A Story Signed Piffy: Happy Birthday ReloD!!

Hello everyone! I am so sorry that I haven't posted in a while, but I'm back!

On Saturday I went to a birthday party for a company owned by my rotary club's president. ReloD (Russian English languages open doors) teaches Russian and English to people in hopes of bettering communication. The company turned 17 this weekend and we "went to nature" for a party. It was like the state parks in Oregon. Lakes and green grass, surrounded by pine and birch trees. At one point I took a short nap and looked around and I thought I was back home.

Let me tell you something about Russians. They know how to eat. I ate some meat and picked through the food until I was full and everyone kept piling on more food.
Russia doesn't have pickles, but they do have pickling cucumbers and they eat them just speared. Of all the food I ate, there wasn't much that I didn't try. I ate oiled mushrooms, a tomato and horseradish-like mix (I of course took a huge bite when they said it was spicy. I think my calm reaction scared them a little), a delicious carrot salad, a cabbage-like salad thing and meat. The only thing I didn't eat was the anchovie/sardine things. Because just no. I love fish, but no.

There was also one of my favorite things at this party. Dessert! The Russian sweet tooth is so strong that even I couldn't keep up with them. There was a traditional cake that was a layer of meringue, a layer of creamy frosting, another layer of meringue another layer of creamy frosting, another layer of meringue and then the entire thing was covered in vanilla buttercream frosting. Yeah. Amazing. There was also chocolate cake and way more candy than I knew what to do with.

I have always loved coffee and tea. And in Russia, I am very happy. While this party just had Lipton, everywhere has amazing tea. I love it so much!

After we ate and

chatted, made
almost a million toasts (I went through two glasses of orange juice and a cup of tea) we had some fun. This is Dima and a boy who I think is named Daniil, but I just call him No-Fish rapping about ReloD (I think.) Dima has some mad dance skills doesn't he!
No-Fish is so named because he doesn't speak English. All he knows is "No fish?" and "Panama Beach!" Needless to say, our conversations were thrilling. "No fish?" "I don't understand." "No fish? Panama Beach!" Then we would laugh and it was great. He knew Spanish but between level one Spanish on my part and a Russian accented probably not castajano spanish, we didn't understand each other. He asked if I knew French and I said not really and he said J'taime, to which I responded in my best Russian, I understand. The entire van full of people on the way home busted up laughing. It was hilarious. We also took some pretty awesome selfies too.