Um. My interest in blogging has decreased now that I have lost my home. I liked having a home and a life in Russia. Now I'm just a tourist. And while that might seem more interesting to most people. I don't like it. I liked having a place. So yes.
We left Moscow.
We got to Yaroslavl.
We did stuff in Yaroslavl. Margarita made us a chocolate cake for Christmas. We went to a Loko game. We walked along the Volga. We probably did other things which I forgot about.
We left Yaroslavl.
There was a crying baby in our plats-kart compartment of the train.
We got to Piter.
We were in the train station for a long time. Susanna and I don't talk about that day in the train station any more. We wiped it from our memories.
We went to Novgorod.
We survived for two days without tea and eating/drinking condensed milk sometimes with cheese, or apples, or crackers, or with canned corn. Plus Snickers.
Novgorod was very pretty. and cold. and calm. Like alarmingly calm and unchaotic.
Then we did other things in Novgorod. And now we are in Piter. Now we are leaving with some people from the Ukraine to go to one of the huge palaces outside of Piter.
Good bye
Happy New Year to all!
Monday, December 31, 2007
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Moscow
Moscow is .......
big. like huge. like really really really huge.
an eternal traffic jam.
expensive.
way more America/Europe/civilized-ness than the rest of Russia
There are probably other important things to say about Moscow. Mainly I can’t get over how big it is. It’s huge. Something like 14 million people. I don’t know. Highly alarming.
A brief rundown of the past week:
Left Yaroslavl on Monday morning. It was sort of a relief to go. I had just been dreading it so much that it was okay to get in the car and drive away. This ease of leaving was actually because I knew I would be returning to Yaroslavl in like a week. So yes. Then the driver decided that he was going to take a smoking break like approximately every 5 minutes. Not really. But there were lots of smoking breaks. So we were sort of way behind on arrival into Moscow. Which meant I was taken straight to the hostel/ straight to the general area of the hostel where both driver and I carried/pulled/dragged about my suitcases trying to find the mysterious hostel which we eventually did find. This has already become much too long and detailed. Arrived at hostel. Then Susanna got there. Then we went to Red Square. I like Red Square. Then we went to this hipster bar with Eddie and Sarah (from summer school) and tried not to spend all of our money. Mainly we spend all of our time trying not to spend all of our money. Mainly it always fails because Moscow (as listed above) is expensive. Moving on.
Tuesday:
Train tickets to Helsinki for Susanna and I have been purchased. We were helpfully yelled at by many different people. We were in the wrong train station, then we were not at the international ticket counter, then we were at the correct ticket counter but we incorrectly understood that there was only one line which was waiting for two different windows instead of two lines waiting separately for the two windows (there were definitely two different lines), then we were yelled at because other people had gotten tired of standing in line so they were now sitting, but they wanted to make sure we understood that we were actually behind them in line even though they were now sitting, then we were pleaded with by a woman from Belarus because she needed to change her train ticket in an emergency, then we were yelled at by sitting woman because we had let the Belarus woman cut in front of us but not told the Belarus woman that she was actually behind the sitting woman and not the man in line, then we were yelled at by the ticket woman because there are apparently no trains returning from Helsinki to Piter on the 7. I’m not sure if we were actually “yelled” at . I think in the U.S. it might count as yelling. Or at least not very friendly or polite and dismissive commands. But it’s the sort of the thing that is the standard quo in Russia. I like it. It’s just sort of openly brutal. It makes me feel like “me against the world.” So ticket buying to Helsinki was this game that began 3 weeks ago with emailing about buses, and then became attempted purchasing in Yaroslavl (for me successful) purchasing in Irkutsk for Susanna (unsuccessful), and finally culminated in successful purchasing in Moscow. It’s just a big game. If you can’t see it as a big game, you might want to kill yourself with how frustrating the whole process is. But really it’s just a huge challenge. I don’t know how I will deal with life in the U.S. when buying train tickets involves going on the internet and typing in a credit card number and an address where the tickets will be mailed to. It will be so much less climatic. I won’t be allowed to lose sleep for weeks and procrastinate ticket buying because of how scared I am of train stations and then finally go and have to bravely fight for a place in line and etc....Yeh. That got way out of control.
Other things on Tuesday:
Went to the большой театр (Bolshoi Theatr). Is it always translated to english as the Bolshoi or is it translated as the «Big Theatre» because it if is translated as the «Big Theatre», then that is lame. Then we found ridiculous shopping malls full of like 2000 rouble scarves and perfume and the sort of frivolity and excessive money that I sort of forgot about. I guess I didn't forget about it. But I liked that it doesn't really exist in Yaroslavl. Moscow malls are stately and majestic. They have escalators and heat and a general level of classiness and sophistication that doesn't exist in Yaroslavl. We also found the Masaratti and Ferraris store. That was a good success.
Wednesday:
We went to a cemetery. It was stately and majestic. Like most things in Moscow. There was also a nearby pond. It was pretty. Did more wandering about Red Square. Got lost and found the neither stately nor majestic statue of Peter on the river. It is really just alarming. I feel like our time in Moscow has been less dominated by a huge list of necessary museums and more dominated by random riding of the metro to stations which I sort of remember reading about in Lonely Planet and then sort of wandering about looking for something which might be of importance. I mean the museums are important to. But I like the people. I like that life is everywhere and you just get completely caught up in how many people there and ...I don't know where this thought is going, so I'm going to abandon it.
Thursday:
Tretyakovskaya Gallery where I was once again embarassed by my lack of knowledge of really anything about Russia. Not that I really know anything about art in America. I know the Mona Lisa is important. That has nothing to do with America. I remember walking very fast through the Louvre with Emily to find the Mona Lisa. Okay moving on. We went to Sparrow Hills and walked through the forest/park in the evening snow and it was nice. We found the huge staduim that they built for the 1980 Olympics. And this ski tower thing which I think is used for aerial ski jumping or whatever Eric Bergoust does. But I don't understand because it would sort of lauch the skier into either the river or like the roof of the Lijinki stadium building. Then we read the sign and discovered there was lessons on specific days and so that is the most ridiculolus thing ever and so we spent long amounts of time completely not understanding if it was possible for an actual normal person to pay an unspecificied amount of money and fling himself off the huge ski tower jump thing and land in some unspecificed location. So yes.
Friday:
Kremlin. There were churches and icons and a real live yolka except I guess the fact that was cut down means it wasn't «live» but still it was like a complete tree instead of just being patched together on like a steel frame. And then I tried to be the translater for this tourist who was mistakenly buying Chinese post cards. I'm not sure why they sell postcards of Chinese art in the Moscow Kremlin. But they do. And he just looked around hopelessly as the woman yelled at him saying «китайские открытки» And then in his limited english, he told me he wanted to buy the miniature cannon. And then I told the saleswoman. But she didn't have change for his 1000 roubles. Which is sort of understandable. Then we dug through his wallet and found 500 roubles. The cannon cost 150 roubles. Anything over 100 roubles can be paid for with a 500. That is my rule. However saleswoman kept yelling at us that she had no change but that she could take a credit card. Then the poor man thanked me in his sort of english and defeatedly walked away. It was all very sad.
Saturday: (today)
I just realized there are like 800 other important things we did in Moscow. But I don't feel like going back and adding them.
Side note: The host/owner of the hostel is this amazing man. Who just sort of sits around and then engages in fights with young men about the internet or computers. Actually this is like the craziest hostel ever. It is so out of control. It's also very un-understood whether actual tourists stay here or just that the hostel is full of Russians who are somehow employed by the owner/host man. I don't know. It's ridiculous. Also it is somehow afficilated with the most ridiculous mode-ish cafe ever in the history of the world. There's just lots of black and white boxy furniture and tv screens which silently show like artsy slideshows of very strange artsy pictures. It's so weird. Sometimes we go eat breakfast there. The people at the hostel have told us this is allowed. However the people at the restaurant always give us the most exasperated looks whenever we arrive. also sometimes we see the woman who is always cleaning at the restaurant emerge from this secret room in the hostel. It's so ridiculous, I don't even know what to say. So then this morning we went to the restaurant and it was covered in confetti and the server girl just gave us the most pathetic laugh ever and said that they had been busy all night and that we should come back later for breakfast. But instead we ran away and will not be coming back. There is no way anyone will understand how crazy the hostel and the restuarant are. Oh well. Also in the stairway to the restaurant there is the creepiest green faced halloween dummy man and I was scared for my life the first time I saw him. And he is still the most sketchy thing ever.
We went to a museum about Tolstoy. We went to a Gruzincki (Georgian) restaurant. There was some sort of meat item that cost 4,000 roubles. We did not order that. We went to Victory Park and saw a lot of brides walking around. There were 6 of them at one point. I never thought I would need the genetive plural to talk about the шесть невест.
Then we came back and ate dinner and drank tea. We do a lot of tea drinking these days. Mainly because whenever we enter the hostel we are asked by the owner man if we have замерзли (frozen) and instructed to drink lots of tea. But the tea bags are free. So I don't complain.
Tomorrow we are taking the train from Moscow to Yaroslavl. There is sure to be quite a welcoming feast upon our arrival. I can only imagine how excited Margarita will be to have two students who she needs to be feeding. She already asked me if Susanna is big or small. Because if Susanna was big that would mean the extra cot wouldn't be acceptable for a sleeping place and then Susanna and I would have to take over the main room/Margarita's room for sleeping and Margarita would sleep in my room. But thankfully I answered that Susanna is small so I will be allowed to sleep in my bed and Susanna will be given the cot in my room and everything will work out. I don't know what we're doing in Yaroslavl. Going to watch Loko on Monday. I hope. Taking a bus to a nearby town on Tuesday where the Kremlin is really pretty and they films lots of historical movies there. I don't know what Wednesday. Probably eating a lot of food from Margarita before we are then on our way to Piter and back to a diet which consists of Snickers bars, ice cream, pasta which is always very al dente because of the lack of proper cooking stove appliances, and alarming tomato sauce which is actually more tomato paste but we try to pretend that it was a good purchase so we eat it anyways.
big. like huge. like really really really huge.
an eternal traffic jam.
expensive.
way more America/Europe/civilized-ness than the rest of Russia
There are probably other important things to say about Moscow. Mainly I can’t get over how big it is. It’s huge. Something like 14 million people. I don’t know. Highly alarming.
A brief rundown of the past week:
Left Yaroslavl on Monday morning. It was sort of a relief to go. I had just been dreading it so much that it was okay to get in the car and drive away. This ease of leaving was actually because I knew I would be returning to Yaroslavl in like a week. So yes. Then the driver decided that he was going to take a smoking break like approximately every 5 minutes. Not really. But there were lots of smoking breaks. So we were sort of way behind on arrival into Moscow. Which meant I was taken straight to the hostel/ straight to the general area of the hostel where both driver and I carried/pulled/dragged about my suitcases trying to find the mysterious hostel which we eventually did find. This has already become much too long and detailed. Arrived at hostel. Then Susanna got there. Then we went to Red Square. I like Red Square. Then we went to this hipster bar with Eddie and Sarah (from summer school) and tried not to spend all of our money. Mainly we spend all of our time trying not to spend all of our money. Mainly it always fails because Moscow (as listed above) is expensive. Moving on.
Tuesday:
Train tickets to Helsinki for Susanna and I have been purchased. We were helpfully yelled at by many different people. We were in the wrong train station, then we were not at the international ticket counter, then we were at the correct ticket counter but we incorrectly understood that there was only one line which was waiting for two different windows instead of two lines waiting separately for the two windows (there were definitely two different lines), then we were yelled at because other people had gotten tired of standing in line so they were now sitting, but they wanted to make sure we understood that we were actually behind them in line even though they were now sitting, then we were pleaded with by a woman from Belarus because she needed to change her train ticket in an emergency, then we were yelled at by sitting woman because we had let the Belarus woman cut in front of us but not told the Belarus woman that she was actually behind the sitting woman and not the man in line, then we were yelled at by the ticket woman because there are apparently no trains returning from Helsinki to Piter on the 7. I’m not sure if we were actually “yelled” at . I think in the U.S. it might count as yelling. Or at least not very friendly or polite and dismissive commands. But it’s the sort of the thing that is the standard quo in Russia. I like it. It’s just sort of openly brutal. It makes me feel like “me against the world.” So ticket buying to Helsinki was this game that began 3 weeks ago with emailing about buses, and then became attempted purchasing in Yaroslavl (for me successful) purchasing in Irkutsk for Susanna (unsuccessful), and finally culminated in successful purchasing in Moscow. It’s just a big game. If you can’t see it as a big game, you might want to kill yourself with how frustrating the whole process is. But really it’s just a huge challenge. I don’t know how I will deal with life in the U.S. when buying train tickets involves going on the internet and typing in a credit card number and an address where the tickets will be mailed to. It will be so much less climatic. I won’t be allowed to lose sleep for weeks and procrastinate ticket buying because of how scared I am of train stations and then finally go and have to bravely fight for a place in line and etc....Yeh. That got way out of control.
Other things on Tuesday:
Went to the большой театр (Bolshoi Theatr). Is it always translated to english as the Bolshoi or is it translated as the «Big Theatre» because it if is translated as the «Big Theatre», then that is lame. Then we found ridiculous shopping malls full of like 2000 rouble scarves and perfume and the sort of frivolity and excessive money that I sort of forgot about. I guess I didn't forget about it. But I liked that it doesn't really exist in Yaroslavl. Moscow malls are stately and majestic. They have escalators and heat and a general level of classiness and sophistication that doesn't exist in Yaroslavl. We also found the Masaratti and Ferraris store. That was a good success.
Wednesday:
We went to a cemetery. It was stately and majestic. Like most things in Moscow. There was also a nearby pond. It was pretty. Did more wandering about Red Square. Got lost and found the neither stately nor majestic statue of Peter on the river. It is really just alarming. I feel like our time in Moscow has been less dominated by a huge list of necessary museums and more dominated by random riding of the metro to stations which I sort of remember reading about in Lonely Planet and then sort of wandering about looking for something which might be of importance. I mean the museums are important to. But I like the people. I like that life is everywhere and you just get completely caught up in how many people there and ...I don't know where this thought is going, so I'm going to abandon it.
Thursday:
Tretyakovskaya Gallery where I was once again embarassed by my lack of knowledge of really anything about Russia. Not that I really know anything about art in America. I know the Mona Lisa is important. That has nothing to do with America. I remember walking very fast through the Louvre with Emily to find the Mona Lisa. Okay moving on. We went to Sparrow Hills and walked through the forest/park in the evening snow and it was nice. We found the huge staduim that they built for the 1980 Olympics. And this ski tower thing which I think is used for aerial ski jumping or whatever Eric Bergoust does. But I don't understand because it would sort of lauch the skier into either the river or like the roof of the Lijinki stadium building. Then we read the sign and discovered there was lessons on specific days and so that is the most ridiculolus thing ever and so we spent long amounts of time completely not understanding if it was possible for an actual normal person to pay an unspecificied amount of money and fling himself off the huge ski tower jump thing and land in some unspecificed location. So yes.
Friday:
Kremlin. There were churches and icons and a real live yolka except I guess the fact that was cut down means it wasn't «live» but still it was like a complete tree instead of just being patched together on like a steel frame. And then I tried to be the translater for this tourist who was mistakenly buying Chinese post cards. I'm not sure why they sell postcards of Chinese art in the Moscow Kremlin. But they do. And he just looked around hopelessly as the woman yelled at him saying «китайские открытки» And then in his limited english, he told me he wanted to buy the miniature cannon. And then I told the saleswoman. But she didn't have change for his 1000 roubles. Which is sort of understandable. Then we dug through his wallet and found 500 roubles. The cannon cost 150 roubles. Anything over 100 roubles can be paid for with a 500. That is my rule. However saleswoman kept yelling at us that she had no change but that she could take a credit card. Then the poor man thanked me in his sort of english and defeatedly walked away. It was all very sad.
Saturday: (today)
I just realized there are like 800 other important things we did in Moscow. But I don't feel like going back and adding them.
Side note: The host/owner of the hostel is this amazing man. Who just sort of sits around and then engages in fights with young men about the internet or computers. Actually this is like the craziest hostel ever. It is so out of control. It's also very un-understood whether actual tourists stay here or just that the hostel is full of Russians who are somehow employed by the owner/host man. I don't know. It's ridiculous. Also it is somehow afficilated with the most ridiculous mode-ish cafe ever in the history of the world. There's just lots of black and white boxy furniture and tv screens which silently show like artsy slideshows of very strange artsy pictures. It's so weird. Sometimes we go eat breakfast there. The people at the hostel have told us this is allowed. However the people at the restaurant always give us the most exasperated looks whenever we arrive. also sometimes we see the woman who is always cleaning at the restaurant emerge from this secret room in the hostel. It's so ridiculous, I don't even know what to say. So then this morning we went to the restaurant and it was covered in confetti and the server girl just gave us the most pathetic laugh ever and said that they had been busy all night and that we should come back later for breakfast. But instead we ran away and will not be coming back. There is no way anyone will understand how crazy the hostel and the restuarant are. Oh well. Also in the stairway to the restaurant there is the creepiest green faced halloween dummy man and I was scared for my life the first time I saw him. And he is still the most sketchy thing ever.
We went to a museum about Tolstoy. We went to a Gruzincki (Georgian) restaurant. There was some sort of meat item that cost 4,000 roubles. We did not order that. We went to Victory Park and saw a lot of brides walking around. There were 6 of them at one point. I never thought I would need the genetive plural to talk about the шесть невест.
Then we came back and ate dinner and drank tea. We do a lot of tea drinking these days. Mainly because whenever we enter the hostel we are asked by the owner man if we have замерзли (frozen) and instructed to drink lots of tea. But the tea bags are free. So I don't complain.
Tomorrow we are taking the train from Moscow to Yaroslavl. There is sure to be quite a welcoming feast upon our arrival. I can only imagine how excited Margarita will be to have two students who she needs to be feeding. She already asked me if Susanna is big or small. Because if Susanna was big that would mean the extra cot wouldn't be acceptable for a sleeping place and then Susanna and I would have to take over the main room/Margarita's room for sleeping and Margarita would sleep in my room. But thankfully I answered that Susanna is small so I will be allowed to sleep in my bed and Susanna will be given the cot in my room and everything will work out. I don't know what we're doing in Yaroslavl. Going to watch Loko on Monday. I hope. Taking a bus to a nearby town on Tuesday where the Kremlin is really pretty and they films lots of historical movies there. I don't know what Wednesday. Probably eating a lot of food from Margarita before we are then on our way to Piter and back to a diet which consists of Snickers bars, ice cream, pasta which is always very al dente because of the lack of proper cooking stove appliances, and alarming tomato sauce which is actually more tomato paste but we try to pretend that it was a good purchase so we eat it anyways.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
An Abby Favorite (List Making)
Things I will Miss
This is not a serious list. I refuse to make a serious list of things I will miss. But these are things I will miss (well some of them are).
