Behind the Urals

And now, for the reflections...

2007-08-28T15:21:00.000+06:00

Well this is it. It is 7:00 am and I am sitting in my trusty little blue and white kitchen, cup of coffee in hand, looking out at the gray Russian sky and thankful that I will be escaping before fall really gets a chance to settle into the Urals.

I woke up on my hammock bed to the sound of the hot water fighting its way through the pipes [which sounds frighteningly similar to machine guns] and blaring techno music in the courtyard. In other words, I woke as I do every other morning here at dorm #6. I tried to lay still and drift back to dreams of America, but it was too late—I am too excited about coming home and too anxious about my upcoming cross-continental travels to trick myself back to sleep. And thus, here I am, sitting in this [surprisingly clean at the present moment] kitchen, reflecting on the past year.

Just as I was at a loss for words while I was writing up my Fulbright final report last week, I am for once silenced as I stare at the computer screen this morning. What was this year? How can I sum it up in one page? A success? A struggle? Somewhere in between, perhaps? Despite my best efforts at setting realistic expectations, I certainly arrived last August with grandiose notions of all that I could do in a year: from mastering the Russian language to working my ass off for the women of Russia to somehow seeing all of this massive country. If there is one thing that Russia does well, it is quickly and efficiently bringing one back down to earth and disillusioning the idealists. My goals were quite soon cut down into more realistic, bite size pieces. Throughout the year, I worked on this language that I will never speak fluently with various levels of effort and success. Perhaps that best thing that I can say about that is during my last weekend in Kalinovo, I spoke Russian continuously without grasping or stumbling for words and without a massive headache by Sunday evening. I know that I will never sound eloquent, but I believe there is something to say for simply being understood.

And the women of Russia? I am leaving them in about the same position that they were when I came. And after a year of observing and dabbling in the Russian non-profit world, I think this is probably as it should be. I can support, I can help where help is genuinely needed, I can offer stories of American successes and struggles, but at the end of the day, this is ultimately their fight to fight. I now understand the overwhelming complexities of domestic violence in a country like Russia and I am awestruck with the respect that I hold for women like the founders of Ekaterina, who choose to devote their lives to battling the problem despite these intimidating odds against them. They are brave, they understand the incredibly long road ahead of them, they keep their spirits high and light despite it, and they are damn good at what they do, even on the days when it feels like throwing a single stone into an ocean. Many of my favorite moments from this year happened while watching these women in action: from listening to Anya regularly counsel women over the phone with such ease and experience to watching Olga Nikolaevna take on the stereotypes of some stubborn policeman or lawyer at a training session, irony brewing in her beautiful black eyes all the while. It is in this area of my Fulbright experience that I had to most seriously rework my goals and plans, but it is consequently where I learned the most. I am returning to America with new ideas about our role in organizations like Ekaterina and with problems like domestic violence [that’s a whole separate conversation for those of you who are interested]. If anything, I am proud simply to have volunteered for an entire year. I got the opportunity to regularly explain the amazing concept that is American volunteerism and to show that I, indeed, considered it a privilege to get to spend a year in the Urals volunteering. I will be able to continue my relationship with Ekaterina by doing things like translating and database fun online and I look forward to learning how these women will progress with their work as time goes on.

And seeing all of Russia? Well, that was certainly an unrealistic expectation, but for the time being, I have seen enough. I look forward to someday returning to Russia, to visiting the friends that I have come to love so well and to perhaps again try to tackle the problems I just discussed, only with more experience and resources at my disposal. But for the present moment, I am inexplicably excited to land on American soil, to walk off of the plane and hear all those loud voices booming in the airport, to walk by the McDonald’s and Pizza Hut and Starbucks, to smile at the man who will serve me my first cup of to-go coffee and be smiled back at for the first time in a year and to think to myself “ah, родина”.

And yet I cannot end this last entry there, because here I am still sitting in this kitchen, trying to figure out how I am going to walk away from this dorm that I so fiercely hate and love. I can confidently say that I will not miss the water turning on and off and brown, nor the pipes freezing and sending me into near hypothermia, nor Artyem, our neighbor who has a lovely habit of boiling meat cutlets in his underwear in the shared kitchen. But what success we have had in turning a fading Soviet dorm into a home and an odd mix of international students into a family! Where would I be this year if it were not for Jen, Josefina, and Midori? Probably curled in the fetal position on the curb somewhere, crying and cold. These girls have made this experience worthwhile and, in the words of Midori, they have been my Russia. An American Christian missionary, an American fliberal feminist, an outspoken Swedish writer, and the self-described most-untypical Japanese girl in the world. Yes, we were an odd bunch and that is what has made our family so fantastic. This is undoubtedly what I will miss the most: laying in Jen’s bed with Midori, passing hours with meaningful and meaningless conversations; listening to Josefina and Midori argue through the thin walls and catching the moment when the bickering transitions into laughter; moving back and forth between Biblical analysis and feminist theory with Jen, both of us convinced that there are countless similarities in our respective professions; drinking beer and playing cribbage on the ironing board with Jen on the days when Russia got the best of us; and all those amazing days when the four of us managed to gather somewhere together, be it the road home from the university or the ski slopes or right here in this kitchen. I will miss the laughter, I will miss Russians’ confused faces while watching us interact, I will miss turning to watch Midori’s face after Josefina makes some ridiculous comment, and I will miss the comradery of all of us trying to tackle and survive Russia together.

This self-indulgent reflection has gone for far too long and the sun has managed to work its way through the clouds in the meantime. I am off to enjoy my last three days in the Urals. I cannot wait to see all of you soon—email and call and let me know where you will be in September! Thank you all for listening and reading this year, as well as for supporting me with letters and emails and phone calls and packages : ) I never could have made it without you.

Signing off from Russia,

Byeeetsy Hoooooody [as I am known in this part of the world]

Summer Fun

2007-08-21T23:25:00.000+06:00

I have been sitting around Ekaterinburg for the last couple weeks and trying to figure out how to chronicle my summer adventures. I guess we can just jump right in:

After getting back from my travels with Midori way back in June, I started to tackle the next task on my summer to-do list: teaching at orientation sessions for FLEX students—Russian high school students who are leaving for America for a year-long cultural exchange program. I taught at 2 sessions that each included about 35 15-year-old Russian munchkins who had amazing English skills and who were very excited about their upcoming trip. The hilarity involved in teaching about American culture and life from a Russian perspective is unimaginable. We talked about everything from culture shock to host families to the fact that Americans don’t always take off their shoes indoors and can get offended if you are late [this one I took particular pleasure in describing to a Russian audience]. It was a great opportunity to get to do fun “American” things with these energetic kids, such as teaching them to throw a Frisbee or starting every lesson with some sort of icebreaker or energizer, which—to kids who have been educated in the formal Russian system—was both very bizarre and fun. Perhaps my favorite moment was when John, the director of the program in Ekaterinburg, looked up at the “new words” list on the wall of my classroom, and saw that we had written only “ethnocentrism” and “barn”. Enough said.

I finished up the FLEX fun on July 3^rd and on July 4^th I was already back on the train. This time I was headed to Ufa, where I worked as a volunteer for an English camp that is sponsored by the US embassy in Moscow. This camp had about 100 kids with varying levels of English. The camp is modeled like an American day camp, which meant that every day I got to teach something like “English through sports” [yes, we learned baseball!] or “English through arts and crafts,” etc. Although at times both challenging and exhausting, it was an amazing and hilarious experience. After my Concordia Language Villages experiences, it was fun to be a guest native speaker at an English camp, to teach the kids English songs and phrases and words, and just to be surrounded by cute little munchkins with so much energy and who are so excited to get to practice their English with “a real American.”

