neighbor

There's an babushka on my street who's kind of startling. She will wobble up to strangers, shout someting twice and cackle. Last time I saw her on the sidewalk/bobsled chute thing. "What a pretty bag you have! A pretty bag! Ha ha ha!" I was a bit concerned about where this was leading, but took comfort in the fact that my wallet had already been stolen by then. I tried to smile vaguely (although experience should have taught me by now that this is usually taken as encouragement) and we both slid off in our respective directions. I was on the bus with a couple people I'd met before and this babushka, and we were a bit crowded, so I was sitting on the front 3 inches of a 2-person seat with a student of mine who was sleeping against the window and a man who runs another marshrutka that was done for the day. I had thought my conversation with the English teacher from another school had been cut off by the body of the latest passenger, but he began to speak to me, anyway. "May I call you Sue?" he asked in a whisper. Gulp. "Call me Susan," I said, and immediately the babushka shouted, "I thought she was a Russian! A Russian! Ha ha ha! But she's speaking a foreign language! A foreign language! Ha ha ha!" Today as I was coming home, she was walking down the street toward me, and she said "How gray you are! How gray! Ha ha ha!" I was a bit concerned about my general appearance, and asked my host mother what she had meant. I had misunderstood the word. She actually meant "How cold you look! How cold! Ha ha ha!"