Cooking is the Real Struggle

I didn't realize how easy I really have it here in Russia with cooking. The thing is I don't cook. All my meals are provided and I don't even have to go grocery shopping. Tonight was a bit different though.

I want to begin by saying that I do cook for myself at college, and although I might make quesadillas everyday, sometimes twice a day, they are good quesadillas, and I cook meat and beans to put in them. So I know I'm not the best cook, but I do cook and I know how to, especially growing up with my mother teaching me. My host mother, however, probably does not believe that I have ever been in a kitchen. 

After teaching today, I felt so hungry although I had a big bowl of pasta for lunch. I debated stopping on my way home and getting shawarma, but "You have dinner made at your house" I told myself and also I didn't want to walk in the half-snow half-rain. When I got to the apartment, my host mother started talking to me. I guess you should know that my host mother doesn't speak English, so when she talks to me she speaks Russian. I guess you should also know that I don't speak Russian.

She lets me go into my room and use the bathroom, and then I walk back into kitchen and she starts speaking to me again. I am completely lost with what is going on and Zhenya won't help translate. Finally she takes out a bag of meat and sets it on the table as she continues to talk. She does hand motions and sounds until I realize that it's duck.

Now I've never had duck, let alone cooked it, but then she just walks out and leaves me and Zhenya at the table with a duck leg. Zhenya starts rubbing salt and pepper on her meat, so I just follow. At this moment I'm still trying to figure out what is going on. My host mother comes back in, looks at what I'm doing and starts talking to me again, and watches me as I put the duck into a pan to cook. She says something about "no problem" and "Miss Hope" (the teacher that lived with them last semester) and goes into her bedroom to sleep.

Fast forward past the part where I almost freaked out because I don't know how to cook duck, and also I don't know where everything is in the kitchen or how to use it.

So tonight I cooked duck, because I think that's what I was supposed to do. I would like to inform you all that duck is hard to cook, and I think my host mother has lost faith in me. But the duck turned out fine and we feasted tonight. After we ate, Zhenya and I rocked out to The Chipettes, which is the female equivalent to Alvin and the Chipmunks.

Everyday in Russia is an adventure.