#arkaim

Я не могла не изобразить его на наскальной живописи)

Ярко начался третий фестиваль посвященный нашему уральскому городищу - Аркаим. Уникален в своих находках эпосом, культурой и наследием ❤️

1. Favorite place in your country?

There are plenty of beautiful places that I absolutely love. Depending on a season the same place can be a heaven or hell. But I think the place I eager to visit the most is South Ural - our mountains and steppes. There is a certain place, Arkaim(you can Google it, it's a historical site and a natural reserve) where we go with my family camping every summer.

I mean it's amazing, look:

9. Which of your neighbouring countries would you like to visit most/know best?

I think I really want to visit Japan(that considered a neighbouring as far as I know?) and Abkhazia(Georgia). Also Belarus and Kazakhstan as my family has friends from there.

13. Does your country (or family) have any specific superstitions or traditions that might seem stranger to outsiders?

Ooh... several ones, I won't even recall all of them now.

For Russia:

• We always take off outdoor shoes when we come home.

• A meal usually has fruits, only one dish and then we have tea with sweets.

• Nostalgia about the old times, especially the things that where good in USSR is a favorite thing for elderly people. Personally I love Soviet cinematography, yet I don't idealize USSR. Watching "The Irony of Fate" while cooking for the new year celebration is a tradition too.

• Almost every family has a cat or cats.

• You should always bring a notable, big, pricy enough gift for birthdays and new year. Otherwise it's disrespectful.

• Guests should always be served a good meal.

• Women tend to dress up well with full makeup, high heels and jewelry no matter where they go.

• Almost every family has a dacha - a summer cottage on the countryside. The cottage can be very small and even made like slum houses. The garden is usually full with edible stuff and serves as am additional source of food for the owners. This can be very essential for poor people.

• Some strange mixture of feminism and patriarchy: the perfect fate for women in considered to not be obliged to work and earn money, a 'true' man provides for a woman and all his family(he has to pay for her if even on a first date and buy her expensive presents, she isn't obliged to give him anything, but men often expect sex after that), a 'true' man should serve in the army(compulsory, but some escape due to health and corruption), a 'true' woman should be pure and should be a mother.

These traditions are however rapidly reducing nowadays. I'm glad about that.

For Tatars:

• Cleaning 24/7

• Cooking tons of food.

• "Allah birsa" which means "God will give" before saying any of your future plans.

• Who needs a vacation by the sea when you got relatives in aul(village)? You will also have a free fitness programm with working in the kitchen garden, around the house and with animals. Otherwise you're lazy and it's 'oyat' (shame).

• Milk tea is a heavenly nectar and a permanent fuel for a Tatar person.

• Usually Muslim women wear hijabs but we wear kalfaks and tubeteis, sometimes with a headscarf.

Let me show you how it looks:

These are women from my family:

As to my family traditions, we go on the countryside almost every week and play checkers on family ocations.

30. Do you have people of different nationalities in your family?

I have another ethnicity, if that counts. My grandfather on my dad's side is said to be from a Finno-ugric ethnicity, but we don't know which exactly as he left the family when my father was a child. But because of our society, my father has always preferred to identify as a Russian.

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