Adventures in Siberia

Blog. In America.

2008-01-12T13:47:00.000-08:00

So I got on my plane to Germany. All was fine. I was sitting in an aisle with an empty seat next to me, so that was nice. There was this guy in the window seat who appeared to speak fluent Russian, and I’m pretty sure he was Russian, but I’m not sure if he had some sort of weird accent or speech impediment or what but EVERY time he tried to talk to me I couldn’t understand anything he was saying. It was sort of painful and awkward.

Changed planes in Frankfurt. Ended up sitting in an aisle again (thank God) next to some Polish guy and his son who sort of spoke Russian but not really. So every time he tried to say something to me, I had no idea what he was saying. Especially because I think half the time he wasn’t even trying to speak Russian, just straight up Polish (which sounded like a really weird mix between German and Russian). Also part of the time he’d be looking at me but talking to his son so that threw me off, like, a LOT, and found myself unsure of what to do. He also took up much of my personal space. But other than that he was okay. I helped him fill out all of the forms he had to fill out since he didn’t speak any English whatsoever. Which involved a lot of Russian, smiling, and pointing to places on passports. Then the girl next to his son was asking me how to declare cigarettes, as if it was really important, which made me unsure of just how many cigarettes they were bringing in.

They ran out of chicken for dinner, so that was sad. The stewardesses were also not so nice. But that’s okay. I listened to one of their, like, 20 radio stations. Eating/drinking took up a lot of time. About an hour into the 8 hour flight I seriously thought I was going to die. I was like…I’m just not going to make it. But it was fine. And then about halfway through they played a John Cusack movie (new?) called Martian Child. It was sort of weird. But they had a lot of funny lines, and then everyone looked at me funny. For example:
Martian Child: I eat Lucky Charms.
John Cusack:……I’m a big believer in a substantial breakfast.
Maybe you had to be there.

Then like 20 mins before our flight got in I actually thought I was going to die. I had gotten up and walked around and stretched and whatnot, but my legs were SO itchy. It was awful. Also our plane seemed to be doing, like, figure 8s around Long Island instead of just, like, going straight to JFK and landing (we could see this on the screen with the map, they show what the plane’s doing, etc). I was like…what is this ridiculous aircraft doing.

So then I was SO grateful that I was a US citizen because the line to check passport for internationals was atrocious. I have no idea how many international flights had just come in, but it looked like…a million. There were SO many people. I stood in the US line for, like, 7 mins. Also when they took my customs declaration they didn’t even LOOK at it. I could have said that I had Mad Cow diseased meat and they WOULDN’T EVEN HAVE KNOWN.

Then I was stressed because I didn’t know how to get from JFK to LaGuardia. Some guy told me that the shuttle bus stopped running at 8, and I should ask about other shuttles at the ground transportation desk. Then this woman said there were no other shuttles available and sent me back to where the bus was. Then the first guy told me that I’d have to take a taxi. Then I took a taxi to my hotel. Also, the hallways were ramped. It was the strangest thing I’d ever seen. I almost took a picture but was too tired. But it didn’t smell like smoke and EVERYONE SMILED. I like, didn’t know what to do. I’m so used to just scowling and not looking at anyone that I must have looked so strange when I tried to half smile and half just keep going. It meant I had really shifty eyes and…well, a half smile. So then, even though I had been up for 20 hours, I was too wired and overwhelmed to do anything. And I was sort of surprised at how not surprised I was about everything. I didn’t really fazed or shocked or anything, just sort of sad. So I ordered take-out Chinese. Which was not very good. And then went to sleep.

Next morning got up at 5:45. Had an 8:30 flight. Got on the 6:30 shuttle to LaGuardia. Arrived at, like, 6:40. Was completely checked in and sitting at my gate at 7. WHY DO I ALWAYS DO THIS?! I was even selected for secondary security screening, or whatever it is. And still an hour and a half early. I DON’T NEED TO BE THERE THAT EARLY.

Also they had coverage of the New Hampshire primaries going like 24 HOURS A DAY. THAT IS NOT NECESSARY. IT ALREADY HAPPENED. I swear, if I had to hear anything again I probably would have attacked someone. GOD I had forgotten what US politics was like. Then there was this clip of Hilary Clinton saying something to the extent of “I came here, heard what you had to say, and found my voice.” BARF. OH GOD. I seriously thought I was going to hurl my Lufthansa-given hot dog pretzel all over the floor.

I should, in fact, be appreciating all of this as evidence that we actually HAVE a democracy. For a second I thought “they wouldn’t do this in Russia…” but then I realized that Putin already “selected” his successor and there’s really no democratic element to it at all.

So I was irritated by that. I was also on a flight consisting entirely of businessmen. AND THEY WERE SO IRRITATING. All in their little suits (actually I like suits), playing with their blackberries, talking about the economy. This never used to bother me before. They were all…like…TALKING to each other, and to other people. See, I’m so used to people just sitting by themselves and not talking to anyone else because Russians don’t really do that.

