I apologize it took so long to post something. Our first week was pretty busy and by the time I made it home everyday I was too tired to write anything.
We arrived in Ufa on Friday around 10:00PM. We had spent all of Friday in Domededovo (Moscow) and I hadn’t slept at all on the international flight. I pretty much conked right out as soon as I boarded the plane to Ufa. When we finally landed, it was still so bright outside that I thought maybe we had made some stopover in another Russian city. Turns out, the sun doesn’t set here until around 11:30PM. I was under the impression that only happened in the North (White Nights in Petersburg). It’s kind of awesome! A taxi driver took me to my host family who had supper ready for me. I have a host sister (Vika) who is 19 and a host mom (Yulia Nikolaevna). Vika is a student at my school (Bashkir State Pedagogical University) but works at night a lot. My host mom works at a grocery store a few days a week (sometimes all night!). I sat and chatted with my sister for awhile at the table and then watched some TV with the two of them (some concert on MTV – I recognized a few of the bands). I was surprised I had the energy to talk with my host family the first night and unpack my things etc, but I managed to stay up with them until 1AM.
The next day we had an orientation at school – Vika took me there via marshrutka. We live VERY far from my campus – it takes me about an hour and forty five minutes door-to-door in the morning. Sometimes I can catch a marshrutka (mini-bus) from the center and I can get home in half the time (although I kind of fear for my life – the marshrutka drivers drive EXTREMELY fast here). At orientation we received our cell phones, met some of our teachers, took a placement test (I ended up in the second group – which is fine so far but I hope our grammar teacher steps it up a bit or I might consider switching to the first), and met our peer tutors.
Once we met our peer tutors we walked around the city and got to know one another afterwards. My tutor is AMAZING. She’s super nice, chatty, and very pretty. Her name is Lena, she’s 23, Muslim, and married (for the second time). She knows English very well (she’s read the Twilight series in English) but both of us had to sign an agreement that we would not speak English with each other (I also can’t speak English on campus, with teachers, staff, or my host family). So Lena and her two friends and their respective American students walked around the city – it was City Day in Ufa so there were a lot of events going on. Lena and I chatted for about 2 hours or so and then her friend (who lives near me out in the sticks) took me home. That night I went to a nearby park with my host mom and met her two other daughters who have their own families. We waited for about an hour and a half in the park until the sun set and watched a huge fireworks show! I tried to capture it on film but was unsuccessful. 
The next day was Sunday and my host sister and her friend Alyona and I went to the movie theater where my sister works and we saw Get Him to the Greek with Jonah Hill and Russell Brand. It was an OK movie – I caught some of the funny parts and understood the gist of the movie but a lot of the specific words and phrases were way over my head. The theater is also super far away – it took us about an hour by bus and it was SUPER hot. It was in the 90s for most of the week here. It’s not that the heat is so bad but because the sun is up from 5AM-11:30PM it seems worse than it is. My apartment and school don’t have air conditioning. :-/ I’ve been drinking a TON of water from my water bottle with a filter (which has been working so far – so stomach problems yet!).
We started class on Monday. Every other day I have Phonetics and Grammar and the other days I have Film/Press and Lexicon. In July we’ll also have a Culture class and something else….I forget. The teachers are all great. Two of them are pretty young (maybe my age or a little older) and the other two are older. Three out of four of them are Tatars. I myself cannot tell the difference between Russians and Tatars by appearance alone (I usually can by their names). Ufa is comprised of about 35% ethnic Russians, 30% Bashkirs (who look Central Asian – Bashkir is a Turkic language and many of the Bashkir words I’ve seen on signs are the same in Kyrgyz!), and 30% Tatars. We have class from 9AM-1PM and then have lunch. The first few days we went to a café called Sani (which means sleigh)- but me and another girl in my group recently decided to just eat in our school cafeteria, which costs WAY less (about $1 compared to $5-6 at Sani). After school we have to work in the library or computer lab for a few hours (on another campus). They have a nice facility but I’d rather go to a café and use the Wi-Fi there. I’m gonna try to work on getting permission to do work in a café rather than our un-airconditioned school!
Besides school it was a pretty busy week. Monday after school I met with Vika and Alyona and walked around the city, through a few parks, and down to the river. The river is nice and there are beaches for swimming. We walked along the shore until we were caught in a thunderstorm and tried to take shelter under a bridge but we still got soaked and soooo dirty. It was a good time though – Ufa is a really green city and the riverside was really nice. On Tuesday it was Lena’s (my tutor) birthday and we met after class and walked around the city and saw different parks (there was one really nice one with a man-made lake with swans). I bought Lena a flower for her birthday, which she liked. We were with Lena’s friend and another American student too. The other student is more of a beginner and uses her tutor to help her with homework and teach her new words. I’ve been using mine as a nice break from homework – someone to chat with and hang out with. Wednesday we had our first excursion – to play mini-golf. The guy who runs the program at our university (Oleg) is a big sportsmen. He must be like 6’7 and very….robust looking. He owns his own mini-golf club in Ufa. It would have been a good time but it was very very hot and our tutors didn’t quite understand how to play. So we left after about an hour or so. Friday we went to see a play by a German writer at the theater. It was pretty funny and I understood most of it, which is always a plus. Finally, on Saturday Lena invited me on a picnic to celebrate her birthday with her Muslim girlfriends. At first I was nervous that I wouldn’t know anyone else there but it was a lot of fun! We went to the riverside and cooked chicken and fish and chatted and played a card game called Mafia.
There’s a ton of cultural idiosyncrasies and little events that are pretty funny but I think I’ll save them for another post!
PS – I added pictures from the first week to my Picasa album:
http://picasaweb.google.com/RStakun/Ufa06201002?authkey=Gv1sRgCPzx1M3ZqZzRsgE&feat=directlink