Marshrutkas. They are essentially the greatest thing ever. I think I might take a picture of my favorite #91. However, this will be an undercover picture taking operation. As in I will go make Susanna stand somewhere so that she is located by some sort of famous thing (достопримечательность) and by a marshrutka. And then the people will think I am taking a picture of the girl by the statue but I am actually taking a picture of the marshrutka which is parked on the street next to the girl and the statue. Yes. Brilliant idea. I know.
Russian MTV. At some point, you would think I would recover from my MTV deprived childhood and stop being obsessed with MTV. However that point has never come. I really like Russian MTV. Mainly the music videos. Except not the Britney Spears music video. Or the пятьдесть центов (Fi’ty) and J.T. music video (Ayo Technology). Both of those videos are alarming. Anyways I will miss Russian MTV. Half of the songs are in English anyways. Either because they are actually American or British performers. Or because they are Russian stars trying to make the jump to western celebrity status. Oh Dima!
Related to MTV. My American readers. Is there a song called Destination Unknown that you have ever heard? Because they play that song all the time on Russian MTV. It is in English. It is a very alarming song. And a more alarming music video in which all the women march about in slutty green marching band outfits.
I will miss the fact that the Russian language comes alive in Russia. Oh man. So lame and cliché and like, DUH. But I don’t know. I remember during summer school, how artificial it seemed to force myself not to read in English. I never thought about the fact that in Russia there’s hundreds/thousands/lots of bookstores full of books which are all in Russian. There’s no artificiality in functioning (trying to function) in Russian. They even have crappy tabloid magazines in the kiosks about all the latest Russian celebrity gossip.
I will miss Алла Пугачёва when I return to the U.S. She is so awesome.
Related to #4. I have pretty much been functioning under the language pledge for like the past 7 months. Which means my Russian is better (I hope) and my English is bad. The only English language I encounter is my grammer-less blogging and e-mail writing. And sometimes spoken English with my Russian friends who are worse at English than I am at Russian. Like where verb conjugation doesn’t exist. I’m pretty sure I will retain my speaking and reading abilities quickly, but writing papers will be hard. Also during the magic (English) weekend of summer school, even though we were speaking English, I would always just automatically say что? instead of What?. I hope that happens again when I return to the English speaking world. Or I will say чего. I don’t know why I like it so much when people say чего instead of что. Like why is there the need to decline the word into the genitive case. Seriously. It makes me so happy when people say чего!
Today Margarita got a Christmas card from the parents of a student she hosted a long time ago. Enclosed was a picture of the girl, Erin and her husband at their wedding. They were standing next to a Rolls Royce at a castle in England. But that’s not important. It just seems comical how far away that is from the dirty streets of Yaroslavl. (I will miss the dirty streets). So I was enlisted to translate the card to Margarita from English to Russian. So I did that. I felt accomplished. Then Margarita’s friend came over and Margarita shows her the card and picture. And explains that Erin вышла. Which makes sense but there’s a second part of the phrase (замуж= wife) which is apparently optional. It was funny. I can’t explain it. Then the friend looks at photo: «она вышла за НЕГРО?» As in, she married A BLACK PERSON. Also are we allowed to say “negro” in America. It’s only the other n-word that is bad right? But I feel like you’re not really allowed to say “negro” either. So that was funny.
I will miss my fierce independence. I am very proud of my ability to turn what was initially loneliness into so called “fierce independence.” At some point, one of the girls on the basketball team asked if I had come here alone. And I said, “No, there are 7 other American students with me.” And then she asked if I knew any of them before I came. And I said “No.” And then I tried to explain that I had friends who were studying in Irkutsk. Which is true. Susanna and Eddie and Natalie and Ivan are all in Irkutsk. Irkutsk is Russia so that is sort of reassuring. At the same time, Irkutsk is 5 time zones from Yaroslavl. Like, they are far away. 5 time zones is huge. That’s like practically the span of the whole U.S (I think N.Y. to Hawaii is 6 time zones?). And then I realized I was actually pretty far away from people. So yes. I’m glad I turned that potential bad thing, into something that gave me a lot of courage to figure out simple things about Russia (buying hockey tickets, train tickets, hotel reservations) and at the same time figure out lots of things about myself and what I’m supposed to do with my life and what I’m supposed to believe and …
Comment about dubbing. If you’re going to dub the damn film/television show, just completely cut out the first language and replace it with Russian. I hate it when there is English still audible in the background. It’s so confusing to try to make myself listen to the Russian when I can almost hear what they are saying in English. So yes that’s annoying. Also I got over the fact that I used to be annoyed when the mouths didn’t match up with what the people were saying. Probably this is a totally American thing. Like are English speaking countries, the only places where rarely are there shows/ads dubbed in from another language (i.e. it’s all originally produced in English). Actually I don’t know. I know lots of American things are dubbed into Russian. There is also a fair amount of French and German stuff. A while ago there even appeared some television ad for a car dubbed from either Japanese or Chinese. Also there is this new yogurt product called “Beauty.” The whole television ad and product is completely Russian except it’s called “Beauty.” Are more people actually going to buy the product because it’s an English named product? I would buy a yogurt called Красота. In fact, I would buy a yogurt called Красота before I would buy one called “Beauty.” It’s also said in this male, but breathy pronunciation of “Beauty.”
Why do they pick the worst possible American programs to dub into Russian. The more I type “dub,” the stranger a word it seems to me. That’s totally a Russian construction that I subconsciously translated into English! (мне кажется). Anyways, who decided My Sweet Sixteen needed to be broadcast to a Russian audience? Tonight on MTV there was some sort of dating show where the girl was having dinner with her two suitors and the two men got into some heated argument. And you can hear them in both quiet English and loud Russian. Ты меня не знаешь! Что ты сказал! (You don’t know me! What did you say!) And then the men start throwing their drinks at each other. And the girl just sits there in the middle of the chaos. And the camera men start restraining the men from attacking each other as they continue to yell at each other in amazingly translated Russian. It was so brilliant. I will miss that.
Lokomotiv. Oh man. Loko is so awesome. I don’t think I would ever get tired of it. The woman at the ticket office giving her exasperated sigh when I approach the window. Every time she makes sure I still want only one ticket. (Hopefully next week, I will be able to pleasantly surprise her and buy tickets for both Susanna and I). The thrill of the overcrowded marshrutka and the traffic jams getting to the arena. The mass of smoking and drinking hooligans outside the arena. The Russian national anthem (Surreal. Every single time). The hockey. The cheers. And taunting of the officials. I wish I could figure out the actual words they say. Goals. Power plays. Penalty shots. Oh man. It’s so BRILLIANT. I wonder if they would give me a work visa to come back to Russia and drive the zamboni at Arena? And hang out with the 50 yr. old Russian men who drive the zamboni’s. Also I could possibly become one of the cheerleader girls. Although that is on the bottom of the list of possible ways to return to Russia. Also I could become the mascot. He just skates around in a huge costume being a loon. I feel fully qualified for such employment.
I wonder if I have to change how I dress when I come back to Midd. I wonder if when I return to the U.S., I will still want to wear the heeled boots and the puffy coat with fake fur hood thing. At some point (like 4 months ago), I would have considered the clothes I wear now, completely ridiculous. Not all the clothes. Jeans are always practical. But the bright pink sweater. Yes. I now own a bright pink sweater. It is even a turtle-neck. Mainly I was forced into impulse purchasing of said pink sweater because the woman in the рынок/рынке shoved it at me and demanded I try it on and then began loudly saying красовица! (pretty/beautiful girl?) and so I just bought it. But it is actually very warm and comfy. So there needs to be some decision made about the bright pink sweater and its wear-a-bility in the U.S.
I can’t believe it’s almost over. Not really. I still have almost 6 weeks left in Russia. But it will more of a tourist and less of a person living in Russia. I remember when I was leaving the U.S. and I kept reassuring myself that “It’ll only be 4 months and you never have to go back to Russia after that. Just get it over with.” Wow. How much has changed. And I’m glad that I like being here so much and that hopefully I’ll be back in the very near immediate future.
Also I’m trying to formulate some sort of adequate but short answer to the question which is bound to occur like 8 billion times. “How was Russia?” Do I say it/she changed my life? Did it/she actually change my life? (The reason for the it/she construction is that I couldn’t allow myself to call Russia just an “it” and she is the “motherland,” so yes…that reminds me of the e-mail list that circulated called something like “Flying to the Motherland.” That seems like 8 billion years ago when we were buying our plane tickets.) So I don’t know what to say to people. And so I’ll end up saying some lame answer like “It was really cool and I can’t explain it.” That’s true though. I can neither explain Russia nor the impact she had on my life. So it’s not really a cop-out (real word? correct context?) answer. It’s the truth. Are all cultures and countries so different from each other? How hard is it for Americans to understand life in England (same language, similar quality of life)? What about other European countries with a different language? Italy or Spain? What about India or Egypt? Are all of these places equally difficult to explain to someone who has never been there? Is Russia really that hard to explain or am I just searching for some deep level of complexity because I read too much into the country? Does the русская душа (Russian soul/heart/hard to explain concept) really exist? We used to mock it all the time. But now I don’t know. Do I just think that it exists because I want it to exist?
And so I don’t know if Russia is any less explainable than any other country. How do you go about explaining an entire country, culture, language, life? It has to deal with my problems with explaining America to Vacilica. America to her is this complete utopia and she would sacrifice a lot to be able to move to the U.S. She tells me that the streets are clean and that everyone has big houses. The big house comment is drawn from her watching Home Alone. Andrei thinks I am a farmer due to the location of Montana on the U.S. map. I don’t blame him. Pretty much the entire U.S. population thinks everyone in Montana is a farmer. Unless they think the state was sold to Canada. Or confiscated as some sort of nuclear testing zone. (Note: farmer comment, sale to Canada, and nuclear testing zone are all real things I have heard said by other U.S. citizens about Montana.) How America is represented in Russia: President Bush, President Clinton and Lewinsky, Hillary, Paris Hilton, Britney, McDonalds, Big houses, excessive richness, Hollywood, New York, September 11, Iraq, Schwarzeneggar. There’s probably more, but I can’t think of them. Once when I went to play hockey, this girl after the game told me that it probably wasn’t weird that I played hockey at home, because everyone in the U.S. plays hockey. I stared at her. I don’t think that the U.S. as a hockey playing oasis is a wide spread belief in Russia (she may be the only one who thinks that). And for good reason. No one plays hockey in the U.S.
Those earlier mentioned beliefs of America are clearly ridiculous. At the same time, I can’t explain America to Russians. How do you explain an entire country, culture, language, people? You can’t. But I feel that maybe there’s a more cohesive binding together of Russian people than any sort of community in the U.S. Our grammar teacher always talks about the коллектив (collective) as in the sense of community and togetherness that existed longer before the Soviet Union but was only strengthened during the U.S.S.R.
This list has veered far off topic from things I will miss about Russia and my favorite Russian MTV videos. But perhaps these are good closing thoughts as I prepare for initial departure from Yaroslavl. Initial departure in that I’m coming back a week later for 3 days with Susanna. But I’m telling my friends in Yaroslavl that I’m leaving for good on the 17th because it seems simpler and more clear cut and Susanna probably doesn’t want to spend her whole time in Yaroslavl at Vacilica’s flat drinking tea.
Why is the United in USA and the United in UN two different words in Russian? USA United is Cоедённые (which I remember on our Russian final last winter we were supposed to know what CША stood for. And Susanna and I were disgusted by K Moss’s expectation that we know what США actually stands for. I mean, we knew штаты (states) and америки (America) Just not “united”. And the UN United is Объединённых. Also the UN in Russian is the “ООН.” Which is pretty awesome.
This is not a serious list. I refuse to make a serious list of things I will miss. But these are things I will miss (well some of them are).
Marshrutkas. They are essentially the greatest thing ever. I think I might take a picture of my favorite #91. However, this will be an undercover picture taking operation. As in I will go make Susanna stand somewhere so that she is located by some sort of famous thing (достопримечательность) and by a marshrutka. And then the people will think I am taking a picture of the girl by the statue but I am actually taking a picture of the marshrutka which is parked on the street next to the girl and the statue. Yes. Brilliant idea. I know.
Russian MTV. At some point, you would think I would recover from my MTV deprived childhood and stop being obsessed with MTV. However that point has never come. I really like Russian MTV. Mainly the music videos. Except not the Britney Spears music video. Or the пятьдесть центов (Fi’ty) and J.T. music video (Ayo Technology). Both of those videos are alarming. Anyways I will miss Russian MTV. Half of the songs are in English anyways. Either because they are actually American or British performers. Or because they are Russian stars trying to make the jump to western celebrity status. Oh Dima!
Related to MTV. My American readers. Is there a song called Destination Unknown that you have ever heard? Because they play that song all the time on Russian MTV. It is in English. It is a very alarming song. And a more alarming music video in which all the women march about in slutty green marching band outfits.
I will miss the fact that the Russian language comes alive in Russia. Oh man. So lame and cliché and like, DUH. But I don’t know. I remember during summer school, how artificial it seemed to force myself not to read in English. I never thought about the fact that in Russia there’s hundreds/thousands/lots of bookstores full of books which are all in Russian. There’s no artificiality in functioning (trying to function) in Russian. They even have crappy tabloid magazines in the kiosks about all the latest Russian celebrity gossip.
I will miss Алла Пугачёва when I return to the U.S. She is so awesome.
Related to #4. I have pretty much been functioning under the language pledge for like the past 7 months. Which means my Russian is better (I hope) and my English is bad. The only English language I encounter is my grammer-less blogging and e-mail writing. And sometimes spoken English with my Russian friends who are worse at English than I am at Russian. Like where verb conjugation doesn’t exist. I’m pretty sure I will retain my speaking and reading abilities quickly, but writing papers will be hard. Also during the magic (English) weekend of summer school, even though we were speaking English, I would always just automatically say что? instead of What?. I hope that happens again when I return to the English speaking world. Or I will say чего. I don’t know why I like it so much when people say чего instead of что. Like why is there the need to decline the word into the genitive case. Seriously. It makes me so happy when people say чего!
Today Margarita got a Christmas card from the parents of a student she hosted a long time ago. Enclosed was a picture of the girl, Erin and her husband at their wedding. They were standing next to a Rolls Royce at a castle in England. But that’s not important. It just seems comical how far away that is from the dirty streets of Yaroslavl. (I will miss the dirty streets). So I was enlisted to translate the card to Margarita from English to Russian. So I did that. I felt accomplished. Then Margarita’s friend came over and Margarita shows her the card and picture. And explains that Erin вышла. Which makes sense but there’s a second part of the phrase (замуж= wife) which is apparently optional. It was funny. I can’t explain it. Then the friend looks at photo: «она вышла за НЕГРО?» As in, she married A BLACK PERSON. Also are we allowed to say “negro” in America. It’s only the other n-word that is bad right? But I feel like you’re not really allowed to say “negro” either. So that was funny.
I will miss my fierce independence. I am very proud of my ability to turn what was initially loneliness into so called “fierce independence.” At some point, one of the girls on the basketball team asked if I had come here alone. And I said, “No, there are 7 other American students with me.” And then she asked if I knew any of them before I came. And I said “No.” And then I tried to explain that I had friends who were studying in Irkutsk. Which is true. Susanna and Eddie and Natalie and Ivan are all in Irkutsk. Irkutsk is Russia so that is sort of reassuring. At the same time, Irkutsk is 5 time zones from Yaroslavl. Like, they are far away. 5 time zones is huge. That’s like practically the span of the whole U.S (I think N.Y. to Hawaii is 6 time zones?). And then I realized I was actually pretty far away from people. So yes. I’m glad I turned that potential bad thing, into something that gave me a lot of courage to figure out simple things about Russia (buying hockey tickets, train tickets, hotel reservations) and at the same time figure out lots of things about myself and what I’m supposed to do with my life and what I’m supposed to believe and …
Comment about dubbing. If you’re going to dub the damn film/television show, just completely cut out the first language and replace it with Russian. I hate it when there is English still audible in the background. It’s so confusing to try to make myself listen to the Russian when I can almost hear what they are saying in English. So yes that’s annoying. Also I got over the fact that I used to be annoyed when the mouths didn’t match up with what the people were saying. Probably this is a totally American thing. Like are English speaking countries, the only places where rarely are there shows/ads dubbed in from another language (i.e. it’s all originally produced in English). Actually I don’t know. I know lots of American things are dubbed into Russian. There is also a fair amount of French and German stuff. A while ago there even appeared some television ad for a car dubbed from either Japanese or Chinese. Also there is this new yogurt product called “Beauty.” The whole television ad and product is completely Russian except it’s called “Beauty.” Are more people actually going to buy the product because it’s an English named product? I would buy a yogurt called Красота. In fact, I would buy a yogurt called Красота before I would buy one called “Beauty.” It’s also said in this male, but breathy pronunciation of “Beauty.”
Why do they pick the worst possible American programs to dub into Russian. The more I type “dub,” the stranger a word it seems to me. That’s totally a Russian construction that I subconsciously translated into English! (мне кажется). Anyways, who decided My Sweet Sixteen needed to be broadcast to a Russian audience? Tonight on MTV there was some sort of dating show where the girl was having dinner with her two suitors and the two men got into some heated argument. And you can hear them in both quiet English and loud Russian. Ты меня не знаешь! Что ты сказал! (You don’t know me! What did you say!) And then the men start throwing their drinks at each other. And the girl just sits there in the middle of the chaos. And the camera men start restraining the men from attacking each other as they continue to yell at each other in amazingly translated Russian. It was so brilliant. I will miss that.
Lokomotiv. Oh man. Loko is so awesome. I don’t think I would ever get tired of it. The woman at the ticket office giving her exasperated sigh when I approach the window. Every time she makes sure I still want only one ticket. (Hopefully next week, I will be able to pleasantly surprise her and buy tickets for both Susanna and I). The thrill of the overcrowded marshrutka and the traffic jams getting to the arena. The mass of smoking and drinking hooligans outside the arena. The Russian national anthem (Surreal. Every single time). The hockey. The cheers. And taunting of the officials. I wish I could figure out the actual words they say. Goals. Power plays. Penalty shots. Oh man. It’s so BRILLIANT. I wonder if they would give me a work visa to come back to Russia and drive the zamboni at Arena? And hang out with the 50 yr. old Russian men who drive the zamboni’s. Also I could possibly become one of the cheerleader girls. Although that is on the bottom of the list of possible ways to return to Russia. Also I could become the mascot. He just skates around in a huge costume being a loon. I feel fully qualified for such employment.
I wonder if I have to change how I dress when I come back to Midd. I wonder if when I return to the U.S., I will still want to wear the heeled boots and the puffy coat with fake fur hood thing. At some point (like 4 months ago), I would have considered the clothes I wear now, completely ridiculous. Not all the clothes. Jeans are always practical. But the bright pink sweater. Yes. I now own a bright pink sweater. It is even a turtle-neck. Mainly I was forced into impulse purchasing of said pink sweater because the woman in the рынок/рынке shoved it at me and demanded I try it on and then began loudly saying красовица! (pretty/beautiful girl?) and so I just bought it. But it is actually very warm and comfy. So there needs to be some decision made about the bright pink sweater and its wear-a-bility in the U.S.