Also, television in the US? Completely ridiculous. I really shouldn’t be saying this, since Russian television consists of squeezing yourself through wall cut outs in order to avoid being shoved into a pool, or avoiding bulls while dressed in banana suits on bicycles, but still. At any rate, I’m sort of appalled by it all. But I never really liked any of the really trashy shows. It’s all just sort of…strange. Cold Case Files is still fantastic. As is Everybody Loves Raymond. And right now I’m watching a documentary about a New York gang. It is COMPLETELY disgusting. Anyway, not important.

So I guess I should, like, wrap this blog up. As it’s my last entry. Reflect on my semester. I don’t really know what to say. Russia is so hard to sum up. However, I’m hooked and can’t wait to go back. I’d like to work/do grad school in Moscow after graduation. Or maybe even this summer. At any rate, earlier in November I was debating about how much I wanted to speak Russian, given that it would mean I wouldn’t be speaking English. In order to become REALLY good at Russian, I’d have to speak less English (this makes sense). I want to do that. For awhile I was so frustrated that I just felt I’d be okay with being so-so and do other things. But now I really want to come back. And keep going. And become really good. And live in Russia for awhile.

Well, anyway. That’s where I want to go from here.

Last. Blog. of. Russia.

2008-01-08T18:38:00.003-08:00

omg let's not even talk about it.

Good thing I left the hostel so early, as I’m now sitting here at the airport completely checked in almost 3 hours before my plane leaves. Everyone always says you have to leave early and it does NOT TAKE THAT LONG. Maybe if it’s a day when a lot of people fly. I don’t think Tuesday is that day.

So where did I leave off? I think I talked about Yaroslavl. Anyway after that I came back and had dinner at the Starlite Diner. AKA the BEST PLACE EVER. Like, I love Moscow, and would really like to live there, and the Starlite Diner just clinched it for me. Like, it’s JUST LIKE AMERICA. EXCEPT IN RUSSIA. And even BETTER. Like, if I’m ever in Moscow again, and just like…I could really go for some America right now…ALL I have to do is go there. It’s all like 50s diner decorated with the stuff on the wall and the barstools and everything. And they were playing AMERICAN CHRISTMAS CAROLS. AHHHHHH. I WAS SO HAPPY. Bing Crosby was playing. I could not have been happier. And then they had all the regular diner stuff (except their 24 hr breakfast menu left something to be desired, but that’s okay) AND something called….a Bailey’s Milkshake. BEST THING EVER. Would we have something like that in America? I don’t know but it was pretty fantastic. OMG. I was having one of those moments where I was just like “I’m……so……happy….right….now…..”

Came back and hung around. Think I talked about this already, actually, right? Maybe? Maybe not. Well the next day I got up and went to the History of Moscow Museum, which was moderately interesting. Then I went to the Modern History Museum (of Russia) which was INSANE. This was, like, the Tretyakov Gallery of Modern Russian History. They had like 36 rooms (they call them “zals”). The Tretyakov Gallery has like 61. The History of Moscow Museum had three. I was there for over 3 hours and could have been there for WAY longer. So then I had planned to go to the WW2 museum, but at that point I only would have had an hour there and was pretty worn out. So I decided to go to the Tretyakov Gallery instead. Both a good and a bad choice.

So I got there and had another “Russian Museum moment”, where I went into what looked like a main entrance of the building, which was actually just a private, separate exhibition. But I went to buy a ticket, looked at the Russian student price, got exact change, and gave the woman my money and my student ID at the same time. So she opened it and looked at it for a LONG time and I was like, oh man, she’s going to tell me I’m a foreigner and have to pay three times as much, and this is going to be a nightmare because then I’m going to argue with her in my broken Russian and it was so cold out so my mouth doesn’t form words and there are people behind me and ahhhh. And then she looks up and smiles and says “you get in free today! It’s the first Sunday of the month!” and hands me a ticket. Oh man. How amazing was that.

So I looked through the, like, 3 room exhibition they had and then tried to find the entrance to the actual Tretyakov Gallery. Then I was very intimidated because police officers were blocking the entrance. So I sort of paced around in the cold until they left. Then I saw a sign that said it was open until 7:30, not 6:30 like I thought! It was only 4:45 at that point so I had sooo much time. Then I went in to buy a ticket. And stood in line for like 10 mins. And I showed the woman my ID and she looked at it for a long long time. And told me I had to pay 100 rubles. And I told her no, the price on the wall said 50 rubles. And she said no, because I was clearly an exchange student. And I said no, I’m a student at a Russian university and they told me I pay the same price that Russian students pay. And we had this argument and it was awkward because there were all these people waiting in line and I almost walked away and then realized that I really wanted to see the Tretyakov Gallery and so I just paid the 100 rubles. The worst thing is that I should have been in free here too.

So then I stood in the most awful coat check line ever. I was seriously standing there for 30 or 35 mins. It’s not that hard. You take the person’s coat and then give them a number. But everyone was waiting SO long and these woman were just old and sitting around. Seriously. Only half of them were working. One girl tried to give this woman her coat and the woman was like “No, I only give coats back, I don’t take them.” Like, seriously?! There are about 6,000 people here and none of them are trying to RETRIEVE their coat. Then they were talking to each other a lot and not working. These were seriously the most obnoxious 60 year old women I had ever seen. So then the girl in front of me had no little hook thing on her coat and needed a hanger. And they had a box of them right near the counter for that purpose. So the girl asks if she could use a hanger and the woman says “I don’t do that” and then takes my coat. Like, seriously? You can’t grab a hanger from behind you and hang it up? I would have yelled at her had I wanted to use my broken Russian. But I felt it was better for her to stand up for herself as she actually has a grasp on the language. Being a native, and all.