While in Ufa, I lived with a host family—namely, Gulnara, the director of the camp. She was wonderful! She is 25 and has perhaps the best English I have ever heard in Russia. She and her family took me in for the 2 weeks that I was there and made sure that I got all the possible cultural excursions while I was in Bashkir [the republic that Ufa is located in]. We got to go camping one weekend and for the first [and to date the only] time all summer, I got to go swimming! We camped at a lake that was at the bottom of these gorgeous mountains. For a girl who is accustomed to the relatively flatlands of the Midwest, it was unbelievable. I swam in a lake with a clay bottom for the first time and I spent hours just laying on a raft, looking up at the hills and mountains in awe. During the weekend festivities, I taught the entire crew to throw an American football, instantly gaining the respect of the Russian men, who were quite confused as to why a GIRL could throw a spiral and they couldn’t.

After Ufa, I came back to Ekat for a few days and then hopped on a plane to St. Petersburg, where I met Jodi Wu for the next adventure! She and I spent 10 eventful days in St. Petersburg and another week in Prague. While Petersburg will never lose its place in my heart, I think that Jodi best summed up our stay there by saying “It was at once so amazing and so awful.” Russia was in tourist season, which meant long lines everywhere, which was, of course, matched with that outstanding customer service that the country is so famous for. In the course of the week, I got into a verbal fight with a customer service agent at the Hermitage, Jodi was screamed at by a middle-aged Russian woman on a marshutka, and we both witnessed a museum worker punch/shove a female Australian tourist. Russia, in short, was not at its best. Nevertheless, we had fun. We saw an amazingly dramatic ballet at the Marinskii, took a detour to Novgorod [one of my favorite Russian cities], and got to watch the Rolling Stones do a sound check outside the Hermitage.

From Petersburg we flew to Prague, where we spent five amazing days relaxing in what I would now call European luxury. We got to stay with Heather Keyes, which was for me an amazing Bemidji connection and who showed us outstanding hospitality. From castles to concerts to churches to a tour of a 14^th century mine, this trip was full of beauty. The city is truly gorgeous and I must admit, I think I had goose bumps when we first walked down the cobblestone streets and looked up at the main castle in the distance. We, of course, also indulged in the famous Czech beer, along with dumplings and sausages and lots of meat and gravy. Although filled to the brim with tourists, the city manages to supply enough tiny outdoor cafes to always have an open table for anyone looking for beer or coffee, which Jodi and I took advantage of every day.

And now I am here, at this place that I will only call “home” for another week. I have been doing a little work for the crisis center, enjoying time with Jen and her sister who is visiting from Minnesota, and reflecting on what has been an amazing year. More on those reflections to come in the next [last!] blog. For now, know that I am so excited to come home and can’t wait to see so many of the faces that I have missed so much this past year!

Белые Ночи

2007-06-16T20:00:00.000+06:00

White nights are met by rainy mornings
where Petersburg is calm and quiet—
at least in the courtyard outside my window
where the only sound is a single broom sweeping the pavement.
The city pretends that this gray is darkness,
a pause in the perpetual illumination,
and we all sleep a little longer
and move slightly slower when we
finally throw the covers off,
thankful for this sacred moment of shade.

White nights and I am wandering the city
with my newfound soul mate.
We sit on a bench in Летний Сад
and stare at those strolling by,
seeing who can spot the Americans first
[this leads to lengthy conversation about white socks]
and analyzing the romantic relationships
that are developing on the surrounding benches.
Across the path the aging trees are weaving
a pattern of thin black lines that stand out
against the constant twilight.
The grass—almost glowing green—is growing wildly,
trying to catch the trees and never coming close.
And all the while behind the park’s tiny canal
cars are speeding by
rushing to the river for the evening’s holiday.

White nights and I am on top of St. Isaac’s
watching the rain pour onto a distant district.
The tourists are frantically circling the dome
snapping photos that can never hope to frame
this beauty.
Midori and I sit against the rail
and watch the sun walk along the horizon.
She marvels at the European buildings
falling towards each other with age and grace
and I fix my eyes on the naval columns
aglow with flame and glory
on Russia’s Independence Day.
The city creaks and groans and prepares for the rain.

White nights and we move inside St. Isaac’s to wait out the rain.
It is late and the massive church is nearly empty.
One tour group moves slowly from highlight to highlight
and we rest on benches as far from them as possible.
We watch an old woman
(dressed in house clothes complete with
a tattered scarf tied over her hair)
spray the plants on the altar with water,
carefully crossing herself each time.
Midori says her mom wrote that
she never pushed religion upon her
and trusted she’d find it when it was time.
“But Buddhists don’t believe that God is
going to save us,” she adds,
glancing up at the huge golden crucifixion
hanging above us.
We stand to leave
and our footsteps echo off of the marble pillars.

White nights and suddenly everything is sacred.
I walk home slowly along the river
with my now fading soul mate at my side
and the sun trailing behind us.
I am in love
with the bubbly, beautiful girl next to me
who came into my life like an unannounced hurricane
that somehow created order and hope
with screams and laughter and lots of ice cream.
with this city in June
with all the trees overflowing with green
and with the way the sunlight falls
softly onto the buildings at midnight.

So that's the romantic version of the trip that Midori and I just took to Petersburg and Petrozavodsk. In between the beautiful views, we had 6 nights on the train over the course of 10 days, many excellent meals with Ludmila (my former host mother), a quick tour of Duluth's sister city, a run-in with a Santa Claus look alike, and many more memorable moments.

Two Great May Holidays: Victory Day and…My Birthday

2007-05-18T11:03:00.000+06:00

So far, these have been the two highlights of May and I thought I’d take a little time today to share them here.

May 9^th is Victory Day. All usual cynicism aside, Victory Day is a big deal in Russia. I would argue that Russians continue to pay significantly more attention to the Second World War than most Americans do. There are legitimate reasons for it: officially, 20 million Russians died in the war. They fought on their own soil and like in any country with war, there were tremendous hardships, including a 900 day blockade of St. Petersburg. And then there are the 3000 Soviet and now Russian movies made to remind us, constantly, about the war. Not to mention all the babushki. At any rate, all of this means that across the nation, Victory Day is a huge celebration—in every city, there are tanks, there are soldiers, there are fireworks. The day usually begins with a morning parade and ends, as far as I could tell, with lots of alcohol.

I was hesitant about going to the Victory Day parade with our international crew, mainly because—ironically—Victory Day in Russia has become a place where skinheads express their negative opinions towards foreigners, sometimes relatively “peacefully” [such as a group of people screaming “go home Yankees” at a parade that Jen attended in Petersburg a couple years ago] and sometimes more violently. But Ekaterinburg is exceptional in being a relatively peaceful and safe Russian town and thus, at 9:45 am on May 9^th, I found myself standing atop a crowded tank (#344) on the square of 1905, anxiously awaiting the start of the 62^nd Victory Day Parade. The scene was amazing: all around the square there were groups of soldiers in uniform standing also awaiting the start of the big day. Little kids were climbing all over the tanks as if they were trees and women in 3 inch stilettos were carefully climbing up onto the tanks for a better view. In the background, the Lenin statue calmly watched over the entire square. It was Soviet, it was Russian, and it was unreal.

