5/16. My family doesn't speak any English.

I awake at 1 p.m. I’ve had weird dreams of playing softball all night, and being booed off the field for not doing well. I believe someone was flipped off. I don’t know what this means.

Irina pulled me into the kitchen for some breakfast. We aren’t talking much at this point because its scary and we’re both nervous about making mistakes. She leaves me to go and watch T.V and I spend the next three hours sitting at the table writing translations of commonly used phrases and words. I finally muster up the courage to go in and say something. “Can we go get an adapter?” “Mine is bad”…

It was beautiful and wrong and just fine. We spent a few minutes figuring out what should happen to fix this dilemma/just communicating what the problem was. We decided to run to the store around the corner to try and find one that would fit my silly Mac cable. They, alas, didn’t have one. We came back to the house, and after a little searching, found one that worked! It was some of the best news ever. I charged my laptop, looked at some pictures I had saved to my desktop, and started to write what I would eventually put in my blog when I had Internet access. (I just put in some eye drops, and my eyes are now more bloodshot and all stingy)

At this point I was feeling pretty lame. I couldn’t talk to my family and I was tired and not hungry but was being fed on a more than regular basis by these sweet women but couldn’t tell them “I’m full”, “no stop”, “seriously thank you, but no thank you”. In the middle of my mind rant, Tamara came in and started talking to me. I had no idea where we were going with this. She looks at my face so intently when she speaks. She knows I can’t understand but believes that as long as she keeps talking to me, I’ll eventually understand what she’s saying to me. I stare back, trying to believe the same thing, and hoping for the best at the end of the sentence. Sometimes we get lucky. Sometimes the hand gestures just don’t do it. Irina came in and kind of laughed at her mom’s attempt to communicate with me. She went from standing and smiling to kneeling next to my bed and playing the communication game with us. Irina is so good at the game. She knows the hand gestures that make sense, the best way to get the point across with the least amount of words possible. They are both such friendly ladies.

At the end of our 15-minute “chat”, we had communicated that I was going to meet Sergei, my program director in Petersburg, at 1 by metro, but was leaving at 12. I would have breakfast in the morning, eat lunch while I was out, and then have dinner when I came back home. Irina would be out, but was going to get back around 6. I gave us a round of applause and the group was all smiles. Tamara was spent so she went to go read, and I, naturally, was given food. Irina and I were used to this now. We went and talked about Monday’s schedule and called it a night. I think this was the first time I really smiled since I’d arrived. I even closed the door and did a little dance in my room.