So at that point I was pretty bitter and hating the Tretyakov Gallery before I had even seen any of the art. But then as I went on it was really cool. And since there were SO many people there and it’s pretty big, you can sort of breeze through without anyone looking at you like you’re a heathen for not examining and appreciating every single piece of artwork there. Which is excellent, because my art attention span is pretty low. So I looked at the stuff I liked, and just sort of glanced at the stuff I didn’t. It was really cool to actually see a lot of those paintings that I had seen so often, but never up close. For example, the painting of Ivan the Terrible and his Son, or the portrait of Dostoevsky. I dunno. Just cool stuff like that. I actually really like art galleries because nothing is ever the same in a book. It all looks really cool up close but in a book I’m just sort of like….eh.

So then I went to the gift shop and got a puzzle of one of the paintings. Put it together later that night. Found it very enjoyable. Denis sort of laughed at me but that’s okay. I also got a poster of bears. They weren’t dancing, just climbing, but I thought it was really necessary.

So then I sought out the Moo-Moo café on Tverskaya Boulevard. And this is a HUGE road. And a lot of time they don’t have crosswalks or lights, you just have to find a metro station or an underground crossing. So I was on the wrong side of the street when I found it but COULD NOT FIND an underground crosswalk. Like, it was right there, so close, and yet so far. But eventually I found one. I suppose it made the Moo-Moo quest that much more exciting.

So I had my regular borsht, tea, and a little bread thing. Okay, so here’s something to rant about (related, promise). In Russia they ALWAYS want you to have small bills. Like, anywhere in America, even if you paid with a 50 it wouldn’t be that big of a deal. If you’re paying for anything under, like, 700 rubles with a 1000 ruble bill here, it’s like a catastrophe (that’s like paying for something that’s almost $30 with a $40 bill…NOT a big deal). So my little meal was 120 rubles (almost $5). All I had was a 500 ruble bill (like a $20 bill). This is fine. I figured anything over 100 rubles is fine with a 500 ruble bill. In America ANYTHING would be fine with a 20. Even though I always apologize if it’s something less than, like $5, but then all the service people always smile and tell me it’s fine and are so nice because it’s America and they understand capitalism and friendliness. Anyway, I digress. So I go to pay and the girl has, like, a mini fit. With lots of deep sighing and “don’t you have anything smaller?” And I tell her I don’t. And she just sits there. And I don’t do anything. And she’s like, “well, I can’t change that.” (as in, make change for it, give me change…how do you say that in English?). And I tell her that I don’t have anything else so she’s going to have to do something (you CAN’T tell me that in the entire Moo-Moo café they don’t have $15 in change. I just don’t believe it.) So she sat there and looked at me and did lots of sighing and finally took my 500 bill and gave me change. I KNEW SHE COULD. I KNEW IT WAS POSSIBLE. Then the little caramel she gave me with my receipt was smushed and I resented her for it.

So I ended up going to bed really late (but finished my puzzle!). Decided that I wanted my last day in Moscow to be sort of calm. So I almost went to a bunch of museums but decided that I didn’t have the energy, so I just wandered the city, which was quite nice. Especially Arbat. Did some souvenir shopping, found some that I really really liked. There are ridiculous people. Especially sketchy men at souvenir stands. There was this one guy from Georgia (the country, not the state). And this other Russian guy. Don’t want to go into it but I was just like…..eeeeelllghhhchchhh. Also I wanted to buy this particular martrushka doll from this guy. He told me it was 900 rubles. I said this was ridiculous and that the guy one stand over would sell me one just like it for 400 (which was actually not true, he had said 500). Then the seller told me that that may be true, but the painting on this doll was better (actually, that was true. But not 500 rubles better). So I just stood there as he kept lowering the price. And didn’t say anything. And when he got to 450, and sort of paused longer than usual, I said okay. Haggling on Arbat is ridiculous. There was also this woman that I was buying a hat from…and she was like “it’s 1200 rubles. But we could probably go lower.” So then I asked if we could go lower and she says “sure, what do you want to pay?” Like, seriously?

Then I was in this store talking to these women who were asking me about studying in Russia. This one was really annoying, actually, I kept telling her that I was just looking and she kept showing me EVERYTHING. And then saying that she could give it to me for x rubles. And I kept telling her I was just looking. And she wouldn’t shut up. And I was like WOMAN LEAVE ME ALONE. I didn’t actually say that, but I wanted to. So later they were asking me about studying abroad and everything and sort of…not really talking down to me, but talking to me like I was way younger. And then they’re like “…so have you tried vodka?” and I’m like “Yea….” And they start laughing and looking surprised and doing the “Ух, ты!” that Russians so often do. And then asked me how old I was and looked very surprised when I said 20. Do I really look that young? I don’t think so. Someone in mom’s office also once told me I looked like I was, like, 15. I don’t believe them.

