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January 25, 2015

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Life at Small House, Postaweek

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Express Yourself (Converge Part 2)

This week’s photo challenge is part 2 of my Moscow penpal saga.  If you’re new or missed part 1, read this first. The short version: I’ve been communicating with a Russian man for quite awhile now, and this week I received a package!

postcard

Ayyyyyyyyyyyyy!!! 🙂  Such crazy fun and what an interesting glimpse of a major cultural difference!  First the trinkets:

trinkets

…next, a perfectly themed Yuri Gagarin t-shirt!  Evgeny is an astrophysicist: one of our earliest conversations was about the Cold War Space Race.


Maggie arrived home while I was opening the final item and we nearly killed ourselves laughing. Gender roles are alive and kicking in Moscow…bigtime!

apron3

I’ve been around a long time, and no man in his right mind has ever given me an apron!  Apparently this is high praise from a Russian male so I won’t smack him with a frying pan; couldn’t reach that high anyway!! 🙂

I’ve been enjoying this entire experience so much I began studying Russian two months ago.  Slow going, but I’m getting better at cadence and recognizing which cyrillc syllables are stressed when I see words in print.  However, to express yourself well, you REALLY need to understand complicated grammar rules…so I bought these:

russianlanguage

До следующего раза! (until next time!)

🙂 🙂 🙂

obamaputin

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22 thoughts on “Weekly Photo Challenge: Express Yourself (Converge Part 2)”

  2. OMG I still love this! Keep ’em coming! By the way, funny timing – I just watched a beautiful documentary this morning about Russian ballerinas and now I’m dying to see a ballet. Quite a few of Russia’s prima ballerinas travel to the states with US-based companies. Also, why is everything that is Russian so beautiful? The colors! The history! The architecture! Aaaaah. This is so fun to live vicariously through you. Hahaha.

    • 🙂 Yes, tremendous cultural events there. A week ago I got to see a really cool Russian musical in it’s entirety via a freakin skype call! 21st century, eh? He had a great close-up seat so my “view” was perfect! Didn’t understand a word of course, but got the gist of it from the performance and dancing. Way cool!!

  3. This is such an interesting friendship and stranger still how you became acquainted. I think the gifts are awesome! Just love the patterning on the apron! These kind of friendships do much to span the divide between cultures and countries. Well done!

    • I sent a Vero Beach t-shirt and printed up a blank card with a photo of my garden in bloom last March. Inside I handwrote (in cyrillic) some of the original Ovid poetry we’d discussed a few years back!

  8. What beautiful gifts he sent! My daughter-in-law is from Belarus, and she talks to her parents and grandmother in Russian all the time. I tried learning the Cyrillic alphabet but gave up after ten minutes. Spanish is easy peasy in comparison.

    • I was so touched by it all. This has been a really interesting (almost life altering) event and I’ve learned a great deal about myself and the many cultural misperceptions I’ve developped over the years. (and yes, cyrillic is an absolute b*tch to get down!)

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