Loitering by the Corner Store

I went running one evening last week. Very few people around here go running, so I felt a little conspicuous as I jogged along the main road and out to the vineyards and back. Sure enough, two guys hanging out at the magazine (corner store) took note of my strange activity and stopped me to talk on the way back into town. They wanted to know how long I'd been running and where I'd gone to. Both seemed pretty impressed that I was actually running. Both guys were pretty friendly, they shared their sunflower seeds with me. One was Georgian and the other Armenian. We had a friendly chat for about 30 minutes. The Georgian guy (Artur) has family living in Los Angeles. He went to visit them, once, and wanted to talk with me about America. He wanted to see some photos of America, so I agreed to come back to the store the following evening and show him. This conversation was almost exclusively in Russian. I was able to follow about 80% of it, which made me pretty happy.

I returned to the store the following evening at 6 pm. Well, 6:10 pm, to be honest. I was preparing for English Club and was running a little behind. There was nobody else standing outside the store, so I stood and waited a little while. I had been waiting 10 minutes or so when an older fellow walked up to me and started talking to me. He looked familiar, I think i had been introduced to him the night before at the store. This guy was very friendly, really wanted to talk to me, and had exactly 0 teeth (I checked when he wasn't looking). He spoke in all vowels and I could hardly understand anything he said. Nice guy, though. He kept shaking my hand a lot. He offered me his hankie, since I'd been standing in the warm sun and was sweating a bit. He also went in the store and bought me a beer. Drinking in public seems to be legal in Russia, or at least completely un-enforced, but I felt a little strange strange standing on the sidewalk knocking back a beer. I drank a little and gave the rest back to my new friend, since I was going to be teaching in 30 minutes. We "talked" for about 20 minutes. Or rather, he kept talking, I kept saying "Sorry, I don't understand", and he kept shaking my hand. In our entire conversation, all I got was that he was Tatarstani, something about "women and children", and "America" and "good" were also mentioned in the same sentence. After 20 minutes I decided it was time to go. Artur was a no-show (or i'd missed him), the current conversation wasn't really going anywhere, and I had to get to English Club, anyways. Good times. Meeting new people is always fun, and sometimes you get free beer.