And then the clock struck ten and the excitement truly began. Basically what happens is that two main generals (at least I think that’s who they were) ride around the square standing up in convertible Volgas. There are all sorts of official phrases said through a loud speaker—the best part by far is when the general rides around to greet and congratulate each individual group of soldiers with the victory. There is a scripted conversation that is repeated about 20 times as the general drives from group to group, the highlight being when the soldiers all together scream “Uuuuraaaa!” (which is Russian “Hooooraaaay!). From atop our tank, we participated in the cheer, somewhat to the dismay of the spectators around us. Our Russian friends sang the national anthem and everyone watched in excitement as all the soldiers marched around the square. There were veterans, cadets, and everything in between.

That was it. Afterwards, we carefully climbed off our tank [only after several rounds of pictures] and meandered around the crowded square. If you passed a veteran in the crowd, it was appropriate to congratulate him with the victory, which we proudly did in our accented Russian. There were also lots of booths selling “fair food” including cotton candy and something called “soldier kasha” that we were not brave enough to try out. From this moment on, the main focus of the day seemed to switch over to alcohol for a good percentage of the crowd, which perhaps means it is a good point to transition to my birthday.

At the end of May 16, Midori turned to me and said “I think it’s been a very Russian day.” That might be the best way of summing up my birthday, besides saying that it was an absolutely excellent day.

We started early—I woke up to pancakes and a festively decorated kitchen, compliments of Jen. After a relaxing morning, Midori, Jen, and I hopped on the trolleybus and headed towards…EUROPE’S BIGGEST INDOOR WATERPARK! [Or so claim most Russians in Ekaterinburg]. In the words of Jen “now I really want to Europe’s smallest waterpark.” At any rate, we enjoyed 3 solid hours of 30 degrees Celcius, which was my main request for the day. We also learned [not surprisingly] that Russian safety standards and waterpark engineering skills are…well…less than impressive. For example, I [foolishly, in retrospect] chose “The Black Hole” as my first waterslide. Well, at some point in the black hole I noticed that I didn’t seem to be moving at all. And so, keeping my claustrophobia under control as best I could, I crawled for 3 minutes through utter darkness until I finally reached the huge drop off that shot me out into the pool. It was frightening, to say the least. There were also two grown and intoxicated men having an inner-tube fight on the lazy river for almost the entire time we were there. Nevertheless, it was a great time—we even got to sit in a sauna that was 120 degrees C, at which point Midori exclaimed “This is the first time I’ve been warm since I came to Russia!”.

After that adventure, we headed across the street to the movie theater, where we watched Человек-Паук (Spiderman 3). Even this proved to be a uniquely Russian experience. Despite the fact that it was 3:00 pm, there was an intoxicated couple in front of us who walked into the theater with a glass tumbler full of vodka [that they had ordered at, yes, the theater’s concession stand]. We were worried that they would be out of control, but once the movie started, the woman stopped screaming “Max! What’s going on?” and they pretty much calmed down. Halfway through the movie, the sound went out and at about the same time, Max’s tumbler of vodka caught up with him. He bent over in his seat, leading his girlfriend to start screaming [in that lovely loud, drunkenly slurred voice] “Max, what’s wrong with you? Max?!” [Max тебе плохо, что ли?]. The family sitting behind us got up at this point…but apparently only to report the sound problem and not the drunken mess in front of us. That was okay, because after Max finished vomiting his vodka onto the movie theater floor, the girlfriend smacked him across the face and the couple abruptly left. All the while good and evil were going at it on the screen behind them.

Despite that excitement, the movie was excellent as well. Jen and I spent half the time watching Spiderman and the other half watching Midori, who was like a 3-year-old watching their favorite cartoon—she didn’t even notice the drama between Max and his girlfriend!

In the evening, we had a gathering of international students with cake and coffee. Around this time I also found out that Russian style is to just drop by with gifts without warning, which might be my new favorite cultural difference : ) Misha brought Cadburry chocolates and Sergei and Alfina brought about 20 roses. All in all, it was a wonderful day. It was great to hear from so many of you on the day—thank you for all the messages!

One more point of business: to answer the question that is running around out there, I am coming home in early September. It’s not official yet and it is going to take some serious maneuvering through the Russian visa system [though I must say, if there is one thing this year has taught me, it’s how to effectively tightrope walk through the tangled system of Russian bureaucracy], but that’s what I am shooting for. I will keep you all updated. And in the meantime, there is a big summer of traveling adventures coming up—but more about that in the next blog : )

Falling In Line/Strutting My Stuff

2007-04-08T23:23:00.000+06:00

Since arriving to Russia in August and beginning the long process of cultural adjustment, I have had a constant question in my mind about when it is necessary to follow Russian cultural standards and when it is appropriate and perhaps necessary to protect my American self. The question is constant largely because the relevant moments are generally ordinary and mundane: can I answer my cell phone in class? do I need to wear a hat today? what do I want for dinner tonight? I came here concerned about being culturally sensitive, but soon realized that I also need to make sure that I find times and places for my Americanness as well…and the balancing act of doing so has become my journey is cultural assimilation.

In the last month, this question has suddenly become more apparent and defined in my behavior. And thus the title of this entry: in many aspects of my ordinary life here, I have spent the last month either almost entirely assimilating or completely rebelling—in between these two options right now there seems to be little room for common ground.

I first noticed this development when a few things about myself unexpectedly “russified.” First, in the course of a three-day trip to Izhevsk, I started to like two staples of Russian life that I swore I would NEVER like: instant coffee [forgive me] and carbonated water. I honestly don’t know what happened—it was as if all the sudden the radiation had gone to my head and what before had tasted disgusting was now wonderful. That same week, I found myself craving grechka [buckwheat] and regularly cleaning the dirt off of my shoes and the bottom of my jeans without complaint. While walking on the street, I noticed that for the most part, I have stopped smiling and I don’t usually apologize when I push past people to get onto a crowded bus. To top it all off, when walking into the university a couple weeks ago, I saw my friend Polina and said hi. She looked really confused as she said hello back—later in the day, she told me that she hadn’t recognized me because I “looked so Russian.” I spent the rest of the day trying to decide if I should be flattered or seriously reconsidering my recent wardrobe choices.

Now, this last week, I first recognized the flipside of this dichotomy. The weather has taken a balmy turn here, so much so that even most of the mud has disappeared and/or turned to dust. As a result, I have been running often, despite the fact that I turn more heads per capita than perhaps if Lenin himself was walking down the street. Because of this attention, I used to feel self-conscious and avoid running except within the safety of parks, where only old grandmothers and tiny children can mock me. But something has changed recently: perhaps emboldened by my Wolfmother/Ani Difranco music mix, I smile at the people staring at me. I smirk at the groups of young men who make rude remarks as I run pass them, confident that I can outrun them if necessary, especially considering most of them are usually about two packs of cigarettes and four beers into the day by the time they see me. I ignore the concerned comments that I should probably put a hat on and I wonder to myself how all the women who are still wearing fur coats are not passing out from heat exhaustion. And after the run, like the exercise-addicted American that I still am, I feel great, reenergized, and ready to tackle the massive to-do list that I created for myself before I hit the streets.

These little changes cross into all the everyday aspects of my life, like fashion, food, and my daily routine. Right now, America and Russia are going punch for punch and they each seem to be winning their own sets of battles. The other day I wore a sweatshirt on the street for the first time in months, but the next day I spent 30 minutes trying to match my scarf, hat, coat, shoes, and purse for a presentation where I was going to probably going to remove the first three items at the coat check before I even saw anyone who might care about how I looked. While cultural assimilation seemed to be an overwhelming process in September and October, right now it somehow feels natural. I think that I am unconsciously boiling myself down to the essential and deciding, in an odd form of spring cleaning, what behaviors can be thrown out and what are here to stay for good. I’m not sure what will be left in the end: a loud and still overly political American, no doubt, but perhaps one with a mean face, a strange wardrobe complete with a hat to match every outfit, and an odd affection for techno music [just kidding! that last one will never happen].

