Friday, December 3, 2010

День Благодарения// Thanksgiving Day

This was the first time spending Thanksgiving away from my family and instead being in Russia. Our group decided to have a thanksgiving dinner together at the university where we would bring in something to contribute to the dinner. Me being me and wanting to have a piece of my family with me at the dinner, I decided to go up to the challenge of making a flan. It really wouldn’t have been a challenge had I not been in Russia of course, but as I made my way down the aisles of Globus, one of the supermarkets in the outskirts of the historical center where I live, I noticed that the chance of finding evaporated milk was becoming less and less. One of my professors said “Yeah, I’ve never seen that before in Russia. Who would drink milk like that?” And that pretty much sealed the deal on finding evaporated milk. One of the replacements for evaporated milk I found online was cream which here is сливки (slivki) and or trying to use coconut milk, so I bought both and enough to make two flans in case one or the other failed. I went for the сливки replacement first which the flan ended up coming out like water but the center of the flan was pretty good. So I used the coconut milk and to make the story short, the flan was pretty damn good for being a Russian made flan. But I wasn’t sure the flan was good so I didn’t bring it in for others to try until this week. But this post I’ll use to post up a list of things I’m thankful for in my life back home in the spirit of Thanksgiving (even though its December 3rd) already, it’s the idea that counts!

  1. Living and studying in states (New York and Vermont) where all four seasons come and go. Russia does not have four seasons, only two: winter and summer. Feel free to argue with me… once you’ve lived in Russia.
  2. Having the sun in my life, I’m glad I won’t be here when the sun dies billions of years in the future, cause seriously… the sun’s rays are so important and its crazy how you’re mood can change based on this celestial object.
  3. The use of salt to remove ice. Omg, I walk around and it feels like I’m walking over a lake as the ice either cracks under me or I slowly walk over a patch making sure to not slip.
  4. Not being called a foreigner at home, read the post about it if you haven’t.
  5. Being able to drink tap water. I hate having to drink boiled water and only once its cooled.
  6. Having a real phone contract/plan, MTC I hate you… and I hope you know that. (I asked to turn off the extra 100 minutes plan on my phone, not the SMS plan!!)
  7. Having real internet… okay this should be #1 or completely its own list. The internet here through the modem is so ridiculous, I can’t wait to be with WiFi again, sometimes I consider selling my soul to the devil for real internet… but then I think of the repercussions.
  8. Not having to live through -15F degree weather three days in a row… and it’ll just get worse from here.
  9. The convenience of a supermarket which you don’t have to take a ½ hr trip to get to, God bless Wal-Mart, K-Mart, C-Town and every other supermarkets I’ve ever set foot in.
  10. And lastly, the American education system. Even though my Russian class is good (I’ll post about that in a bit) I appreciate the system I was educated in where schedules don’t change every other day for the first few weeks. 

This picture is for everyone that laughed when I talked about my internet and how weird it acts. In order to get some decent internet I had to buy a USB-USB cable which allows me to hang my modem off my lamp in order for that little light to constantly stay blue (good signal) instead of red (bad signal).

    No comments:

    Post a Comment