FOUND A BLINI PLACE ACROSS THE STREET FROM MY HOSTEL. When did that happen? Why did that not happen earlier? Then wanted to know how many meals I had left in Russia, and how many of them could take place there. I was sad that they didn’t have the “Teaspoon” restaurant in Moscow, like they do in St. Petersburg, but Teremok is even BETTER. Well, they have better blini, I think. “Teaspoon” has better tea. And maybe jam. But they don’t have banana-chocolate or wild berry blini. Oh man.

So then later I had dinner with Nolan and Betsy from language school. I had SO MUCH FUN. I hadn’t really ever talked to Betsy, but she was so cool. I had so much fun. Her friend was visiting too. Nolan made borsht, we had all kinds of Russian things (vinigrette (is that how you would transliterate it?), stewed cabbage, salad with mayonnaise (but VERY little, so I could sort of scrape it off and eat it), borsht.) Honey chili vodka which was VERY strange. Watched some excellent youtube videos which I can’t wait to show everyone at home. OMG. I had a great time. Even though I’m an idiot and got on the wrong metro line to get there, ending up at “Sokol” station instead of “Sokolniki” station. And was then like 45 mins late. But it all ended up okay.

Mitt Romney is on TV right now in this little airport café bar. I need to catch up on all of that once I’m back.

I am so sad I’m leaving. Got up this morning, took a shower, had some blini. Denis carried my gigantic suitcase down the stairs for me, which I am so grateful for, and was amazed he could actually do (he’s sort of skinny). Gave me a hug and told me to come back. I said I would when I need to find an apartment in Moscow (which Betsy told me is not possible to do unless I’m actually HERE. Finding one from America is not so…well, possible). Anyway, I am so sad. Like, SO sad. I hope I have this moment of clarity when I’m home, where I’m like “I NEED to go back” or “I’ll be okay here”. I’d like to get a job in Moscow after graduation. Or maybe grad school. Or maybe in Irkutsk. I guess we’ll see.

So now I only have 1 hour left until my flight. I’m really tired because I didn’t sleep enough. That’s probably better, though, because then I’ll sleep on the plane.

Customs was only a little more intense than it was coming over. As in, now we had to put our baggage through a little screener thing instead of just walking through. In other words, we went through security. Which is what you usually do. So customs didn’t really exist at all.

I’m off to find a wifi card so I can post this and download all kinds of Russian music from this site Nolan gave me. My next entry will probably be posted when I’m in America. THAT is weird. And it’ll probably be all about culture shock.

Also I remember when I came being like “this airport is sort of…..elllchhkik….” and now I’m like “this place is SO nice, what a GREAT airport!” I feel like JFK is going to feel like…the Winter Palace, or something. Sorry, that’s an awful analogy.

P.S. Allie-A chupa chup is a sucker. But I bought a GIGANTIC one. I can still eat it, but now it's just like pieces of candy instead of a giant sucker, which was much cooler.

Random, unimportant thoughts.

2008-01-06T12:39:00.000-08:00

I AM A HORRIBLE CHUPA CHUP CARETAKER. My chupa chup has cracked, as I decided it would be a good idea to drag it to Yaroslavl and bag in a пакет. This was a bad idea. It's now, in, like three pieces and is not full. AHHH MY GIGANTIC CHUPA CHUP IS LEFT IN PIECES. Much like my heart.

Also this happened a couple days ago, but is still important. Also I'm still working on the chupa chup, regardless of its incompleteness.

There was some really funny story I needed to relay but I've forgotten it already. Also I don't feel like going into the details of my day (as I always seem to do) so I'll do that later.

Didn't buy a phone card, since I'm going home in like two days. Figured I could call everyone once I'm there and don't need to do it from Russia.

I'm drinking tea and doing a jigsaw puzzle (of a painting found in the Tretyakov Gallery) instead of sleeping. Denis and (presumably) his girlfriend left to go do something Christmasy. I was thinking of going to church for Christmas eve but didn't have the energy. Or the head scarf. He gave me his cell number to call if needed. So now I feel like I should stay up in case anyone has some sort of crisis. Also this girlfriend thing is a major blow to our potential love affair.

JOKING.

Back in Moscow.

2008-01-05T10:45:00.000-08:00

There are people speaking German here. It's weird to hear. Anyway.

So last night I walked around to a bunch of different hotels and guess what? THEY WERE ALL FULL. How does that happen? So this woman was SO nice and found this dorm/hostel/thing place for me in the outskirts of Yaroslavl. So I got there at, like, 7, but this meant I couldn't do any more wandering because I was so far away. The room I was in was okay, except for the smell of cat pee. I couldn't figure out where it was coming from until I saw the disgusting, mangy looking cat sitting on the downstairs couch. Whatever, cat pee is ten times better than smoke. Also I opened the window so it was fine.

Went to the supermarket to buy a bottle of water and three juiceboxes. I need to start paying attention to which boxes I'm buying. See, at the time of purchase, I'm really only interested in the box. But when it comes time to drink, I'm interested in the straw as well. But I wasn't paying attention, so I didn't buy juiceboxes with straws. Only an idiot does this more than three times.