[For those of you who are wondering, life in general is going great here. Work is plugging along, with the biggest news being that the first version of the database for Crisis Center Ekaterina launched last week. My parents visited and managed to survive and even enjoy (or so I am told) all the wonders and challenges that the Urals have to offer in the muddy month of March. At school, I am busy with a whole new round of presentations about America, as well as the production of a Russian play where all the parts are going to be played by foreigners. And, in between all that, I have been enjoying the spring both in the city and the country, and trying to make the most in the last few months with my crazy (but wonderful) Russian/international community].

I would like to congratulate you with spring!

2007-03-02T13:23:00.000+05:00

Well, it is March 2nd and here in the Urals, Russians claim that spring has started. I have spent the last three days trying to argue that spring does not start on March 1, but on March 20 (and, for the love of god, it certainly doesn't start on March 1 in Russia), but my cries have mostly fallen on deaf ears. Incidentally, Russians like to congratulate each other with spring, as though we as a people have somehow willed the season upon ourselves. Thus, I would like to wish all of you a happy spring :) (I must admit that despite my protests, we have indeed reached a monumental high of -2 C today).

I am at long last back in Ekaterinburg and settling into a good working and studying routine. The most exciting news is that at long last my work with Ekaterina [the women's crisis center] has taken off. The key ingredient turned out to be my secret nerdiness [or not so secret, as I'm sure some of you are thinking], in this case, my past experience with building computer databases. After one afternoon of observing Anya and Nadezhda's very elaborate system of post-it notes that they use to track clients who call the crisis line, I offered to help them set up a basic computer database. Well, to make a long story short, they jumped and after many months of twiddling my thumbs with regards to the crisis center work, I am finally sitting with more work than I could have asked for. It is an exciting development, especially because nearly none of the NGOs that I know of in provincial Russia use databases. In other words, if I am able to pull this off, it could make an actual improvement in the work that Ekaterina does. In the meantime, I have fallen in love with the women who work at the center and have been having lots of fun getting to better know them and their histories with this type of activism.

I have also found a local family center that I started volunteering with. I am going to help out Larisa Leonova [the director] with some grant-writing/basic fundraising. She is also looking to get more involved in training sessions/consultations for women who have experienced domestic violence. From a couple tea and cookies sessions with her, I have learned that right now Ekaterina is the ONLY organization within a city of 2 million that works at all on the problem of domestic violence. With that in mind, I am excited about the opportunity to hopefully help her find funding to get some similar programs up and running in a different area of town. We'll see...

That's the biggest news from here. Other short updates:

On February 9th, we celebrated Midori's 21st birthday with a skiing extravaganza! Josefina, Jen, Midori, Misha, and I all trekked out to the outskirts of town, strapped on some skis, and hit the "slopes." It was Midori's first time on skis and despite some fights with the Russian ski lift [which ultimately resulted in some serious frostbite], she had a blast. She also got to make her first snow angel and participate in some serious snow fights. Pictures from the crazy day are up on the facebook.
I made the Russian news again :) It was at the American Center again, this time Danai and I were making lots of valentines with members of the community [ie little kids and grandmothers who braved the cold for the promise of American crafts]. We are becoming quite the celebrities in town, which basically means that the mean salespeople are either much nicer to me now [because Americans, let's be real, are so cool] or even meaner to me [because clearly I'm a spy]. At any rate, I think this is my 15 minutes of fame and I'm not quite sure how I feel about the fact that it's being used up in the Urals of Russia.
After six months of living only within the borders of Russia, I took a short vacation to England last week! Although it feels great to be back in Ekat now, it felt amazing to spend a week relaxing in all sorts of Western comforts, from lattes to clean streets/trains/stores to smiling waitresses to food with spices [beyond salt, pepper, and sour cream, that is].
In contrast to Russia, it actually is spring there and I spent a good portion of the week blinking and not believing my eyes when I saw all the green. In short, I fell in love with the city and it was a great trip.

Next week, I have plans to visit a teacher's house for the first time (Midori, Jen, Josefina, and I have all been invited over for tea and pancakes!), celebrate my first International Women's Day with the lovely women of Ekaterina, and take a day trip to visit an orphanage. Hopefully I'll get around to putting up the results of all those adventures shortly after they occur. I hope you are all doing well and enjoying whatever version of spring you find yourself in!

A Day in the Life of a Foreigner in Moscow

2007-02-06T00:15:00.000+05:00

On February 1^st, I woke up in a hostel on “Starii Arbat” and was surprised to discover that the sun was shining in my eyes. After three long days of sitting in a chair at the Fulbright midyear conference, my body reacted to the sun with one thought: ice-skating. I sent out the word to the Fulbrighters still in town and at 2:00 pm I met Dan, Lauren, and Julia to go ice skating in Gorkii Park. I had heard that it was a huge skating area; what I didn’t know was that they flood all the paths in the gigantic park. You can literally skate/stroll through the entire park. It was sooooo cool. We rented skates and went exploring through the park, which was so large that we barely made it through the entire park in the hour we were there. What’s more, there was a blue sky and happy, smiling Russians on skates: some played hockey, some were on dates, and some were just gossiping in the park with their friends. There are still, of course, kiosks in the park, so you can buy—well—whatever you want while you skate. We determined that what we wanted was beer and we spent the last 15 minutes skating with Nevskoe Pivo in hand.

After skating, Dan, Julia, and I rolled over to another metro stop to meet Liza [another community service Fulbrighter] for a belated birthday celebration. We went to a café that Julia had found earlier that week—it was underground and only had room for about 10 tables. All the food that you could order was sitting out in dishes on the bar—you could point out what you wanted and the woman at the bar would dish you up a portion and then throw it in the microwave for a few minutes. They also had Baltika 8 [my favorite beer in Russia] on tap, which I have never found anywhere else. We sat and talked loudly, scaring off what seemed to be the café’s main customers: old men eating chocolate and drinking cognac. They were so inspiring that we decided to do the same and thus we sat for another hour, sipping cognac and eating miniature chocolate bars, until we realized that we were late for our next event, meeting Liza’s friend Misha at his art gallery. Off we rushed again.

While walking to the gallery, Misha informed us that he needed to impress someone at the opening with his language skills and therefore we should speak only English with him there. After he introduced us 4 times not as Betsy, Liza, Dan, and Julia but merely as his “American friends,” we understood that we were invited primarily to be pimped out as Americans. A common occurrence in Russia? Certainly. But this time we decided to give Misha a run for his money. Standing in the middle of a room filled with grotesque art and with plastic cups of wine in hand, the four of us somehow ended up in an hour and a half discussion/argument/fight about abortion. We succeeded in offending each other at various moments and in almost shouting every few minutes. In the process, we shocked all the Russians around us, who were unacquainted with the typical American style of political discourse. Misha several times tried to change the topic unsuccessfully—in short, I don’t think we’ll be invited back as token Americans again.

