Downtown Cheboksary is lovely. The buildings are so pretty, and there are also many shopping centers. One of them has a big cinema, where Ira, Tasha, Nadia and I watched Apollo 13 in Russian voice-dub. It was a funny experience that the Americans were “speaking in Russian” and complaining about Russian cosmonauts in space. Tasha and I found it very ironic when the Americans asked where the Russians were on the Moon, but maybe it’s just a bad joke between us. We looked around . I gave her a funny look and whispered, “Well…they’re right here. They’re all around us/”

Surprisingly, it was very easy to sit through, and although the plot was rather sad and plain; the Russian was easy enough to understand. The ending where the ill-fated astronauts said “I am going home” in English was translated over to Russian “I am flying to you” = “Ya lechy tebe” instead, so not all of the film was direct or literal translation. The vocabulary was fairly simple: “moon”=”luna”, “Russian”=”russki”, “astronaut”=”kosmonaut”, etc.

Earlier in the day, the family and friends had a backyard barbecue when we came home from school. Sadly, the rain and “veter” (wind) hit us like Niagara Falls, even our little tent could not prevent us from the damp rain. We rescued the dishes and leftover meat, and evacuated to the garage to finish our meal. We were on a good laugh when I started eating one of the still-raw meat without even realizing it.