Banya Bliss

Last weekend, Sara, my student Ksenia, and I were invited by Sara's student Lena to Lena's home in Kovrov. Her parents live there in their own house with a big yard and, most importantly, a banya. I love the public banya with all its gossiping grandmothers, but it's great to kick back at a real, private Russian banya. A private banya is mainly a room with a stove and a couple wooden benches. It can get pretty hot, especially when you start throwing water on the rocks in the stove and you sit up on the top level. It gets really good when someone starts beating you with a venik (a bundle of branches with leaves on them). The combination of waves of heat and wet leaves is supposed to be really good for you...

We left on Sunday morning and when we got to Kovrov (it takes about an hour an a half by bus) Lena's mom had prepared a feast for us, including the king of Russian food, blini. Also notice the liver pate in the shape of a pig sitting in front of me.

After we stuffed ourselves thoroughly with blini (I wasn't brave enough to dig into the pig) we slept for over an hour, and then headed out to the banya, which was already nice and hot. We went between sweating in the banya to sitting outside in the cool air, drinking tea with steam rising from our bodies.
And what could be better than banya, tea, and food, than all those things plus guns? Her dad busted out a BB gun and we had some target practice between banya runs. Here's Sara with the gun:

And me with the gun:
And here's me with the dog and Lena's mom:

This is Lena and her dad, and a bottle he found in the banya. Her dad was our banchik, whipping us good with a venik. There was some screaming, but that didn't stop the beating. It's good for you.

After a few hours of banya relaxation and fun, we finished the night off the best way possible: more eating. Lena's mom made one of the best kinds of Russian soup, salyanka, and her dad grilled shashlik, which you can see in the picture:

We stayed overnight and came back to Vladimir early in the morning, still worn out and full from our fun in Kovrov. We got to experience the three best things about Russia: food, banya, and hospitality.

Spring Training

The weather here has been unseasonably warm and sunny (until a little cold snap today), so we’ve been taking advantage of it by playing in the backyard like typical American kids. There are lots of options to satisfy our sporting desires. Throwing the football around is usually my first choice, of course. In the fall, Eric and I made up a great game that involves running in a circle and synchronized spinning and throwing two footballs. It’s hard to explain, but a beautiful thing to behold. Unfortunately, we haven’t gotten to break out that one yet this spring because the grass is still pretty fragile (we dug up a lot of grass playing it in the fall).

Since the baseball season began recently in America, we’ve started to play some makeshift baseball in the yard. We have a tennis ball and a plastic bat that is already pretty deformed, but it works. Last Saturday we had our first “real” game. Our teams were based around skin tone, the смуглые (swarthy, dark) people against the белые (white) people. (I’m смуглая, in case you had doubts). This is the same way we compete in all games – pool, Trivial Pursuit, and cards. I hit a home run, but the white people eked out a win in the end. We’ll get them next time.

The other big sports news is that my TV now shows the channel NASN (North American Sports Network). I’m sure it wasn’t there before, but it conveniently appeared right before the NCAA tournament. We’ve enjoyed watching quite a few games, but there are a few downsides: 1) times – only daytime games are convenient for us to watch, and we’ve had to stay up most of the night a couple times to see evening games, 2) commercials – NASN shows about 4 different commercials, and if I hear “There are over 385,000 NCAA student athletes, and almost all of us will go pro in something other than sports,” I might break my TV (I’m even starting to loath the Honda commercial that features the calming voice of Garrison Keillor), 3) the Russian announcer – this guy dubs over the usually banal American sports announcing with even worse commentary. Most of his analysis consists of phrases like, “simply fantastic!”, “16 points!”, “good throw!” He had a brilliant moment of insight during a baseball game the other night when he announced that the word “baseball” is made from two words, namely, “base” and “ball”. He probably knows that he can say anything he wants because there are approximately 17 Russians in the whole country watching NASN. The upside is that around midnight his commentary disappears, after he presumably downs some vodka and passes out in the studio.

Go Twins and BoSox!