The Russian Country, Part I

Last weekend I took a trip to the country with Sergei and Alfina. We drove to Alfina’s hometown, which is about 2 hours away from Ekat. We stayed in her parents’ house, which is a typically small and remarkably clean Russian house, complete with a garden that contains two banyas—the "old" one and the new one that all the male relatives are working on building.

Every weekend Alfina’s family gathers at her parents’ house; by the end of the weekend, I had met her two sisters, their husbands, one sister’s 7 month old baby, and her brother, along with many guests who dropped in from time to time. Her parents are incredibly nice and very funny—her dad has a Tartar accent and the lovely habit of Russian males to mumble, meaning that I could understand about every third word he said. I don’t think I ever saw her mom sit down the whole time I was there, unless it was to play with Liza, the baby. She stood at the kitchen all day and cooked and cooked and cooked—anytime I happened to walk through, she cornered me with the words, "Kushai, kushai, kushai…esh’, esh’, esh!" [Eat, eat, eat!]. My longing for home-cooked Russian food was fulfilled this weekend, in particular by the highest stack of blyini [Russian crepes] I have ever seen.

In between the force-feeding, Alfina and I cruised around the countryside in their car. The town sits above a large lake—the Urals roll all around it, resulting in gorgeous scenery, especially this time of year. The lake is mostly surrounded by pine trees with the occasionally birch tree that throws in a splash of yellow within the deep green tree line. We drove all around the shoreline of the lake…or, more specifically, I drove around the shoreline. When we arrived in the town, Alfina and Sergei announced that now I could drive all weekend, a fact that I was slightly surprised by. I said that I didn’t even know if it was legal for me to drive in Russia. Not surprisingly, this didn’t faze them and they immediately sat me down in the driver’s seat and told me to enjoy the Russian roads. Let me tell you, Russian roads bring a whole new challenge to driving. At one point, I was literally driving on a road of rocks—no dirt, no asphalt, no pavement. I don’t know how we didn’t get a flat tire at some point. Nevertheless, it was fun…

Each evening Alfina and I took a trip together to the banya, which is a Russian sauna. Russians have all sorts of traditions surrounding the banya; I was indoctrinated to most of them this weekend. After overcoming my American modesty, I walked into the first room, which is the "cold room." We undressed, grabbed some honey and salt [homemade face-wash], and walked into the next room, which I mistakenly identified as the "hot room." It was in fact that middle room and the hot room provided the most intense heat I have ever experienced. It is a steam sauna, so you pour heat on the rocks and then sit on the top bench and sweat and sweat and sweat [and hope that the feeling that your skin is burning off is just a heat-induced hallucination]. Then you walk back to the cold room and drink beer and gossip until you are ready for more heat. As far as I can tell, this process continues until all the beer is consumed. They also have a tradition of hitting people with branches of birch trees in the banya, a "very useful" Russian tradition that is supposed to…clear your skin and give you vitamins??? I don’t know, but I experienced it and it was only partially traumatizing.

There were many more memorable moments from the weekend. For brevity’s sake, here are the other high points:

• I overcame my fear of Russian men, a development which happened when I realized that I had just spent two hours sitting in a room with all the husbands and brothers, who—slightly under the influence of vodka—peppered me with questions about America one after another and were impressed by my ability to drop the names of Russian NHL hockey players.
• Russia is apparently not only the single place in the world where I am considered a good dancer, but also the only place where I am told that I am a good driver…
• In Russia, everyone but the driver can consume as much alcohol as s/he wants while in a car. Yes, I learned this lesson by [a slightly disturbing] experience. No one could believe that this is illegal in America.
• I was the first foreigner that most of them had met...
• For the first time, I spoke and listened only to Russian for three whole days [excepting the random words that people threw into Russian sentences in a futile effort to impress me]. By the end of the weekend, my head was spinning, but I was also thinking in Russian without effort.