Not ready to end the night yet, we continued onto an underground bar called “Agi”. It had a bookstore and a cobblestone floor and dimly lit tables. A “retro-dance band” was playing, complete with a piano, fiddle, bass, and a woman with Marilyn Monroe blonde hair and red lipstick playing on the accordion in the center of the stage. The music made me feel like I should be dancing on the streets of Paris or Chicago in the spring. While Dan danced with Liza, I ordered up the birthday margaritas. We sat for an hour, sipping our drinks and listening to the music, calm after the storm at the art gallery. We went home on the last metro car and when I got to my stop, I rode the 7-story escalator completely alone for the first time, making the day seem entirely surreal. For me, it belonged in a Hemingway novel but somehow ended up in my life. Moscow has overpriced hotels and crabby, crooked taxi drivers, but it also has skating parks, grungy cafes, and now a few pages of my journal.

In Siberia, It’s Always Friday

2007-02-02T16:41:00.000+05:00

I am happy to introduce the newest feature of my blog: guest writers! Carrie Miller wrote up about our adventures in Omsk--enjoy :)

In mid-December Betsy and I boarded a night train from Ekaterinburg to Omsk. After 12 hours marked by bread, cheese, chocolate cookies, and something resembling sleep, we awoke and took our first steps into Siberia. Scampering across the railroad tracks, we were greeted by a bright turquoise train station and a good dusting of snow (at the time, Ekaterinburg was covered in thick mud). We hopped on a bus and headed toward the center of town to find a hotel. As our bus drove through the city, I saw Betsy’s eyes suddenly light up, and low and behold, we were driving by a T.G.I. Friday’s. Since “authentic” American food is hard to come by in Ekaterinburg (Russian’s can’t even make decent pizza) I promised Betsy that we could go.

Betsy’s roommate Josefina lived in Omsk for a year, so we went to a hotel that she recommended. Unfortunately, there was a sign on the door which read “hotel doesn’t work,” so we walked a few more blocks to a different place. Although this hotel was a little more expensive than we would have liked, it did have life-size Santa’s climbing on the railing outside, and while we ate our complimentary brunch, a guy walked around putting giant Santa hats on the backs of all the chairs. After getting settled in our room, Betsy and I hit the streets to find museums and other adventures.

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, quite possibly my favorite author, was arrested in 1849 for being too liberal, given a mock execution, and exiled to Omsk where he remained for four years. The museum which bears his name is small but excellent, complete with some of Dostoevsky’s possessions and a few emotionally intense Russian paintings. Betsy was nice enough to pay the small fee for me to take pictures, and we were given a receipt which was marked and endorsed with no less than two official-looking stamps.

A little ways past the Dostoevsky museum was a Russian military museum, the main exhibit of which focused on World War II. I had never really thought about WWII from the Russian perspective, and it was really interesting to see anti-Germany war propaganda, which had a hard and distinctly Russian quality. I was also surprised by the large number of women pictured among Russia’s armed forces, some of whom were decorated WWII heroes. However, Betsy put forth the theory that the old women running the museum might have over-represented their gender in the displays.

After the museums it was time for dinner and American cultural imperialism a la T.G.I. Friday’s. While I can’t say I support the existence of American chain restaurants in foreign countries, it did warm my heart a little to see how happy Betsy was with her smoothie and plate of Cajun chicken fingers. I tried to order a “Top Shelf” margarita and was informed that they did not have any of the top shelf alcohol, and had to settle for the more modest version. And yes, the waiters were all wearing suspenders bedecked in flair and smiling, which is very uncommon in Russia. Another plus was the menu written in English. At all the other restaurants I ate whatever Betsy felt like translating for me.

The next day marked another culinary exploit: the candy café. Imagine, if you will, a small, brightly decorated shop filled with a varied multitude of delicious confections, none of which cost more than a dollar. The stoic yet friendly woman behind the counter was good enough to inform us that the “chocolate potato” did not actually contain any potato (I would have eaten it even if it did), and when we tried to order a pink heart-shaped cookie she refused, saying “why would you eat that when there are so many things that are better?”

The final museum of our Osmk adventure was an art museum in a beautiful old wooden building. The main attraction was an exhibit of Alexy Lieberov, a Siberian artist who was born in Tomsk and later lived in Omsk. The landscape of Omsk, which lies just north of Kazakhstan, resembles my best memories of northern Minnesota. Those really old memories in which everything becomes pristine and whimsical, and you can smell the cold in the air. I had a wonderfully visceral experience with Lieberov’s work, and I reckon Betsy did too, because we were freaking out looking at all the artwork, much to the amusement of the museum staff.

After kickin’ it at a Georgian restaurant and a café, it was time for Betsy and I to catch our late night train back to Ekaterinburg. Train stations in Russia are clean an beautiful. High ceilings, marble floors, classical paintings, and colorful exteriors. However, the people inside them can be real wild cards. As we waited to board, a crazy homeless man decided the quiet American girls in the corner would be good to talk to (or talk at?) and began berating us. I mostly ignored him because I don’t speak Russian, Betsy got frustrated and uncomfortable, and the young boy a few chairs away from us thought the whole scene was hilarious. Unluckily for Betsy, our fortunes did not improve when we boarded our third-class train car which was packed with sweaty, rowdy old men. As we set up our bunks a socially-aggressive man without a shirt kept talking to Betsy, most notably asking us why we were wearing money belts. This problem was resolved, however, simply by going to bed (signaling that all conversation was over for the night). I slept surprisingly well amid the snores and musty aromas, and we escaped Siberia unscathed.

Pictures from Carrie’s trip to Russia, including Ekaterinburg, Omsk, and “the country”: http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=9AbM2jZm0bsNO

Life on the Road

2007-01-26T13:06:00.000+05:00

Hello from Moscow!

I am writing this blog as I near the end of my January journey. In the past month, I have traveled all over the Western half of Russia with some of my oldest and closest friends. When the trip ends upon my arrival into Ekaterinburg on February 4th, I will have spent a total of 165 hours [yes, an entire week] on the train! It has been a long month and there is still a little bit left to go, but all in all, it has been the trip of a lifetime. After trying to figure out how to best convey all of the amazing and hilarious events of the past month, I decided to put up some excerpts from my journaling on the road.

December 30, 2006 (Moscow)

I can't wait for the new year! I am in Moscow, staying at Marina's with Jen and Laura Erceg, and very quickly falling in love with the city. It is great to be around Laura and it is great to be in a big city again. I didn't realize how much I has missed that until I heard the sound of the cars rushing by and smelled the air in the subway and felt oddly comforted.

Today we went to a DVD/electronics market with an entire floor of bootleg movies and music. Jen and I went crazy with finding American movies to bring back to our "village." I have gotten used to seeing bootleg movies sold all over the streets here, but it was strange to find an entire mall of them...

Jan 2, 2007

Holy god! I just got done skating on Red Square. It was awesome! I actually thought I was in heaven and dreaming when I looked up and (in between dodging all the people stumbling around on skates) I saw St. Basil's Cathedral and the Kremlin. I don't know what happened in my life such that I am spending New Years in Moscow and skating on Red Square, but I am grateful that it took these turns.

New Year's was also amazing. It is cool to celebrate the holiday outside of the United States, because instead of focusing on alcohol and kissing someone at midnight, it is a family holiday and a strangely patriotic holiday. We had an amazing dinner with Marina's family and a group of American friends. The table was FULL of salads and other foods. We had champagne and Marina's parents shared mini-shots of vodka with each other--so cute! When the clock struck midnight, we all popped a grape into our mouths at each strike of the clock and made a wish each time (12 wishes, as it turns out, is a lot--Marina makes a list every year beforehand in case she chokes under the pressure of the moment). Then we, along with the television and presumably most of the country, sang the Russian national anthem and toasted to each other. It was so great to celebrate such a special holiday in this culture for the first time.

