1st letter from Russiagirl
Hello! I thought I'd give everyone a chance to hear some of the letters that my buddyRussiagirl sent to me when we were exchange students in Russia way, WAY back in 1993-1994. She is hilarious, and gives a very vivid picture of life for all of us.
This letter is dated May 12, 1994. I refuse to write all of it, because she writes so SMALL and there is 4 pages, so I shall give you the best parts.
Dear mbwillow: "10 days for your letter- not bad. And since you're in Russia I can afford to write back! I went to the post office today and they'd raised the prices AGAIN- now it's 925 rubles for a shit envelope with a psychedelic Aeroflot on it. Thank God I'm leaving soon. I'm gonna go broke if it'd been like this all year..." .
"...I'm sneaking out of town. I told the new director-woman I was going to babushka's....I'm just going to get the hell out of Stavropol. This place puts me in a coma..."
She goes on to talk about her vacation at Tuapse and Sochi (the place I want to return to desperately). "...that's where I was on vacation. It's pretty nice there. Tuapse had rich families up the ass! I had bananas, steak, and champagne every day while I was there."
"...I had my birthday in March- my 17th. Everybody came over and got drunk. I got all this weird shit- a Lenin wall hanging, a KGB card, a pair of purple slippers with dogs heads and rolling eyes, a fountain pen (?) and from our Republican/WASP/tennis playing yuppie friend, a copy of "It Doesn't Take a Hero" by Norman Schwartzkopf."
"Yesterday I got a package notice in the mail. I went to the post office and they sent me to the back room. It was filled with enormous stacks of papers, letters, magazines, birth control devices, small children, etc. It was amazing. So I showed the lady my slip and she started digging through everything. She dug for maybe 15 minutes and then asked me where I'd gotten the slip. I told her my post office box. She glared at me suspiciously and asked if I'd written it myself. No, I didn't write the fucking slip myself! She dug around for another 10 minutes and then told me she didn't believe meand I'd better just go home, and that if I ever did have a package, the post office would send a slip. BLAHH!!! So I left- I have a slip (that I wrote myself- NOT!) and no package!"
"I just got a letter from my aunt along with your letter. I hate relative letters- it means you have to write them back. I hate spending my money to write letters about the weather to my damn relatives! My grandparents think I'm the designated Old Fart Pen Pal and I keep getting letters from people like my grandma's bingo partner (really!) that say stuff like blah blah blah- we're sixty years old an we have no life so we'd really appreciate a letter from Russia. Sorry senior citizen, send a S.A.S.E and we'll talk!"
"Just for kicks I go to school occasionally now. I don't go to class or anything. I just sit in our AFS room and answer the phone. See the cool thing is that we share our office with the assistant principal. I also type out her English tests for her and like to change the answers when they get boring. Example: Choose the correct answer.
I enjoy ____________ by my friend.
a) beating b) being beaten
The original choices were visiting or being visited. So far she hasn't said anything about it. I don't know if that means she enjoys it or she's too dumb to notice."
"Well, I gotta go pack my shit. Write back and keep me informed of life in the north." "Forty-six days and counting," Russiagirl ...Out of time- out of money- out of patience...93-94 Russia.