I can’t believe it’s almost over. Not really. I still have almost 6 weeks left in Russia. But it will more of a tourist and less of a person living in Russia. I remember when I was leaving the U.S. and I kept reassuring myself that “It’ll only be 4 months and you never have to go back to Russia after that. Just get it over with.” Wow. How much has changed. And I’m glad that I like being here so much and that hopefully I’ll be back in the very near immediate future.
Also I’m trying to formulate some sort of adequate but short answer to the question which is bound to occur like 8 billion times. “How was Russia?” Do I say it/she changed my life? Did it/she actually change my life? (The reason for the it/she construction is that I couldn’t allow myself to call Russia just an “it” and she is the “motherland,” so yes…that reminds me of the e-mail list that circulated called something like “Flying to the Motherland.” That seems like 8 billion years ago when we were buying our plane tickets.) So I don’t know what to say to people. And so I’ll end up saying some lame answer like “It was really cool and I can’t explain it.” That’s true though. I can neither explain Russia nor the impact she had on my life. So it’s not really a cop-out (real word? correct context?) answer. It’s the truth. Are all cultures and countries so different from each other? How hard is it for Americans to understand life in England (same language, similar quality of life)? What about other European countries with a different language? Italy or Spain? What about India or Egypt? Are all of these places equally difficult to explain to someone who has never been there? Is Russia really that hard to explain or am I just searching for some deep level of complexity because I read too much into the country? Does the русская душа (Russian soul/heart/hard to explain concept) really exist? We used to mock it all the time. But now I don’t know. Do I just think that it exists because I want it to exist?
And so I don’t know if Russia is any less explainable than any other country. How do you go about explaining an entire country, culture, language, life? It has to deal with my problems with explaining America to Vacilica. America to her is this complete utopia and she would sacrifice a lot to be able to move to the U.S. She tells me that the streets are clean and that everyone has big houses. The big house comment is drawn from her watching Home Alone. Andrei thinks I am a farmer due to the location of Montana on the U.S. map. I don’t blame him. Pretty much the entire U.S. population thinks everyone in Montana is a farmer. Unless they think the state was sold to Canada. Or confiscated as some sort of nuclear testing zone. (Note: farmer comment, sale to Canada, and nuclear testing zone are all real things I have heard said by other U.S. citizens about Montana.) How America is represented in Russia: President Bush, President Clinton and Lewinsky, Hillary, Paris Hilton, Britney, McDonalds, Big houses, excessive richness, Hollywood, New York, September 11, Iraq, Schwarzeneggar. There’s probably more, but I can’t think of them. Once when I went to play hockey, this girl after the game told me that it probably wasn’t weird that I played hockey at home, because everyone in the U.S. plays hockey. I stared at her. I don’t think that the U.S. as a hockey playing oasis is a wide spread belief in Russia (she may be the only one who thinks that). And for good reason. No one plays hockey in the U.S.
Those earlier mentioned beliefs of America are clearly ridiculous. At the same time, I can’t explain America to Russians. How do you explain an entire country, culture, language, people? You can’t. But I feel that maybe there’s a more cohesive binding together of Russian people than any sort of community in the U.S. Our grammar teacher always talks about the коллектив (collective) as in the sense of community and togetherness that existed longer before the Soviet Union but was only strengthened during the U.S.S.R.
This list has veered far off topic from things I will miss about Russia and my favorite Russian MTV videos. But perhaps these are good closing thoughts as I prepare for initial departure from Yaroslavl. Initial departure in that I’m coming back a week later for 3 days with Susanna. But I’m telling my friends in Yaroslavl that I’m leaving for good on the 17th because it seems simpler and more clear cut and Susanna probably doesn’t want to spend her whole time in Yaroslavl at Vacilica’s flat drinking tea.
Why is the United in USA and the United in UN two different words in Russian? USA United is Cоедённые (which I remember on our Russian final last winter we were supposed to know what CША stood for. And Susanna and I were disgusted by K Moss’s expectation that we know what США actually stands for. I mean, we knew штаты (states) and америки (America) Just not “united”. And the UN United is Объединённых. Also the UN in Russian is the “ООН.” Which is pretty awesome.
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Thoughts
So I've been thinking about this alot. And after I say this I am going to stop discussing politics on this blog. I don't know what I'm supposed to think about politics in Russia. I mean you can read the earlier blog posts where I fairly soundly express my general support for Putin and what he is doing in the country. But I can't seem to reconcile that with the fact that well, lots of people keep telling me that I am wrong. Like smart people that I respect. Maybe the Russian media is not free, and is controlled by Putin, and that is bad. Maybe he really is as bad as he is portrayed in American media and I have been brainstormed by первый канал новости (Channel 1 News) into thinking that Putin is awesome. Maybe there is some sort of inbetween conclusion that needs to be reached where he won't be the greatest thing since sliced bread, but also won't be the worst thing since ... Well you get the analogy.
So mainly I suppose I don't really know what to think. Maybe that's the point. That studying abroad is supposed to challenge your perceptions of the world and how you see both your own country and other countries. Oh man. I am such a great study abroad student.
Also classes end on Friday. And so for all of those interested, these are my not very planned travel plans.
Monday, December 17: Leave Yaroslavl (tear- as in I will cry, not I will rip a piece of paper.)
Meet Susanna in Moscow!!!
Then we are in Moscow until Sunday the 23rd when we take a train to Yaroslavl. And Susanna meets Margarita.
Then we leave Yaroslavl on the 26th and go to Piter. Then we are in Piter/ maybe go to Novgorod for a day or two until January 3.
January 3 we go meet Laurel in Helsinki.
January 7 we return from Helsinki
January 9 board train from Piter to Kazan.
Then we ночевать (sleep over) in Kazan (I think) and some other town along the Trans Siberian.
Then we get to Irkutsk on the 14. I think we're taking the Circumnavigational Train or something like that around Baikal. Well around part of Baikal.
Then I think we're going the rest of the way all the way to Vladivostok.
Then the planned-ness sort of ends and at some point I purchase plane ticket/train ticket back to Moscow and fly back to the U.S.
Arrival in N.Y is (I think) January 28.
Friday, December 7, 2007
Russian Drunk Dialing
So remember long ago when I wrote about how I went to that Loko game and befriended girl (Anya) and her husband (Sasha). And they asked me if I was married. And how we should go ice skating some time. And the drunk husband wished me a good morning as I got on the marshrytka to go home at 10 p.m. Well, yes. Sasha just drunk dialed me. So that’s fairly ridiculous. Apparently things are “ok” (said in very amazing Russian accent) with him. The amazingness of this phone call was that the first minute, I really had no idea what was going on. And then he started yelling into the phone “Sasha, hockey, hockey, hockey, Sasha.” And I caught on. I don’t really know what else to say…That like made my (undetermined long period of time).
And approximately two hours later receive another drunk dial. I was invited to hang out with him and his brother who is in the army. I unfortunately had to decline. Then he suggested they come over here. I don’t think Margarita would have approved.
And approximately two hours later receive another drunk dial. I was invited to hang out with him and his brother who is in the army. I unfortunately had to decline. Then he suggested they come over here. I don’t think Margarita would have approved.
Third Blog Entry (the other abandoned ones are available if you scroll down)
This is now the third WORD document I have open on my computer in hopes of typing a successful blog entry. The first one started out good and turned into me talking about how much I love Russia. Although it’s interesting to type and try to explain my reasoning (there is no reasoning), and I spend a lot of time thinking about this lately, there’s no adequate explanation. Any “normal” American or Russian, in fact, probably any person in the world would want to live in America before they would want to live in Russia. And so it’s pointless trying to have people understand what I like about this country so much. I feel like I’m a puzzle piece and I sort of fit into the America puzzle, but you have to bend the piece (me) in order to get it to fit. But the puzzle piece fits into the Russian puzzle perfectly. I also don’t like my “I like Russia SO much” writing because I’m afraid that the moment I return to America, I will realize how much better America is and then I will have to look back at these blog entries read by lots of people in which I spent all my time talking about how awesome Russia is and I will feel like a fool. But that will not happen. I will always still love Russia. Ahh. We’re back on the “love Russia-ness.” So I abandoned the first WORD document.
Second WORD document. This quickly turned into me talking about how bad reverse culture shock is going to be (returning to the U.S.) which although is not directly saying that I like Russia a lot more than America, that’s pretty much what it’s saying. So I abandoned it.
Third WORD document. This is it. I refuse to allow myself to transition into my poetic thoughts about Russia-ness. So I will objectively explain important events which have occurred in the past days.
I went to basketball on Thursday for the first time in a while. I missed it while I was in Archangelsk, once to go watch a Loko game, once for Thanksgiving dinner… And one of the girls, Masha, asked me when I was leaving. And I had to say “in two weeks.” It always used to be “I don’t know, either in December or in June,” then it was “in six weeks,” “in five weeks.” And suddenly now it’s “two weeks.” Granted I’m not leaving Russia for probably 8 weeks. But I’m leaving Yaroslavl on Dec. 17th. Then I’m coming back for like 3 days with Susanna, but that’s too complicated to explain in Russian. So I just go with the 17th as my final departure date. Then she asked if I thought I had improved a lot in my Russian while I was here. I really don’t like this question. I can’t tell if I’m better. I feel like the more you know and the better you get, maybe the better you realize how little you know. Does that make sense? And so I went with my standby answer of “Well I understand a lot more now.” Then she told me that the first day at basketball, the only word I said was “Da.” So apparently I have improved. But I still share the fear with Natalie that we will return to Midd and people will not believe that we have spent the past what 7/8 months speaking Russian. Like we’re still bad. But then I remember the first days of summer school when like we just never talked (at least I didn’t). And if we did we talked very slowly. Now I talk and at a fairly fast rate, granted the grammar is sort of a nightmare. I don’t know what the point of this story was….
I don’t remember what I did on Saturday. Oh yes. I bought Love Actually in Russian. It cost 4 dollars. And now I watch it. A lot.
Sunday was the elections to the State Duma. So I tagged along with Margarita when she went to vote. After she showed her passport and received her ballot, the guy looked up at me. I just shook my head and backed away from the table. I wonder what would have happened if I had produced my U.S. passport to him. I bought one of the Russian Federation Passport Cover Things for it. So now people are especially surprised when they open that and see the damn American eagle flying about the pages and other general American looniness.
Anyways, Edinaya Rocciya (United/Unified Russia) won like 63 percent of the votes. Then the Communists, then LDPR, then Spravedlivaya Rocciya (Just/Fair Russia) all got the minimum 7% of the votes to make the cut to have seats in the Duma. So now Putin and Единая Россия can do whatever they want since they have a constitutional majority. So probably soon Putin will resign from the presidency, so that he will have the necessary amount of time out of office and be able to run again in the March presidential elections. Except maybe he won’t. But I think he will.
Also today in politics we talked about if the elections were democratic because already huge delegations of election auditor people decided not even to come oversee the elections (I already wrote about this.) They said Russia was making it hard to get visas. Russia said America made them pull out to make Russia look bad. But some big European group/organization/thing that came and oversaw elections just made some announcement that the elections were undemocratic. I don’t really know that much about it. Except today our politics professor was talking about it and said the solution to the problem was for Russia to stop being a member of that organization. That Russia was the largest, richest member of the group and paid the most money to support it, and if they were going to claim our elections were unfair, then we will just not be a part of their organization any longer. That is brilliant. Perhaps I should be appalled at how disrespectful it would be for Russia to pull out of the international organization. Perhaps I should be worried about their claim that Russia’s elections were undemocratic. Actually I feel like Russia is proving a worthy opponent on the world stage. Russia is doing things that only America is allowed to do. It’s brilliant.
I don’t think I like the fact that Единая Россия has that much power. It does seem sort of undemocratic (not the elections) but the fact that they will clearly dominate Duma. But the Communists are old and outdated and LDPR (which translates as the liberal-democratic party of Russia) is well crazy. Jirinovski (their head leader) is essentially the entire party. Margarita told me he is a very brilliant man and that a while ago, he proposed a law allowing Russian men to have more than one wife, because there is a severe imbalance of Russian men and women (as in there are a lot more women than men). I think the fact that he was brilliant and his wedding rule proposal were two separate things in our discussion, but anyways. He’s crazy. And справедливая россия is a really young and relatively weak party and they barely made the 7 % barrier.
I think I would have voted for Edinaya Rocciya. Maybe that’s only because I have spent the past month reading all of their pre election handouts and programs and propaganda and ads and such. But I just think that life in Russia gets better every year. They move further away from the failure of the Soviet Union and closer to the level of European/American lifestyle. Although, Russia will NEVER be Europe or America. Which is a very good thing.
I don’t know why I approve of Putin. Maybe it’s because they always talk about how awesome he is on the television channels. He’s always in a different part of Russia or different countries having some meeting, with leaders of Iran or miners in Kamchatka. They can’t make up the fact that he is having these meetings. He does do a lot of work. Does Bush ever meet with people? Aside from during election season. I guess I never watch the news in the U.S., but I get the feeling that Bush hangs out in the white house or farm/ranch in Texas or various undisclosed locations. Even if Putin’s politics are bad (which I don’t think they are), I feel like you have to admit that he is a good politician. Perhaps the fact that he is a good politician automatically makes his politics questionable. Ah. Now I’ve even confused myself.
Maybe I like Putin because he is making Russia strong. And an equal of America. I feel like America needs some opposition. Otherwise we’ll just go around starting wars with various countries. Today on the news, there was some news item about the U.S. and Iran. And some politician saying (I think) that we (U.S.) need to be careful with the U.S. and Iran, because Bush tricked us all last time into starting the war in Iraq. Are we about to start a war with Iran? Isn’t the world more stable when there are several strong countries than when there is one bully country that just does what they want? I’m tired of thinking about politics.
Sunday I purchased a ticket to the Loko game tomorrow (Wednesday). I have now done this three times. The woman at the ticket office is tired of me. There was an audible sigh when I approached the window on Sunday. Also, buying tickets is really much more than necessarily complicated. First I explained I wanted a ticket for Wednesday for the price of 150 roubles. Then she says, what section of the arena, as there are like 6 different sections of the arena where seats cost 150 roubles. So I said section 13 because I have sat there before. Then she said what row? And I asked what rows were available and she began to read them all of. Does it really matter if I sit in the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd row? So I said 3rd row. Then she asked another question. I didn’t understand it, so I went with the go-to answer of “yes.” That was not the right answer. She started listing off more numbers. I heard her say “first” and I immediately said yes. Only after I had agreed to “first,” did I realize she was asking me what seat number I wanted. I actually didn’t want the first seat as it’s on the aisle, but there was no way I was going to change my mind and ask for the 6th seat or something like that. Also during this discussion, she asked me how many tickets I wanted? Two? I was so flattered by her suggestion that I was in fact not only buying a ticket for myself, but also a ticket for some hot, hockey-playing Russian man. But, alas, I answered “no, one.”
But is it really necessary to pick your exact seat? Can’t you just pick the price and they figure out the rest for you? Is there this abundance of choice in the U.S.? Like if I went to buy a ticket to an N.H.L game would I actually get to pick not only the section and the row, but the specific seat. Especially if it was a cheap ticket. Granted a cheap ticket to an N.H.L game is way more than the 150 roubles, 6 bucks to the Loko games. But still. Wouldn’t they just assign you a seat for whatever price you were going to pay. So now I have a ticket to the Loko game tomorrow. Woot Woot! Also, there is a Loko game on Friday, the final one while I am in Yaroslavl. Well, Susanna and I are hopefully returning to Yaroslavl while there is another Loko game so that we can go to it after I “leave” Yaroslavl on the 17th. But that doesn’t count as me being in Yaroslavl as all of my luggage will already be in Moscow (hopefully, must call and order taxi man tomorrow). So essentially this means that probably on Thursday, I will have one of my last chances to buy a Loko ticket. And hopefully I will be able to successfully pick out a section, row, and even seat number and the women will not sigh (too loudly) at me.
Tonight I just returned from my zachyot/ interview/ final exam for my mainstream class. Essentially, this consisted of me having a 5 minute conversation with my professor about the fairy tale Cinderella (Золушка). So if anyone is interested in my character analysis of the various characters in Cinderella or explanation of some of the 31 events that often occur in fairy tales (and which ones can be found in Cinderella), I am well prepared for such discussion.
Then after returning from such exam. I allowed myself to write this blog entry. Well to start three different ones and finally finish this one. And now I have to do my grammer and my phonetics homework. And it is midnight.
Also tonight Margarita gave me this hunk of chicken to eat for dinner. There was lots of redness and bone and skin and just general not acceptable-ness occurring in said meat item. Plus I just don’t like chicken. Perhaps I should be ashamed to reveal this, but I would take a hot dog over chicken hunk any day. So I sort of ate the chicken. Meaning tried to disguise it by eating a piece of chicken followed immediately by large forkful of pasta or gulps of water/apple juice. And then when Margarita went to go turn on the chainik, I skillfully took most of the chicken and wrapped it in a napkin and put it in my lap and hoped that our cat, Vacya, wouldn’t catch on and suddenly start attacking my chair until it was revealed that I was smuggling gross chicken. Then the chicken was successfully thrown away on my way to class. Good story. I know. When I move back to Russia, I will not be eating hunks of chicken. Am I actually allowed to use “hunks” in this context?
Going to do my homework…
Second WORD document. This quickly turned into me talking about how bad reverse culture shock is going to be (returning to the U.S.) which although is not directly saying that I like Russia a lot more than America, that’s pretty much what it’s saying. So I abandoned it.
Third WORD document. This is it. I refuse to allow myself to transition into my poetic thoughts about Russia-ness. So I will objectively explain important events which have occurred in the past days.
I went to basketball on Thursday for the first time in a while. I missed it while I was in Archangelsk, once to go watch a Loko game, once for Thanksgiving dinner… And one of the girls, Masha, asked me when I was leaving. And I had to say “in two weeks.” It always used to be “I don’t know, either in December or in June,” then it was “in six weeks,” “in five weeks.” And suddenly now it’s “two weeks.” Granted I’m not leaving Russia for probably 8 weeks. But I’m leaving Yaroslavl on Dec. 17th. Then I’m coming back for like 3 days with Susanna, but that’s too complicated to explain in Russian. So I just go with the 17th as my final departure date. Then she asked if I thought I had improved a lot in my Russian while I was here. I really don’t like this question. I can’t tell if I’m better. I feel like the more you know and the better you get, maybe the better you realize how little you know. Does that make sense? And so I went with my standby answer of “Well I understand a lot more now.” Then she told me that the first day at basketball, the only word I said was “Da.” So apparently I have improved. But I still share the fear with Natalie that we will return to Midd and people will not believe that we have spent the past what 7/8 months speaking Russian. Like we’re still bad. But then I remember the first days of summer school when like we just never talked (at least I didn’t). And if we did we talked very slowly. Now I talk and at a fairly fast rate, granted the grammar is sort of a nightmare. I don’t know what the point of this story was….
