Yes Russia DOES have a Beach!

On Thursday, since it was the 2nd to last day for the ROTC cadets, our program coordinator agreed (with some convincing from their majors) that we should all go to the Yaroslavl beach in the afternoon! The Volga is the main river that goes through Yaroslavl and there are basically 2 beaches... the one that says you're "HIGHLY recommended to NOT swim in the water" and the one that only says you're "Recommended not to swim in the water." - we opted for the latter :)

It was a little interesting, since the Russian idea of "swimsuit" is slightly different than what we'd see in America.... basically the bottoms were a little skimpy... on the women AND men! :) In true American fashion, American's never let their presence remain a secret when in foreign countries and our group was in full force yelling in the water and bringing chicken-fights to the Federation. We may have gotten a few stares and "what hell are they doing?" but honestly, when else will you swim in the Volga river with some great friends?! NEVER!! We even got some of our Russian translators to chicken fight too, although I think they thought we were a little crazy and tried to disassociate from us as much as possible... Below are some of our translators... Asiya, Katya (blue), Katya's Russian bf (can you tell he's Russian??) and Sveta (in the yellow top)

After about 4 hours in the scorching Russian sun (you think I'm joking, but I'm serious... it's HOT here!) headed back for a quick shower and off to a night of bowling! Believe it or not we found a legit bowling alley in Yaroslavl... all we had to do was go down a dark alleyway to find it. But seriously... Don't worry! Everything ended up fine!! :) Except for the fact that I'm a horrible bowler no matter what side of the ocean I'm on! After a quick trip to McDonalds (I've seriously been to McDonalds more in the past 3 weeks then in the past 3 years!!) I walked back to the homebase.. trying to take in the whole day and the realization that my first 3 weeks were almost up.

I have to honestly say that the day at the beach was the most fun I've had in Russia ... friends, sun, sand, the Volga and maybe a little bit of Baltika 7 - what more could you want for a great Russian afternoon?!