But you're an AMERICAN! Of course you can play hockey with us!

I know that I have been quite negligent in updating during the last month, but—for what it’s worth—it is in large part due to the fact that my life has gotten busier and better in the last month. After a long wait, I have started working more regularly with the crisis center. Classes have continued to go well and I have even started attending a foreign literature class with Jen [it is pretty cool to read American literature in a foreign lit class]. I have also continued to meet interesting, kind, and welcoming Russians. But all of that will wait, because this update is dedicated to a different development: namely, my recent discovery of a women’s hockey team in Ekaterinburg.

As some of you might know, I spent all four months in Petersburg looking for a women’s hockey team without an ounce of success. Usually I couldn’t get the phrase “women’s hockey” out of my mouth before someone has responded with a harsh “Nyet!”. When I packed my suitcases in Bemidji this August, I thought long and hard about whether or not it was worth it to haul my heavy skates across the ocean and ultimately decided that it was. Well, that was most definitely the best packing decision I made this trip…

About a month ago, I was cruising the town with Alfina and Sergei when Sergei turned to me and said “Betsy, I watched our women’s hockey team play on TV last night.” I quickly asked him to clarify what “our” meant, assuming he was talking about Russia and not Ekaterinburg. When he responded with “Sverlovskaya”, I made him clarify three times that he was telling me that there was a women’s hockey team in Ekaterinburg whose games are televised. Armed with this information, I began a mad search to find the team. I asked everyone I knew, but no one had any more info about it. I started going around to the hockey stores in town and asking the employees. After asking three times at “Hockey World,” a kind soul finally told me that if I went to a different hockey store, I would find someone there who knew about the team. The next day, I went to the store, where I was introduced to Irina, who, at it happens, used to play for the Mercury [that’s the team]. She not only confirmed that the team exists, she promptly drove me to the rink, where I met with the coaches, saw the team practicing, and was invited to practice with them the next day. I agreed, but told them that I didn’t have any equipment besides skates. The coach responded with “Oh that’s okay, Irina will take care of you.” Irina asked me to meet her back at the shop later that evening. I, being the naïve American, assumed that I was meeting Irina to, you know, pick up her own gear that I would use to practice with the next day. Au contraire, we picked out a full new set of equipment. Half way through the shopping spree I timidly said to Irina “Um, when I am going to have to pay for this?”. She laughed and said “Oh, don’t worry! The club is covering this.” So let me get this straight: the club, who has never seen me play, is willing to shell out for a full set of brand new hockey equipment for a foreigner? Either the foreigner card is working even better these days or I had just sold my soul and the next several years of my life to a powerful member of the Russian mafia [it has yet to be determined, by the way, which one actually occurred].

The next day, slightly petrified and very excited, I made my way over to the rink [which, as it happens, is just a 10 minute walk from my house]. With my shiny new gear in hand, I walked into a packed locker room, the inhabitants of whom all turned to stare at me. As I got dressed from practice, I received a bit of a shock as I discovered that locker room talk in Russian, much like in English, uses its own words and phrases, very few of which I understood. Consequently, the team thinks that I speak literally no Russian and, since none of them speak English, we don’t do too much socializing. That said, they are all incredibly nice to me and don’t seem to mind the fact that I show up once a week and interrupt their practice flow.

The actual practice went pretty well, despite my being incredibly out of shape. The structure is a little different from an American practice and I quickly learned that I knew none of the necessary words for a hockey practice [puck really doesn’t get you too far]. So far I have gone to three practices and I am slowly picking up the vocabulary. Part of the difficulty [but also the coolest part] is that in Russian practices drills NEVER repeat. In other words, I have skated with this team three times and we have not once repeated a drill from an earlier practice. It makes sure that you have to think on the ice, which is awesome, but also challenging for the little foreigner…

So that’s my good news : ) I am sure there will be lots of more stories to come about the team. Expect an update about the crisis center next week, as well as some good stories about the snow, which is here to stay. Despite the bitter, extreme, frightening cold, I am so far enjoying the Russian winter.

Hope you all have a Happy Thanksgiving! I’ll be celebrating by giving some 5th graders a presentation about Thanksgiving at the American Center and then having a makeshift Thanksgiving dinner with some consulate and Fulbright people. I will miss you all on the American holiday!

Hello hello!

It has been a while and there is a lot to say, but I want to start with my trip to Kalinovo two weeks ago. During the weekend, we celebrated Sergei’s [not our Sergei, but Alfina’s sister’s husband] 30^th birthday in true Russian style. We spent nearly all of Saturday preparing for the event, cutting vegetables for salads, buying vodka, wine, and a cake, and cooking monties [an Uzbek food that resembles an oversized pelmeni/dumpling that is filled with meat and vegetables, then steam cooked and served with mayo or smetana…yum!]. Once every spare inch of the table was filled with food, we all sat down and ate for a good two hours, pausing about every two minutes to give a toast and wish Seryezha happy birthday. Yes, the men took a shot of vodka with every toast. Yes, I participated once by taking a half-shot [definitely one of the benefits of being a woman in Russia is not being forced to down half a bottle of vodka at every holiday].

