You may have already known, or you may have found out upon finding a huge spread of Chinese food in John Jay, that the Chinese New Year was Monday. I would venture to say that, at this point, most Columbians are acquainted with this holiday. That makes for two new years on most of our radars.
But I’ve added a new one to mine: the Russian New Year. I’ve been taking Russian since my first semester here, so I do consider myself somewhat versed in Slavic happenings. But somehow the great minds on the seventh floor of Hamilton failed to mention the importance of this holiday, or at least they didn’t make it clear how massively fun it could be, even for a non-Russian.
Lucky for me, I was already back on campus by Jan. 13, which is the day before the actual “Old New Year” is celebrated, and I was fortunate enough to be spontaneously invited to the Zlatne Uste Golden Festival in Brooklyn, a Balkan music festival. It was blistering cold outside and I had already made a vow not to venture out again.
But how could I turn this down? Wasn’t it some sort of duty of mine as a student of Russian? I think the obvious answer is yes.