The pics from the weekend are up on the facebook. I miss you all and hope you are doing well! Over and out…

And now, on what Iam actually supposed to be doing here...

Hey y’all—this entry is from my meeting last week. More to come about the weekend in the country later on this week…

Today I met with the workers of Crisis Center Ekaterina for the first time. After spending the morning in bed, sick and exhausted, I somehow mustered enough energy to go and meet the women at a local library. There I was met first by the center’s director, Ludmila Ermakova. I was a little confused as to why we were meeting at a library [since the crisis center, as I understood, had some office somewhere in town]. I was also scared that they would tell me that they didn’t have work for me or that they would see that I couldn’t understand or speak well in Russian and say that it just wasn’t practical for me to volunteer with them. Alas, my fears were finally quelled by the two hour meeting that began upon my arrival.

First Ludmila Ermakova told me about the center’s two main projects. The first project includes several different kinds of support for domestic violence survivors. The staff psychologist, Olga, provides free consultations with domestic violence survivors every Monday in a little office at the front of the library where we met. During this meeting a female lawyer visited, who is also going to start offering free legal consultations for domestic violence survivors twice a month. In addition to this, the group has a one-room office somewhere else in the city that runs a domestic violence hotline for four hours every day—this is mainly staffed by Anya [who I met at my university, where she works in the social department] and Nadezhda, the other staff psychologist.

The second project focuses on trafficking of women. Part of this project is education of police officers, students, teachers, etc throughout the city. Right now, Anya and Nadezhda are organizing a training for different professors and workers at universities throughout the city; it is set for the end of October and I am planning on sitting in on it [although Olga kept joking that I would give a presentation on anti-trafficking work in America during it]. They are also in the process of making a brochure to hand out to girls throughout the city with information about trafficking, along with a list of crisis centers in major cities throughout the world—with the depressing but necessary idea that if a Russian woman is trafficked, then if she has the brochure she will have information about where to receive help in the city that she is trafficked to. I am planning on helping them search the web for these crisis centers.

The first main task that I am going to get started on for them is translating their website into English [after I am satisfied with the work, I’ll let you all know the website address]. Ludmila Erkmakova also mentioned several times that it will probably be interesting me to follow them around the city and watch the work they do [she is absolutely right about that]. I had been worried that they would not want me in their hair as they worked, so I am very excited to discover that they will are willing to let me trail after them.

In all, the women are hilarious, kind, and seem happy enough to have me around. It was pretty cool to sit down with them and talk about their activities and women’s activism, because it again felt like a comfortable and familiar environment, despite the fact that they were speaking Russian a mile a minute as we froze in a room that was mysterious 10 degrees colder than the balmy weather outside.

Coming soon, updates on my weekend in the country, my first experience in a Russian banya, and a lesson on how to drive a car in Russia.

Traveling back to the beginning

During the past five years, I must have been asked at least a thousand times why I study Russian language. My answer is different every time, but one piece is almost always included: when I was in third grade, these Russian hockey players came to my town and my family hosted a couple of Russian boys in my home for a week. Sometimes I include more information: their names were Sergei and Alexei and they were amazed by McDonalds and American supermarkets…it was my first international experience…I didn’t understand that other cultures existed until that moment… The story then turns to Concordia Language Villages, U of C, Petersburg, and usually ends with “and here I am today.”

Many of you have already had to listen to this story at least once—why do I bring it up now, you ask? Well, as it turns out, Sergei lives in Ekaterinburg. And, since my sister Katie is simply a molodets and has kept in contact with Sergei on and off for the past 14 years, she was able to track him down and let him know that I am in town. Last week Sergei emailed Katie his cell phone number and said in classic English-Russian that it was “obligatory for me to call him.” A couple nights ago I worked up the courage to fulfill that obligation; when I called, we agreed to meet up and, thus, I spent 5 hours last night hanging out with him and his wife, Alfina. They met me at my dorm in their car, greeted me in Russian style with a huge bouquet of flowers, and took me out to dinner at the only “sports bar” in town [it has an excellent brewery, but the huge TVs more often than not show Russian fashion TV]. We sat there for at least two hours, drinking beer and eating tons of food that they ordered, talking about their lives here in Russia, my life in the states and here, and about the week that Sergei spent in Bemidji so many years ago. It was amazing to listen to what he remembered about American and Bemidji and what his impressions as a 13-year-old boy had been.

