"Kvass, looks like soysauce, smells like beer/bread, and tastes like bubbly soda. Odd!" was the exact thing I told my host family after trying it during dinner. I made a small joke of switching the soysauce with the kvass, but of course, it would be impolite to play such a prank. Today was our first snow day, which had me really excited because I have not seen snow in 16 years. It never snows where I used to live in California, so I have only seen photos of my father and I in Kansas with snow and tractors in the field. I owe a friend a nickel, because I thought it would never snow this early. It's only October!

I went ice skating last night. Initially, the rink looked minuscule compared to the popular one in my hometown, but as we got on the ice, it seemed just as big and even more crowded. It seemed like everyone already knew how to skate. I really liked skating here because it's cheap (less than $5) compared to the $8-10 back at home. Renting skates we had to give our IDS to the service person, to ensure we would return the skates later. Returning the skates was a bit difficult, because there is no such concept as a tidy line in Russia, and there was only that tiny booth to pack around 20 people. I think I might head back there today with some school friends too.'

We headed to McDonalds for 30 mins before home. Talked, but most people were rather tired. As my sister and I excited the building, some rude teenagers mimicked some bad Chinese, but it was so bad I almost laughed. There was no reason to get very mad about it, so I just said "Yo, whatsup? I understand and SPEAK Russian you know."---po-russki.