Came back, took a shower, enjoyed my straw-less juiceboxes. Watched Erin Brokovich (is that how you spell it?) Went to sleep. Woke up the next morning and got ready to go into town. So, the woman at the...um...sleeping place told me to get on the number 8 trolleybus. Okay, fine. So I'm standing at the stop and it's not stopping. Then I realize I'm at a marshrutka stop, not a bus stop. But then I notice I can take the 78 marshrutka, which is probably faster anyway. I get on. Like 10,000 other people get on. This is ridiculous. I can't move, I'm sweating SOOOO much, and there are thousands of people getting on every second. So when I finally saw a cafe I recognized I got off, figuring that meant I was close enough to where I needed to be. Wrong. I was, in fact, on the right street, but it seems as if Freedom Street in Yaroslavl is the longest street ever. I needed building number 10. I was at, like, building number 87. So I walked for a long time. And finally found it. Anyway I went to the Kremlin, which was...interesting. Went to the local history museum, where everyone was so nice and there was only ONE guard babushka who actually didn't follow me around all the time. Saw a bunch of churches and monuments. Walked along the Volga. Very nice indeed.

There's more I need to remember but...I guess that'll come later.

Dear Lonely Planet, you are not awesome.

2008-01-04T06:14:00.000-08:00

So I woke up Denis by calling him and asking him to open the door. Which he did. And was, again, SO nice. And said he tried to call me on my cell phone, except now I have a new number, etc. He might actually be the nicest person alive, you don't even know.

So he showed me my bed and I laid down and then was unable to sleep. Finally fell asleep at some point. Woke up after, like, 3 hours of sleep. Left Denis a note in what I hope was comprehensible Russian, paid for my 3 hours of sleep and went to the train station. I ended up leaving much later than I had planned, so was terrified I was going to miss my train. Especially since I had to change metro lines and somehow ended up on the green line instead of the red line. And OF COURSE I was sweating in the metro, because, that's the number one you DO in the metro. Second most commonly occurring metro activity is transportation. This should give you an idea of how much I sweat in the metro.

Made it on time. Got on my train. Slept. Woke up and arrived in Yaroslavl. Looked at this nice new edition map of Yaroslavl from Lonely Planet and set off to find my hotel (also, this whole "Natalie's Russian cell phone doesn't feel like calling anywhere in Russia except for Moscow and St. Petersburg" is getting REALLY annoying.) So I figured I'd do the same thing I did, like, the last four times I went to some city, which involves just going to the hotel and getting a room. Works every time. Except for SOME reason this map is weird and I ended up wandering around Yaroslavl for 2 hours. It's -17 degrees Celsius. And even though I asked for directions, it was still very very far until I found where I needed to be. And unfortunately, I walked around the part of Yaroslavl that DOESN'T have anything of cultural significance (with the exception of the Che Guevara Coffee Shop, which I would very much like to visit if I have time). So I FINALLY find the street where I need to be. And the place where Hotel Volga is supposed to be. And what's there? A SHOPPING MALL. And I ask some woman and she said that yes, at one point in the past, Hotel Volga was there. And now it is not. And no one seemed to know where it was. So I wandered for awhile trying to find it, before deciding I would find another hotel. Which I HOPE still exists and is in the right place on this photocopied Lonely Planet Yaroslavl map.

So I'm walking along the Ulitsa in a world of pain because it's -17 degrees out. So I step inside what looks like another shopping mall and what do I find? A trendy wifi cafe. So I'm sitting here with my small cup of coffee and ferrero rocher candy and am still cold. Also the very upsetting part about all of this is that at this point all the museums are closed, which means I'll wander around and find all the churches and monuments I can. I think that's a good plan. Then I'll probably call home. And Deda. Which is necessary because I'm in Yaroslavl. I hope I can find a phone card.

Back to Moscow tomorrow. I'm sad because it means I won't get to spend that much time in Yaroslavl, but...I'll be in Moscow, and that'll be awesome.

Okay. Everything is INSANE.

2008-01-02T13:52:00.000-08:00

So we arrived in St. Petersburg and everything was great. A lot of the people in this hostel are insane and it's sort of hard to explain. The Australians are fun but sometimes crazy. Okay first of all there is ALWAYS SOMEONE SLEEPING. At all times of the day. Especially the guy from Brazil, who actually sleeps all the time. And when is not sleeping, is playing with his cell phone in bed. Seriously, on New Year's Day he got up at 11 PM. Like, I thought I had slept late (1:30, even though almost everyone else was still sleeping), but WHAT?! 11 PM?! Who does that? And it's not like he went to bed THAT late. I went to bed at like, 4, and he went to bed not long after me. And there's this guy from Finland who violently snores. Like, it is AWFUL. I can't just not sleep, he actually wakes me up at night. And it's not rhythmic, either, it's...just...loud, and irregular, and ridiculous. I wanted to take a video but he came back from clubbing or something after I had already woken up, and then left today. And then there are just random people sleeping all the time. It's completely bizarre. And means our stuff is in totally disorganized piles because whenever we go into our room its dark and we can't see anything. Oh well. We think this is hilarious, but also recognize how no one could find this funny at all.

