Longest entry ever

So, I haven’t updated since I’ve been here so I guess I’ll go ahead and do that…

We flew into Ulan-Ude because there was a bunch of fog in Irkutsk. I didn’t really understand anything, and thought we had landed in Irkutsk and was about to have a panic attack (not really). So we ended up hanging out in the Ulan-Ude airport for awhile before heading off to Irkutsk again. Massive problems with communication-many variations of what we thought happened:

Elisabeth had been sleeping, and thought that they were kidding, or that we had boarded the wrong plane.

I thought we were in Irkutsk.

Eddie thought the plane was making a stop, the way buses or trains do.

Sonya understood everything that was going on. When she asked me if I understood, I again thought she was making some sort of reference to Irkutsk.

But we finally got to Irkutsk (at like 1 PM after having not slept in forever), met our host families, went to our respective apartments, unpacked a bit, and then met at Elisabeth’s apartment for some more orientation. I should add, again, that I had gone like 4 days with about 10 hours of sleep. Actually more like 3 days, but that’s not important. We talked about all of the various dangers of Irkutsk (Eddie likening the city to a video game, where we have to get through various levels without dying), and other important safety matters. Various ways to die include:

Trafficking drugs and being stuck in a Russian prison;

Having the police set you up to commit a crime, getting your fingerprints on incriminating evidence, and then being stuck in a Russian prison;

Stepping on a loose manhole cover and boiling to death;

Being killed by falling ice;

Gypsy cabs;

And other such things.

What we failed to talk about, however, were the Marshrutkas, which I’m fairly sure can and will kill somebody. The way they work is that there are about 150 different cab numbers, with various numbers of cabs for each number. They technically have a route with a number of stops, but the route there and the route back can be different-for example, I can go from my stop to the university on marshrutka 64, but coming back from the university I can’t because it doesn’t stop there and goes a different way. Also, sometimes the drivers won’t stop at certain stops if they don’t feel like it, so if you want them to stop you have to scream the name of your stop, while three rows of Russians turn around and judge you because of your American accent. The roads also have either no lines or just a white dotted line in the middle, which I’m pretty sure is more of a suggestion than an actual road divider. While you would think that only 2 cars can fit on each side of the road, the marshrutkas manage to weave in and out of cars in ways you think impossible. The other day I was coming home from somewhere, and my marshrutka pulled out to pass someone-but there was minimal room between the next car and a giant truck in front of that car. There was also a parked car ahead. I was pretty sure we were going to die, and then magically we appeared in front of the car and behind the truck in a space that must have just magically opened up.

Our classes are okay, except that our professor for Baikal Studies talks really quickly and we can’t understand what he’s saying. Then he asks us a question and there are very uncomfortable and long pauses before he says “okay…” and moves on. We finally resorted to playing a guessing game about animals at the end of the last class. We also don’t have a textbook or anything, so it’s not like I can use that to reference what he said in class. My notes consist of a word followed by a question mark, or a number and then a “what does that mean?” or a date, and then a “what happened then?” Pretty sad. We did, however, learn how to say “a safe place for Nerpi”. We still need to find mainstream classes too, which is going to be a nightmare. I’m pretty sure that starts tomorrow.

Other than all of that, Irkutsk is a pretty standard city. I actually like it a lot. There are way more American products here than I thought, which is interesting. There’s a Subway and lots of English everywhere. It’s sort of like America in the 90s. Enrique Inglesias is really popular, I’ve heard the songs “Coco Jumbo”, “Total Eclipse of the Heart”, and “Crazy” on the radio, “Flipper” was on TV, high speed internet is a relatively new phenomenon, etc. Actually, it’s not really like America at all. Everywhere you go you have to ask for what you want instead of bringing it up to the cashier, because it’s all behind locked glass cabinets. I am deathly afraid of the police and medical care. What else? I don’t even know.

We went to Baikal on Friday, which was fantastic. We first went to this outdoor museum with all kinds of ancient Buryatii/Mongolian (I think?) architecture. It was really very interesting and cool. At least, I think it was interesting, except we didn’t completely understand our tour guide. This situation worsened as she continued to demand that we ask questions, and when we failed to, scolded us for either sleeping, being bored, not caring, or being sad. Our anxieties about asking questions included:

Not knowing if it was a stupid question.

Asking something that she had already talked about (possibly multiple times).

Not knowing how to translate what we wanted to ask.

Simply not having any good questions.

It was a fairly uncomfortable situation. The 2^nd museum was also interesting, and thankfully there were a few other Russians on the tour, so they could ask questions and we could pretend we understood. It was a museum about Baikal, full of maps and containers of fish and stuffed animals. They also had aquariums. I thought all of the fish were really very interesting, but the highlight was definitely the Nerpi (plural of Nerpa). It was sad to see them in the aquarium, but they look like fun and interesting animals. I actually bought a small nerpa keychain in Listvianka (the village we were visiting), mainly because it was the only way I could get change for a 500 ruble bill. I like it very much though.

