All The Blueberries Ever.

                One of my favorite things to do here is go to the open market. It is kind of like a farmer’s market and a flea market combined.  Every town has one, and you can find all kinds of awesome things. The language barrier isn’t too hard to overcome and when it is the worst thing that happens is you come home with way too many blueberries. I’m not kidding. I just bought like 11 cups of blueberries on accident. I have already made blueberry cake and blueberry cobbler and I still have like 7 cups left. I have come to the end of my blueberry utilization skills. 

                The lady that was selling the blueberries had a huge bucket full and I asked how much they were and she said 150  Rubles, so I said, “horosho.” Which I thought meant, “OK, let me have a reasonable amount of blueberries and I will pay you 150 Rubles, roughly three dollars.” Apparently, it was 150 for the whole bucket.  I really like having fresh produce, and I also like contributing to the local economy, especially considering that the ladies at the market are the nicest I’ve met in Russia. I still don’t know numbers past 10, so usually I just pull out a handful of coins and they pick out what they need. Some of them count them out as they take them, probably trying to get me to learn to count.

                They set up their wares in two lines lining the path to the entrance of the market. When I get there I walk up and down checking all the produce out before I purchase anything and they try and sell me everything they have. I end up saying, “Nia nada,” a lot which means, “I don’t need it.” I don’t know if it is because my pronunciation is funny or if they are charmed with my half assed attempts to speak Russian because they always repeat what I say back to me. When one of them asked if AJ was a boy or a girl and I said, “Doch” which means, “daughter” they all said it back to me and laughed their butts off.

                I usually just buy a ton of tomatoes because I know how to prepare them. You know the feeling you get when someone is talking about you? One of the last times I went I heard one of the ladies saying something about tomatoes. And in my head I thought, “This crazy American. She must eat nothing but tomatoes. I tell you these Americans LOVE tomatoes!” And while I do love tomatoes I don’t want to contribute to any weird stereotypes.