The entire weekend again proved to be hilarious. The high points are as follows:

• I ate liver. With fried pasta. For breakfast. The first time I consumed liver in Russia, it was in a pastry in a café in St. Petersburg and completely accidental [the word for liver and cookie in Russian are dangerously similar]. This time, even in the morning without a drop of caffeine in my body, I immediately understood the word and said “No, no no!”, but it was already too late. Alfina sat a large plate down in front of me and told me to try it. Somehow, I managed to choke it down and politely refused a second helping. At this point birthday Sergei walked into the kitchen, looked at the liver, and said “Gross. Who eats an organ that’s primary purpose is to filter?”.

• On Saturday after the birthday celebration, Alfina, Albina [her sister], Zhenya [friend], and I went to the Kalinovo diskoteka. It was in the main hall of an old Soviet building and when we arrived, there were about 4 teenage girls dancing in the middle of the hall and about 30 people standing up on the balcony watching. Does anyone remember when the City opened as a “night club” in Bemidji? This experience was frighteningly similar to that one. I listened to a year’s worth of Russian techno music in one night and bonded with Albina when we both refused to participate in the dancing.

• This time around I noticed that Kalinovo is full of goats, cows, and sheep that just roam the streets. Alfina and I took a walk in a park by the lake on Sunday morning and came across a group of 10 cows that were having a nice little breakfast by themselves…

There is a lot more to report on [I found a hockey team, am about to actually start volunteering, and have been doing lots more strange and frighteningly official representation of American culture] and I hoping to catch up on it during the upcoming holiday weekend: the day of liberation from the Poles! This is my favorite holiday in Russia: it used to be Revolution Day during Soviet times and Russia still hasn’t quite figured out what to replace it with. The last time I was here it was the “Day of Unity and Solidarity” [although Russians joked that they weren’t sure who they were united with] and now we’ve moved to a more traditional war holiday. On Saturday I asked a group of Russian friends when the Russians were liberated from the Poles and no one seemed to know.

Speaking of holidays, Happy Halloween! [Okay, I know this is late now, but it was a few days before Halloween when I actually wrote this…I left it in to prove that I am not completely neglecting this blog, but rather fighting with internet access. I swear.]

P.S. This word of the week was written about a month ago…the homesickness has passed, I promise!

Word of the Week: Homesickness

Homesickness: n. 1. Sadness because one is away from home. 2. What I was experiencing in massive amounts on a random Sunday last month.

After completing my first two months in Ekaterinburg and watching homesickness wash over each member of our international cohort, I have rethought exactly what homesickness means and why it afflicts us at a given moment.

From what I can tell, homesickness—much like culture shock—occurs at the moments when we no longer have patience for Russia, when we have a string of bad luck with salespersons and buses, when all we really want is a triple latte to go and instead we get a tiny cappuccino in a teacup that we have to consume in a café that is blaring techno music. It is in these moments that I long to be home. Usually, the feeling passes within a second, a minute, or an hour; I start speaking Russian with ease for a few minutes or I go to a museum and see something that I’d never see in America or Midore screams in excitement and I remember just how cool it is to be here. But every once in a while, the moments pile up too quickly and that’s when real homesickness hits.

And then what does it mean? It is still unclear, but from what I can tell, homesickness means actually grasping the physical distance between myself and my homeland. There are days when you all feel just a moment away. And there are other days when I think I can feel every river, hill, city, country, lake, sea, and ocean between myself and America. These are days when I know that I am trapped in the middle of an enormous landmass called Eurasia and that really, there is no escape.

I picked homesickness for the word of the week because a few weekends ago I battled my way through the worst wave of it to date. I actually had a wonderful weekend, but a series of unfortunate events that occurred within a hour of each other caused me to finally lose my patience with Russia. I came to Jen and cried for as long as I could. When I stopped to take a breath, she looked at me and said “Yup, it’s been a month.” As it happens, four years of living in Russia arms you with some skills for beating homesickness down. She sent me on a walk to an internet café an hour away and in the meantime went out and bought an American movie in English, orange Fanta, and popcorn. When I came back, not only was all this American comfort waiting for me, but also a huge ice cream cake that Midore had purchased especially for me. In the end, I not only felt better, but found myself thinking about how lucky I am to live with these wonderful people. I love our international community, because we are all battling our own way through a unique version of culture shock and homesickness, but we somehow manage to do it together and help each other out as we work our way through Russian life and culture.