Being hospital Russians, the night could not end with dinner. We drove around the town until 10:00 PM, stopping at all the sights to take pictures and admire the views. Sergei and Alfina told me a lot about the history of the town, as well as about what there is to do in the town now. As the night went on, it became clear that as far as they are concerned, I am their guest for the year. We made plans to go watch hockey once the professional season starts and to all go skating together sometime. They also invited me to their parents’ place in the country this weekend, an invitation which I gladly accepted [finally, I am going to a dacha and a banya!]. Alfina is Tartar, which means that she is Muslim and that she grew up speaking both Tartar and Russian. I cannot wait to meet her parents and to get a chance to hear and learn about Tartar culture. I also am excited to see the Russian countryside and to take my first car road-trip in Russia [okay, so that actually petrifies me, but I’m willing to take the risk]. The trip also means a whole weekend of speaking only Russian—my brain might implode by the end of it, but both Sergei and Alfina are great about speaking slowly and helping me understand what they are saying. After coming all this way, it feels great to have such nice people who are ready and willing to take care of me and help me out.

So that’s my crazy news. I have never believed in fate, but standing out on the bank of the perfectly calm river last night, looking across the water at a massive Russian cathedral, and talking with the person who planted the tiny origins of this journey so many years ago—well, it was simply unreal. I have lately found myself often saying that it is a small world and I am more and more starting to believe that it is the kind and interesting people that enter and reenter our lives that make it so comfortably small, no matter how far away from home we travel.

We watch you through the window!

That quote comes from my first night of hanging out with a group of Russian students in Ekaterinburg. The night began when Defri [another foreign student from Indonesia] called me and Midore to see if we wanted to hang out on the other side of the dorm with a group of friends. We said, “sure, of course,” and happily went over to their kitchen. When we walked in, there were four girls sitting around the table and one boy standing in the corner with a guitar. As the girls introduced themselves, one—Aliya—turned to me and said “Oh yes, you’re the American who lives across the courtyard. We’ve seen you.” I responded by asking “On the street?” and she said “Oh no, we watch you in your room from the balcony. You’re always home!”. Russian honesty never ceases to amaze me…

Midore and I proceeded to spend a couple hours getting acquainted with the girls and then another hour listening to Artyem [the lone boy] play on the guitar while the girls sang along. It was beautiful and one of those classic moments when I remember just exactly why I traveled across the ocean and a continent to live on the western edge of Asia and Siberia.

Last Monday we all started classes. I didn’t realize just how much ACTR did to keep our program in Petersburg organized until I attempted to attend similar classes without the aid of Erin, our resident director. The class schedule changes at least one time a day. When I arrived at the university on Monday morning, there was a list on the wall, which was supposed to assign everyone to a language group/class. Everyone’s name was there except mine! I went to the dean, who explained that they didn’t know what to do with me and that I was just supposed to figure out what classes I needed. In the long run, it’s great to have that flexibility but this week it was somewhat overwhelming as I attempted to figure out what classes will be most helpful and what students are at my level. I’m going to give it another go next week and hopefully have my schedule set by then.

In the meantime, I have been hanging out a lot with Jen and Midore, whose acclimation to the Russian life and weather provides endless humor. She has a habit of screaming and grunting when she is excited…or scared…or upset…or happy…or cold...or tired... It is hilarious! After a bumpy start, her Russian is really coming along and we have all been helping her out, which usually leads to more humorous situations than I could ever even dream up. For example, this last week I somehow ended up doing some official English translations for the Japanese Ministry of Education, despite my best efforts to explain to our dean and Midore that I was not quite qualified for such tasks.