I don’t remember what I did on Saturday. Oh yes. I bought Love Actually in Russian. It cost 4 dollars. And now I watch it. A lot.
Sunday was the elections to the State Duma. So I tagged along with Margarita when she went to vote. After she showed her passport and received her ballot, the guy looked up at me. I just shook my head and backed away from the table. I wonder what would have happened if I had produced my U.S. passport to him. I bought one of the Russian Federation Passport Cover Things for it. So now people are especially surprised when they open that and see the damn American eagle flying about the pages and other general American looniness.
Anyways, Edinaya Rocciya (United/Unified Russia) won like 63 percent of the votes. Then the Communists, then LDPR, then Spravedlivaya Rocciya (Just/Fair Russia) all got the minimum 7% of the votes to make the cut to have seats in the Duma. So now Putin and Единая Россия can do whatever they want since they have a constitutional majority. So probably soon Putin will resign from the presidency, so that he will have the necessary amount of time out of office and be able to run again in the March presidential elections. Except maybe he won’t. But I think he will.
Also today in politics we talked about if the elections were democratic because already huge delegations of election auditor people decided not even to come oversee the elections (I already wrote about this.) They said Russia was making it hard to get visas. Russia said America made them pull out to make Russia look bad. But some big European group/organization/thing that came and oversaw elections just made some announcement that the elections were undemocratic. I don’t really know that much about it. Except today our politics professor was talking about it and said the solution to the problem was for Russia to stop being a member of that organization. That Russia was the largest, richest member of the group and paid the most money to support it, and if they were going to claim our elections were unfair, then we will just not be a part of their organization any longer. That is brilliant. Perhaps I should be appalled at how disrespectful it would be for Russia to pull out of the international organization. Perhaps I should be worried about their claim that Russia’s elections were undemocratic. Actually I feel like Russia is proving a worthy opponent on the world stage. Russia is doing things that only America is allowed to do. It’s brilliant.
I don’t think I like the fact that Единая Россия has that much power. It does seem sort of undemocratic (not the elections) but the fact that they will clearly dominate Duma. But the Communists are old and outdated and LDPR (which translates as the liberal-democratic party of Russia) is well crazy. Jirinovski (their head leader) is essentially the entire party. Margarita told me he is a very brilliant man and that a while ago, he proposed a law allowing Russian men to have more than one wife, because there is a severe imbalance of Russian men and women (as in there are a lot more women than men). I think the fact that he was brilliant and his wedding rule proposal were two separate things in our discussion, but anyways. He’s crazy. And справедливая россия is a really young and relatively weak party and they barely made the 7 % barrier.
I think I would have voted for Edinaya Rocciya. Maybe that’s only because I have spent the past month reading all of their pre election handouts and programs and propaganda and ads and such. But I just think that life in Russia gets better every year. They move further away from the failure of the Soviet Union and closer to the level of European/American lifestyle. Although, Russia will NEVER be Europe or America. Which is a very good thing.
I don’t know why I approve of Putin. Maybe it’s because they always talk about how awesome he is on the television channels. He’s always in a different part of Russia or different countries having some meeting, with leaders of Iran or miners in Kamchatka. They can’t make up the fact that he is having these meetings. He does do a lot of work. Does Bush ever meet with people? Aside from during election season. I guess I never watch the news in the U.S., but I get the feeling that Bush hangs out in the white house or farm/ranch in Texas or various undisclosed locations. Even if Putin’s politics are bad (which I don’t think they are), I feel like you have to admit that he is a good politician. Perhaps the fact that he is a good politician automatically makes his politics questionable. Ah. Now I’ve even confused myself.
Maybe I like Putin because he is making Russia strong. And an equal of America. I feel like America needs some opposition. Otherwise we’ll just go around starting wars with various countries. Today on the news, there was some news item about the U.S. and Iran. And some politician saying (I think) that we (U.S.) need to be careful with the U.S. and Iran, because Bush tricked us all last time into starting the war in Iraq. Are we about to start a war with Iran? Isn’t the world more stable when there are several strong countries than when there is one bully country that just does what they want? I’m tired of thinking about politics.
Sunday I purchased a ticket to the Loko game tomorrow (Wednesday). I have now done this three times. The woman at the ticket office is tired of me. There was an audible sigh when I approached the window on Sunday. Also, buying tickets is really much more than necessarily complicated. First I explained I wanted a ticket for Wednesday for the price of 150 roubles. Then she says, what section of the arena, as there are like 6 different sections of the arena where seats cost 150 roubles. So I said section 13 because I have sat there before. Then she said what row? And I asked what rows were available and she began to read them all of. Does it really matter if I sit in the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd row? So I said 3rd row. Then she asked another question. I didn’t understand it, so I went with the go-to answer of “yes.” That was not the right answer. She started listing off more numbers. I heard her say “first” and I immediately said yes. Only after I had agreed to “first,” did I realize she was asking me what seat number I wanted. I actually didn’t want the first seat as it’s on the aisle, but there was no way I was going to change my mind and ask for the 6th seat or something like that. Also during this discussion, she asked me how many tickets I wanted? Two? I was so flattered by her suggestion that I was in fact not only buying a ticket for myself, but also a ticket for some hot, hockey-playing Russian man. But, alas, I answered “no, one.”
But is it really necessary to pick your exact seat? Can’t you just pick the price and they figure out the rest for you? Is there this abundance of choice in the U.S.? Like if I went to buy a ticket to an N.H.L game would I actually get to pick not only the section and the row, but the specific seat. Especially if it was a cheap ticket. Granted a cheap ticket to an N.H.L game is way more than the 150 roubles, 6 bucks to the Loko games. But still. Wouldn’t they just assign you a seat for whatever price you were going to pay. So now I have a ticket to the Loko game tomorrow. Woot Woot! Also, there is a Loko game on Friday, the final one while I am in Yaroslavl. Well, Susanna and I are hopefully returning to Yaroslavl while there is another Loko game so that we can go to it after I “leave” Yaroslavl on the 17th. But that doesn’t count as me being in Yaroslavl as all of my luggage will already be in Moscow (hopefully, must call and order taxi man tomorrow). So essentially this means that probably on Thursday, I will have one of my last chances to buy a Loko ticket. And hopefully I will be able to successfully pick out a section, row, and even seat number and the women will not sigh (too loudly) at me.
Tonight I just returned from my zachyot/ interview/ final exam for my mainstream class. Essentially, this consisted of me having a 5 minute conversation with my professor about the fairy tale Cinderella (Золушка). So if anyone is interested in my character analysis of the various characters in Cinderella or explanation of some of the 31 events that often occur in fairy tales (and which ones can be found in Cinderella), I am well prepared for such discussion.
Then after returning from such exam. I allowed myself to write this blog entry. Well to start three different ones and finally finish this one. And now I have to do my grammer and my phonetics homework. And it is midnight.
Also tonight Margarita gave me this hunk of chicken to eat for dinner. There was lots of redness and bone and skin and just general not acceptable-ness occurring in said meat item. Plus I just don’t like chicken. Perhaps I should be ashamed to reveal this, but I would take a hot dog over chicken hunk any day. So I sort of ate the chicken. Meaning tried to disguise it by eating a piece of chicken followed immediately by large forkful of pasta or gulps of water/apple juice. And then when Margarita went to go turn on the chainik, I skillfully took most of the chicken and wrapped it in a napkin and put it in my lap and hoped that our cat, Vacya, wouldn’t catch on and suddenly start attacking my chair until it was revealed that I was smuggling gross chicken. Then the chicken was successfully thrown away on my way to class. Good story. I know. When I move back to Russia, I will not be eating hunks of chicken. Am I actually allowed to use “hunks” in this context?
Going to do my homework…
Reverse Culture Shock
…is going to suck. I am already dreading it. I still have at least 8 weeks in Russia. I just know it’s going to suck so bad. I also don’t really know if I ever had “forward” culture shock. I can think of some days in September and October when I was sort of not totally cheery, but there was never a string of days when I just wanted to go home. Also the days when I was sort of miserable where always when it was raining and you are allowed a lot more misery than usual when it is raining. I think I should stop worrying about culture shock into America and enjoy the rest of my time in Russia.
Less than 2 weeks left in Yaroslavl. I have sort of accepted my departure-ness. Also, Margarita and I have lately been getting along like BFF’s (best friend’s forever). I’m not sure if this is because I’m leaving in two weeks or if we actually have sort of figured each other out enough that there is now some level of friendship, acceptance, compatibility-ness.
(This post was also abandoned becuase it was me talking about my new BFF Margarita and I couldn't take myself seriously.)
Less than 2 weeks left in Yaroslavl. I have sort of accepted my departure-ness. Also, Margarita and I have lately been getting along like BFF’s (best friend’s forever). I’m not sure if this is because I’m leaving in two weeks or if we actually have sort of figured each other out enough that there is now some level of friendship, acceptance, compatibility-ness.
(This post was also abandoned becuase it was me talking about my new BFF Margarita and I couldn't take myself seriously.)
When you say “I’m moving to Russia for six months,” no one ever says “Well, don’t fall in love.”
Mainly people say things like “Don’t die,” “It’ll definitely be interesting,” “You can always come home early, if it turns out to be that awful.” Mainly, they say “Don’t die.” I think if you were to look back at facebook wall posts written amongst the Midd kids setting off for Russia at the end of August, the verb умирать (to die- as in “don’t die”) would appear often. If you don’t know what facebook is, you’re clearly not that hip. But that’s not important.
Also before I go on for too long, I would like to clarify that I have not fallen in love with some Russian man named Sergei, Igor, Dima, or Alexander. I predict one person finds that sentence funny. Moving on. I fell in love with just…Russia. Also if you would like to continue to respect me, perhaps you should stop reading before I go into more of my “how awesome Russia is…” and you become more and more convinced that I have lost my mind.
Perhaps I had a more pessimistic view of my time in Russia, than other people do approaching their time in Russia. Like, I was scared. Crazy scared. I thought I was actually going to die. This is not a realistic fear. Realistic fears would be: I won’t have any friends, I won’t ever understand what is occurring, I will be really lonely and bored and unhappy… I think those are realistic fears when leaving for Russia. Fear of death is not a realistic fear. However, I really thought I was going to die. I don’t know why. At any point, I could have said “enough” and flown back to the U.S. I still just thought I was going to die. I definitely didn’t think I would be sitting here, a little over 3 months after my arrival, talking about how much I like this country.
Also, writing this is fairly scary. I feel like I’m going to make a huge fool of myself. Any sane person would look at the choice of America and Russia and well, pick America. Any American would make this choice, any Russian would definitely make this choice. And I feel like maybe when I get back to the U.S., I will realize how much of a fool I was. How much better life in the U.S. is. And then I will have to look back and remember how I went about proclaiming how awesome Russia was.
That’s not going to happen.
(At this point I gave up on this entry...it was too "I love Russia so much.")
Also before I go on for too long, I would like to clarify that I have not fallen in love with some Russian man named Sergei, Igor, Dima, or Alexander. I predict one person finds that sentence funny. Moving on. I fell in love with just…Russia. Also if you would like to continue to respect me, perhaps you should stop reading before I go into more of my “how awesome Russia is…” and you become more and more convinced that I have lost my mind.
Perhaps I had a more pessimistic view of my time in Russia, than other people do approaching their time in Russia. Like, I was scared. Crazy scared. I thought I was actually going to die. This is not a realistic fear. Realistic fears would be: I won’t have any friends, I won’t ever understand what is occurring, I will be really lonely and bored and unhappy… I think those are realistic fears when leaving for Russia. Fear of death is not a realistic fear. However, I really thought I was going to die. I don’t know why. At any point, I could have said “enough” and flown back to the U.S. I still just thought I was going to die. I definitely didn’t think I would be sitting here, a little over 3 months after my arrival, talking about how much I like this country.
Also, writing this is fairly scary. I feel like I’m going to make a huge fool of myself. Any sane person would look at the choice of America and Russia and well, pick America. Any American would make this choice, any Russian would definitely make this choice. And I feel like maybe when I get back to the U.S., I will realize how much of a fool I was. How much better life in the U.S. is. And then I will have to look back and remember how I went about proclaiming how awesome Russia was.
That’s not going to happen.
(At this point I gave up on this entry...it was too "I love Russia so much.")
Friday, November 30, 2007
такого как путин
Things I Should Be Doing Right Now:
---Writing спасибо (Thank You) cards to all of our professors and office workers. (This would usually be a good procrastination method from having to do real work. However the fact that said notes have to be in Russian and hopefully have minimal mistakes makes me very much not want to do this. At least Megan said that it isn’t that big of a deal if there are grammar mistakes. The professors would definitely not believe we wrote them if they were completely free of mistakes)
---Doing my phonetics homework.
---Proofreading my politics paper – because no matter how many times I read it and reread it, I will still get it back covered in red ink due to my complete inattention/inability to correctly use case declensions.
---Going to bed, as it is now 1:12 a.m.
Things I Am Not Doing Right Now:
---All of the above.
I finished writing my paper though. It is 20 pages long. Well, like 19 and a half. I’m not really sure how this happened. I guess I sort of have been writing it for a month. But still, it’s 20 pages and it’s in Russian and it’s FULL of mistakes!!! But it’s still done (well sort of). There is lots of footnoting and further proofreading that needs to occur. Then there is some sort of oral presentation/defense which has to happen. Ahh.
I told myself I couldn’t write a blog entry until I finished the paper tonight, because as soon as I start functioning in English to write the blog, it would have been impossible to go back to Russian writing mode. I mean more impossible than Russian writing mode is usually (and Russian writing mode is always very impossible and highly unproductive). However the lesson learned is that many nights of highly unproductive-ness can still result in a high overall level of productivity.
It’s like when you’re in high school and you take 6 months to write the 15 page senior paper and then you get to college and you write 10 page papers in a weekend – or if you are Flora, you write them in like 4 hours.
I calmed down off the “throw everything away/give everything away/leave it all in Russia” bandwagon and now tomorrow shall call cab driver to arrange for me to be driven with baggage to Andrei’s house in Moscow where I can leave my stuff for December and January while we with Sonya travel about the country. Also, I wonder why I brought my Chaco’s to Russia. Did that ever sound like a good idea? But I pretend that my excuse is that I wanted to wear them at Laurel’s house and then they just got brought along to Boston and then to New York and then to Moscow. But it’s still sort of highly ridiculous. Plus they’re heavy. Not that there is any way my luggage will ever be under the weight limit to get back to the U.S.
Things That Actually Relate To Russia
The Loko game on Monday: You’re not going to understand my amazing cleverness unless you speak Russian. Oh well. So I was on the marshrytka along with half of the population of Yaroslavl. Now that it’s actually cold and snowy, the marshrytka’s are almost always FULL of people. But my maneuvering/shoving of people skills to reach the door have greatly improved since that culture moment/getting disastrously lost in Bragino. So whenever you go to a Loko game, like half of the marshrytka gets off at the stop for the arena. But on this marshrytka, there were a lot of шуба (dead animal-fur coat) wearing women. Шуба pronounced “shoo-buh” and so I definitely assumed that they would not be exiting for the hockey game. Oh man, was I wrong. There were so many шубы (много шуб) at the hockey game. This is where my cleverness comes in. A hockey puck is called шайба “shai-buh.” And I came to the conclusion that if I was in charge I would make there be a mandatory decision for every woman between шуба and шайба. It’s clever because the two words sound like each other. Like you can’t have the best of both worlds. You can’t get to go to hockey games and get to wear the dead animal (Margarita thinks she has ridded me of my vegetarian habits-Haha. She has not completely. I still call it a dead animal and not a fur coat.) Every woman has to make a choice. You can pick шайба (puck) or you can pick шуба (animal/coat). I think it was a lot more clever when it only existed in my head. It doesn’t sound very clever at all, now that I have typed it.
Today at basketball practice the girls were talking about how their parents forbid them to play sports when they were young. So they secretly had to go to basketball or football practice (remember that when I say football, I am logically referring to the sport played by such people as David Beckham and Mia Hamm, and not the sport played by such people as OJ Simpson). And then I was glad that I had never taken my hockey stick to basketball practice when we used to play hockey on Monday nights. I don’t think they would have understood/been accepting of the idea of me not only playing ice hockey (Margarita has asked me like 800 times if I have ever tried figure skating. Answer: NO), but playing ice hockey on the boys team all the way through high school, plus playing pick up with the men at Arena. So the fact that they were forbidden from playing sports is so like 1950’s or something or earlier, I don’t know. It’s old. Also, mother, thank you for not forbidding me from playing hockey.
I feel like the blog is recently much less “this is what I did,” and more “this is what I think.” I don’t know how I feel about that.
The elections to the State (federal) Dyma are on Sunday. Edinaya Rocciya is going to win. They’re going to get like 60% or more. This is okay with me, I think. Today I decided I wanted to read what English newspapers were saying about the upcoming elections. Oh man. I forgot how much America doesn’t like Putin. Like they just ripped him apart and talked about how its not true democracy and how this European delegation of observers of the voting process (there has to be a better English word to explain this, but I can’t think of it) declined to come because according to them, Russia was being really annoying and only wanted to supply visas for like ¼ of their delegation. But the English-language (i.e. not just British) newspapers wrote that Putin said that the delegation didn’t come because America convinced them not to come so that Russia would look bad and look like we were trying to conduct somehow rigged or unfair elections. And then there were various Putin quotes about Europe and America keeping their noses out of Russia’s business and not meddling in our internal affairs. But the translations were not anything close to something Putin would ever say. He wouldn’t have insulting comments about “America staying out of our business.” I listen to his speeches on the news every day. He doesn’t talk like that. That’s more like Bush quality of speaking. Also I heard Bush’s voice on the news because the dubbing was delayed like 5 seconds after Bush started speaking. And I forgot how much I hate his voice. Like he just sounds like a complete loon. Perhaps even a goon.
So anyways, it was crazy reading what the English-speaking press is saying about the elections on Sunday. Also they keep mentioning the “next president” of Russia which we don’t really talk about in Russia, because everyone just sort of secretly thinks it’s going to be Putin. Maybe not everyone, but a lot of people. I think I agree with them. And since presidential elections are on March 2 (I won’t be here. Ah!!! The misery is overwhelming.) that means he would have to leave the presidency before Dec 23 in order to declare his candidacy. And he is also the only candidate on the Edinaya Rocciya list to the federal Dyma. And elections are on the 2nd (in two days). So there is the possibility that he could then become a deputat in the Dyma for 3 months and then go back to the presidency. But if he does this, he is going to have to resign from the presidency like soon. But he keeps talking about the “next president,” but no one actually believes him. Not that any Russians are really that angry about this. He has a huge popularity rating. I feel like I didn’t know that when I was in the U.S. The population actually incredibly supports him. And there are no other political personality’s in Russia even close to the support that Putin has. So mainly Russians would support him having a third term. I'm pretty sure that didn't make sense that whole thing I just wrote about Putin. But sort of the whole point is that it is really complicated and he might resign really soon in order to be able to have a 3rd term without disrupting the constitution. But he might not. But no one really knows.
