The Russians love their гулять!

гулять: to stroll, to walk with no purpose. It's basically what Russians do in their free time. They don't go to each others houses and theirs really no other place to go, so they гуляют. I had my first major гулять last Friday with my first Russian friend Лина (Lina). She's only 16 and in the 10th class, buts she so cute and funny and I actually really like her. She's really into photography and we have a similar taste in music. So we were talking online (I was using a translator of course) and she invited me to go гулятьing with her and her brother. I met her brother Kostia at the last disco tech at school. He's at the university studying computer programming and he speaks English really well. So I was like, yeah I'd love to! I invited Andrea and Lina's friend Anya (I think? It's hard for me to remember names!) And then we ran into a bunch of other people intermittently as we were walking and met up with Kostia and his friend Alex in the park.

We walked around the park and the streets a bunch, and just as гулять implies, it was without purpose. Until Kostia suggested we go play pool. We were all horrible but it was so awesome. And the Russians play pool differently. The balls are all white and they are numbered. The que ball is yellow but you don't have to use the que ball; you can use any ball you want to hit the other balls. I still sucked at it! We stayed in the pool hall for a while until the smell of smoke drove us out (I smelt so disgusting when I got home, I took a shower right away!). We walked around some more, ran into some drunk kids from school which we neatly got rid of. Then it was getting late and I wasn't sure how I was going to get home because I live too far from the center to walk and the buses had stopped a while ago. But Kostia was so sweet and was like, I will put you in a taxi if you want because I promised your mama when I called her to ask if you could stay later with us that I would get you home safe. I am responsible for you. I was very sweet and gentlemen like of him. I ended up going in a taxi with Andrea and his mom from Andrea's aunt's house. So it was all good. Awesome times. I hope I can do something like that again!