Our next stop was the banya, which was even better than I remembered the banya being the first time I went. For those of you who don’t know, the banya is like a sauna house. You get in your bathing suits (or just without clothes, which is I guess what you’re normally supposed to do, but we don’t) and enter this wooden house. It’s very hot. And smells very good. Then there’s a smaller room which is about 500 degrees, with a bunch of very hot rocks. You pour water on the hot rocks and steam yourself nearly to death. I actually thought I would stop breathing and was going to die, but I didn’t run out because I remembered that last time, when I thought I was dying, everything ended up being okay. The first two minutes are the worst. Anyway, so you sit in there and steam yourself and sweat about as much in 2 minutes as you would on a hour long run and complain about how hot it is, then run out and jump into Baikal (or the snow, if it’s winter, or any other body of water). You then repeat the process about 60,000 times until your banya time is up. During this whole time we also drank tea (which is basically what happens when you do anything in Russia). I’ve heard that this whole experience is better with vodka. AH! I almost forgot to add the best part. When you’re in the steaming sauna room, one person lays down face first on a towel, and you beat each other with birch branches. It’s supposed to make all of the bad things in your body come out through your skin. I don’t really know how to convey how excellent this whole process is. I think we will be returning on Sunday.

We then ate at a restaurant with a waitress who hated us because there were 10 of us and we didn’t speak Russian. They offered us the English menu and we declined, but then proceeded to ask her about 15,000 questions as to what something actually was.

On Sunday I gathered mushrooms in the woods at my host family’s dacha. It reminded me of the fairy tale “Masha and the Mushrooms” (Tolstoy, I believe), where Masha spills all of her mushrooms on the railroad tracks while a train was approaching. Her sister is yelling “leave the mushrooms!” but all she can hear is “the mushrooms!” and is frantically gathering as the train approaches. I don’t actually remember whether or not she gets run over, but seeing as it’s a Russian fairy tale, I’m pretty sure she does.

Still trying to find a fitness center. This is frustrating because, this being Russia, they have all kinds of rules and stipulations. First off, it’s pretty expensive. Second, they have all these strange rules after you’ve bought your monthly pass. At one gym, the monthly pass is good for 10 hours (this includes showering). Who works out for 10 hours a month? (Or, actually, less than that, because you have to shower too). Others you can only go 2-3 times per week, and no more than an hour each time (again, includes showering). And they really don’t like it if you leave without showering. I find this problematic, because they also don’t like it when you go anywhere with wet hair. Also when it’s 20 below, you probably don’t want to go anywhere with wet hair. I need to either invest in a hair dryer, wait at the fitness center while my hair dries, leave without showering, or find some other solution. This is quite the problem, and both I and the problem are rapidly increasing in size as my host family continues to feed me more than I can manage, and then yells at me and tells me how poorly I eat when I don’t eat enough to feed a family of twelve.

Eddie and I were in a CD store the other day and raving about how cheap the prices were. Eddie bought a Beatles album for like eight dollars (in the states its like 30), and I bought 3 DVDs for less than $5 each (Vinnie-Pooh (or the Russian Winnie the Pooh), Delai Nogy (Happy Feet), and Wallace and Gromit…In Russian). This is fantastic. Then we were talking and Eddie was like “This is great! Um…but do you think they’re pirated?” and I was like “No, of course not! This is an actual CD and DVD store! They can’t sell pirated discs here!” This, of course, was a stupid comment, because a) this is Russia and b) I should have been tipped off by the one DVD with 14 Disney movies on it. I then returned home and showed my host sisters, who then proceeded to tell me that Russia too has expensive DVDs, they just happen to be legal, where as the ones I bought are not. So now my dilemma is: Do I continue to buy DVDs and CDs knowing that they’ve been pirated? And moreover, if I do, will I be able to take them out of the country with me? Will I be arrested? If not, I plan on buying like 18,000 DVDs and CDs. Oh, I also should have known they were pirated because what kind of company puts of a “Best of Meg Ryan” DVD with like 6 of her films?

Other interesting notes:

Russians have a way of taking a very healthy concept-such as a salad-and making it disgustingly unhealthy. For example, most of the time when you order a salad, you read the ingredients and think “yes! This is great! All kinds of fruits, vegetables, etc…” but then you realize that all of these fruits and vegetables are actually drenched in mayonnaise, which they failed to mention on the menu. Why? Because it’s a natural assumption that all salads are drenched in mayonnaise. For example, while the “Moscow Salad” sounded quite good, it actually…isn’t. My host mother knows that I don’t love mayonnaise, so she made a salad and said “it’s okay, I used butter instead of mayonnaise.” Butter? On salad? It’s fine.