Also this is related to earlier comment about the voting observing people from Europe not coming. When we saw this on the news, Margarita had the most awesome comment ever. I don’t actually remember what she said, but it was something that would be translated like “Well, who gives a damn.” Like, if the snotty Europeans and Americans don’t approve of our elections, we don’t really care, at all. And this attitude is awesome. Except of course, Russia gets completely trashed in the international press because of not complying with the election observer people (I really wish I could think of a better word), but America always has the “Fuck the world. We do what we want” attitude. Hey, let’s go invade Afghanistan. And Iraq. And not sign the Kyoto Pollution Treaty Protocol Thing.
Going to write the Thank-You notes. I bet as soon as I have to use some hard case ending, I will think of a really important thing to write about on my blog. I wonder if they’ll know if I write them all the exact same note.
Ugh. There’s 11 cards. I’ve only written 2. Ah. I just used the ты form instead of the вы form.
Also when I was reading about Putin in the U.S. press they referred to the такого как путин song in which the girl sings about how wants a boyfriend like Putin who doesn't drink or run away and is strong. And they used this to show how dominating Putin is and how he brainwashes all of the Russians into being in love with him and not being a true democracy. Except all of the Russians also realize how ridiculous this song is.
---Writing спасибо (Thank You) cards to all of our professors and office workers. (This would usually be a good procrastination method from having to do real work. However the fact that said notes have to be in Russian and hopefully have minimal mistakes makes me very much not want to do this. At least Megan said that it isn’t that big of a deal if there are grammar mistakes. The professors would definitely not believe we wrote them if they were completely free of mistakes)
---Doing my phonetics homework.
---Proofreading my politics paper – because no matter how many times I read it and reread it, I will still get it back covered in red ink due to my complete inattention/inability to correctly use case declensions.
---Going to bed, as it is now 1:12 a.m.
Things I Am Not Doing Right Now:
---All of the above.
I finished writing my paper though. It is 20 pages long. Well, like 19 and a half. I’m not really sure how this happened. I guess I sort of have been writing it for a month. But still, it’s 20 pages and it’s in Russian and it’s FULL of mistakes!!! But it’s still done (well sort of). There is lots of footnoting and further proofreading that needs to occur. Then there is some sort of oral presentation/defense which has to happen. Ahh.
I told myself I couldn’t write a blog entry until I finished the paper tonight, because as soon as I start functioning in English to write the blog, it would have been impossible to go back to Russian writing mode. I mean more impossible than Russian writing mode is usually (and Russian writing mode is always very impossible and highly unproductive). However the lesson learned is that many nights of highly unproductive-ness can still result in a high overall level of productivity.
It’s like when you’re in high school and you take 6 months to write the 15 page senior paper and then you get to college and you write 10 page papers in a weekend – or if you are Flora, you write them in like 4 hours.
I calmed down off the “throw everything away/give everything away/leave it all in Russia” bandwagon and now tomorrow shall call cab driver to arrange for me to be driven with baggage to Andrei’s house in Moscow where I can leave my stuff for December and January while we with Sonya travel about the country. Also, I wonder why I brought my Chaco’s to Russia. Did that ever sound like a good idea? But I pretend that my excuse is that I wanted to wear them at Laurel’s house and then they just got brought along to Boston and then to New York and then to Moscow. But it’s still sort of highly ridiculous. Plus they’re heavy. Not that there is any way my luggage will ever be under the weight limit to get back to the U.S.
Things That Actually Relate To Russia
The Loko game on Monday: You’re not going to understand my amazing cleverness unless you speak Russian. Oh well. So I was on the marshrytka along with half of the population of Yaroslavl. Now that it’s actually cold and snowy, the marshrytka’s are almost always FULL of people. But my maneuvering/shoving of people skills to reach the door have greatly improved since that culture moment/getting disastrously lost in Bragino. So whenever you go to a Loko game, like half of the marshrytka gets off at the stop for the arena. But on this marshrytka, there were a lot of шуба (dead animal-fur coat) wearing women. Шуба pronounced “shoo-buh” and so I definitely assumed that they would not be exiting for the hockey game. Oh man, was I wrong. There were so many шубы (много шуб) at the hockey game. This is where my cleverness comes in. A hockey puck is called шайба “shai-buh.” And I came to the conclusion that if I was in charge I would make there be a mandatory decision for every woman between шуба and шайба. It’s clever because the two words sound like each other. Like you can’t have the best of both worlds. You can’t get to go to hockey games and get to wear the dead animal (Margarita thinks she has ridded me of my vegetarian habits-Haha. She has not completely. I still call it a dead animal and not a fur coat.) Every woman has to make a choice. You can pick шайба (puck) or you can pick шуба (animal/coat). I think it was a lot more clever when it only existed in my head. It doesn’t sound very clever at all, now that I have typed it.
Today at basketball practice the girls were talking about how their parents forbid them to play sports when they were young. So they secretly had to go to basketball or football practice (remember that when I say football, I am logically referring to the sport played by such people as David Beckham and Mia Hamm, and not the sport played by such people as OJ Simpson). And then I was glad that I had never taken my hockey stick to basketball practice when we used to play hockey on Monday nights. I don’t think they would have understood/been accepting of the idea of me not only playing ice hockey (Margarita has asked me like 800 times if I have ever tried figure skating. Answer: NO), but playing ice hockey on the boys team all the way through high school, plus playing pick up with the men at Arena. So the fact that they were forbidden from playing sports is so like 1950’s or something or earlier, I don’t know. It’s old. Also, mother, thank you for not forbidding me from playing hockey.
I feel like the blog is recently much less “this is what I did,” and more “this is what I think.” I don’t know how I feel about that.
The elections to the State (federal) Dyma are on Sunday. Edinaya Rocciya is going to win. They’re going to get like 60% or more. This is okay with me, I think. Today I decided I wanted to read what English newspapers were saying about the upcoming elections. Oh man. I forgot how much America doesn’t like Putin. Like they just ripped him apart and talked about how its not true democracy and how this European delegation of observers of the voting process (there has to be a better English word to explain this, but I can’t think of it) declined to come because according to them, Russia was being really annoying and only wanted to supply visas for like ¼ of their delegation. But the English-language (i.e. not just British) newspapers wrote that Putin said that the delegation didn’t come because America convinced them not to come so that Russia would look bad and look like we were trying to conduct somehow rigged or unfair elections. And then there were various Putin quotes about Europe and America keeping their noses out of Russia’s business and not meddling in our internal affairs. But the translations were not anything close to something Putin would ever say. He wouldn’t have insulting comments about “America staying out of our business.” I listen to his speeches on the news every day. He doesn’t talk like that. That’s more like Bush quality of speaking. Also I heard Bush’s voice on the news because the dubbing was delayed like 5 seconds after Bush started speaking. And I forgot how much I hate his voice. Like he just sounds like a complete loon. Perhaps even a goon.
So anyways, it was crazy reading what the English-speaking press is saying about the elections on Sunday. Also they keep mentioning the “next president” of Russia which we don’t really talk about in Russia, because everyone just sort of secretly thinks it’s going to be Putin. Maybe not everyone, but a lot of people. I think I agree with them. And since presidential elections are on March 2 (I won’t be here. Ah!!! The misery is overwhelming.) that means he would have to leave the presidency before Dec 23 in order to declare his candidacy. And he is also the only candidate on the Edinaya Rocciya list to the federal Dyma. And elections are on the 2nd (in two days). So there is the possibility that he could then become a deputat in the Dyma for 3 months and then go back to the presidency. But if he does this, he is going to have to resign from the presidency like soon. But he keeps talking about the “next president,” but no one actually believes him. Not that any Russians are really that angry about this. He has a huge popularity rating. I feel like I didn’t know that when I was in the U.S. The population actually incredibly supports him. And there are no other political personality’s in Russia even close to the support that Putin has. So mainly Russians would support him having a third term. I'm pretty sure that didn't make sense that whole thing I just wrote about Putin. But sort of the whole point is that it is really complicated and he might resign really soon in order to be able to have a 3rd term without disrupting the constitution. But he might not. But no one really knows.
Also this is related to earlier comment about the voting observing people from Europe not coming. When we saw this on the news, Margarita had the most awesome comment ever. I don’t actually remember what she said, but it was something that would be translated like “Well, who gives a damn.” Like, if the snotty Europeans and Americans don’t approve of our elections, we don’t really care, at all. And this attitude is awesome. Except of course, Russia gets completely trashed in the international press because of not complying with the election observer people (I really wish I could think of a better word), but America always has the “Fuck the world. We do what we want” attitude. Hey, let’s go invade Afghanistan. And Iraq. And not sign the Kyoto Pollution Treaty Protocol Thing.
Going to write the Thank-You notes. I bet as soon as I have to use some hard case ending, I will think of a really important thing to write about on my blog. I wonder if they’ll know if I write them all the exact same note.
Ugh. There’s 11 cards. I’ve only written 2. Ah. I just used the ты form instead of the вы form.
Also when I was reading about Putin in the U.S. press they referred to the такого как путин song in which the girl sings about how wants a boyfriend like Putin who doesn't drink or run away and is strong. And they used this to show how dominating Putin is and how he brainwashes all of the Russians into being in love with him and not being a true democracy. Except all of the Russians also realize how ridiculous this song is.
Thursday, November 29, 2007
выйти из шкафа
A. Today in phonetics we had to listen to the tape recording of us reading a Pushkin poem in early September right when we arrived. In short, I was appalled by my speaking ability (or lack thereof). I was also appalled by what my voice actually sounds like. But that always happens when I have to hear myself on message machines or such. It doesn’t even sound like Russian when I speak. Then we listened to the recording we just recorded today. And there were differences. So that was good. Apparently I discovered in the past 3 months that there are “soft” letters/sounds in Russian language and so it sounds a little better. But it’s still so atrocious. Maybe I should be optimistic. “Look at the process you made in only three months.” “Recognize your ability to tell the difference between good Russian and bad Russian, because that is the first step to reaching a level of good Russian.” Oh god, but it is so bad.
Б. And I feel like the Russian I speak in the university is like 10 times better than any Russian I speak on the street. Like, I can’t try to conjugate a verb correctly or worry about the soft “l” that I am supposed to be articulating because I am too busy trying to not get hit in traffic. I also just feel like I’ve gotten lazy in Russian. Like I never really study that much anymore. And if I do, I don’t spend my time memorizing vocabulary words. I guess it’s not my vocabulary that limits me so much. It’s just like the more “real” Russian I hear, the more aware I become of the little constructions and nuances that I completely understand but never remember when I am trying to formulate my thoughts. And then I try to defend myself that I have reached a functional level in Russia where I can buy train tickets and buy tickets to hockey games and concerts and theatres and reserve hotel rooms and read the newspaper and come away understanding the basic thoughts and etc. and so maybe I should stop worrying about the grammar and awkward constructions and accent. But it’s still really worrisome. And I don’t really know what the answer is. I guess I should just make myself talk more. I know that the answer is not “Go back to Midd and don’t take a Russian class for the spring.” But that’s what I have to do.
В. What is the difference between when we say “I have” and we say “I have got” because Vacilica’s husband Aleksei refuses to believe me that there is really no difference. And that maybe the only difference is that “I have got” is conversational and I would never write that. Plus I feel like I never actually say “I have got.” But that is what he always says, plus that’s what they teach in the English textbook at School Number 4 where I teach, and I don’t want to ruin their whole “I have got…” construction.
Г. This is still related to me complaining about how bad I am at Russian. So at some point in my study of Russian I realized that they don’t use the construction “Me and Sonya” (shout-out to Sonya!), instead Russians would say “We with Sonya.” So I started using this form. And at first I feel like an imposter, like this is some construction only allowed to be used by people who actually speak the language. But then you get over it and you go about explaining how “We with the babyshka watch ‘Dances on the Ice’ every Sunday night.” And you feel like you cracked this code and it is awesome. And then today in grammar, our professor explained that when foreigners use the construction “Me and Sonya” it sounds to a Russian like I actually involved in said activity and was forced to drag Sonya along as like a suitcase that I was pulling behind me. Like Sonya becomes a very unappreciated and insulted participant in said activity. So apparently I didn’t crack any secret code when I began saying “We with Sonya,” I just made it sound like Sonya was an actual person who was equally involved in such activity and she stopped being some large bulky useless item/person which I dragged along behind me.
Д. Also you can’t say “я голодна” “I’m hungry” because that is automatically a foreigner construction and Russians understand what you are saying, but secretly think you are a weirdo. You are supposed to say some huge long verb which I will now be forced to go look up in a dictionary. Returned. Said verb. Проголодаться (с.в.) So now I will try to remember to say я проголодалась.
Е. Why am I always exhausted when I wake up at like 7:15. But now it is 1:00 a.m. and I am not going to bed and instead typing this blog.
Ё. Every day I involve myself in this huge battle (this battle only occurs in my head) of “stay or go.” Haha. You all thought I had decided weeks ago that I was going back to Midd for the spring. And I did decide. Except now everyday I want to stay here more and more. Not that I ever really wanted to leave that much. It just seemed like a responsible choice to go home and finish college. So then I made the mistake of asking Megan what would happen if I told her now that I actually wanted to stay. And she said “We would figure it out.” This was not the correct answer. The correct answer would have been. “Abby, you already made your choice. You have to leave.” But I am going to leave. And then I will be able to come back. And it will all be okay. But I can’t actually guarantee that I get on my plane leaving Moscow. That sounds like one of the most ridiculous things I have ever thought. After all, the only reason I got on the plane to Frankfurt and Moscow was because I couldn’t abandon Natalie and SpongeBob (disguised in the pea coat) in the New York airport.
Ж. Are you allowed to гулать by yourself or does such activity require you to have companions?
И. Vacilica asked me different English words which mean crazy person and I came up with fool and idiot and then……..LOON. And I didn’t know if I should share with her this gold mine of a word (you’re definitely not allowed to say gold mine of a word…). But then I told her and she totally didn’t understand that I had just revealed to her the best word in the English language. She didn’t understand that she had been let into this secret group of people who know and utilize the word loon in their daily speech. She didn’t understand that she had been revealed a secret English word which will someday sweep the English speaking world and possibly get adopted into Russian and take various case forms so there will be много лунов and people will spend their time talking about сумасшедших лунах.
К. Life is so much easier when I am in my “selfish don’t change the world” mode. But then I get in this “change the world” mode and it’s just so exhausting to be affected by everyone else’s problems. It’s not everyone though. It’s just the kids. Maybe I should feel bad for all of the really poor Russian grandmothers living alone because their husbands already died and barely surviving on their small pension payments. But I don’t really feel that bad for them. This is going to sound really mean, but I feel like I approach them as more of historical relics from the Soviet Union than as real people. Oh man. I am a horrible person. Anyways, the babyshkas don’t tug at my heart strings. Why do I use all of these strange English idioms now? The kids do though. Not all of the kids. The kids at School 4 where I teach English are really cute, but they don’t get to me. They’re all 10 years old and they already have 2 cell phones each. These kids are rich. Well their parents are. As Margarita would say in her disgusted tone “бизнес…” (business). I am ashamed of my cell phone when I enter School Number 4. But it’s the other kids who don’t have money and don’t really have much of a future. Like I walk past the little boys playing hockey on the sidewalk and well mainly I just want to play hockey with them, but I also just want to take care of them.
Л. So now I have to return to Russia to personally take care of all the poor and mistreated Russian children. This is what I felt like when I was in New Orleans. That somebody just needed to do something for these kids. But then the feeling fades and you sort of realize you can’t change the whole world and so maybe it’s not worth spending all your time stressing about it. But I feel like I’ve changed my “change the world itself” life plan to a “change the world one child at a time” life view.
М. Agh. This is completely not about Russia. Also it is 2:10 in the morning and I am still typing this. I am going to not be happy when the alarm on my phone goes into its shrilly, peppy alarm ring tomorrow (today) morning.
Н. Now it is Thursday morning. And I am running out of time to write this. Soon (actually like right now), I have to leave to go to the university so that I can use the internet and then go teach English and then go to basketball practice and then come home and eat dinner and do my homework (write the final 3 pages of my 20 pg. politics paper!).
О. There’s lots of other important things to write about:
-I went to another Loko game. It was awesome, as usual. We won 4-2. And came back from 2-1 losing margin entering the 3rd period.
-If you are wondering how to say a gay person came out of the closet in Russian, you just say выйти из шкафа which translates directly as to walk out of the closet. This is brilliant.
-I’m leaving Yaroslavl on Dec. 17, but then Susanna and I are coming back for 2 days on our way to Piter. But still this is amazingly depressing. And also worrisome because somehow I have to get the multiple like billion pound suitcases to Moscow so that they can stay in my friend’s house there until I return at the end of January to fly to New York. Except I don’t want to have to pay like 3,000 roubles to take a cab to Moscow. But the train would be like extremely atrocious with the suitcases. So I think I am just going to throw everything away, leave it all in Russia. I’m sort of kidding. But I’m sort of not.
Things That Would Not Be Thrown Away:
-hockey skates and gloves
-souvenirs I have bought for people
-my awesome fur hooded winter coat
-possibly 3 pairs of pants and some sweaters
-laptop
-my boots
-the rest could really just be thrown away
П. Ahhhh, now I am late leaving the apartment.
Kitty…
С Днём Рождения!!!
Happy Birthday!!!
Б. And I feel like the Russian I speak in the university is like 10 times better than any Russian I speak on the street. Like, I can’t try to conjugate a verb correctly or worry about the soft “l” that I am supposed to be articulating because I am too busy trying to not get hit in traffic. I also just feel like I’ve gotten lazy in Russian. Like I never really study that much anymore. And if I do, I don’t spend my time memorizing vocabulary words. I guess it’s not my vocabulary that limits me so much. It’s just like the more “real” Russian I hear, the more aware I become of the little constructions and nuances that I completely understand but never remember when I am trying to formulate my thoughts. And then I try to defend myself that I have reached a functional level in Russia where I can buy train tickets and buy tickets to hockey games and concerts and theatres and reserve hotel rooms and read the newspaper and come away understanding the basic thoughts and etc. and so maybe I should stop worrying about the grammar and awkward constructions and accent. But it’s still really worrisome. And I don’t really know what the answer is. I guess I should just make myself talk more. I know that the answer is not “Go back to Midd and don’t take a Russian class for the spring.” But that’s what I have to do.
В. What is the difference between when we say “I have” and we say “I have got” because Vacilica’s husband Aleksei refuses to believe me that there is really no difference. And that maybe the only difference is that “I have got” is conversational and I would never write that. Plus I feel like I never actually say “I have got.” But that is what he always says, plus that’s what they teach in the English textbook at School Number 4 where I teach, and I don’t want to ruin their whole “I have got…” construction.
