my social weekend

Post Reply New Topic

This weekend I drove down to my hometown, Sarasota, to visit friends and family for St. Patrick's Day. As usual, I was pulled in many different diections, and didn't have time to spend with everyone, but did manage to have fun.

One odd thing about the trip was that we had been watching the neighbor's cat from the last weekend, but she didn't pick him back up before going out of town again, so we ended up bringing him with us. Fortunately, he travels well.

Saturday was dominated by a my best friend's son's second birthday party. First, let me point out that I have no kids of my own, nor have I ever been around kids for any length of time, as I was the youngest son, and we lived far from any of my cousins. My friend has 3 kids, ages 5 months, 2 years, and 6 years. Another couple who were there had 2 kids, ages 2 and 4 (I think), and another of their friends was there with her 2-year old. My friend's wife and mom were there, and two older ladies also came, one of who liked to be everyone's grandmother (Baba Zena). What made the party really interesting was that of the people there, only me, my friend, his 6-year old daughter, and his mother spoke English as their primary language. Everyone else was raised speaking Russian, and most of them were speaking it at the party. I have tried to learn 3 foreign languages in my life,and Russian wasn't one of them. Despite all this, I had a good time, and I think everyone else did as well. I'm not great at meeting new people, especially in social activities, but not only did I enjoy myself, I learned a lot and was helpful with things. I tried to make a point of talking to everyone, but I did at least talk to most of them.

Dinner at the party was interesting, too. It was a lot of good, traditional Russian food, including Russian potato salad, orange caviar, perogies (?), and clove, which was rice and beef. There were other items, too, and the food was all seasoned differently from the American standard, so while it is an aquired taste, I liked it.

Sunday was a traditional St. Patrick's Day dinner at my brother's house, and after that we watched the NASCAR race. Not as stimulating, but it's always good to visit family.

Pierogi are traditional Polish dumplings. I don't care for them, personally. No offence, like, but when you pit pierogi against a roast beef dinner as a national dish you know which one is going to win. And it ain't the dumplings.

I didn't know Russians were big on St. Patricks day. That's interesting.

ok, strickly speaking, I think they were from Estonia, Kazikystan (sp?), and Belarus. I'm not sure if any were actually from Russia; I didn't ask everybody.