Since this seems to be the Midore-focused entry, I’ll point out that the picture is me and her in her dorm room. It was taken after the first day of classes [a rough day for everyone involved], after which we decided to take some photos displaying our national pride. It shows the “why Russia, why?????” sentiment that floats through our rooms a couple times a day. With that said, I must emphasize that I am having a blast and can’t imagine being anywhere but here right now. It is a strange combination of homesickness, culture shock, and pure fun—I don’t think ever in my laugh have I laughed as often or as hard as I have in the last week.

For now, that is all. It is the 17th of September and outside my window snow is starting to fall for the first time. Midore is screaming—both with joy at the sight of snow and out of fear of the next 9 months of snow. Somehow the sky is blue and though I am having trouble believing that it could already be this cold, it is beautiful. And freezing…
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P.S. I have posted a few pictures on the facebook and hope to put more up by the end of this week. For those of you who a) don’t have the facebook or b) are saying to yourself “the facebook?!”, make friends with a college student and kindly ask them to show you my profile.

Oh my, you came from so far away!

• That’s a direct quote from the old security guard who wrote me a day pass for the university on Wednesday. And indeed during the last week I have come to realize just how far I have traveled away to end up just east of the Urals and Europe. A couple of interesting [and, for the most part, cool] facts about Ekaterinburg:
  There is no McDonald’s in this town [although rumor has it that one is being built right now]. They do, however, have a MacPik, which is a Russian knock-off of the great American chain.
• The town is still often called by the old name (Sverdlosk) in many places, such as train schedules [which made for an interesting time purchasing our tickets] and by many Russians who don’t live here.
• Even the American Consulate seems to be run mostly by Russians…
• The center of the town sports one of the coolest Lenin statues I have seen to date in Russia (picture to come).
• I stand out so much here that when I was in the ACTR office, one of the Americans said "yeah, I saw you on the street yesterday." In other words, she remembered seeing me before she met me.

The past week I was indoctrinated to the wonderful world of Russian documents and paperwork. I think I spent more time waiting in lines this week than I ever had in my life: after three unsuccessful tries, I registered my visa at my university, stood in line twice at a bank to pay for my registration and my visa [don’t ask me what the difference is], registered for a student ID at my university and got stamps from three different university offices on it, officially registered with my dorm [more paper signing, stamps, and glue-sticking of photos], registered my room for the appropriate furniture and fixtures, got checked for lice, and x-rayed for…well…I guess I still don’t know what. Tomorrow I am going to stand in line at a different bank to pay my tuition and my dorm fee and then [in theory] I will set. Whew.

Between all of that, I have been steadily exploring the town and loving what I have found so far. A couple days ago I went for my first run in "Park Mayakovskovo", which is a gorgeous park about 20 minutes away from my dorm. It is huge and covered with birch and pine trees—despite the fact that it is pretty much right in the city, it feels like you are running through a forest. Also, for the first time in my life, I saw several Russians running the park—my favorite was a man who was running with his dog, who he had trained to hold his water bottle in his mouth! Tomorrow Jacob and I are going planning on going hiking in one of the even bigger parks on the outskirts of town.

One of the most interesting things about the town so far is just how compact it is. After spending the last week walking around most of the city, I have determined that it does not occupy much more physical space than Bemidji; yet instead of 11,912 people, Ekaterinburg has over 1.5 million in the same amount of space. This means that there are people everywhere—particularly crammed onto buses and trams and stuck in seemingly endless traffic jams. That said, the city runs amazing efficiently and seems to have a good handle on how to move all these people around everyday. I’m interested to see how it all functions once the mud and snow arrive.

Yesterday our fourth roommate arrived—from Japan! That makes for a good American-European-Asian bloc that we have going on here on the third floor of Chapaeva, dom 16A. : ) Her name is Midore and her Russian is…coming along : ) She an incredibly sweet girl and has an excellent habit of screaming (literally) whenever she is exited—it has made for a couple of exciting days and one ridiculous trip to a Russian supermarket this evening.