Г. This is still related to me complaining about how bad I am at Russian. So at some point in my study of Russian I realized that they don’t use the construction “Me and Sonya” (shout-out to Sonya!), instead Russians would say “We with Sonya.” So I started using this form. And at first I feel like an imposter, like this is some construction only allowed to be used by people who actually speak the language. But then you get over it and you go about explaining how “We with the babyshka watch ‘Dances on the Ice’ every Sunday night.” And you feel like you cracked this code and it is awesome. And then today in grammar, our professor explained that when foreigners use the construction “Me and Sonya” it sounds to a Russian like I actually involved in said activity and was forced to drag Sonya along as like a suitcase that I was pulling behind me. Like Sonya becomes a very unappreciated and insulted participant in said activity. So apparently I didn’t crack any secret code when I began saying “We with Sonya,” I just made it sound like Sonya was an actual person who was equally involved in such activity and she stopped being some large bulky useless item/person which I dragged along behind me.
Д. Also you can’t say “я голодна” “I’m hungry” because that is automatically a foreigner construction and Russians understand what you are saying, but secretly think you are a weirdo. You are supposed to say some huge long verb which I will now be forced to go look up in a dictionary. Returned. Said verb. Проголодаться (с.в.) So now I will try to remember to say я проголодалась.
Е. Why am I always exhausted when I wake up at like 7:15. But now it is 1:00 a.m. and I am not going to bed and instead typing this blog.
Ё. Every day I involve myself in this huge battle (this battle only occurs in my head) of “stay or go.” Haha. You all thought I had decided weeks ago that I was going back to Midd for the spring. And I did decide. Except now everyday I want to stay here more and more. Not that I ever really wanted to leave that much. It just seemed like a responsible choice to go home and finish college. So then I made the mistake of asking Megan what would happen if I told her now that I actually wanted to stay. And she said “We would figure it out.” This was not the correct answer. The correct answer would have been. “Abby, you already made your choice. You have to leave.” But I am going to leave. And then I will be able to come back. And it will all be okay. But I can’t actually guarantee that I get on my plane leaving Moscow. That sounds like one of the most ridiculous things I have ever thought. After all, the only reason I got on the plane to Frankfurt and Moscow was because I couldn’t abandon Natalie and SpongeBob (disguised in the pea coat) in the New York airport.
Ж. Are you allowed to гулать by yourself or does such activity require you to have companions?
И. Vacilica asked me different English words which mean crazy person and I came up with fool and idiot and then……..LOON. And I didn’t know if I should share with her this gold mine of a word (you’re definitely not allowed to say gold mine of a word…). But then I told her and she totally didn’t understand that I had just revealed to her the best word in the English language. She didn’t understand that she had been let into this secret group of people who know and utilize the word loon in their daily speech. She didn’t understand that she had been revealed a secret English word which will someday sweep the English speaking world and possibly get adopted into Russian and take various case forms so there will be много лунов and people will spend their time talking about сумасшедших лунах.
К. Life is so much easier when I am in my “selfish don’t change the world” mode. But then I get in this “change the world” mode and it’s just so exhausting to be affected by everyone else’s problems. It’s not everyone though. It’s just the kids. Maybe I should feel bad for all of the really poor Russian grandmothers living alone because their husbands already died and barely surviving on their small pension payments. But I don’t really feel that bad for them. This is going to sound really mean, but I feel like I approach them as more of historical relics from the Soviet Union than as real people. Oh man. I am a horrible person. Anyways, the babyshkas don’t tug at my heart strings. Why do I use all of these strange English idioms now? The kids do though. Not all of the kids. The kids at School 4 where I teach English are really cute, but they don’t get to me. They’re all 10 years old and they already have 2 cell phones each. These kids are rich. Well their parents are. As Margarita would say in her disgusted tone “бизнес…” (business). I am ashamed of my cell phone when I enter School Number 4. But it’s the other kids who don’t have money and don’t really have much of a future. Like I walk past the little boys playing hockey on the sidewalk and well mainly I just want to play hockey with them, but I also just want to take care of them.
Л. So now I have to return to Russia to personally take care of all the poor and mistreated Russian children. This is what I felt like when I was in New Orleans. That somebody just needed to do something for these kids. But then the feeling fades and you sort of realize you can’t change the whole world and so maybe it’s not worth spending all your time stressing about it. But I feel like I’ve changed my “change the world itself” life plan to a “change the world one child at a time” life view.
М. Agh. This is completely not about Russia. Also it is 2:10 in the morning and I am still typing this. I am going to not be happy when the alarm on my phone goes into its shrilly, peppy alarm ring tomorrow (today) morning.
Н. Now it is Thursday morning. And I am running out of time to write this. Soon (actually like right now), I have to leave to go to the university so that I can use the internet and then go teach English and then go to basketball practice and then come home and eat dinner and do my homework (write the final 3 pages of my 20 pg. politics paper!).
О. There’s lots of other important things to write about:
-I went to another Loko game. It was awesome, as usual. We won 4-2. And came back from 2-1 losing margin entering the 3rd period.
-If you are wondering how to say a gay person came out of the closet in Russian, you just say выйти из шкафа which translates directly as to walk out of the closet. This is brilliant.
-I’m leaving Yaroslavl on Dec. 17, but then Susanna and I are coming back for 2 days on our way to Piter. But still this is amazingly depressing. And also worrisome because somehow I have to get the multiple like billion pound suitcases to Moscow so that they can stay in my friend’s house there until I return at the end of January to fly to New York. Except I don’t want to have to pay like 3,000 roubles to take a cab to Moscow. But the train would be like extremely atrocious with the suitcases. So I think I am just going to throw everything away, leave it all in Russia. I’m sort of kidding. But I’m sort of not.
Things That Would Not Be Thrown Away:
-hockey skates and gloves
-souvenirs I have bought for people
-my awesome fur hooded winter coat
-possibly 3 pairs of pants and some sweaters
-laptop
-my boots
-the rest could really just be thrown away
П. Ahhhh, now I am late leaving the apartment.
Kitty…
С Днём Рождения!!!
Happy Birthday!!!
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Monday, November 26, 2007
Flat Stanley and Paper Napkins
I thought I lost Flat Stanley today. It would have been a catastrophe.
You may ask who/what is Flat Stanley. And I will answer you. Apparently there is a popular children’s series of books about a character named Flat Stanley who goes on all sorts of adventures around the world. He is flat, as in two dimesional. I am not sure if this is critical to the plot line of the stories. So American children read the Flat Stanley books and then they draw their own “Flat Stanley’s” on pieces of paper and send them on adventures. Like they would give the Flat Stanley to a truck driver and the truck driver would take pictures of Flat Stanley at various locations in the U.S. on his truck route and send the pictures back to the kids. Or they just send the Flat Stanley to relatives living in different spots across the U.S. And the relatives would take pictures of him and send the pictures back to the children. So I received Flat Stanley in an envelope from my mother approximately 2 weeks ago. This Flat Stanley belonged to a family friend, Jessie, who is in 2nd grade in Missoula. So I was instructed to take pictures of Flat Stanley in Russia and send them back to my mom and she would get them to Jessie. Later I was informed that Jessie’s entire class was talking about how Flat Stanley was in Russia.
I’m not big on the whole picture taking thing to begin with. Especially in Russia, where they might put you in jail for taking a picture. But knowing that the hopes of an entire 2nd grade class rested on my shoulders, I decided to suck it up and take Flat Stanley for a photo shoot on the banks of the Volga. So I did that and I sent the pictures off to my mother. Then I thought, I can probably get a picture of Flat Stanley by an onion-dome church without being arrested. So today on my various errands (Margarita thought I was at the library for 5 hours. I was not at the library for one moment.), I stopped by the church. Immediately I noticed two police cars. Churches, however, are one of the things you actually can fairly fearlessly take pictures of. So I pulled out the camera and then I couldn’t find Flat Stanley! He was not stuck in my planner where he was supposed to be. So I just took a picture of myself and the church and returned home. I was sort of relieved. I had begun to worry that the police men were really bored and would try to question me as to why I was taking a picture of this piece of paper with the church in the background. My Russian is not bad. It’s not especially good either. Even if I was completely fluent, the policemen would never have understood my explanation that Flat Stanley is a character from an American book who travels around the world and you are supposed to take pictures of him in different places and send the pictures back to the elementary school kids.
This is the sort of thing that captives people in the U.S. and everybody gets excited about finding the coolest place to take a picture of Flat Stanley. There is no way any Russian would ever understand this concept. Perhaps, they would. But I really don’t think they would. Mostly there would just be scorn at how worry free and trivial minded the Americans are. So I was sort of relieved that I had forgotten Flat Stanley at home and avoided any sort of atrocious conversation with the Russian police. After all, the churches always look better when they are lit up at night, so I figured I could just return tomorrow evening and take a picture when the church would be lit up. Then I got home and I still couldn’t find Flat Stanley. Panic began to occur. The Volga pictures were good. But Flat Stanley really needed to be photographed next to an onion-dome church before his tour of Russia could be done.
So I was freaking out about how I had lost/thrown away the piece of paper that Flat Stanley was drawn on. How the whole second grade class would be betrayed and heartbroken. Then I figured I could probably just draw another one and never tell anyone I had lost the original one. After all, it’s not important what Flat Stanley actually looks like, it’s just important what he’s standing next to in the picture. But then I found him stuck inside of my phonetics book. Thank goodness.
So tomorrow evening I shall take a photo of Flat Stanley next to the lit up церковь ильи пророка (Elijah the Prophet) and send those off to my mother as well.
My mom suggested I take a picture of Flat Stanley on the marshrutka. This is one of the most ridiculous proposals ever (sorry mom) and I refuse to suffer the humiliation of taking a picture of a piece of paper sitting next to me on the marshrutka.
Also, Laurel! Get excited about the fact that Flat Stanley is being sent to Paris! It has been requested that after his tour of Yaroslavl, he be sent on for some photos in Paris before being returned home to Missoula. Susanna, I’m not sure why Irkutsk didn’t make the cut. Sorry.
Other Things Unrelated to Flat Stanley:
I sort of went souvenir shopping today. As I have discussed earlier, souvenir shopping is a difficult task to embark upon for several reasons. I have no idea what anybody would want from Russia. However, whatever I purchase is required to be interesting, Russian, light (very-light), compact, easily packable, un-breakable, and cheap. It is sort of hard to satisfy all of these requirements in one gift. However, I came up with the brilliant idea of paper napkins from макдоналдс. These satisfy essentially all of the above requirement. Except that I think people would be underwhelmed when I return from Russia and proudly give them each a single макдоналдс paper napkin from the макдоналдс in Yaroslavl. So I scrapped that idea. But that is still my backup plan.
Kurt, I bought you the most awesome gift ever today. It is not a napkin from макдоналдс. I don’t think you actually read my blog. But hopefully Aiko will read this and tell you. It is awesome. And if you don’t think it is awesome, then I will just have to keep it for myself. You only have to wait ‘til February to receive it.
For a really long time I wondered what they called hair conditioner in Russia. I was smart enough to not go to a store and ask for кондитионер (conditioner) because then they would think I was requesting an air conditioner. Anyways I went to this small grocery store by our house to buy a bottle of shampoo and even though you get to pick out yourself the stuff, it was still stressful because the saleswomen were staring at me, so I just picked fast and left. And then I returned home and with the help of my trusty English-Russian dictionary which is now held together both with duct tape and black hockey tape realized that I had in fact purchased conditioner. I don’t remember the full word but it is long and starts with an “o”. So then I thought I would just pretend that the conditioner was shampoo and just use it. Except this doesn’t work because now my hair just constantly looks like a grease pot, even after I “wash/conditioner” it. So I went to another store today and actually bought shampoo. Good story. I know.
I can no longer pretend that this blog entry is a productive use of my time.
You may ask who/what is Flat Stanley. And I will answer you. Apparently there is a popular children’s series of books about a character named Flat Stanley who goes on all sorts of adventures around the world. He is flat, as in two dimesional. I am not sure if this is critical to the plot line of the stories. So American children read the Flat Stanley books and then they draw their own “Flat Stanley’s” on pieces of paper and send them on adventures. Like they would give the Flat Stanley to a truck driver and the truck driver would take pictures of Flat Stanley at various locations in the U.S. on his truck route and send the pictures back to the kids. Or they just send the Flat Stanley to relatives living in different spots across the U.S. And the relatives would take pictures of him and send the pictures back to the children. So I received Flat Stanley in an envelope from my mother approximately 2 weeks ago. This Flat Stanley belonged to a family friend, Jessie, who is in 2nd grade in Missoula. So I was instructed to take pictures of Flat Stanley in Russia and send them back to my mom and she would get them to Jessie. Later I was informed that Jessie’s entire class was talking about how Flat Stanley was in Russia.
I’m not big on the whole picture taking thing to begin with. Especially in Russia, where they might put you in jail for taking a picture. But knowing that the hopes of an entire 2nd grade class rested on my shoulders, I decided to suck it up and take Flat Stanley for a photo shoot on the banks of the Volga. So I did that and I sent the pictures off to my mother. Then I thought, I can probably get a picture of Flat Stanley by an onion-dome church without being arrested. So today on my various errands (Margarita thought I was at the library for 5 hours. I was not at the library for one moment.), I stopped by the church. Immediately I noticed two police cars. Churches, however, are one of the things you actually can fairly fearlessly take pictures of. So I pulled out the camera and then I couldn’t find Flat Stanley! He was not stuck in my planner where he was supposed to be. So I just took a picture of myself and the church and returned home. I was sort of relieved. I had begun to worry that the police men were really bored and would try to question me as to why I was taking a picture of this piece of paper with the church in the background. My Russian is not bad. It’s not especially good either. Even if I was completely fluent, the policemen would never have understood my explanation that Flat Stanley is a character from an American book who travels around the world and you are supposed to take pictures of him in different places and send the pictures back to the elementary school kids.
This is the sort of thing that captives people in the U.S. and everybody gets excited about finding the coolest place to take a picture of Flat Stanley. There is no way any Russian would ever understand this concept. Perhaps, they would. But I really don’t think they would. Mostly there would just be scorn at how worry free and trivial minded the Americans are. So I was sort of relieved that I had forgotten Flat Stanley at home and avoided any sort of atrocious conversation with the Russian police. After all, the churches always look better when they are lit up at night, so I figured I could just return tomorrow evening and take a picture when the church would be lit up. Then I got home and I still couldn’t find Flat Stanley. Panic began to occur. The Volga pictures were good. But Flat Stanley really needed to be photographed next to an onion-dome church before his tour of Russia could be done.
So I was freaking out about how I had lost/thrown away the piece of paper that Flat Stanley was drawn on. How the whole second grade class would be betrayed and heartbroken. Then I figured I could probably just draw another one and never tell anyone I had lost the original one. After all, it’s not important what Flat Stanley actually looks like, it’s just important what he’s standing next to in the picture. But then I found him stuck inside of my phonetics book. Thank goodness.
So tomorrow evening I shall take a photo of Flat Stanley next to the lit up церковь ильи пророка (Elijah the Prophet) and send those off to my mother as well.
My mom suggested I take a picture of Flat Stanley on the marshrutka. This is one of the most ridiculous proposals ever (sorry mom) and I refuse to suffer the humiliation of taking a picture of a piece of paper sitting next to me on the marshrutka.
Also, Laurel! Get excited about the fact that Flat Stanley is being sent to Paris! It has been requested that after his tour of Yaroslavl, he be sent on for some photos in Paris before being returned home to Missoula. Susanna, I’m not sure why Irkutsk didn’t make the cut. Sorry.
Other Things Unrelated to Flat Stanley:
I sort of went souvenir shopping today. As I have discussed earlier, souvenir shopping is a difficult task to embark upon for several reasons. I have no idea what anybody would want from Russia. However, whatever I purchase is required to be interesting, Russian, light (very-light), compact, easily packable, un-breakable, and cheap. It is sort of hard to satisfy all of these requirements in one gift. However, I came up with the brilliant idea of paper napkins from макдоналдс. These satisfy essentially all of the above requirement. Except that I think people would be underwhelmed when I return from Russia and proudly give them each a single макдоналдс paper napkin from the макдоналдс in Yaroslavl. So I scrapped that idea. But that is still my backup plan.
Kurt, I bought you the most awesome gift ever today. It is not a napkin from макдоналдс. I don’t think you actually read my blog. But hopefully Aiko will read this and tell you. It is awesome. And if you don’t think it is awesome, then I will just have to keep it for myself. You only have to wait ‘til February to receive it.
For a really long time I wondered what they called hair conditioner in Russia. I was smart enough to not go to a store and ask for кондитионер (conditioner) because then they would think I was requesting an air conditioner. Anyways I went to this small grocery store by our house to buy a bottle of shampoo and even though you get to pick out yourself the stuff, it was still stressful because the saleswomen were staring at me, so I just picked fast and left. And then I returned home and with the help of my trusty English-Russian dictionary which is now held together both with duct tape and black hockey tape realized that I had in fact purchased conditioner. I don’t remember the full word but it is long and starts with an “o”. So then I thought I would just pretend that the conditioner was shampoo and just use it. Except this doesn’t work because now my hair just constantly looks like a grease pot, even after I “wash/conditioner” it. So I went to another store today and actually bought shampoo. Good story. I know.
I can no longer pretend that this blog entry is a productive use of my time.
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Happy Thanksgiving
Happy Thanksgiving! My e-mail won't work. At first this was sort of annoying. Now it is really annoying. Then I thought that maybe it would be fixed soon because it is almost 8 a.m. in Vermont, and Middlebury will not be functional without e-mail. In fact they are probably sending out e-mail messages about how they apologize for the inconvenience that e-mail is not working and it will be fixed soon. But then I realized that it is Thanksgiving and so Ron probably doesn't care that e-mail isn't working. But I am still annoyed. So I don't know how long I will sit here waiting for it to start working.
Other things:
Yesterday I bought a winter coat. It was so much of a less tramatic process than I imagined it was going to be. The buying of the coat was undramatic. However after I bought the coat I was supposed to go over to a friend's house and then go to the theater. And I am pretty sure that the friend would have disapproved of how much money I had spent on the coat (which wasn't that much money for me, but would be a LOT of money for her), plus I didn't really want to have the huge plastic bag with me at the theater. So I solved this problem by stuffing the brand new coat into my shoulder bag/purse thing. This was ridiculous. So then I just had this huge overflowing bag which I tried to calmly carry about and ignore the fact that it was essentially exploding and hope that nobody said anything about it. But it all worked out and the friend didn't ask about it. And then we went to the theatre. And I understood very little of the play, but since it was a comedy it meant that at some points the entire audience of Russians were laughing. This was sort of unsettling. But in a very comforting way. It is good to know that Russians can laugh in large groups. I am aware that Russians can laugh with each other in small company, but it was good when the whole audience was laughing. Also on the marshrutka to the theatre, I both got a lucky ticket and lost one of my mittens. (I have to buy new mittens today before Margarita yells at me). So I guess that I was going to have very bad luck and my lucky ticket minimized the damage to only losing a mitten.
Other items of note: Artic Slaughter is no longer in existence as a band. There is some new band, but I forgot what they are called. Sorry, Kit.