Afterwards there were fireworks going off everywhere. You'd look out the window and see them shooting off in every direction in the distance and coming right at your face from the courtyard. I am pretty sure that the hospitals were full of patients burned by them the next day :)

January 7, 2007

I am back on the train, this time with Laura Eaton! We are headed to Ekaterinburg and have about 26 hours to go.

There was no snow in Moscow and here (somewhere approaching the Urals) the forest is covered with it. It looks like a fantasy world--Laura said it looks like Narnia.

January 15, 2007 (on the train to Petersburg)

My body feels more at ease just as I feel myself getting closer to Petersburg. It is 8:40 am Moscow time and I am listening to the Piter FM soundtrack in excitement. Laura Eaton and I are traveling first class in the most pimped out Russian train ever. There is a serious sea-green theme going on in our compartment. There is also a full tea set, including a teapot with "Ekaterinburg-St. Petersburg" written on it. I am trying my hardest not to steal it.

Laura and I had a good run in Ekat. She, too, fell in love with Midori. It is hard to remember what we did, because for the most part we just chilled and relaxed. On Wednesday, we went to the geological museum, which was hilarious from start to finish. I knew roughly where it was, but couldn't quite find it. So, according to Russian habit, I started asking people where it was. After interrupting three different conversations and getting "I don't know!", I settled on a man who was standing on the sidewalk reading a poster on a wall. As I found out, if you ever see a grown man doing that 10:00 am in Russia, there's a pretty good chance he's drunk. The man first told us about a geology museum that was "through the forest and by a church" that existed 50 years ago. Then he remembered where the one we wanted was and proceeded to walk us into the museum. Once inside the museum, he turned to me and said "maybe we can get together sometime and you can teach me english." I responded by saying "but I only speak russian." He then asked me for a piece of paper and/or pen to write down my number on and when I said I didn't have any, he angrily said "Oh, okay. I see how it is. That's how it's gonna be," and stormed out of the museum, leaving the old women who work there staring wide-eyed at me and Laura. All for a geological museum!

On Saturday we headed out to Kalinovo for a 24-hour tour. It was probably the highlight of the trip so far. Almost all the relatives were there, so Laura got to meet the whole crew in style. It was hilarious! She and I did the banya together. Then she and the men (Sergei, Dima, and Rashad) started taking vodka shots together (this started when Laura and I didn't believe that they used to drink cocktails of vodka and beer, which, not surprisingly, Sergei decided to prove to us by drinking one down--ew!). There were many memorable moments, including Laura chasing a shot with a liver pie.

From here on out, the journaling falls off--the stories of Petersburg, Moscow, Samara, and the Fulbright mid-session conference in Moscow will come soon.

Holidays in Ekat, the mayonnaise capital of the world*

2006-12-25T22:27:00.000+05:00

Merry Christmas!

I am sitting down to write this after celebrating my first American Christmas in Russia. It is strange to greet a holiday in a country that doesn’t recognize it—instead of sitting at home with their families, most inhabitants of Ekaterinburg put on their boots and coats and scurried off to work in the dark at 8:30 am (Russians celebrate Christmas on January 7^th, according to the old calendar). Fortunately, foreigners seem to huddle together with candles and chocolate in hopes of remembering that somewhere in the world, the holiday season has arrived in full.

After that opening paragraph, I should point out that I have actually been celebrating Christmas for the last three days : ) It all started on Saturday, when our friend Katya decided to throw a Christmas party in her apartment for all the foreigners she knows. Midori and I arrived to find a Christmas tree and a table full of food especially for us. After eating all of the traditional Russian holiday foods—including mandarin oranges, blini, olivye (a mayonnaise salad with all sorts of vegetables that Russians always have on new year’s), and pieces of toast with whole fish on them (scary, but surprisingly tasty), we moved onto playing games. The most entertaining game was by far “Telephone”—we sat foreigner-Russian-foreigner-Russian in a circle and watched words like “apple” become “fighter-pilot” as it went around the circle. The day ended with sledding our way back to the bus stop.

Last night we celebrated European Christmas with Josefina, Midori, Johanna, and Johanna’s friend Christian. We lit candles, ate lasagna, and talked about Christmas in our respective countries (apparently Midori—and most of Japan—buys a huge bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken to celebrate every year). This morning we awoke to American Christmas: Jen and I made breakfast and we all exchanged gifts. We had stockings full of candy from Santa and some hilarious homemade Christmas decorations (I’m hoping to have pictures up on the facebook soon). We all had our moments when it was difficult to be away from home on the holiday, but all in all we had a good time celebrating the day with our makeshift family.

Before entering the holidays, I had been busy entertaining Carrie Miller for the past two weeks. We had a good run around the Urals—we saw the opera and ballet, and also watched the entire city turn into one big mud puddle when the weather took an unexpected balmy turn. We had an amazing trip to Omsk. It was my first time to Siberia and I was pleasantly surprised—it was beautiful and not cold at all. I realized as we were traveling that I am only now beginning to understand just how vast, endless, and complex this country really is. [Carrie promised to write more about Omsk for you all and post it here]. One weekend we also made our way to Alfina’s parents’ place in the country, where I managed to shield Carrie from liver breakfast, but not from the banya ; ) Sergei and Alfina were amazing tour guides and had a great time utilizing their minimal English skills. In short, it was fun to show off my city and good to see an old friend. I discovered that translating is both exhausting and difficult and that I have a long way to go with it. That said, my Russian has been coming along as of late and my English has been slipping, a fact which may be more and more apparent on this lovely little blog.

In other news, I passed my “exams” in our university and am about to embark on a month-long traveling adventure. It starts with Jen and I leaving for Moscow, where we will celebrate New Year’s (which Russians celebrate like we in America celebrate Christmas) with Laura Erceg, our mutual friend Marina, and her family. Laura Eaton flies into Moscow on January 5^th and on January 7^th, she, I and Alfina (who is coming to Moscow for a few days) will make our way back to Ekaterinburg. After showing Laura my city, she and I will continue on to Petersburg, so that I can introduce her to my true Russian love. We make our way back to Moscow at the end of January—I have Fulbright mid-session training in Moscow at the very end of the month, so I will hang out in the capital until February 2^nd or so, when Jen will fly back in from America and she and I will head back home. Did you catch all of that? It is going to be a wild month, but I am looking forward to touring the Western half of the country!

I miss you all and hope you are enjoying a wonderful holiday! Happy New Year!!!

*Midori’s boyfriend discovered through a Google search that people in Ekaterinburg consume more mayonnaise than any other city in the world. It even made it into the Guinness Book of World Records! How’s that for getting our city on the map??

Turkey and Pumpkin, Russkii Style

2006-12-10T23:24:00.000+05:00

Privet!

I have meaning to write for a while about my Thanksgiving adventures and am just getting around to it now. I used to think that Thanksgiving was by far the worst holiday to be away from America and in particular to be in Russia, in part because it is nearly impossible to find a single turkey in the entire country. Thanksgiving 2006 Ekat-style, however, has changed my mind.

The highlight of my Thanksgiving by far was a presentation/craft-session that Danai [the American English Language Fellow in town] and I organized at the American Center. The American Center invited about 20 middle and high school students who study English. Danai gave a presentation about the history and traditions surrounding Thanksgiving in America and then we made hand-turkeys and little pilgrims with the kids. It was hilarious to watch teenage kids get excited about American-style crafts! Danai and I even managed to produce a pumpkin pie that we had made from raw pumpkin the night before—I didn’t even know this was possible.