Hmm, what else? Some of you will be happy to know that I taught Turil [Jen’s good friend from Turkey who is quickly becoming my favorite person in Ekaterinburg] how to play "Set" the other night, which—with the language barrier and all—was quite a task. I now know how to say diamond, filled, and shaded in Russian, but still haven’t tackled "squiggle."

Also, I know that you all might be tired of hearing about Russian haircuts, but one observation must be documented. Remember back in the early 1990s when boys used to wear short hair with one skinny long rat’s tail in the back [St. Philip’s people: think Mike Dryer]? Well, that fad has hit Russia hard. I can’t tell you how many seemingly attractive Russian boys I have met, only to have them turn around to reveal a rat’s tail down their back! On that note, I am off for my new evening ritual of beer and cribbage with Jen—vsevo dobrovo (take care)!

Ekat, whaaaat?!?! [Said with the intonation of B-town, whaaaat?!?!]

At long last, I have arrived at my new home.

I don’t quite know where to begin. First things first, I guess: I survived the train ride. The first 20 hours were actually quite enjoyable, as Jacob (my ETA buddy) and I had a lovely couple of Russian boys in our kupe. They spent at least 5 hours grilling us in Russian about life in America, which led to my first Russian conversation about feminism and just what exactly it is that I am doing here. Misha, age 20 and from the city of Perm, told me that he didn’t understand why American women got offended when men offered them their seats on the bus. After a long description of how and why this bothered him, he turned to me and said, “well, what do think? What is your feminism?” I took a deep breath and decided to tell him that my focus is violence against women, which to me had always seemed a more significant problem than the seat issue. Misha agreed with me and then spent another 20 minutes going back and forth between speaking about how much violence against women pained him and how he still didn’t understand the issue of the seats on the bus/opening doors/carrying bags/why feminists hate men. Again, I took a deep breath and opened my mouth; I said that there were a lot of different forms of feminism in the states and that the idea that all feminists are man-haters is a common misconception [spasibo Rush Limbaugh]. Seeing his reaction to this, I decided to go for it and continued to say that based on my own definition of feminism, I thought that all women and men should consider themselves feminists, as a matter of respect for themselves and their relationships with each other. Assuming I had pissed him off for the rest of our trip, I sheepishly looked up at his [gorgeous] eyes, at which point Misha smiled and said “ah, I see. I guess this American feminism isn’t so scary after all. I’ll be sure to tell my friends.” I still don’t know whether he actually meant it or if he said it politely in order to change the subject, but nevertheless, I was glad that my first conversation about feminism didn’t end with silence or swearing.

I rolled into Ekaterinburg on the evening of the 29th. “The American” from my university] met me at the train station. Her name is Jen and—you’re not going to believe this—she’s from Minnesota and played hockey for the Minneapolis Novas. It is a small, crazy world : ) During the past 48 hours Jen has shown me the wonder of what happens when Minnesota nice and Russian hospitality combines: she has been taking me around the city, helping me get everything in order with my university, introducing me to people everywhere we go, and taking care of me in general. She has been living here for the past four years, which means her Russian is amazing and she knows the city inside and out.

Right now, I am living in the dorm, sharing a room with Jen and a common area with a combination of international and Russian students. I had always planned on moving immediately into an apartment, but the dorm, which is pretty nice and has free internet as well as a kitchen, only costs 900 rubles a month (about $35). So I am torn between saving money (which I can then spend on more during the next year and summer) and feeling like I have outgrown the college dorm atmosphere (people here don’t party like American freshman—although my Swedish roommate did just walk in with a bottle of vodka as I typed that—but there is something strange about sharing a room, bathroom, kitchen, etc with all sorts of people). I am also concerned about speaking too much English here…For now, I think I will stay put for the month and try to scope out the other options in that time.