E-mail is still not working. This is annoying. Also Margarita is supposed to be at a birthday party all day meaning whenever I decide to go home, the apartment should be empty, which would be AMAZING. But I am worried that she will be there and I will not get to appreciate my rare moments of being alone. This is strange. I am alone almost all the time. But never actually "alone, alone." Like she is always lurking somewhere about the apartment and sometimes you just need to know that no one else is around. Even if she is gone, she has promised to return exactly at 7 p.m. I am not sure why this is necessary. There is no way I am going to eat dinner tonight. I made this clear to her. That the whole point is to eat a large Thanksgiving meal at like 2 p.m. and then not eat for several hours/days. Except I bet she makes me eat dinner anyways. Ugh.
Other things:
Yesterday I bought a winter coat. It was so much of a less tramatic process than I imagined it was going to be. The buying of the coat was undramatic. However after I bought the coat I was supposed to go over to a friend's house and then go to the theater. And I am pretty sure that the friend would have disapproved of how much money I had spent on the coat (which wasn't that much money for me, but would be a LOT of money for her), plus I didn't really want to have the huge plastic bag with me at the theater. So I solved this problem by stuffing the brand new coat into my shoulder bag/purse thing. This was ridiculous. So then I just had this huge overflowing bag which I tried to calmly carry about and ignore the fact that it was essentially exploding and hope that nobody said anything about it. But it all worked out and the friend didn't ask about it. And then we went to the theatre. And I understood very little of the play, but since it was a comedy it meant that at some points the entire audience of Russians were laughing. This was sort of unsettling. But in a very comforting way. It is good to know that Russians can laugh in large groups. I am aware that Russians can laugh with each other in small company, but it was good when the whole audience was laughing. Also on the marshrutka to the theatre, I both got a lucky ticket and lost one of my mittens. (I have to buy new mittens today before Margarita yells at me). So I guess that I was going to have very bad luck and my lucky ticket minimized the damage to only losing a mitten.
Other items of note: Artic Slaughter is no longer in existence as a band. There is some new band, but I forgot what they are called. Sorry, Kit.
E-mail is still not working. This is annoying. Also Margarita is supposed to be at a birthday party all day meaning whenever I decide to go home, the apartment should be empty, which would be AMAZING. But I am worried that she will be there and I will not get to appreciate my rare moments of being alone. This is strange. I am alone almost all the time. But never actually "alone, alone." Like she is always lurking somewhere about the apartment and sometimes you just need to know that no one else is around. Even if she is gone, she has promised to return exactly at 7 p.m. I am not sure why this is necessary. There is no way I am going to eat dinner tonight. I made this clear to her. That the whole point is to eat a large Thanksgiving meal at like 2 p.m. and then not eat for several hours/days. Except I bet she makes me eat dinner anyways. Ugh.
АВАРИЯ!!!
Tuesday was a day/evening to remember. I have my mainstream class on Tuesday evenings from 8:05 to 9:20 although it usually ends around 9:00. Then I make the 20 minute walk home, usually with my friend Vacilica from class, and then do my homework. Some weeks my mom calls around 11 p.m. my time (1 p.m. her time).
Yesterday as I left for evening class, Margarita was worried that my mom was going to call too early when I was still at class. So she started freaking out about this (*side note: She also freaked out at me last night when I was eating dinner. I had a complete plate covered with potatoes which I was slowly (not really that slowly, but by Margarita’s concerned glares, too slowly for her liking) eating. Then I put down my fork so that I could take a drink of tea. And immediately, like immediately, she asks, “Is something wrong with the potatoes. Are they okay? What’s wrong?” Essentially, I got yelled at for taking a beverage break. I wasn’t even taking a beverage break for a silly beverage such as water, I was drinking the country’s favorite drink/meal, tea. Whatever, I’m over it. Next time I shall keep fork in hand and keep eating the potatoes simultaneously while drinking the tea. Moving on.*)
So then she asked me what she should say if my mother called. I tried to reassure her that my mom would not call 3 hours ahead of our scheduled time. But Margarita was still really worked up about this. Then she suddenly said “Ring late” in English as she had decided this was how she could explain to my mother to “Call back later.” Except she has a very hard to understand accent. I really hope my accent when I speak Russian is more understandable than her accent when she speaks English. Usually when she starts speaking English (which is rare) I don’t understand what is going on. And so I stare at her. And then she repeats the phrase and finally my brain registers that I need to switch to English understanding mode. However, I think that due to earlier referenced “staring period” she thinks I actually don’t know English. Her vocabulary includes such words/phrases as
-butterfly (most Russians know this word. They also know submarine because of The Beatles “Yellow Submarine.” I don’t know if Margarita knows “submarine.”
-“please sit down”
-“good bye”
-“6 o’clock”
-“ring late”
Anyways, I’m getting off topic. So I left for class. And I got to class. And I listened to the lecture. And understood some of it. Then I walked Vacilica to her bus stop. By this time it was 9:30. So I had an hour to get home. If I had walked it probably would have taken me 30 minutes. But I sort of wanted to get some work done before my mom was supposed to call at 10:30. So I got on the 91 marshrutka bus which was supposed to be a 10 minute ride and then a 5 minute walk. And it was what I would call sort of full. There were no seats left (there’s probably seats for 20 people) and maybe like 5 people were already standing in the center aisle way. So I got on and paid my fare and then we kept stopping and collecting more and more and more and more and more and more people. Suddenly I found myself in the middle of the standing people in the middle of the marshrutka far away from either the rear or front doors. So then I tried to move so that I could make my way through the crowd to get to the door to get off at my stop. But no matter how much I tried to move, no one else seemed to notice or to make any room for me to get to the door. So I just stood there.
Sometimes, I get tired of being brave in Russia. Like I probably could have just shoved my way through all these people and made it to the door and pushed my way off at my stop. But I was tired and like I said, I didn’t feel like being brave. So I just stood there squished in the crowd. So then we passed my stop. But I was having a cultural experience of being squished by like 8 billion other people on the marshrutka. I don’t know how to explain how full it was. My best explanation is that at one point, I was having a hard time finding an empty place on the floor to put my foot without stepping on someone else’s foot. If you understand that the space your feet take up on the floor is much less than the space the rest of your body takes up, you will begin to get an idea for how full this marshrutka was. Then we kept collecting more people. The door on the marsrutka has to fold in when it opens. The rear door couldn’t fold in because of the mass of people to open for much of the ride. At any given stop, 5 people would get off (they could only use the front door at this point), 1 of the people would actually be getting off at the stop, then the 4 extra people would climb back in, plus like 3 new passengers.
And then finally we got to almost the end of the route and people started to get off. When I got off there were still lots of people standing in the aisle, but there was at least room to move around and make it to the door. So I got off and I walked to the other side of the street and waited for another 91 coming back into the city to come along. And it was 10:10 by then. So I had given up on getting home in time for the 10:30 phone call from mom. Then a marshrutka never came along. So I stood there for a long time. At this point I began to get sort of worried about my current situation. Not so much that I would miss the phone call. But the whole me being a 30 minute drive away from home at 10:15 at night when the public transportation is starting to shut down. Then Margarita called me on my cell phone. “ABBY! WHERE are you?” I had spent quite a lot of time trying to think of a good excuse for me being like an hour later than I usually am on Tuesday’s after evening class. So I told her that I had to talk to my professor but I was on my way home. I didn’t think she would understand my excuse that the marshrutka was too crowded to get off and plus, I was having my cultural moment of being in a huge crowd of Russian people. Also, no matter how squished we became no one would ever not get on the marshrutka and no one would ever make eye contact or say anything regardless of the fact that any one person was guaranteed to be physically molesting at least like 4 other people. Ah yes, Russia!
So then having successfully lied to Margarita. I continued to wait for the marshrutka. At this point I decided to start walking around the road back towards the center of Yaroslavl. But it would have been impossible for me to actually walk back. As well as the fact that it would have taken like an hour and a half, it is along huge scary large highways. And then no marshrutka’s came. But a sketchy car did pull up next to me. So I kept walking. Then I saw a marshrutka and I took of running across the icy/snowy road/field. But then it turned because it wasn’t going where I needed it to be going. Then I continued walking. There was a high level of panic occurring at this point. A level of panic that is not being adequately conveyed through my writing.
Then I saw another marshrutka. And so I began running again except this time it was actually a real field of snow without a path in it. So I was in my heel boot things running across a snow field at 10:30 p.m. in the Bragino (aka far from my house) part of Yaroslavl. Then my phone rang. And I knew it was going to be Margarita yelling at me again. Except it was Vacilica calling to try to figure out when we could meet again. This was ridiculous. My phone never rings. No one ever calls me. Sometimes I get text messages. So not only was my phone ringing. My phone was ringing during as earlier described sprint across snow field etc…Then I lied to her and said that my mom was supposed to be calling (which was true I just left out the whole part of me being lost in Bragino far from the phone on which my mother would be calling on). So I said I would call her back. Then I slowed to a walk as the marshrutka I had been chasing sped far away from me. Then I got to this other “stop” where people were actually waiting which was a good sign. As the other various places where I had stood waiting had all been without people. Also upon my approach to said kiosk and bus/tram/marshrutka stop there was a large patch of ice on which I sort of did some sort of figure skating stately and majestic twirl except it was neither stately nor majestic.
Then I started to imagine the conversation that was likely occurring between my mother and Margarita.
Margarita: Allyo?
Mother: Abby?
Margarita: Abby no.
Mother: Pajalsta.
Margarita: Ring late.
Mother: Pajalsta? Spasibo? Pajalsta? Spasibo? Abby?
Margarita: No Abby. Ring Late.
Mother: Abby? Pajalsta?
Then I stood at this stop for a long time. Lots of marshrutkas would drive by, except they were empty and done for the day and going to wherever marshrutkas go when they are not being driven. I wonder where they do go? Does every marshrutka driver actually own his marshrutka? Because they all have their very individual curtains and other various decorations. And park it at their apartment? Or is there a huge compound somewhere in Yaroslavl where there are like a billion marshrutka’s, because if there is, I want to go there. I don’t know why I am so intrigued by marshrutkas. They’re just so awesome. I feel like they capture so many different aspects of the whole Russia experience. If I was going to write a thesis, I would write it about marshrutka’s in Russia. This is a если бы construction because 1. I am not going to write a thesis and 2. Middlebury would not allow me to write a thesis about how awesome marshrutkas are. I just typed marshrutka like 6 billion times.
Kept waiting for a marshrutka. Kept waiting for Margarita to call me again and yell at me that she had just had a conversation with my mother. And WHERE WAS I? But she didn’t call. Thank goodness.
Then I asked this woman how to get back to Gigant (my stop) and we waited together for a marshrutka and then got on and then I got off at Gigant. Also this was one of the “small” marshrutka’s which I had never before had reason to ride. These are actually yellow vans, with seats for maybe 10 or 12 people. I think these are the only kind of marshrutkas they have in Irkutsk. So then I got to ride on of the small marshrutka’s which was good because it was on my list of “mandatory things to do before I can leave.” Then I ran through the back alleyways/ courtyard area’s of the various apartment buildings to get home. Courtyard is not the right word. These areas are neither classy nor majestic. Mainly they are dark and sketchy. So then I was sprinting through the back alleyways and it was 11:00 at night and I was very late and there was so much adrenaline. And it was pretty cool. Then I got home. And launched into this over exaggerated monologue about what a кошмар (nightmare/catastrophe/etc…) the whole evening had been. Then I told Margarita that after speaking with my professor I got on a marshrutka but I didn’t read the number correctly and so it didn’t go where I thought it would go. So then I had to get off and wait and take another “correct” one back. Which is sort of true. Except I did actually know the number of the one I got on, there was just the whole “too many people” problem. Then my mom called at 11:30 having actually not called at 10:30, so it all worked out. But oh man, last night was just so ridiculous. I hope that this blog entry conveyed at least a part of how ridiculous the whole evening was.
Yesterday as I left for evening class, Margarita was worried that my mom was going to call too early when I was still at class. So she started freaking out about this (*side note: She also freaked out at me last night when I was eating dinner. I had a complete plate covered with potatoes which I was slowly (not really that slowly, but by Margarita’s concerned glares, too slowly for her liking) eating. Then I put down my fork so that I could take a drink of tea. And immediately, like immediately, she asks, “Is something wrong with the potatoes. Are they okay? What’s wrong?” Essentially, I got yelled at for taking a beverage break. I wasn’t even taking a beverage break for a silly beverage such as water, I was drinking the country’s favorite drink/meal, tea. Whatever, I’m over it. Next time I shall keep fork in hand and keep eating the potatoes simultaneously while drinking the tea. Moving on.*)
So then she asked me what she should say if my mother called. I tried to reassure her that my mom would not call 3 hours ahead of our scheduled time. But Margarita was still really worked up about this. Then she suddenly said “Ring late” in English as she had decided this was how she could explain to my mother to “Call back later.” Except she has a very hard to understand accent. I really hope my accent when I speak Russian is more understandable than her accent when she speaks English. Usually when she starts speaking English (which is rare) I don’t understand what is going on. And so I stare at her. And then she repeats the phrase and finally my brain registers that I need to switch to English understanding mode. However, I think that due to earlier referenced “staring period” she thinks I actually don’t know English. Her vocabulary includes such words/phrases as
-butterfly (most Russians know this word. They also know submarine because of The Beatles “Yellow Submarine.” I don’t know if Margarita knows “submarine.”
-“please sit down”
-“good bye”
-“6 o’clock”
-“ring late”
Anyways, I’m getting off topic. So I left for class. And I got to class. And I listened to the lecture. And understood some of it. Then I walked Vacilica to her bus stop. By this time it was 9:30. So I had an hour to get home. If I had walked it probably would have taken me 30 minutes. But I sort of wanted to get some work done before my mom was supposed to call at 10:30. So I got on the 91 marshrutka bus which was supposed to be a 10 minute ride and then a 5 minute walk. And it was what I would call sort of full. There were no seats left (there’s probably seats for 20 people) and maybe like 5 people were already standing in the center aisle way. So I got on and paid my fare and then we kept stopping and collecting more and more and more and more and more and more people. Suddenly I found myself in the middle of the standing people in the middle of the marshrutka far away from either the rear or front doors. So then I tried to move so that I could make my way through the crowd to get to the door to get off at my stop. But no matter how much I tried to move, no one else seemed to notice or to make any room for me to get to the door. So I just stood there.
Sometimes, I get tired of being brave in Russia. Like I probably could have just shoved my way through all these people and made it to the door and pushed my way off at my stop. But I was tired and like I said, I didn’t feel like being brave. So I just stood there squished in the crowd. So then we passed my stop. But I was having a cultural experience of being squished by like 8 billion other people on the marshrutka. I don’t know how to explain how full it was. My best explanation is that at one point, I was having a hard time finding an empty place on the floor to put my foot without stepping on someone else’s foot. If you understand that the space your feet take up on the floor is much less than the space the rest of your body takes up, you will begin to get an idea for how full this marshrutka was. Then we kept collecting more people. The door on the marsrutka has to fold in when it opens. The rear door couldn’t fold in because of the mass of people to open for much of the ride. At any given stop, 5 people would get off (they could only use the front door at this point), 1 of the people would actually be getting off at the stop, then the 4 extra people would climb back in, plus like 3 new passengers.
And then finally we got to almost the end of the route and people started to get off. When I got off there were still lots of people standing in the aisle, but there was at least room to move around and make it to the door. So I got off and I walked to the other side of the street and waited for another 91 coming back into the city to come along. And it was 10:10 by then. So I had given up on getting home in time for the 10:30 phone call from mom. Then a marshrutka never came along. So I stood there for a long time. At this point I began to get sort of worried about my current situation. Not so much that I would miss the phone call. But the whole me being a 30 minute drive away from home at 10:15 at night when the public transportation is starting to shut down. Then Margarita called me on my cell phone. “ABBY! WHERE are you?” I had spent quite a lot of time trying to think of a good excuse for me being like an hour later than I usually am on Tuesday’s after evening class. So I told her that I had to talk to my professor but I was on my way home. I didn’t think she would understand my excuse that the marshrutka was too crowded to get off and plus, I was having my cultural moment of being in a huge crowd of Russian people. Also, no matter how squished we became no one would ever not get on the marshrutka and no one would ever make eye contact or say anything regardless of the fact that any one person was guaranteed to be physically molesting at least like 4 other people. Ah yes, Russia!
So then having successfully lied to Margarita. I continued to wait for the marshrutka. At this point I decided to start walking around the road back towards the center of Yaroslavl. But it would have been impossible for me to actually walk back. As well as the fact that it would have taken like an hour and a half, it is along huge scary large highways. And then no marshrutka’s came. But a sketchy car did pull up next to me. So I kept walking. Then I saw a marshrutka and I took of running across the icy/snowy road/field. But then it turned because it wasn’t going where I needed it to be going. Then I continued walking. There was a high level of panic occurring at this point. A level of panic that is not being adequately conveyed through my writing.
Then I saw another marshrutka. And so I began running again except this time it was actually a real field of snow without a path in it. So I was in my heel boot things running across a snow field at 10:30 p.m. in the Bragino (aka far from my house) part of Yaroslavl. Then my phone rang. And I knew it was going to be Margarita yelling at me again. Except it was Vacilica calling to try to figure out when we could meet again. This was ridiculous. My phone never rings. No one ever calls me. Sometimes I get text messages. So not only was my phone ringing. My phone was ringing during as earlier described sprint across snow field etc…Then I lied to her and said that my mom was supposed to be calling (which was true I just left out the whole part of me being lost in Bragino far from the phone on which my mother would be calling on). So I said I would call her back. Then I slowed to a walk as the marshrutka I had been chasing sped far away from me. Then I got to this other “stop” where people were actually waiting which was a good sign. As the other various places where I had stood waiting had all been without people. Also upon my approach to said kiosk and bus/tram/marshrutka stop there was a large patch of ice on which I sort of did some sort of figure skating stately and majestic twirl except it was neither stately nor majestic.
Then I started to imagine the conversation that was likely occurring between my mother and Margarita.
Margarita: Allyo?
Mother: Abby?
Margarita: Abby no.
Mother: Pajalsta.
Margarita: Ring late.
Mother: Pajalsta? Spasibo? Pajalsta? Spasibo? Abby?
Margarita: No Abby. Ring Late.
Mother: Abby? Pajalsta?
Then I stood at this stop for a long time. Lots of marshrutkas would drive by, except they were empty and done for the day and going to wherever marshrutkas go when they are not being driven. I wonder where they do go? Does every marshrutka driver actually own his marshrutka? Because they all have their very individual curtains and other various decorations. And park it at their apartment? Or is there a huge compound somewhere in Yaroslavl where there are like a billion marshrutka’s, because if there is, I want to go there. I don’t know why I am so intrigued by marshrutkas. They’re just so awesome. I feel like they capture so many different aspects of the whole Russia experience. If I was going to write a thesis, I would write it about marshrutka’s in Russia. This is a если бы construction because 1. I am not going to write a thesis and 2. Middlebury would not allow me to write a thesis about how awesome marshrutkas are. I just typed marshrutka like 6 billion times.
