• Hey do you guys wanna come with us to fire?
• Fire? You mean - bonfire?
• Yeah, fire.
  "Hakuna Matata," we decided, and became regulars at the night hangouts with the golden youth of Williamsville.

Our new friends are burning a fire in a low rectangular grill. Cans of Budweiser are passed around in a circle - with the American flag - and small clay pipes - the smell of burning wood makes it impossible to catch the pungent sweet smell, memorable from the eternal hazy cloud over sleepy Amsterdam.

Lera is twisting her can in her hands, Dana is lost, smoking cigarette after cigarette. I try to listen to the guys' conversation - and immediately get stuck in a pile of slang and interjections.

Today one of the guys is flying to Afghanistan. The future hero is the biggest, the ugliest, the only one here - with a girlfriend.

Getting bored, I take a "captive" - a native in the next lounge chair. I nudge him in the side:

• Hey, they keep repeating "dirty", what is that?
  He thinks for a moment.
• It means "good".
  My victim's name is Joe, and Joe has perfect diction and a wonderful sad smile. Joe says he is half Polish. I have to tell him that I have been to Poland, and that it looks like one big Buffalo.

He thought about it.

Meanwhile, Mike tells a sad story about a friend who met a truck driver who fell asleep at the wheel head-on on the highway:

• I'll get a tattoo with his date of birth.
  We tell them that in Russia, you can get away with 4 years in a settlement for hitting a person. Deep shock:
• 4 years?! According to our laws - 20 years. Cruel.
• Nope, fair.
  I am tactless in any language.

New logs fly into the fire. At the end of the evening, Joe friendly pats me on the shoulder. Americans are very non-contact, and such rare gestures should be valued.

What else?

Surprisingly, the morals in the American province are no different from those accepted in the Russian hinterland - everyone is terribly bored. Through the grapevine, Lera was surprised to learn that she, it turns out, is sleeping with Mike, and the three of us are weaving intrigues against Jess. It would be funny if it weren't so disgusting.

Also, it is categorically not accepted to pay for girls. An unpleasant surprise for us spoiled ones. Mike even paid for Lera's cola with a creak, and she is, after all, the lady of his heart.

A priori, almost everyone treated us very coldly. At work, we were sincerely considered stupid, and they tried to explain what a dollar is. We, in turn, tried to explain to them where Italy is. It's true.

I am offended in my best feelings. It would be fine if we were ugly, but why stupid?!

A stranger's soul is a dark place. You can not understand a person in any language.

But I fell in love with the local cemeteries with all my heart. They regularly shoot movies there, and you can find tombstones two hundred years old. We lived near one. Once we picked a whole handful of wild strawberries there.

And also - one of the saddest things I have seen in my life - three tombstones in a row: MOTHER 1923-1995, FATHER 1915-1981, DAUGHTER 1944-1952.

That's how it is.