Day 6, Dacha Day 2

Sunday, Day 6

I am really writing this on Monday, and not Sunday. But in the interest of consistency, lets call it Day 6. Let me explain life at the dacha. I almost feel guilty, at this point, for getting paid to go there, so to justify it with research and documentation, dacha life:

You wake up in the morning feeling amazingly rested because you slept in a room with open windows facing the sea and breathed salt water all night. You stumble down the tiny narrow stairs in your bathing suit and eat zavtruk, which is eggs or small sausages, and cheese and bread, tea and coffee, etc.

You walk to the beach, stay until noon, swimming and sunning and catching fish and finding shells, and then go back to the dacha for “lunch” except it’s kind of an entire afternoon affair with slow grilling and smoking of the fish you just caught, lots more bread and cheese and fresh vegetables from the garden followed by mass quantities of watermelon and a weird melon that’s sort of a cantaloupe and sort of honeydew, but neither.

Then, around 5, when you’ve finally stopped eating and have started to digest, you go back to the beach to cool off during the late afternoon heat. You come back, drink some beer, maybe have a late night snack, and finally give up on eating and drinking outside when you can’t stand the mosquitoes anymore. Rinse and repeat.

Now to be more specific, I got the best sleep of my life. Dad, not so much, I think because he was hot, no AC, and he very generously gave me the room with the better breeze. On our way to the beach, Valia asked me if I would wear a Parielle, which is like a sheer wrap-thingy that you put over a bikini or whatever.

I had whispered to Dad earlier that they think it’s really weird that we wear clothes to the beach. Not at the beach, but to the beach. I mean yes, it’s a five minute walk, but in those 5 minutes you go through all the dachas, cross the only road around, up a hill to go over train tracks and through a little market until you get to the sand. So wearing clothes seemed appropriate to us. Plus, it’s not like we were decked out in evening wear, you know, shorts, t-shirts.

So Nastia and Valia kidnapped me, and Valia tugged on her Parielle and asked me, “If I buy you one of these, will you wear it?” So they began to haggle and look for the exact pink to match my bathing suit; Nastia finally found one (actually not very obnoxious looking!) and we snatched it up. Everyone felt much better. Sasha brought the fishing net (big big net with a square frame) and fished with Nastia later in the morning. They caught about a million shrimp, and were careful to throw the other living things that we don’t eat (little snakes and stuff, gross!) and even the seaweed back in the sea.

This second day, the water was much more calm and less salty, the current changed and most of it was flowing from the Limon. Less waves, more fish for Nastia. We later cooked these and ate them for lunch, and by we I mean everyone else, because after seeing them alive, even loving shrimp, I could not bring myself to eat them (except for the three that Nastia’s grandmother, Lara, peeled and put on my plate, which I felt obligated to swallow and quickly wash down with vodka.

I never knew this, but Dad almost died choking on a fish bone when he was around 2 years old and since then really hasn’t enjoyed eating fish, or at least fish with bones. He may have gone hungrier than he let on a couple times. We ate a lot of fish over the weekend, but this second day we also had svinya, pig, pork, (not me, but them) which Sasha cooked on a grill outside even though it was thunderstorming, and basically it smoked the meat and was delicious.

We ate and drank more than normal, I think because it was raining and we knew we weren’t going to hurry back to the beach. So Nastia taught me more card games, and genius, wrote out for me the Russian alphabet. (The only problem is she wrote it in her little-girl cursive, but I still am making sense of it all.) She helped me with the sounds of all the letters, which, for the most part, are fine except for about three letters, all almost indistinguishable for me, that all sound something like “Shch” but who knows.

So then we played Battleship, but, you know, Russian style, so instead of saying C7, I had to use the Russian alphabet. Such a good way to learn but Battleship has never left me so stressed out. Finally the sun came out and we went back to the beach, and Nastia and I practiced each other’s alphabet with sticks in the sand and made sand castles. Awesome to feel like a little kid again.

We all sat around until 8 and then ate and drank some more. It was sort of sad to close up the dacha again. Nastia and I exchanged addresses, in our respective languages, and Sasha drove us home. It was such a scary ride this time in the dark, no lights anywhere, and all these sharp turns that kind of came out of nowhere (I was sandwiched between Dad and a gigantic woman in the backseat so at least I had cushioning on either side).

I conked out after we reached lighted roads and I stopped clenching my jaw in fear, but not before seeing another car slam on its brakes and almost cause an accident to let a hedgehog cross the road, and after Dad told me that the night before, he stayed up late enough to see the stars come out and the big dipper was right-side up! I totally love it! (But of course I missed it myself and the city lights are too bright I think.)

I am absolutely eaten alive by mosquitoes, I have them everywhere, including my bellybutton. So I think I’ve gotten the gist of the day down, and I learned my lesson not to wait until the day after because it already seems way too foggy. I’ll try to remember yesterday’s words, but I think they might be blending in with today’s. And the dacha was at Carolina Bougass.

Words:
diamond: boubna
spade: peeka
clover: triefa
heart: cherva
beer: pivo
reva: little fish that Nastia likes
shrimp: clevietkey
key: clooch
flower: tsvietok
hot: holodno (general)
cold: gareecho (general)
base: baza
enough: vsyo
cheese: sir (rolled “r”)