Of melons and men

To counter that last gloomy post, let me assure you that funny things happen to me in Russia all the time!

One of the funny things about this summer has been that Ruth (my counterpart for the high school version of our program) and I get hit on all the time. This counts as "funny" because it runs completely contrary to my general experience of being an American woman in Russia. That is, the experience of constantly not being up to snuff in terms of figure, clothing, makeup, or priorities. Which is demoralizing sometimes, but generally just something that you live with; and actually I have to say that it was quite nice to feel, for the majority of my Fulbright, that I was totally invisible to the men of Russia. I mean, street harassment levels were near zero.

But it turns out that two amerikanki are better than one, at least in terms of approachability. A lone American just looks like she might be a schlubby Russian. But two Americans – schlubby though they may be – are probably speaking English, and can therefore be pegged as Foreign Chicks. Foreign Chicks are apparently hot by definition, because every time Ruth and I go out together, we end up with male admirers.

Early this week, we were riding the bus together on the way to visit one of Ruth's students' host families. As soon as we got off, we heard a voice behind us: "Girls! Girls! May I speak to you for a minute?" Sketchy, but it was daylight and there were plenty of people around, so we stopped to chat with Ibragim, a Tajik who was hoping to get us to go on a double date with him and a friend this weekend. We fed him the old line about not having cell phones (we're always worried that one of our students is going to call us as we are delivering this line, but it hasn't happened yet), and he wrote down his number for us on a scrap of paper. Then he reached into his black plastic grocery bag and pulled out... a big ol' melon! He presented us with a melon! We couldn't help but burst out laughing. This would be like a Nebraska boy giving you an ear of corn, or a Mainer pulling a lobster out of his bag. But we graciously accepted the gift (feeling slightly bad, for we are never going to call him back) and thanked him.

Then we had to schlep this melon into the grocery store - we needed a hostess gift, and determined that regifting the melon would be gauche – and leave it with the security guard, because of course you're not allowed to enter the grocery store with a melon. (Handing over the offending melon caused us to burst out laughing again. No English was spoken to reveal us as Foreign Chicks, so I'm pretty sure the security guard just thought we were straight-up crazy.)