Kept waiting for a marshrutka. Kept waiting for Margarita to call me again and yell at me that she had just had a conversation with my mother. And WHERE WAS I? But she didn’t call. Thank goodness.
Then I asked this woman how to get back to Gigant (my stop) and we waited together for a marshrutka and then got on and then I got off at Gigant. Also this was one of the “small” marshrutka’s which I had never before had reason to ride. These are actually yellow vans, with seats for maybe 10 or 12 people. I think these are the only kind of marshrutkas they have in Irkutsk. So then I got to ride on of the small marshrutka’s which was good because it was on my list of “mandatory things to do before I can leave.” Then I ran through the back alleyways/ courtyard area’s of the various apartment buildings to get home. Courtyard is not the right word. These areas are neither classy nor majestic. Mainly they are dark and sketchy. So then I was sprinting through the back alleyways and it was 11:00 at night and I was very late and there was so much adrenaline. And it was pretty cool. Then I got home. And launched into this over exaggerated monologue about what a кошмар (nightmare/catastrophe/etc…) the whole evening had been. Then I told Margarita that after speaking with my professor I got on a marshrutka but I didn’t read the number correctly and so it didn’t go where I thought it would go. So then I had to get off and wait and take another “correct” one back. Which is sort of true. Except I did actually know the number of the one I got on, there was just the whole “too many people” problem. Then my mom called at 11:30 having actually not called at 10:30, so it all worked out. But oh man, last night was just so ridiculous. I hope that this blog entry conveyed at least a part of how ridiculous the whole evening was.
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Вы замужем?
The Highlights
A
Margarita yelled at me for being a hooligan last night. At the time, it sort of pissed me off, but now I just think it’s funny. She gave me a new clean towel which I am then supposed to go and hang on its hook in the bathroom. But when I went to go hang it up, the old towel was still there. So I didn’t know what to do. So I just put the towel back in my room. And then when I was organizing my room, I laid the towel on the floor near the door, so that I would remember to put it in the bathroom. And then Margarita walked by and saw the towel on the ground and yelled at me for being a hooligan and putting the clean towel on the ground. And then I just sputtered (is that an english word? maybe I mean stuttered. Or stammered.) and tried to make up some excuse that I had accidentally dropped it there. Except she didn’t appreciate this excuse. Whenever I do something wrong, she always says something like “See what a hooligan you are when I am not here to keep you in line.” At least that’s what I think she says. This had earlier applied to my inability to finish all of the food I was left for meals when she was not home to supervise my eating, but has now apparently spread to my delinquent towel dropping activities. And my sub par laundry skills. Apparently I don’t wash out the soap well enough from the clothes or wring out enough of the water before I hang them up to dry.
Б
Wednesday was a big day. I decided that I wanted to go to the локомотив hockey game, since they only have 6 more home games while I will be in Yaroslavl, and I hadn’t been since early September. My first obstacle was purchasing a ticket. So I walked to the building where I thought hockey people had said I could buy a ticket. Except the front of the whole building was blocked off for a remont. I realize that’s not an English word. But remont is so much cooler than remodel. Plus I feel like remodel sort of carries the meaning that it might look new and clean and classy after the remodel. But I feel like there are much lower (and more realistic) expectations of a remont. Anyways, then I found these signs instructing to the secret back entrance. At this point, I successfully entered the building. Which had turned out to be more challenging than I expected. And I was actually fairly content with my entering of the building that I still would have been happy if my ticket buying had failed. This will probably not make sense. Russia, or at least me being in Russia, just sort of lowers my expectations like that. Somehow, I think professors at Midd would be less than impressed if I decided that entering the building was really adequate enough and there was no reason to actually go to class or do any of the work. Then, I asked one of the guard women where I could buy tickets for the game. And apparently I had to exit the building and go to another secret back/side entrance. Once again, this was a successful venture and I purchased the ticket.
В
Got on the marshrytka (This word is impossible to type. I always try to type it with the Russian letters even when the keyboard is in English.) And I received a lucky ticket! I also recently realized that the Russians call them счастливый билет (which I guess translates to “happy ticket.”) I am not sure if I am actually receiving an abnormal number of lucky tickets or I just didn’t get one for a long time when I got here. I now have 5 of them. I guess this is enough, that I could sacrifice one so that I could eat it, and see if my luck got really good. But I sort of like my collection of them. Then there was a traffic jam for a long time and then me and half of the marshrytka got off at the stop nearest to the rink. And I bought a program and found my seat and it was awesome. Somehow my actual excitement at doing all of this is really not being translated into my writing. So I will skip ahead to the important parts. They played the Russian national anthem, which is still a very strange and surreal moment. I switched seats with this guy so that he could sit by his wife. Then the wife befriended me. I think that the wife was probably younger than I am. Then there was phone numbers exchanged and popcorn shared and a fateful question asking if I could ice skate. And I said yes. And then the wife said she was very bad. And then I decided to say that I was bad too. Somehow it just didn’t seem right to say, “well, actually I play hockey here at this rink every week.” And then the wife, I think I will now refer to her as Anya, which is her actual name, suggested that we should go ice-skating together. I am unsure if this will ever happen. Mainly because I sort of doubt she will ever call me. But it she does call me, it could be a catastrophe. I guess I will just hope that the fact that I will skate in rented ice skates which will probably be figure skates which will probably be very dull and too small for me, will help to disguise my ice skating aptitude (is that a legit use of that word?). Also, since we were sitting on the first level right behind the net, sometimes an off-shot would hit the glass right where we were sitting. And Anya would scream and I would not really know what to do. Also she kept asking her other friend why there were only 4 of our players on the ice or why the goalie was sprinting towards the bench (on a delayed penalty call) or etc…and I would just dumbly pretend I didn’t understand. But I think I was still paying too much attention to the game and not doing enough giggling and screaming when the puck would approach. Then the husband returned from some undisclosed location (where he had consumed lots of alcohol) and the game ended and we left.
Г
Also the title of this entry is one of the questions Anya asked me. “Are you married?” I had never been asked this question before. So that was good. Then the drunk husband tried to speak English to me. His vocabulary consisted of “My name is Alexander” and something about “Little Lily in Italy.” I think this was some poem he had once memorized. He was astonished that I had no idea what he was talking about. Then they walked me to the marshrytka stop and the girls said “Good bye” in English and the husband yelled “Good morning.” Like I said, limited vocabulary.
Д
The deadline to change my mind and stay the year passed yesterday. So now there has been some calm acceptance of my unfortunate and impending departure. I woke up on Tuesday and there was a lot of snow on the ground and it was a winter wonder land. And I filled out the form to stay the year. But then I calmed down and stuck to my guns (can I say that?)
Е
I am in the process of writing a 20+ pg. paper about Edinaya Pocciya (United Russia). It is a fairly atrocious process that often ends in me playing solitaire or free cell on my computer for hours on end. Mostly it’s hard because although the party is “Putin’s party” and has nearly a 60% popularity rating, with the next popular being the Communists with like 15%, I haven’t met anyone who actually really likes Edinaya Rocciya. Most people just like Putin. But then some people hate Putin. And so I don’t know what I am supposed to think. I guess I’m supposed to not like Putin. But I actually do. Also our politics professor today said that she thinks Putin is going to have a third term. Which would be allowed (sort of) because you are only allowed 2 terms in a row, so if he gave up the position for awhile then he could almost immediately reclaim it. Actually he could pretty much do whatever he wants. **Are American presidents only allowed 2 terms total or 2 terms in a row? Because I thought they were allowed 2 terms total, but other people think it is 2 terms in a row? (I’m sort of embarrassed that I’m half a poly sci major and don’t know this). And then the Russians in this conversation kept talking about how Bill Clinton could become president again. Russians really like Bill Clinton. Also, our politics professor is obsessed with Hillary. And how Hillary will be president and how good old Bill used to be president. Etc…**
Ж (Aiko’s favorite letter!)
Also the president of France (is his title president?) was in Moscow today hanging out with Putin and Zybkov. So the entire country of France being dysfunctional as a result of the strikes doesn’t seem to be affecting him that much. He’s just chilling with Putin.
З
I never go to museums in Yaroslavl. Actually, I went to one of the exhibits in the Kremlin area one time. But my Russian friend Vacilica refused to pay the entrance fee at the gate because she wanted to go pay at the other gate where there were pictures of the exhibits to help us choose. So then the guard woman yelled at us and threatened to call the police. So I am scared to go back there. But there are other museums I should be going to. But whenever I say I will go to a museum, I always would much rather just wander about the city or ride random marshrytkas until they kick all of us off at the end of the route, and then wander more, and then hope that somehow I will be able to make it back into the city. So maybe I will go to a museum this weekend, but I probably won’t. Oh well.
И (this whole labeling the points in Cyrillic was a good idea until I got to where I don’t know the order of the alphabet and now I have to go look in the dictionary to find the next letter. Perhaps I should memorize the alphabet this weekend).
Facebook has some special function where you can enter your maiden name so that it will not be displayed on your profile (because that would disrespect your husband???) but your old friends can search for you with your maiden name and still find you. This is ridiculous. If you are married. You are not allowed on facebook. Period. End of discussion. No exceptions. I know it is a difficult choice. Marriage or the ability to poke people. But you can’t have the best of both worlds. Also, facebook is out of control with it’s like 10 trillion different options/functions/junk.
К
I would like to clarify that Artic Slaughter as mentioned in one of my previous posts as being one of Kit’s New Year’s Resolutions (make Artic Slaughter more popular). Artic Slaughter is a band, and not the actual slaughtering of walruses or penguins. Because that would be atrocious and I would not allow that to be one of his New Year’s Resolutions. Also, I think by mentioning Artic Slaughter on this blog, I have done more for their popularity than Kit ever did. Kit, do they still exist? BURN!
Л
The drunk men on the marshrytka this morning approved of my hockey playing-ness.
-Man 1: A girl playing hockey. Нормально. Which I guess translates as “normal” but I feel like it has more of a “good” meaning.
-Man 2: Yes. Нормально.
(5 minutes pass)
-Man 2: How do you know she plays hockey? Maybe she plays basketball or football.
-Man 1: She has a hockey stick.
-Man 2: Oh.
Also I decided that I am going to abandon my use of the word “soccer” because the English game “football” has essentially 0 contact between the foot and the ball, and the game which is all about the foot and the ball we call soccer. So now I will call soccer, football and I will call football, American football.
A
Margarita yelled at me for being a hooligan last night. At the time, it sort of pissed me off, but now I just think it’s funny. She gave me a new clean towel which I am then supposed to go and hang on its hook in the bathroom. But when I went to go hang it up, the old towel was still there. So I didn’t know what to do. So I just put the towel back in my room. And then when I was organizing my room, I laid the towel on the floor near the door, so that I would remember to put it in the bathroom. And then Margarita walked by and saw the towel on the ground and yelled at me for being a hooligan and putting the clean towel on the ground. And then I just sputtered (is that an english word? maybe I mean stuttered. Or stammered.) and tried to make up some excuse that I had accidentally dropped it there. Except she didn’t appreciate this excuse. Whenever I do something wrong, she always says something like “See what a hooligan you are when I am not here to keep you in line.” At least that’s what I think she says. This had earlier applied to my inability to finish all of the food I was left for meals when she was not home to supervise my eating, but has now apparently spread to my delinquent towel dropping activities. And my sub par laundry skills. Apparently I don’t wash out the soap well enough from the clothes or wring out enough of the water before I hang them up to dry.
Б
Wednesday was a big day. I decided that I wanted to go to the локомотив hockey game, since they only have 6 more home games while I will be in Yaroslavl, and I hadn’t been since early September. My first obstacle was purchasing a ticket. So I walked to the building where I thought hockey people had said I could buy a ticket. Except the front of the whole building was blocked off for a remont. I realize that’s not an English word. But remont is so much cooler than remodel. Plus I feel like remodel sort of carries the meaning that it might look new and clean and classy after the remodel. But I feel like there are much lower (and more realistic) expectations of a remont. Anyways, then I found these signs instructing to the secret back entrance. At this point, I successfully entered the building. Which had turned out to be more challenging than I expected. And I was actually fairly content with my entering of the building that I still would have been happy if my ticket buying had failed. This will probably not make sense. Russia, or at least me being in Russia, just sort of lowers my expectations like that. Somehow, I think professors at Midd would be less than impressed if I decided that entering the building was really adequate enough and there was no reason to actually go to class or do any of the work. Then, I asked one of the guard women where I could buy tickets for the game. And apparently I had to exit the building and go to another secret back/side entrance. Once again, this was a successful venture and I purchased the ticket.
В
Got on the marshrytka (This word is impossible to type. I always try to type it with the Russian letters even when the keyboard is in English.) And I received a lucky ticket! I also recently realized that the Russians call them счастливый билет (which I guess translates to “happy ticket.”) I am not sure if I am actually receiving an abnormal number of lucky tickets or I just didn’t get one for a long time when I got here. I now have 5 of them. I guess this is enough, that I could sacrifice one so that I could eat it, and see if my luck got really good. But I sort of like my collection of them. Then there was a traffic jam for a long time and then me and half of the marshrytka got off at the stop nearest to the rink. And I bought a program and found my seat and it was awesome. Somehow my actual excitement at doing all of this is really not being translated into my writing. So I will skip ahead to the important parts. They played the Russian national anthem, which is still a very strange and surreal moment. I switched seats with this guy so that he could sit by his wife. Then the wife befriended me. I think that the wife was probably younger than I am. Then there was phone numbers exchanged and popcorn shared and a fateful question asking if I could ice skate. And I said yes. And then the wife said she was very bad. And then I decided to say that I was bad too. Somehow it just didn’t seem right to say, “well, actually I play hockey here at this rink every week.” And then the wife, I think I will now refer to her as Anya, which is her actual name, suggested that we should go ice-skating together. I am unsure if this will ever happen. Mainly because I sort of doubt she will ever call me. But it she does call me, it could be a catastrophe. I guess I will just hope that the fact that I will skate in rented ice skates which will probably be figure skates which will probably be very dull and too small for me, will help to disguise my ice skating aptitude (is that a legit use of that word?). Also, since we were sitting on the first level right behind the net, sometimes an off-shot would hit the glass right where we were sitting. And Anya would scream and I would not really know what to do. Also she kept asking her other friend why there were only 4 of our players on the ice or why the goalie was sprinting towards the bench (on a delayed penalty call) or etc…and I would just dumbly pretend I didn’t understand. But I think I was still paying too much attention to the game and not doing enough giggling and screaming when the puck would approach. Then the husband returned from some undisclosed location (where he had consumed lots of alcohol) and the game ended and we left.
Г
Also the title of this entry is one of the questions Anya asked me. “Are you married?” I had never been asked this question before. So that was good. Then the drunk husband tried to speak English to me. His vocabulary consisted of “My name is Alexander” and something about “Little Lily in Italy.” I think this was some poem he had once memorized. He was astonished that I had no idea what he was talking about. Then they walked me to the marshrytka stop and the girls said “Good bye” in English and the husband yelled “Good morning.” Like I said, limited vocabulary.
Д
The deadline to change my mind and stay the year passed yesterday. So now there has been some calm acceptance of my unfortunate and impending departure. I woke up on Tuesday and there was a lot of snow on the ground and it was a winter wonder land. And I filled out the form to stay the year. But then I calmed down and stuck to my guns (can I say that?)
Е
I am in the process of writing a 20+ pg. paper about Edinaya Pocciya (United Russia). It is a fairly atrocious process that often ends in me playing solitaire or free cell on my computer for hours on end. Mostly it’s hard because although the party is “Putin’s party” and has nearly a 60% popularity rating, with the next popular being the Communists with like 15%, I haven’t met anyone who actually really likes Edinaya Rocciya. Most people just like Putin. But then some people hate Putin. And so I don’t know what I am supposed to think. I guess I’m supposed to not like Putin. But I actually do. Also our politics professor today said that she thinks Putin is going to have a third term. Which would be allowed (sort of) because you are only allowed 2 terms in a row, so if he gave up the position for awhile then he could almost immediately reclaim it. Actually he could pretty much do whatever he wants. **Are American presidents only allowed 2 terms total or 2 terms in a row? Because I thought they were allowed 2 terms total, but other people think it is 2 terms in a row? (I’m sort of embarrassed that I’m half a poly sci major and don’t know this). And then the Russians in this conversation kept talking about how Bill Clinton could become president again. Russians really like Bill Clinton. Also, our politics professor is obsessed with Hillary. And how Hillary will be president and how good old Bill used to be president. Etc…**
Ж (Aiko’s favorite letter!)
Also the president of France (is his title president?) was in Moscow today hanging out with Putin and Zybkov. So the entire country of France being dysfunctional as a result of the strikes doesn’t seem to be affecting him that much. He’s just chilling with Putin.
З
I never go to museums in Yaroslavl. Actually, I went to one of the exhibits in the Kremlin area one time. But my Russian friend Vacilica refused to pay the entrance fee at the gate because she wanted to go pay at the other gate where there were pictures of the exhibits to help us choose. So then the guard woman yelled at us and threatened to call the police. So I am scared to go back there. But there are other museums I should be going to. But whenever I say I will go to a museum, I always would much rather just wander about the city or ride random marshrytkas until they kick all of us off at the end of the route, and then wander more, and then hope that somehow I will be able to make it back into the city. So maybe I will go to a museum this weekend, but I probably won’t. Oh well.
И (this whole labeling the points in Cyrillic was a good idea until I got to where I don’t know the order of the alphabet and now I have to go look in the dictionary to find the next letter. Perhaps I should memorize the alphabet this weekend).
Facebook has some special function where you can enter your maiden name so that it will not be displayed on your profile (because that would disrespect your husband???) but your old friends can search for you with your maiden name and still find you. This is ridiculous. If you are married. You are not allowed on facebook. Period. End of discussion. No exceptions. I know it is a difficult choice. Marriage or the ability to poke people. But you can’t have the best of both worlds. Also, facebook is out of control with it’s like 10 trillion different options/functions/junk.
К
I would like to clarify that Artic Slaughter as mentioned in one of my previous posts as being one of Kit’s New Year’s Resolutions (make Artic Slaughter more popular). Artic Slaughter is a band, and not the actual slaughtering of walruses or penguins. Because that would be atrocious and I would not allow that to be one of his New Year’s Resolutions. Also, I think by mentioning Artic Slaughter on this blog, I have done more for their popularity than Kit ever did. Kit, do they still exist? BURN!
Л
The drunk men on the marshrytka this morning approved of my hockey playing-ness.
-Man 1: A girl playing hockey. Нормально. Which I guess translates as “normal” but I feel like it has more of a “good” meaning.
-Man 2: Yes. Нормально.
(5 minutes pass)
-Man 2: How do you know she plays hockey? Maybe she plays basketball or football.
-Man 1: She has a hockey stick.
-Man 2: Oh.
Also I decided that I am going to abandon my use of the word “soccer” because the English game “football” has essentially 0 contact between the foot and the ball, and the game which is all about the foot and the ball we call soccer. So now I will call soccer, football and I will call football, American football.
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