N. and I stick out like sore thumbs in this region. Everywhere we’ve been yesterday (the spa, the grocery store, the restaurant), we heard, “Wow, you are the first live Russians I’ve ever seen!” Which sounds like the person saying this is in the habit of seeing lots of dead Russians everywhere.
This is an area where you can’t even find a Hispanic person, let alone a Russian-speaker. It’s a little weird to be treated like a very exotic creature everywhere. I mean, everybody is super nice to us but feeling this special gets a little annoying.
Clarissa's Blog 
So weird! I feel like I know a ton of Russians, but thinking about it, I don’t know a single Russian in Oklahoma City.
LikeLike
That reminds me of living in rural China. Everyone wanted to say hello to me, and everyone was very nice, but the attention could be exhausting.
LikeLike
Yes, exactly. 🙂 And people always try to deliver their entire store of knowledge about “Russians” which category, of course, includes Poles, Serbs, Slovaks, Bulgarians and sometimes even Turks.
LikeLike
“Live Russians.” That’s hilarious.
I don’t suppose you disappoint them by telling them you’re actually Ukrainian?
(It’s also totally weird; I live in Kansas, which is hardly a cosmopolitan state, and there are tons of Russian-speaking people around not too far from where I live. Enough that I would not take a second look if I heard people speaking Russian on the street or in a store or something. I also hear a fair amount of Spanish spoken, but then I tend to expect that everywhere in this country. We really ought to make that our second official language.)
LikeLike
Considering you are Ukrainian that is really weird. 🙂
LikeLike