "threw something together," which consisted of ground meat, potatoes, onions, cabbage. This she fried a bit, then she added a mixture of eggs and milk, along with some tomatoes, which she then covered. Ohmigosh, so tasty. If I were to try this at home, I might use chicken bouillion instead of milk, but oh so good.

She also served up сало, basically fat back. In the past I've mostly been grossed out by it, but in my new fat-friendly frame of nutrition I decided to eat it. Not bad at all. And throw a little AZ gun-slinger sauce in and it becomes even more interesting.