I am sitting here trying to do my reading for class as I let my uncomfortably full stomach get less full, just in time to eat more. My host mom loves to feed me. She loves to feed me so much sometimes it's the last thing I want to do. She makes delicious food. I never thought beet soup would taste good. But it does! But, sometimes when I don't want to eat, I have to anyways or risk hurting her feelings. Often when I get home from school she will ask me, "Why didn't you eat cake for breakfast?" It's hard to explain through my very limited language skills that after two bananas, a plum, cereal, tea, and milk, I didn't feel like topping it off with cake. We also eat a lot of melon. I know that she was sad that I wasn't eating enough melon, so I made it up to her by eating 11 pieces in one sitting. Yesterday I ate eight pieces. She's going to call me into the kitchen in a bit to eat more melon. I guess we'll see how much I can eat today.
On Sunday the group went to New Jerusalem Monastery in Istra. It took about an hour to get there by train and it was a gorgeous day. We walked around the church and the monastery grounds and then had some tea at the museum there. After that, we walked over to a part of the grounds where they had a peasant's house (obviously rebuilt) from about 150 years ago. The house was constructed really well and it was really interesting to hear about how everyday people (well, at least the richer peasants) lived back then. When we were walking back to the train station, we happened across two painted statues. I have no idea why they were there, but they were pretty entertaining.
The train ride back was a little more uncomfortable. The seats were all taken and the train was a local train, rather than an express train, so it took quite a bit longer to get back. We were standing in the area where the passengers board the train for most of the ride, which wasn't terrible until a girl who looked about 13 (she was probably older) came into the area with an adorable little kitten and tried to put a cigarette in its mouth. It was definitely an experience being in a tiny area like that for so long with everyone.
It started raining again today. It is a really comforting noise and I love looking out the window to see it, but I think I'm going to wear waterproof shoes tomorrow. Tomorrow is the first day of my new internship, and I'm really excited to observe surgeries!
We are starting to make plans for Thanksgiving, and it looks like we are going to Egypt! I am really, really excited for it. During the month of November we'll hardly be in Moscow. The first long weekend (Nov. 4-7) we are going to Istanbul, Turkey. The Friday after that until the following Sunday we will be in St. Petersburg, and then we are going to hopefully be in Egypt for the final weekend of November. It will be really exciting and I'll make sure to take tons of pictures.
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