Жизнь Прекрасно!

Oh man, This past week has been absolutely awesome! It started with Olonho on Wednesday. Olonho, for the majority of you who don't know are epic yakutian stories. Or rather it's the all-emcompassing name given to the stories. From what I can tell, it's not just the stories, but the art form in which they are told as well. Anyway, on wednesday evening we had an invitation to go to the cultural center and watch a dance that told part of a story from the middle world section of the stories. see, in Yakutian legend there are three worlds. upper, lower and middle. we live in the middle. Anyway, I had no idea what we were going to see and was afraid that i wasn't going to be able to understand it. Fortunately, it was a dance with minimal speaking. Let me say it was pretty awesome too. The story was about this hunchback who through a little bit of magic becomes a great warrior and saves a beautiful maiden. unfortunately, we only saw part one which ended just before said warrior was going to go save the beautiful maiden from the evil demon. I want to go back and see the second part.

I really enjoyed the performance and typical of me, i got caught up in the story and didn't take any pictures. will try to remember if/when we go back. The dancing was awesome. it was like a combination of ballet and traditional yakutian dance. i learned that there's a difference between the way you dance a horse and the way you dance a reindeer. very cool.

Another good thing that happened this week was on Friday night we had a night of Poetry reading at school. This was pretty cool, and Olga Yurievna who's like one of the kind of in charge people at school had asked me to come and read something in english. I didn't read. I recited. The poem I chose was my typical performance poem. Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll. I chose this piece because I have it memorized, and even though it has nonsense words, it's still a coherent story, one that's discriptive enough that i can act out.

So when my turn came, I threw myself into it. And the kids enjoyed it. I had a few people afterwards come up and tell me i did a really good job, and that they could follow the story well. Good, that was my point. What I admired were my classmates who got up and read poems they'd written themselves. That takes a lot of guts.

Continuing on in my week, the next good thing happened on Saturday. Saturday i skipped school completely. Instead, i went and visited Elena Ivanovna's class. Elena Ivanovna is a teacher and a lot of times teachers are kind of in charge of a group of students. I had met some of her students before but this was the first time I met them all together. It was an interesting experience as her class is mostly made up of boys. I gave my presentation about America, my first time giving it in russian. they class asked lots of questions and there was some general bantering and what not which was really fun. I enjoyed myself. Afterwards, I went to my khomus lesson, which was just awesome because i love playing the khomus.

Finally, the coolest thing ever happened on sunday. I took the phone call that I'd been dreading for over a week. The call that Raisa was home. Blin! I don't want to go back there! But fortunately She had some news that was good for me though not for her. First of all, she told me that our Orientation in Vladivostock is going to be on the 22-23 of March and that our trip to Moscow and Piter is going to be right after. That was pretty exciting. Then she told me that we should talk to elena Ivanovna about me staying with her. and I thought Oh yeah! unfortunately, Elena Ivanovna wasn't home when raisa called, so I had to wait. when Elena Ivanovna did get home I told her raisa called. She called back, and talked for a couple of minutes. When they got off the phone, Elena Ivanovna looked at me and goes 'so you're going to stay here?" and I asked "Can I?" And she said "Do you want to?"
'oh yes! very much so!" and she was like "Okay and gave me a big hug. SO i get to stay!

And that's basically my awesome week!