In addition to inviting the students, the American Center happened to invite the press to the event. And, since I was the only Russian-speaking American present that day, I ended up on not one, but two regional news programs. The conversation went a little like this “You are Beeetsy [insert Russian accent here]?”. “Yes, I am.” “Great! You speak Russian like a native [based off of “Yes, I am”]. Can we please interview you?”. “I guess. But if I does makes much mistake while I talks, please, does not showing them at the public through the means of television.” And thus we started. About midway through the interview, I glanced at the microphone and realized that this was for one of the major news stations in town…And thus, for the last two weeks I have been running into people who saw me on the news. When I rolled into Alfina’s parents last weekend, her dad greeted me with “You didn’t tell me you were famous!”.

We followed the presentation up with dinner at one of the US consulate worker’s apartments. It was a bit strange to have Thanksgiving with ten people that I didn’t know, but I was nevertheless in heaven with a spread of all American food. Pictures from the presentation, mainly of the cute little Russian munchkins, are up on the facebook.

Since Thanksgiving, I have been busy both with work and school. That said, there have been a lot of moments lately when I have remembered just why it is so interesting to live in this country. I sat in a café for two hours on Monday with a new friend/coworker who talked to me about everything from Chicago architecture to the Russian draft [which he is dodging] to the disgustingly low pay of teachers and doctors in Russia [the highest paid surgeon in Russia makes no more than $350 a month. Teachers make significantly less]. At the same time, the last week has been blessed with lots of moments where I wonder “exactly why did I come here again?”. After spending the last blog describing the wonder and pain of Russian winter, the Urals decided that it is not, in fact, winter just yet. Carrie Miller arrived on this past Thursday and was greeted by a country of mud. We have been trudging through ankle, calf, and thigh deep puddles all week J More to come on the dirt and our Russian adventures in tourism to come.

Word of the Day: Замерзла

2006-12-02T00:41:00.002+05:00

Замерзла (pronounced za-myerz-la) v. 1. English translation: Frozen. 2. The most common question asked in Russia during the month of December. 3. What I have been for the past two weeks. 4. The surefire way to fall ill and never recover, according to any average babushka.

Usage: Tyi ne zamyerzla? [Are you freezing?].
Da, zamyerzla. [Yes, I am frozen].
Vot blin, ya sovsem zamyerzla. [Dang it, I’m completely frozen].

Yes indeed, winter has arrived. And with it, about two feet of snow and regularly sub-zero temperatures. After weeks of snow and rain and snow and rain mixed with constantly fluctuating temperatures and muddy streets, winter came suddenly and seems to have settled in for a few months. We went to sleep one night and woke up the next morning and it was -23 degrees Celsius and the outside world was completely замерзло. Lucky for us, we also woke up to discover that the pipes in the dorms were замерзли. Consequently, we were замерзли like nothing else. I walked around in six layers of clothing, tried to keep warm with a blow dryer, and drank ten cups of tea a day. Fortunately, due to the gradual melting of our pipes and the impressive initiative of Josefina [who insulated and glued shut all of our windows], our rooms have now reached a livable temperature. Now it’s just dealing with the outside world that we’re working on : )

Замерзла is one of my favorite Russian words because it is used so often and because as a foreigner, I have been asked the question since September. Betsy, are you cold? Betsy, you must be frozen! Betsy, this weather is cold for you, yes? [when the temperature is a good 15C]. This plays into two exceptional characteristic of most Russian people: their obsession with discussing health [and assuming that if one is cold, then she will surely be sick within hours] and their incredible concern for the well-being of foreigners. When the frost hit two weeks ago, I was almost glad to finally be able to answer “Da, замерзлa.” Of course, that opened up the door for about 15 minutes of advice each time about how to stay warm, what foods I needed to be eating, and warnings that I should never ever eat ice cream on the street.

There are so many incredible things about winter in Russia that I could not decide where to start when describing it here. I finally picked the language and am looking forward to, over the next four long and cold months, telling you about the fur hats and coats, the block-long ice patches, the three-inch frost, and what the Urals look like when they are buried under months worth of snow. Until then, know that я замерзла (I am frozen), but nevertheless in love with winter for the first time in my life.

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

2006-11-22T14:09:00.000+05:00

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!

2006-11-14T21:43:00.000+05:00

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

2006-11-14T21:40:00.000+05:00

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.

I love the Internet

2006-10-16T21:07:00.000+06:00

Hello hello!

I apologize for the recent silence and what is going to be a mediocre update. I have been shut out of the internet more times than I can count in the past two weeks and as a result I am only now getting around to the backlog of blogs and emails and pictures that I have sitting around on my desktop. As I write this, I am getting ready to leave the city again for Kalinovo [the town where Alfina’s parents live]. This time promises to be wild—we are celebrating her brother-in-law’s 30^th birthday! I asked if girls also have to consume vodka on such holidays and they responded “tol’ko chut’ chut’” [just a little!]. Here’s to hoping I hold my own…

The biggest event in the past two weeks was the opening of IKEA last Saturday. After going to a museum exhibit with all the international students, we organized a mass exodus to IKEA. Or attempted to. First, we waited at a bus stop where we [and about 200 other Russians] thought the free shuttle bus was supposed to run from. After waiting in the freezing cold for over an hour, I broke down and said, “Let’s just pay for a gypsy taxi.” [See word of the week]. Alexei [sole Russian along for our adventure] looks at me and says “I can call my friend with a marshutka and have him pick up us all up.” The intonation of the word “friend” fueled my suspicion that Alexei, who often works through the entire night, is a member of the powerful Ekat mafia [for more information about Alexei, you can see Josefina’s blog, nothingbutperfection.blogspot.com]. Either way, the marshutka showed up and we were off—into 45 minutes of bumper-to-bumper traffic. When we got to IKEA, we again had to wait 20 minutes on the street just to get into the store! Once we finally entered, everyone started screaming along with Midore. There were so many people there that you had to just follow the crowd in the direction that they walked. We grabbed as many things as we could, ate some excellent Swedish meatballs, and lost each other many times. In the end, we stood in line for over an hour and a half to pay for our purchases. It was a very strange experience in which Soviet Russia [long lines and too many people] met contemporary Russia, full of foreign products and credit card machines. In the course of the adventure, I taught everyone the foot game and acquired an awesome dragon blanket that is resting comfortably on top of my hammock/bed : )

There are pictures of the adventure up on the facebook, along with pictures from my first trip to the ballet, which was awesome. We saw Swan Lake and afterwards, Midore, Josefina, and I danced on the street and decided to give up our study of Russian language in order to become ballerinas.

And now I’d like to introduce you all to my new plan for the blog: word of the week. It’s my attempt to talk more about the ordinary things in Russia and in my life here as a crazy American foreigner. If you let me know what you want to hear about, I’ll do my best to include it [food, climate, language, or the amazing fashion of Russian men: the possibilities are endless!].

Word of the Week: Gypsy Cab

2006-10-16T21:05:00.000+06:00

Gypsy Cab: n. 1.English term used to describe an ordinary car that is used as a makeshift taxi; 2. Russian hitchhiking; 3. Slang for any car in Russia.

In Russia, any car can function as a taxi at any given moment. This occurs because a) legitimate taxi cabs are insanely expensive; b) public transportation stops around 10:00 PM; c) the majority of Russian citizens still don’t have cars. Unlike American hitchhiking, which I generally think of as a risky method for traveling around the entire country, gypsy cabs are frequently used to get around town, most often as a quick way to get home when the rains starts falling and you are without an umbrella.

