Swimming in the River

Yes. I already spoiled the topic of today's post by the title, but
nevertheless, that is what Russians are doing today. It's a spiritual
holiday today, where people swim or dip their bodies in the water at
least three times to cleanse themselves of sins. I think it's a rather
cool tradition since it's great timing with the New Year, but I don't
think I would dare step into the cold waters this winter. Maybe some
winter in California I could handle. I find myself missing Winter camp
in Moscow very strongly, but now I'm dealing with it better, because
school's keeping me busy. We had a test yesterday, and I felt rather
confident about my work this time. I was slightly interrupted during
the oral section, but it was bound to happen. I chose the topic of
"Moya Strana" which translates to my country. It was natural to speak
about it since AFS students always have to present about their native
countries at camps and school. As you might have noticed, my English
is getting stranger. The normal use of syntax is distorted, but that's
happening naturally and I don't mind. In Russian, word order doesn't
matter as much as in English, because they use a case system, which
clearly identifies the actor and object(s) in each sentence. It's
smart, but also a bit hard to learn at first. So now, it's all about
adapting. Most of this week, I didn't want to go on the Internet,
because I'm having a good time without it. Saying this is rather
funny, because in America, I could hardly live without the Internet.
In fact, I would feel really guilty too, because I worked on
websites...and without Internet, you might guess how little I would
accomplish. Anyhow, I purposely want to keep this post short, because
there will be other times to write. See you guys in 5 more months!