dancing cheek to cheek

it's been an eventful last couple weeks. it started to snow a couple times but never stuck. it actually seems colder now than it did then and still there's no snow. the lowest I think has been 2 celcius...still havent figured out the conversion to farenheit. moved in with my host family a week ago yesterday. it has it's awkward moments. i guess I'm just not used to having people stare at me so much. meals are fun. my host dad is a jokester. they speak little english but their daughter, who's the same age as me and goes to the university, is pretty decent in her english. so she's my translator. i have a nice big room to myself. and a bolshoy (big) koshka (cat) named piersik (peach). I'm getting better at understanding the language. not so much speaking it. or using it for that matter. which is sad. we went to Kazan this last weekend. It's a city as far east as Moscow is west, I've been told. it's about 8 hours on the train overnight. it's the center of Islam in Russia. the Kremlin has a huge mosque that we got to tour. it was really interesting. i finally found some postcards there. for some reason they dont have poscards in Nizhnii. every Friday I have my service project at the orphanage or preeyuit (shelter). they celebrated their 12th anniversary and had a big performance they put on. it was the cutest thing ever. I want to take them all home with me. we got to drink tea and have snacks afterwards with them. i just love them. it takes about an hour to get to class on the bus every morning. and it's so crammed, i dont even have to hold onto anything. packed like sardines. no joke. it's a pretty difficult task trying to move. an arm in the face, a shoulder in the back, and then the lovely butt in the stomach or cheek to cheek. it sounds humorous but when you're in the moment, it's pretty torturous. this weekend we have our halloween party. me and stephanie are going as nerds. pretty stoked about that. we're also hittin up a discoteka. that will be interesting. the sun's come out today. I havent seen it in a while. tonight's my host mom's bday so were going to have a birthday dinner. it's been 2 months as of today. only 1 1/2 to go!! cant believe it.