Where there's fire...there's marshmallows

Monday, Natasha and I went to the street shops near the Orthodox church. On our way, we passed a gardening store. We have been talking about fixing up the yard now that it is spring and planting some grass seed and maybe some flowers. So we stopped in on our way back home and bought a rake and some grass seed, and I had bought some daisies from a lady on the street. We were so excited to get to work!! It was a lot of work but now things look pretty nice. We can’t wait till the grass starts growing! We also have a bunch of sticks and branches for a fire one of these nights. Katie, a girl from the UK had mentioned something about roasting marshmallows and I am all for that! But it reminds me of a previous conversation I had with two of the girls here when I had mentioned it…it seems that this is not a universal treat. It is often questioned why Americans roast marshmallows. And the immediate conclusion is that they, Americans, are too poor to buy meat to roast. But then I tried to explain that we also roast meat, and then we roast marshmallows for dessert and make smores with crackers and chocolate. But I think that was not very appetizing to them either.

On the subject of fires- It is true that you often bring your cultural rules with you, and thus another cultural lesson which I have learned….our house has a nice courtyard, and so when I was thinking about having nice fires at night, I remembered the metal fire thing we have in our yard back in NY, everyone can sit around it, it contains the fire nicely, because being in town you can’t just have an open fire. So being in a city of 1 million people, I commented to Tanya that maybe I would look for something to have as a fire pit, and that drew a very inquisitive look from Tanya. So I began to explain what it was and why we had one back home and she said it was not necessary. There are no fire regulations of that sort here. Which made me a little concerned, but also made me laugh when I thought what my brother, who is a volunteer fireman, would say. Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve seen anything of a fire truck or a fire station here. Maybe that is why they are building a new house on the empty lot on our street!