So the next day I decided that my clothes were too dirty to even wear anywhere. So I washed them, which took 3 hours. Which also meant that I couldn't go anywhere that required me to take off my coat, because I was wearing capri length yoga pants, nylons, and a t-shirt. So I wandered around for awhile, went to the supermarket to get some food for the week, etc. Called Deda's friends and walked around St. Petersburg for, like, 3 hours. Then I came back and the Australians wanted me to come with them to some sketchy restaurant with them, which we thankfully couldn't find. We ended up eating at this little place on the square next to the metro which actually had okay pizza. I would have liked it very much if it had toppings that I liked. In fact, I might return. Anyway it was fun.

Then the next day I wanted to go somewhere but was still washing clothes and needed to find a gift to bring to New Year's dinner with Deda's friends, and I was supposed to meet them at 3. So I ended up doing nothing that day. But then went to New Year's dinner which was SO NICE. There were Deda's 2 friends, another woman from the same city where Baba was born (and her daughter), their daughter and son in law, and 2 grandchildren. THEY WERE SO NICE. So we had dinner and talked and went around telling happy memories and then they sang this new years song in a circle (I have a video) and gave presents. And they gave me a present! It was so cute and so nice and I was feeling all warm and fuzzy inside when I left.

Then I came back and general chaos had already ensued. The Australians were already trashed at like 9:30 and had drawn "Happy New Year!" all over their friends naked butt. And then took pictures. So there was general international interaction going on, and was all nice and fun (us, the Ukrainians (who are SO nice btw...but sort of strange...more on this later), the Australians, 2 Russian girls, and the Brazilians, who were not asleep). Then at like 11:30 we left for Nevsky Prospect. This was ridiculous. There was just general fun and whatnot going on on the metro, everyone was laughing, wishing everyone else happy new year, screaming, cheering, etc. Both on the metro and on the escalator on the way up. So then we got to Nevsky Prospect, where it was PACKED, watched Putin's say something on this big screen television, and at midnight all these bells rang, everyone cheered and drank champagne and hugged and wished each other happy new year and there was a concert and a parade and etc etc etc. COMPLETELY AMAZING. WORDS CANNOT EXPLAIN THIS. We hopped on a float for like two seconds (this was the Ukrainians' idea). I ended up losing Sonya and Alya somehow, so I wandered around for awhile, found the Australians, and ran away after like 5 mins. Couldn't find Sonya and Alya, but found the Ukrainians. We walked to Palace Square, and then back to the hostel. The general craziness and loving of everyone going on in the streets of St. Petersburg cannot be explained.

So this is where the night gets ridiculous (actually, this is the part where I get ridiculous). So I came back and went to put something on my bed and grabbed my camera case. Except it was without a camera. So I was sort of worried and looked EVERYWHERE but couldn't find it. And I knew I had taken some pictures in the kitchen, so I looked there, and it was nowhere to be found. I KNEW that I hadn't taken it with me to Nevsky Prospect because I didn't want it to be stolen. I asked the two girls working here if they had seen anything, they said no, and that they had been the only people in the hostel (aside from the people actually living in the hostel). Also a side note and completely unrelated, the brazilian had at this point gotten up from his bed to go to the bathroom. Actually before that I think he might have been on Nevsky Prospect with us, but the speed with which he returned to the bed was amazing. So then I thought maybe someone inside of the hostel stole it (not exactly impossible). So I sit down in the middle of the room and don't know what to do and start crying. This is unusual because I DON'T EVER CRY. ESPECIALLY IN FRONT OF OTHER PEOPLE. ESPECIALLY IN FRONT OF PEOPLE I DON'T KNOW. So (as they told me) I guess I was just wandering around the hostel weeping. Then Sonya and Alya came back and gave me M&Ms and a Chupa Chup. Then the Australians came back. Turns out one of them thought it was their friend's camera, so they grabbed it and put it in their room. Where I didn't look (obviously, I'm not going to go looking through someone else's stuff). Crisis over. Natalie is ridiculous. Then I went to bed. The Finns returned at 8 AM. Violent snoring commenced at 8:03.

The next day everything was closed, so it was sort of hard to do anything. But we walked around Nevsky Prospect and whatnot, Palace Square, etc. I think we went to the restaurant Chainaya Loshka (Teaspoon) which has the best blini ever known to man. Oh man they were so good. So we returned and....I don't really remember what we did after that. I don't think we did anything important.

Next day went to the Hermitage. Was INCREDIBLE. I can't even tell you. Like, it was hard to bring myself to look at the actual art because the rooms themselves were so cool. I also got lost a lot. I wandered around the 2nd floor for about 2 hours before I decided I needed a break and went down to the cafe and looked around the museum shop for awhile. Here is my question: are there people that actually exist, who would pay $1000 for a lacquered box? I mean, COME ON. I'm hesitant to pay $5. $1000? Seriously. Anyway moral of the story is the Hermitage is an amazing place.

Then we had blini again. And these three sketchy Russians from Kalingrad arrived at the hostel. When someone asked them what they were going to do that night, one of them answered "booze and girls". Oh, good. That's nice. At one point they convinced us to sit at the kitchen table with them, which we planned on being only 5 mins, but then we couldn't escape for a very long time. Tried to watch the dubbed version of Love Actually, but couldn't hear anything.