There is a whole system of appropriate behavior from start to finish. To get a gypsy cab, you stand on any major street and hold out your hand, just like you were hailing a normal taxi. When a car pulls over, you open the passenger door, lean in, and tell the driver where you want to go. He might say no at this point or he might offer you a price. The cost of the ride is always determined before you enter the car—you always pay only when you have reached your destination. After the price has been set, the group enters the car and you’re off.

After avoiding gypsy cabs for the entirety of my first stay in Russia, I spent my first couple trips hyperventilating the entire ride. When I got to Ekaterinburg, however, I realized that it is one of the primary means of transportation. I also learned that there are a few rules of conduct that ensure a safe and enjoyable ride:

1. Never travel alone.

2. Never travel without a Russian and/or someone whose Russian can pass for a native speaker’s.

3. If you don’t fall into either of those two groups, don’t speak while you are in the car. [This is just a tried and true method of ensuring that you don’t the get “foreigner tax” attached to your price].

A few weeks ago Jen, Josefina, Midore, and I took a gypsy cab home from a wi-fi restaurant. We had explained to Midore what we were going to do, but evidently she didn’t quite understand, because when we got in the car, her eyes opened up as large as saucers and she gripped my arm the whole way home. When we finally got out at our dorm, she looked at us and said “So how do you know that man????”.

The best gypsy cab ride that I have had to date was back from the market with Defri, Midore, Artyem, and Alya. We ended up with an ancient Russian beetle [the smallest, crappiest kind of Russian car around] with four people scrunched into the back seat. I was sitting behind the driver seat and when our driver sat down, I swear the back of his seat was resting against my chest. As we drove, the whole car was shaking. Midore and I were unsuccessfully trying to hide to our laughter when I noticed that the car was shaking even more than normal and slowing down. I thought the whole car was going to start falling apart piece by piece, but no, we had merely ran out of gas. In the middle of a four-lane street, the driver jumped out, filled the tank with his emergency can, and off we went.

That concludes the first word-a-week entry. Questions on usage and origins are welcomed : )

The Russian Country, Part I

2006-09-30T16:36:00.000+06:00

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...

2006-09-28T14:28:00.001+06:00

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

2006-09-22T11:51:00.000+06:00

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!

2006-09-18T18:10:00.000+06:00

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…
.

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!

2006-09-09T15:56:00.000+06:00

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?!?!]

2006-09-02T12:34:00.000+06:00

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!

2006-09-01T12:24:00.000+06:00

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…

I [heart] Moscow.

2006-08-22T17:19:00.000+06:00

But before I get to that, I should probably say a few words about my time in Petersburg...

I spent Thursday through Sunday morning wandering my favorite Northern city, walking the streets, admiring the buildings that I had missed, and eating as many sweets treats as I could find. It was strange to back in a place so familiar while the country and the language were still feeling incredibly foreign. Nevertheless (and despite the longer than normal fight with jetlag which only ended yesterday), it was an amazing time. Laura and I spent two evenings in my friend Katya's new apartment, during which we were fed dinners, cookies, cakes, and the best green tea I have ever tasted. It was great to catch up with Katya and find out about how her life has changed during the past two years. I had forgotten not only about Russian hospitality, but also about the sense of responsibility that Russian visitors feel towards their guests--after seeing her, she proceeded to check in with me every few hours for the remainder of my time in Petersburg. Needless to say, I felt much more at ease after I saw her.

On Sunday morning, Laura and I boarded the SLOW train to Moscow, which was--as predicted--a good adventure. We arrived in the middle of Moscow and caught a gypsy taxi [my first and hopefully last ride in one] to our dormitory on the outskirts of Moscow. Since that point, we have been resting in the care of the Fulbright program.

So, I am now living in the dorm/apartment/common living space with the six kids on the Fulbright community service program, two returning Fulbright English TAs, and one Russian professor. The group of community service grantees is really great; the others are working on topics of public health [mostly dealing with AIDS], sex-trafficking, microfinancing, social work, and deaf studies. During this week, we are going around and meeting with NGOs that work on our topics and learning about their activities. Today we met with the Russian Social-Democratic Women's Congress, which was amazing. One of the women there was one of the first women in the Russian Duma. It was a very cool experience to hear all of them talk in Russian about their activities, goals, and their regional offices (they have one in Ekat!).

Yesterday I had my first experience in an American Embassy; it is crazy to me that a little American can exist right in the middle of a foreign country. We had briefings all day there, which were actually really useful. I found out from the cultural officer there that there is film festival in Moscow at the end of September that is featuring a famous documentary about domestic violence; I am thinking about returning to the city for that weekend...

which brings me to my next point: despite my continuing loyalty to Petersburg [note that I [heart] Moscow and don't love it], Moscow, at least in the summer, is much more beautiful than I remembered. I have been walking around, enjoying the scenery, the churches, the buildings, and the cosmopolitan feel of the city. The university that we are staying at is particularly beautiful, because--despite the fact that it is still in the city--it is cushioned with a forest of birch trees. It feels just like home :)

If anyone is still reading, I am impressed that you have made it through this long post. As a reward, here is the Russia fun-fact-of-the-day:

The mullet is IN in Petersburg, including the fullet [female mullet]. I might be sporting one myself before too long.

That's all for now. I'll probably wait to write again until I am in Ekaterinburg [I expect to arrive now on August 29]. Until then, take care!

Arrived!

2006-08-18T15:30:00.000+06:00

Hey, just a quick note to let you all know that Laura and I arrived yesterday evening, alive and exhausted. We made it through customs, made it to our hotel, made it to a Teremok to eat some long-awaited blyini, and then promptly fell asleep for the next 12 hours. We have hit a few speedbumps, some expected (buying a train ticket to Moscow was as difficult as I recall, with the ticket-saleswoman yelling at me and indirectly calling me stupid the entire time) and some unexpected (my i-Pod had an identity crisis on the plane and ceased functioning).

Petersburg is beautiful and I will be sure to post pictures as soon as I have them. For now, we are off to wander some more, sleep some more, and then meet up with my friend Katya...

2006-08-15T20:28:00.000+06:00

Signing off from the USA

Just an itinerary update: Tomorrow Laura Erceg and I begin our slow journey to Vladivostok and Ekaterinburg, respectively. We are leaving bright and early from Bemidji in the Hoody camry, which is taking us to MSP. From there we are flying to Amsterdam and then to St. Petersburg. We will be in Piter until August 20th, at which point we are hopping on a train to Moscow. In Moscow we will have a week and a half orientation with the Fulbright office and US Embassy. And then, finally, on August 31st, I will depart, most likely on a 24 hour train ride, for Ekaterinburg. And from there, the true adventure will begin...

I promise more exciting updates in the weeks that follow. Until then :)

2006-07-28T21:18:00.000+06:00

Hey y'all--

This is just the test posting from Bemidji, so that I can make sure the blog is up and running before I take off for Ekaterinburg.

You have successfully found my online home for the next year--I am going to try to write updates here at least once every couple weeks, so that you can all hear about the Russian adventure and know that I haven't fallen into a Siberian camp :)

And, for those of you who are wondering what the hell I am doing in the middle of Russia, here is the scoop:

I received a Fulbright Community Service Grant for the 2006-2007 academic year. During this time, I will be living in Ekaterinburg, Russia. As part of the grant, I'll be taking classes at the Urals State University. I will also be volunteering with some local women's organizations. All of the details are still pretty fuzzy, but I will keep you all updated as I find out, oh say, where I am going to live, who I am going to be working with, and where the last tsars were buried.