27th I leave again.

I feel like I'm freaking out more about college this year than i did last year. which makes about as much sense as a balding monkey.

packing

camp is soon. my room looks ridiculous because I was looking for stuff for peoples costumes. I was helping shimon pack earlier...and cutting onions. 5 to be exact. 

6 pounds of ground beef will be arriving shortly, with my mom.

add 12 decrusted pieces of bread soaked in 6 eggs, salt and mix: that makes a ton of katleti (kinda like salisbury steak).

and of course I get the honor of standing over the pan frying everything.

I should be more excited, hopefully I'll be less meh once I get to the camp grounds.

I'll be back in 9 days. 

edit: one e-mail from Lenya about the costumes and im already more excited. still have to actually read the script, though. 
 we (the older teens/youthful adults) chose to do the snark as a play (Loise Carol poem)
http://www.lib.ru/CARROLL/snarkeng.txt english
http://www.nunu.ru/carroll4.zip russian
I'm playing the beaver.

I'm such a cool sister

When I was little, I wanted an older sister so that I could eves drop on her phone conversations (and you know...live her drama vicariously. this was when I was about five)

My parents never adopted a girl older than me, so I have always been stuck being the older sister (also oldest out of my cousins, but they live so far away it wouldn't make a difference)

But my brothers are so much younger than me that it's easy to be awesome to them. Too big an age difference to fight, but I'm willing to hang out.

In the morning we made candles (layer the wax into an eggshell and then, once it cools, peal it away. the result is an egg-shaped layered candle. of course you can use other forms as well...wide glass candle holders work well. the wax does come out, since it shrinks once it cools)

Then we went to Walden pond (because I can drive them there-oh the glory! Yosef was asking me if it's hard to learn and all) and then we went to Hannaford to get ice-cream and a couple other things Usually we only have vanilla...not that Mama is against buying other flavors, she just doesn't really tend to eat them. Almond Mocha and Peppermint Stick.What a license gives you.

and now we are cooking (more vareniki from the previous post)

Otherwise I've continued socializing. Surprise birthday party Saturday, meeting up with a family friend Sunday (though I was in a...mood that fit the rainy weather that day) and hopefully meeting up with a hs friend today.

Вишнёвые Вареники or Sour Cherry Dumplings

Shimon destemed them and I pitted them.

Dough: 
3 cups flour
3/4 cup very cold water
2 eggs
1/2 teaspoon salt

Filling:
sour cherry*- 700 grams (I think about two cups?)
1 cup sugar
 




pit the cherries, cover them with sugar and let stand overnight. Strain the resulting syrup.

Keep the syrup to dip the dumplings in....it's also just good for anything that requires syrup, like flavoring sparkling water to create soda.

 Mix the flour and salt together. Then, stir in the cold water until the dough no longer sticks to your hands. For me, this required a bit of kneading and a tiny bit more flour.
Let the dough sit for half an hour, covered with a damp towel.

Roll out the dough. It has to be pretty thin-about 3mm or a tenth of an inch.Use a glass to make dough circles.




 Put the filling into the center of each circle. Don't put so much filling that you can't close the dumpling.











Pinch the edges together, you can use a fork for this.
It talks about some sort of braid decoration for the edges in the recipe I was using, but I have no idea what it is. For those who do know what a braid is though: it just says you need to make the edges thinner if you intend to do that.

You can freeze them for storage. To cook, put them in boiling water and wait for them to float up. Make sure they don't get stuck to the bottom of the pot.

 Eat with sour-cream or with the syrup made earlier. Or both.

* This is the first time I've bumped into fresh sour cherries in the US, Mama got them at an Italian market. I suppose normal cherries would work, though it would definitely taste different. (so yes, it's my first time, that's why they turned out a bit lumpy)

the instructions I used:
http://www.gotovim.ru/recepts/sbs/varenvishn.shtml

Head full of Teeth

Usually I don't talk about doctor appointments, but this one was scarier than most.

My dentist had noticed that two of my wisdom teeth are sideways, but the normal little x-ray doesn't give a clear view, so I had to get my mouth scanned to see what my teeth are up to. This is fine, you just have to keep still, and I did this two years back when I was getting my implant. 

And this is what they are up to:

upper right-it's fine. As in, it needs to get yancked out, but it will be fine

upper left-probably okay as well, close to the scines though, so that might be unpleasent if it rips.

lower left-not yet fully formed, but its going into my molar too. additionally it is close to a nerve.

lower left-basically fully formed, very much going into my molar, and also very close to my nerve. its growing from behind and has three prongs surrounding the nerve.

losing that nerve means losing feeling in my teeth (all the way down the row), in my chin and in my lips. not doing the sergery means losing my molar. I think this applies for both the lower teeth.