And this is where things get ridiculous (again). So I go to grab something and what do I find? This green, cardboard/construction paper cut out heart with pen scrawled hearts, stars, and number signs (why the number signs?) on it. And a note in Ukrainian. WHAT?! WE'RE IN COLLEGE! THIS IS SO 1st GRADE! But hilarious. So it was OBVIOUS that it was from Sasha. There were only three Ukrainians, and it probably wasn't from Olga. Or her boyfriend. So then we were like...this is completely insane and went through a lot of effort to call Michael. Well, I signed online, and had Greg call him, and then he got online, and I took a picture and sent it to him, and he decoded it for me. It said something like "happiness/success in the new year and always" and then some sort of diminutive nickname...which might be diminutive for rat. Not really sure. So then I was trying to leave it where I found it so he would think I hadn't found it yet, but at some point I left it on Sonya's bed so she put it in her purse, but then he suddenly stopped being all fun and talking to us and was just like hiding in a corner. So then I realized that he noticed I had taken it and hadn't responded. So then Alya and I went to the grocery store and bought the most ridiculous mix of things (also I forgot to mention this earlier-I found a chupa chup the size of, like, a softball and a half, and bought it and now everyone makes fun of me and says I'm not going to finish it). Anyway. We bought scissors (to cut Abby's hair), an avocado, a pomegranate, starburst, and four chupa chups. So then I wrote a note that says "thanks for the card, here's my email address" etc etc etc. And left him a chupa chup. So evidently this went over really well because then he was all friendly again and tried to set up ICQ on my computer. Then disappeared for like 45 minutes and I wanted to go to bed. So I did when he came back. Also then Oleg started asking me when I was going to come to Kiev.

Then they were gathering things like ALL NIGHT LONG. Also I didn't hear much, but Alya said it was "a symphony of packetii" which is hilarious and made me laugh a lot. They also don't know how to whisper, so when it's really late (or REALLY early) they just talk to each other normally and sort of wake everyone up. Not sweet. So Sasha got up at 8 AM...because they were leaving at 9 AM...but he already had everything ready, so he just sort of sat in the windowsill (his favorite place). This was weird. I went back to sleep. Then at like 9 AM they got ready to leave, but didn't know where they were going. I would make fun of them for this, but this may have happened to me like twice. Except I sort of knew where I was going, just not the final final destination. Anyway. Eventually they left.

Went to the Peter and Paul Cathedral, Church on Spilled Blood, and Church of Our Lady of Kazan. I really liked them all. The Kazansky Church smelled very strongly of Orthodox Church, which made me incredibly happy. They were singing too, which was great as well. Went back and said bye to Alya and Sonya, since they left for Helsinki. Gathered some stuff. Etc.

Then I wanted to go to the Russian Museum, as I had a few hours left. But when I got there there was this GINORMOUS line. So I thought I'd be really smart and find another entrance. So I walked around the building, through the Mikhailovsky gardens (which right now is more like Mikhailovsky frozen dirt) and found another entrance. The sign said "State Russian Museum". I was SO EXCITED. I thought I had totally beat the system (the "system" being really long lines). Went to buy a ticket. The woman yelled at me for trying to pay only the cost of a Russian student instead of an international student, but gave me the Russian student ticket anyway (which, btw, they're supposed to do. If it's a state museum. Since I'm a student at a Russian University, I don't have to pay the foreigner cost, just the Russian student cost. I was actually ready to explain this but she didn't even take a breather in between yelling at me for only giving enough money for the Russian student ticket and then actually giving me the ticket).
So I see a bunch of costumes. Okay, interesting, I want to see Russian art. Wander for awhile. After about 10 minutes I realize that I bought a ticket to the State Russian Museum of ethnic peoples, or something. Some huge exhibition about all the people living in Russia and slavic countries. Which was interesting, just not what I was looking for. So then I was sad, because I only had an hour and a half until the Russian museum closed, which wasn't enough time to leave, stand in line, buy a ticket, and see things. So I wandered around and saw different tools and costumes of slavic peoples. Left and had blini. Came back, took a shower. Left for the airport. Arrived 2 hours before my plane was going to take off. It was even 40 mins before I was allowed through the checkpoint. I had to just sort of wander in search of cafes that didn't exist (but there were signs for them!).

So later I'm sitting and we have about 40 mins till boarding. Okay. 9:40 comes and goes. Then 10:10 (when our plane is supposed to take off) comes and goes. No ones telling us anything. Three other planes board and leave. No one knows whats going on and no one will tell us anything. I call my taxi company to tell them I'm going to be late. 11:30 comes and goes (when we were supposed to have landed in Moscow). My taxi company calls me back asking me to call them when I get on the plane, since the airport won't tell them anything (seriously?). Oh, also, I forgot to mention, they collected the most unpleasant girls in the Russian Federation, and employed them at the St. Petersburg airport. Seriously. UGH. Anyway, then they completely abandoned seat assignments because they overbooked or something (do they really print more than one boarding pass with a particular seat assignment? Isn't it just sort of like, you checked in too late, all the places are taken now? Anyway). FINALLY got on the plane. Had a dry chicken/tasteless cheese croissant sandwich, which for SOME reason, was totally fabulous. Slept. Arrived in Moscow at 1:45. Waited forever for baggage claim. Saw my taxi man. He took me to the Comrade Hostel.

