Sakura

Chapter Four: Trans-Siberian Tailway (I'm so sorry)

Early that morning we were both woken up by knocking at the door and grandma telling us to get ready, so we both groaned and slid out of our beds. It's weird not being able to talk to someone, yet being alone in their presence. The only way we could "communicate" was by eye contact and hand motions, which is a lot more difficult than it seems.

For the most part we kept to ourselves.

We both walked down together, carrying our luggage. Well, I was only carrying my carry-on. In the car I had about half of my total wardrobe. Dad waved us down to the dining hall where they were serving a buffet breakfast, where a large table was against the far wall with pretty much every breakfast food you could imagine. Eggs, pancakes, waffles, fruit, cereal, all the good shit.

"It's all free with our rooms, feel free to dig in." Dad told me before walking back off with his plate of bacon to the table where everyone was sitting. Sasha and I walked over like we were told and got food.

It wasn't the best breakfast I've ever had in my entire life, but it sure as hell wasn't the worst.

After that it was back on the road. Which it didn't seem as daunting anymore seeing as I had slept 10 hours in the car last night. As I was chilling out to some music, eyes shut and head leaning against the door, the tap on my shoulder came again.

But this time instead of my mute Russian cousin, I was met with an outstretched arm holding a phone connected to my mute Russian cousin. I was startled at first, quickly blinking my eyes to adjust to the new light in my retina, but quickly noticed he had pulled up a translator app, from Russian to English. Genius fucker.

"Hi." Was all the brightly lit screen read, with however the fuck you write hi in Russian translated. Catching the memo, I pulled out my phone as well. And look at me! We were communicating.

"Hi." I replied, kind of at a loss for words to say. Even through a robot middleman I'm still an anxious fuck.

"How are you?" He asked, making the appropriate facial expressions behind the phone, which I'm not going to lie, I found hilarious.

"Well I'm still breathing, so that's a plus." I answered, also making the correct facial gestures to boot.

"Fair enough. Sorry about the ride, my sister and I begged for plane tickets but my parents wanted to save money by driving." He said.

"Well would you look at that, I think we're all related after all." I replied, earning a slight snicker from Sasha.  This in turn had Arina (female cousin, let's go keep up.) chuckling to herself. In response Sasha whipped his head around and mumbled something I took to be "fuck off" in Russian.

We continued our makeshift conversation for maybe a couple of hours until the point where he asked what life was like back in Nova Scotia. I started off by telling him that my life was very quiet and uneventful, how I liked to go on walks as often as I could, my passion for music and such. I started telling him about my house and the memories I had in it, and he did the same. Funny enough, I was talking about how I used to always sit and read under the large grandfather clock in my living room, but never realized I forgot to type in the "l" in clock. I didn't catch my mistake until I watched Sasha's eyes widen. I wont say much more on that besides that this time I earned myself a little bit more than a snicker. Turns out he also likes to read, and we both like the same series, Game of Thrones. So we talked theories for the next hour or so before we both decided to take a break. So in the mean time I introduced him to Duolingo and we both spent the rest of our time on there, eating up data in an attempt to learn a foreign language.

Turns out Russian is a buttfuck of a language. With all these weird rules and grammar xhanges, I found my head swimming in a headache of trying to keep up. I did learn a little though, such as "Where is the bathroom?" And "How are you?"

Simple stuff.

We all stopped for lunch at some restaurant I would never be able to recognize about four hours away from my new home.

From what I could tell it served normal Russian cuisine, which was the most foreign looking food I think I've ever seen.

I was weary placing my order, well, telling Sasha what I wanted so he could order for me, because I've never actually tried any Russian food before.

I ordered Pelmeni, which looks like the cross between tortellini and a penis head. But it seemed like a safer option, so I chose it. But! They did have Dr. Pepper, so not everything here was completely unfamiliar.

Turns out Russian food comes in two categories. Super fucking good. Or complete dog shit. Conveniently for me, I got the first of the pair. My father, on the other hand, got the latter. Round two of random-food roulette and my dad failed twice. I couldn't even recognize the steaming pile of meat on his plate. But nevertheless, he choked through it, so props to him.

And as the sun was setting behind us, we drove the final distance to home with full bellies, and a new trait for me, excitement.