The doctor said he needs to talk to another doctor (the one who, according to my dad, seems to be the smartest one) so I guess I gave them a full set of problems to mull over (pun intended.)

 they will call us on wed. or thursday.....

on a happier note, Yulka slept over a couple nights ago! we ate an entire piece of Gorgonzola, and made lemonade and did other things that aren't really interesting from the outside, but were fun :)

I also watched The Philosopher Kings.

debt (I'm not  in the graduate program yet, but): http://money.cnn.com/2011/08/01/news/economy/debt_ceiling_students/index.htm?hpt=hp_t2

hot in the water.

Hannah and I went to the supermarket to get food for our trip to the lake with two of her high school friends. Even there, it was incredibly hot, but it gave us something to do (like swim...at gawk at small children, and look at the fish.)

(I don't remember quite the order of the rest of the events, because I guess sometimes I have an incredibly short memory.  maybe. maybe its all in place.also at some point we watched an animated film The Illusionist and Le combat dans l'ile)

I think it was Sunday that we went to the nature center where Hannah had been organizing archives and the such. We saw a white egret and a couple of blue herons. We were absolutely wiped after that (at least I was), so we went and ate and then went to a Vietnamese restaurant. It had finally started to drizzle, but not enough to break the heat spell and humidity. There was also a street fair, but it broke up at the first hint of rain, and it was very small.

Monday we intended to go to the pool, but instead danced in the sprinklers in front of the library, stared at the sky in the park, ate an an ice cream parlor, and then went to her grandparents house. Her grandparents are lovely. We talked for a spell and then went to the garden, were we collected some corn and bell pepper and jalapenos and basil from the garden for dinner.

We made some sort of middle ground between green salsa and guacamole, it was really good. :

2 cloves garlic

2 jalapeno peppers (it can defiantly hold more)

lemon juice

cilantro (we had Asian cilantro from the garden)
1 avocado

1 small green bell pepper

1/2 tomato

1 scallion

salt

Dinner was the fresh picked corn, burgers (my first ever-yes, yes, I know, it's strange), and smores for desert. (mmm...caramelized fluffed corn-syrup and melted dark chocolate, so good)

The next day we snuck me into a Columbia library (twice) so Hannah could do some work for her class. Lunch was for some reason fantastic-I guess I was a lot hungrier than I thought I was when we came around to it, but that bagel with olive cream cheese and orange juice and mochi was delicious.

And then I bought a ticket to Sloutsberg to visit the Kuznetsovi. Misha and Diniska and I played tennis-in the rain, with dead balls. Which made it so much easier because everything was so much slower, I felt like a beast. And then the next day we went swimming with , and somehow eating ice cream while Sasha and Misha and I waited for the bus was perfect.

Also I had a dream I was an art teacher at my high school.

And today Osya came back from Israel! He has a tan (well...a tan to the extent him and I get tans) and he's happy :)

104 degrees in NYC

A week ago I met up with Sergi, and then we went over to Kostya's house and hung out with him and Sisi. It was a very russian beet soup day-first I had svekolnik, and then borsh. The next day I passed my road test (I got my license in the mail today) and then Папа dropped me off at South Station so I could catch the bus to New York. 

I got in line, and I was 5 min early (cutting it close) but it said NYC on the sign. Of course the sign turned out to be outdated and the people in line where waiting for Philly, so I got to sit around for two hours and then Hannah's mother had to pick me up instead of Hannah and me taking the bus back to her house in NJ. I was dead exhausted by the time we got to her house, but I got there, I'd passed my driving test, and I'd finished Catch 22 (which is fantastic, by the way.)

The next day it was 104 degrees out, or something like that. Hannah and I made blueberry pancakes-so many that we put most of them in a bag and ate them on the subway for 1st lunch. She showed me around Columbia, where she is taking a class on Medieval Art in Manhattan (about how art got imported during the guided age and a lot of studying of the art that ended up there-of which there is a lot, definitely enough to study) We looked at a chapel and watched the tourist groups listing to their tour guides, trying to fight off the heat. We then met up with Rosette and went to the Met. There was a two our line to get into the Alexander McQueen exhibit (it was kindof satisfying walking past them to look at the Contemporary photos and the Byzantine art that is always there. The exhibit for Richard Serra was in a mostly empty hall, and so quite and cool, though I can't really say I liked most of his work, but it was nice after the heat to wander around. Rosette said modern art makes her upset, even if she likes it. After some felafel, we met up with Anna (the one from Paris, who is coming back to Bard this year) joined us too and we went to the strand (huge bookstore) and got sucked into it for a couple of hours.  

Eventually we split up and all went home, where I, for one, fell into an exhausted sleep on a green cot. 

The rest I will tell later...