Today was Labor Day. I had been told that there would likely be communist demonstrations, and I was planning to walk around to see what I could find. We had the day off from classes (as Irina said at English Club…its very interesting that it’s called ‘Labor Day’ yet nobody works…) so I figured I would sleep in and then go exploring. I woke up to the sounds of police cars (it’s not really a siren, more of a thunderous BLAT) and amplified yelling. I came out of my room, and Olga told me I had almost slept through everything. We went on the balcony outside the living room, and saw that in the Chernoshevskii Park next to the apartment building were a group of people holding some kind of demonstration. As Olga explained to me, they were a hate group that protests modern society. There were twelve men standing in a circle around a fire chanting and yelling in old Slavonic and waving flags. After about three hours, they got in line behind the leader and went on a march around the neighborhood. The leader was wearing a lion skin across his shoulder. As the police were already expecting problems in the city, a number of them congregated in our neighborhood to be on standby in case they had to respond to anything in the center of the city…and there were a LOT of police officers. There must have been between two and three hundred police officers in the neighborhood. It was really a strange scene; the sidewalks were filled with policemen and the only cars on the street were police cars (and two busses that were used to bring additional police). I wasn’t particularly thrilled about walking through them when I went out, but I didn’t really have a choice. I did wait until they had started dispersing, however.
Olga is leaving for her dacha tomorrow morning, but she’ll be back Sunday night. She said she’ll be going back and forth quite a bit for the rest of the month, and she will more or less be there the entire month of June. I’m glad I have the arrangement with Vera, because I’m not sure what I would do living here alone. Speaking of, tonight Vera called me around nine o’clock. I had told her that I arrived on Wednesday, but wouldn’t come over for dinner until Saturday because I had English Club Thursday night and plans Friday. She called and asked me why I didn’t show up for dinner tonight. I told her that I thought we had agreed on Saturday, and she sounded confused and then laughed and said that because of the holiday, she forgot that today was Friday and not Saturday. I don’t understand why a holiday like Labor Day which is really only observed with a day off from work should make any difference in the day-to-day activities of a retired person… either way, I’ll go Saturday night. She said she won’t actually be there (she’s going to her dacha for the weekend as well), so I’ll be dining with her daughter and her daughter’s family.
It was funny…last night somehow Olga and I got on the topic of mushrooms (I think it was because she gave me some soup she made with mushrooms in it) and I told her that we have different mushrooms in America. We tried to discuss it, but I didn’t know how to translate any of the names of our mushrooms, so I made a list and this morning tried to translate it. I couldn’t find the name of a single kind of mushroom in any of my dictionaries, and when I told Olga she found a British picture dictionary (she has everything in her library) and opened up a page on mushrooms. She eventually came to the conclusion that Americans don’t understand mushrooms and use silly names for our foods.
I think tomorrow I’ll go to a museum. I haven’t gone to any museums since Brittany left, because after going to so many in such little time I felt a little overwhelmed. I need to find something to do, because unlike in the dorm, if I stay here there is absolutely nothing to do and nobody to talk to. I sent Vova a message about joining me a little while ago.
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