Novosibirsk - Day 12

Today was AWESOME!! I got to sleep in a little bit, until about 11am or so. Then I woke up and caught up on some work related items until about 3pm. I then headed to the Trade Center to get some items for my party that I was having tonight.

When I got to the Trade Center, I found myself walking around looking for simple playing cards. I looked in 3 or 4 stores then eventually found them after calling Scott for assistance. No sooner did I get off the phone with Scott, I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was Ivan and Oleg. They were in the Trade Center looking to buy beer before heading to my place. Cooool.

I ended up walking around with them for the remainder of my shopping excursion. We went to the grocery and stocked up on snacks, beer and food. We actually spent a lot of time in the beer isle finding the right Russian beer. We also got a lot of these snacks that were basically like "fish jerky". It was basically dehydrated fish (scales and all). They smelled terrible, but were actually "quite interesting" when eaten. :) No really, they weren't that bad after all and I guess it's pretty common to eat this while drinking beer, which was definitely on the agenda.

While at the grocery I ordered some marco polo chicken wraps and rice to eat down before the night began; it was very good. I hadn't really eaten today (besides two cups of yogurt when I woke up) and I wanted to get some food in me before we started drinking. When we got back, I hurried up and ate my food and we got started drinking right away (Russian Tradition). :) While waiting on the rest of our party, I got to see "Cars" the movie in Russian. It was just as funny, maybe funnier. Eventually people started arriving and the fun was increasing with every minute.

My first (and only) Russian party was a huge success! I would have been just as happy with 1 or 2 people, but I ended up having a packed living room of my new Russian friends: Oleg, Ivan, Konstanin, Irrina, Julia, Anna, & Sasha (Anna's husband). It was even better that they spoke English about 75% of the night, so I was very thankful. Even when I wasn't part of their conversation, they were speaking English to one another. At no point did I feel like the "foreigner"; it was great.

I learned how to play "Fool" tonight, which is a Russian card game that involves a lot of explaining. :) By the end of the night though, I understood it pretty good, but there were still little rules here and there that were silently thrown in. After many games of Fool, I tried to show everybody how to play Euchre and it turned into a very confusing ordeal. Perhaps because I was a bit drunk and Julia asked a lot of questions that I had a hard time answering. :) We played about 2 or 3 games then gave up on that. We also had a lot of deep thought about "booger scrapers" and "clouds". :) Too much fun!!

A lot of fish and beer was consumed tonight. We had fish jerky, calamari jerky, and raw fish slices to go with our many bottles of pee-vah. The fish was all surprisingly good, though the smell was not so good; it started to get to me towards the end of the night. We took lots of pictures and jammed to some cool tunes (Peter Tosh, Joss Stone, <1 minute of Pantera :), and some Pearl Jam). At the end of the night, everybody found out that I was part of a band and I just so happened to have brought some CD's with me so I shared them with everybody. Konstantin (Koi-sta for short (I just learned this)) and Irrina already had one, so now everybody else had one too. I then showed everybody where I lived and went through lots of pictures on my computer of DD employees and also various pics of my family and my farm. We had very nice time. When they all come to America, I invited them all to stay at my house (sorry Jennifer). :)

As soon as they left, I crashed hard.