Kazan — summer 2014

Wow, major wind and spotty rain.

Just a few hours ago it was majorly windy and rainy. Now it's calm and beautiful.

One of the most common condiments in Russia is horseradish. I think they particularly like it with beef. Myself, I like to smear it on white cheese, which is otherwise pretty boring. So at the store the other day I bought the jar of horseradish on the left. Boring. Almost no bite, despite the fact that the lable says ‘hot table horseradish.’ Today I bought the tube on the right. Now that one has a bit of a bite. Much better.

In the meantime I have beef and cabbage on the stove and laundry in the washing machine.

All our summer Kazan CLI students have arrived safe and sound.

All the students and I reconnoitered at 8:30 a.m. Collected all the passports and migration cards so that the students can be properly registered with the Federal Migration Service. That always irks me because we don't have a similar requirement for Russians in the US. On the other hand, Russia lets Americans into Russia a lot easier than the US lets Russians into the US, so it probably all comes out even. The institute returned our passports by afternoon, which stunned me. The first part of the process has never gone that swiftly before. It speaks well of these folks.

Classes were from 9:00 to 1:00. Testing. Things went smoothly. 1:00 was pizza. 2:00 was the official opening with two of the VPs of the institute speaking. Then the students were free to go home and do homework.

Alas, one of students fell ill and left class about an hour early, poor thing. Her host family wasn't at home that time of day, so I transported her to my spare bedroom to sleep and then headed back to the institute. She got a good 4-5 hours of zees in, and then I put her in a taxi to get her back to her host family at 67 Yamasheva Street. Or so I thought. It was actually 61 Yamasheva Street (typo on list). There can be a lot of distance between a 67 and a 61. Some of these apartment buildings are freakin’ enormous. Her host mother called me to inform me of my error. So I called the student, told her how to ask for help, and the host mother went out looking at the same time. They found each other fairly quickly. Not the thing you want to happen on your first day of class after feeling sick. Most likely her illness was brought on by jet lag and not eating enough, so I expect she'll be fine. We'll keep our eyes open, of course.