My first Russian баня (banya) trip

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banya_(sauna)

In the morning I had my normal class with the 8^th graders. I gave a power point presentation on America.  Without question my kiddies loved it and had lots of questions. After class I went to my tutor’s house and had my Russian lesson about food and some other grammar non-sense that is useful and I need to learn. My tutor and I walked around the streets practicing Russian, playing with her baby, and then we had some green borsht.  It was soon the afternoon and I went home to gather my things for the banya. I brought two towels, a bathing suit, some flipy flops, and some tea with a cup.

I went to the normal bus stop on the side of the road to jump on a bus. This is usually the way to go because if you go to the bus station you have to pay a small fee to the station.  However, it was one of the days the university kids had off so all the busses coming though town from the beach were completely packed and no one was stopping. A lady looked at me, asked if we should just go to the bus station and do things the “correct” way, and I said yes. Why mention this, well because her bag was insanely heavy and I, being a wonderful Peace Corps Volunteer, offered to help her carry bag, the “baba” way, with each of us holding one the two thin straps. It was only a 15 minute walk, but I still have weird tingling feeling in my fingers that were death gripping the bag.  We ended up taking a taxi shared with 3 others to Kherson and I was dropped off at a store where my Uker friends met me.

 We went to their apartment, played UNO had tea and snacks and around 9:45ish we got in their car and drove to the banya, in the middle of nowhere, and it looked like a dark house.  Once we were buzzed in, it looked a little more official, with pretty lights and things. Inside I was greeted with their friends, two more women and a man, post beer time.  We got in our bathing suits, wrapped towels around us, and then went in the sauna room. It was wooded with a large stack of coal? In a metal cage thingy. We sat for about 5-7ish minutes and then my friend hurried me out and we threw out towels on the ground and ran and jumped into the river/lake thing. So much fun, it was cold, but we were hot, and it was just amazing.  After our swim, we sat down for tea or beer for the others, and talked about the normal things, i.e. comparing Ukraine to America, what I think about politics, and so on. And then the process started all over again. We did this till around midnight and then Refreshed with pink and open pores we drove back to the apartment. Ate some sweets, watched some tv, talked more about life, and then passed out.

Didn’t get a chance to take pictures, cause it was the first time meeting some of the people and some were just naked under their towel/sheet, but I posed for this one post-banya.