Oh, We Live With a Host Family?

We have been making major progress with out host family lately! This weekend was mostly a relaxing weekend for us and the only thing we did on Saturday was walk home from sleeping at the school and then we spent the rest of the day doing nothing. Actually, we slept for about an hour.. Then when we woke up and went into the kitchen we found this:

This is our host brother, Misha. He's too short to reach the microwave so he climbs up the heating pipes on the wall and then takes a break while he's waiting for his food. So awesome.

We've been getting to know our host family a lot which is like amazing for us. We've been here for a little over one month and we're just now getting the chance to get to know them. We figured out that if we camp out in our kitchen for a few hours every day then eventually someone will walk in and we can start an awkward Russian/English conversation and then we get to feel good about ourselves for taking the initiative. Go us.

Our younger host sister and brother have really taken a liking to us. By us I mean Audrey. She speaks Russian and I obviously don't so they really only talk to her. What's kind of funny though is that when Masha (younger sister) wants to ask me a question, she'll whisper the question to Audrey. Like I'll understand if she were talking in a normal tone.. right.

They really enjoy playing frisbee in our room, listening to our Ipods in our room, playing hide and seek in our room, and coloring in our room. It's so funny because Audrey and I are pretty much desperate to see the rest of the apartment (the half we have no reason to go into), but they won't let us do anything outside of our room!

Sometimes in the early afternoon I enjoy taking short naps to re-energize myself (haha..) and on more than one occasion I have woken up to more than just myself in my bed. Let me explain this: If Audrey and I make it home pretty early then we usually get some tea and go chill on my bed because it faces the TV. I normally end up falling asleep while Audrey just keeps watching TV for an hour or so. In between the time that I fall asleep and wake up, our siblings come home and, because we're so awesome, they come join us. On my bed. While I'm passed out. Proof? Last night:

Masha is the one in a pink shirt and jeans, and Misha is sitting behind her, and Masha invited her friend into my bed also.. I don't know her name. Is that awkward? And Audrey is usually sitting against the wall between my feet and where Misha is sitting, but she was needed for her awesome picture taking skills.

Another thing Masha and Misha like to do is steal our cameras. Unfortunately for them, they haven't found the delete button yet:

Masha..

Misha..

Along with our siblings, our host mother has also been more talkative in the last few days. On Saturday we made MAJOR progress with her. While Masha and Misha were hanging out in our room, we snuck into the kitchen for some juice and ended up chatting with Tanya for at least an hour and a half. Since she basically only speaks Russian, and I only speak English, we worked on translating some stuff with her. We learned all of their birthdays while she learned more about our families.

I really want to say that we "helped" her make dinner, but we just sat there while she fed us random things every few minutes.

First was a version of egg salad.

First she boiled eggs and cut them up, then she shredded in a block of cheese, and added some mayo. Then she open the sardines.. A whole can of sardines went in. And then she grabbed a stick of butter and started grating butter into it. There were like whole strips of butter in it! Are we the only ones that finds this funny? I hope not. It was weird.

Then she fed it to us. When in a foreign country, do as they do, right? I'm not a sardine person in the least bit. I only took a little bit on my bread, and it was almost too much for me. Audrey kept telling me to eat it all so she wasn't offended, so I took huge bites of bread and ate it as fast as I could without choking. AGH!

Next she fed us something like sauerkraut which was normal and tasty:

Then she brought these things out:

In the picture they're soaking in water because they were frozen and I guess you don't eat them frozen. They look like grapes and have the same thin outer layer that grapes do, but inside it tastes like kiwi. You just pop the whole thing in your mouth and enjoy. The first few you eat are pretty good, but after that then the taste turns kind of bitter and it's hard to eat more even though you really want to.

If that wasn't enough.. last night we tried our luck again and had more success. I was refilling my hot chocolate mug when we decided to grab our coloring books and set up camp in the kitchen again in hopes of luring any curious Ukrainian into the kitchen with our contagious laughs. It worked. Tanya came in again to make dinner and there we were.. I wasn't hungry at all, so when she offered us soup I declined politely, but Audrey is always curious and has to try everything and she accepted a small bowl. Typical to Ukrainian hospitality, whith her bowl came mine.

It was noodles, potatoes, carrots, and liver in a nice broth. It was good, but I was still full from the noodles Audrey and I had eaten earlier in the evening. But, naturally, with soup came more food.

This is a plate of pig fat. We tried it, of course. Admit it, you would've been curious, too! It didn't taste bad at all, it was just the aftertaste that stuck around for a bit too long. A few minutes later, the bread and salami showed up:

I still wasn't hungry.. Guess what happened a few minutes later?

More food appeared. This was like a liver sausage..thing. We ate it with bread.

So much for declining soup politely, eh? I won't lie, I loved every minute of it :)