My first impressions of the town: the Economist didn’t lie—Ekat is on the rise! There are cranes everywhere and it seems like half the town is under construction. It is an interesting mix of Soviet buildings from the 1970s, beautiful old buildings with columns reminiscent of Petersburg, and shiny new buildings that seem to be shooting up all over the place. As predicted by everyone I met in Moscow, the provincial sidewalks and roads are about as level as the Ural Mountains and promise to be covered with mud as soon as it rains. But for now, the city is sunny, warm, and in that beautiful prefall season which is perfect for wandering the streets. It is strange to be looked at everywhere I go—but whereas in Moscow and Petersburg I generally get the feeling that I often annoy people as a foreigner, here it seems that people are much friendlier to foreigners and way more willing to cut us some slack.

That’s the latest report. I am going to spend the weekend walking the city until I am comfortable with all the roads by foot…and then hopefully use the next week to tackle the bus, tram, and trolleybus systems. I am testing for language placement at the university on Monday, but they are not expecting classes to start until September 11th. For the time being, I am hoping to get in contact with the women’s organization I would like to work with and then set out on the ever-daunting task of making Russian friends…

Miss you all! I hope you all have a happy labor day!

One last thing: I know have a cell phone and address—if you want them, shoot me an email and I’ll send them to you.

P.S. The fullet does not appear to be as fashionable in Ekaterinburg—good thing I decided to hold off!

Privet rebyata! [Hello y'all!].

This is an old post that I wrote on my laptop a few days ago. I have since arrived in Ekaterinburg and I promise a real update in the next few days. For now, these adventures from the provinces will have to suffice :)

This weekend I took a trip to towns around Moscow with the community service grantees, the English teaching assistants (ETAs) and Ed, the director of the Russian Fulbright program, and his wife. We started in Yaroslavl’ and continued on to Kastruma (or something like that) and a tiny little village called Plus. I had always wanted to travel around the Golden Ring of Moscow, so I was excited about the opportunity to knock a few cities off of the list. In each town we had a tour guide that took us around to the main sights in each city (generally speaking, we saw a church or two, icon paintings, and a few monuments). There were, however, a few moments that stood out:
• Yaroslavl’ has a monument in the center of the town to Yaroslavl’ (a Russian prince who founded the town in 1010) and the bear that he supposedly fought and killed back in the day—apparently the Russians do (did?) fight bears!
• We arrived in Kastruma on the city’s den’ goroda (literally “day of the city”). It is basically a citywide holiday that every city has in Russia, in which it celebrates its history with parades, concerts, fireworks, and lots of beer. Our group was lucky enough to catch the tail end of the outdoor concert, which we discovered was a performance by the contestants of Fabrika Zvyezd (Russian American Idol)—It was pretty awesome and especially entertaining to watch the preteen girls go crazy over the hunky males, just like they do in the states.
• Driving back to Moscow on a Sunday evening is a little like driving back to the cities on Sunday night after a summer weekend at a cabin—it takes forever. We were on our [thankfully comfortable] bus for 7.5 hours!
• Our faithful bus driver, Vladmir Nikolaevich, enlightened me through example to the fact that buses can, in fact, weave traffic just like little sports cars and can also pass 4 cars at a time. Our tank of a bus (named the Sputnik) and Vladmir cruised over those lovely Russian potholes at quite an impressive pace.

It was a fun weekend, but nevertheless exhausting. I am glad that I had to time to bond with the other Fulbrighters, but am also very happy that this weekend is the last time this year that I will have to take tours with a large group of Americans. I am excited to slip into the center of Russian culture and also foolishly excited to remove myself from a community of English speakers. I can feel the Russian “muscles” in my brain starting to get back into shape and am excited to get back into classroom in order to really get them working again.

I’ll send out the report from Ekaterinburg once I arrive—assuming I survive the 26 hour train ride that begins at 4:30 pm today…