Russians love their public holidays. Sure, we all do, but Russians love to congratulate each other on a public holiday. Each of the prazdniks (festivals) are significant within the culture, so each requires special observance in some way. So it was with some humour (and cultural understanding) that I received a text message on Saturday: "We congratulate all men on the day of protection of the Fatherland! Peace, happiness and prosperity. Your MTS." That was a congratulations from the telephone company.
On the surface this may seem humorous to an outsider. In reality it is an expression of gratitude to all men for their part in protecting the country, even in a future hypothetical sense. This stems from the great suffering that Russia experienced during world war 2. Millions of soldiers died and this runs deep in the Russian psyche.
Today is a public holiday, so I will make the trek to pay my fees to the University international office tomorrow. I hope it won't be so windy tomorrow morning. Although the weather has broken zero degrees during the day this week, it is quite windy, so Spring hasn't broken quite yet. We had better get Abigail down to the ice slides again as they may end up melting this week.
We have some friends coming from Finland tomorrow. They will only be here for 24 hours :(. These are some of the friends who helped us while we were in Finland in September. They are dear friends, who are very supportive of us here in Russia.
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