And here I sit, in the stairwell of the Comrade Hostel, because it is locked, and the doorbell doesn't seem to be waking anyone up. I'm going to try again soon, but I figured that since I can access the free wifi, I might as well do that before completely giving up. Oh, yea, I'm also using that to get the phone number to the hostel as another way to wake up Denis (I feel SO bad. We woke him up the last time too. And I couldn't call him because I didn't write down the hostel number and the wifi at the airport required a card, which I couldn't buy, since we were stuck in this one room for three hours. I wanted to die). So it's 4:30 AM now, I got here at 3. My train leaves at 9:30. Which means I'll sleep for like.....3 hours. And leave some stuff here. I can sleep on the train though, and a lot tomorrow night. I think it's all going to be okay.

There is so much more I need to say. I feel like last week was way more peculiar than this entry expressed.

2007-12-29T14:55:00.000-08:00

So I would say today was pretty productive. I woke up, had breakfast (the continental breakfast here leaves something to be desired, but it’s okay…it did its job. I left the hostel not hungry and not needing to eat for a couple of hours), went to Sannaya Square. Called Deda’s friends. We’re probably going to meet after I come back from Novgorod, around the 30^th. I’m excited, this should be very nice.

Wandered trying to find the Railway Museum. Found it. It was closed. So I wandered some more, looking for more things on the checklist of things to see. Had a nice business lunch. And as I was wandering trying to find a particular church/cathedral, I ran right into St. Isaac’s Square. I knew this had to be an important place, as there was a large, aesthetically pleasing building with a Russian flag on it, a statue, and a gigantic cathedral. Turns out this was, in fact, St. Isaac’s Cathedral, but it was on a different map because this was technically a different section in my guide (they break up the cities into sections, so you can sightsee in one section, and then go to another, etc). I had planned on leaving the Palace Embankment section until I got back, but it seems as if I just ran right into it. So I went to St. Isaac’s Cathedral, which was ABSOLUTELY amazing. SO gorgeous. I can’t decide whether or not I like it more than the Cathedral of the Assumption. St. Isaac’s looks a lot newer. But oh man. I could have just stood there for hours.

Then happened to run into the Bronze Horseman. Pretty exciting. Also I think there were two people there who were supposed to be dressed up as Peter the Great and Catherine II. I’m not really sure what their purpose was…but I guess it was amusing to look at them (this was exactly what I wrote my essay on for Speech Practice…the prompt was “who needs an ordinary person?” (which, by the way, is a completely ridiculous and stupid question, but whatever) and I said that I did, because I like to people-watch, and if they didn’t exist, how would I occupy myself on the streets? I’m not sure she loved that essay). I also saw the Palace Square and looked at the Hermitage, but I’m coming back one day after Novgorod. I want to get there when it opens and then not leave until it closes. And then maybe I’ll go back again. We’ll see.

Found the Marinskii Theatre, and maybe want to see something there. They have a New Year’s Eve show, and Romeo and Juliet on January 2^nd. I guess I’ll see how much tickets cost. Mama Mia is also playing somewhere that is not the Marinskii Theatre, so I guess we’ll just have to see…

The moral of the story is that I did a lot of walking around today and my feet hurt a lot. Also I went to a Subway with wifi. What kind of Subway has wifi? And I ordered a sub but the girl put a ridiculous amount of sauce on it that I didn’t want at all. And it was white-ish, making me believe that a significant part of it was mayonnaise. But I scraped as much off as possible and then ate it. Which I was actually proud of myself for, given my aversion to condiments of all kinds. Not feeling so great right now though, so maybe that wasn’t a good decision.

Friday, December 28^th

Oh, okay, so I forgot to mention this yesterday. But you can’t buy tickets for the Electrichka (sort of like a train?) early. You have to buy them the day of. Which does NOT work out well for planning purposes, because what are you supposed to do if there aren’t any left? So I got to the train station this morning to buy my electrichka ticket 25 mins before my train left. Everything was fine. No need to worry.

Then I started freaking out though, because I guess there was one “Novgorod” stop before the ACTUAL Novgorod, so then I wasn’t sure where to get off. I was pretty sure that Novgorod was the end of the line, so I wouldn’t need to worry about these things, but I’m positive the overhead voice said “Novgorod” 45 mins before we got there. I couldn’t understand anything else though because it was really fuzzy. So then I was afraid that I would just be riding the electrichka for hours before someone found out and then I’d be kicked off the side of the tracks in the middle of Russia with a heavy blue adidas bag. But the first Novgorod stop was in the middle of nowhere and no one else was getting off, so I didn’t either.

This went on for about 45 mins until we actually arrived in Novgorod and I realized I had been right all along and there was no reason to freak out about it. So my phone wasn’t working last night when I tried to call hostels/hotels (my phone is being really annoying, actually, and only works about half the time), so I just wandered to the hotel recommended by Lonely Planet. And they had free rooms. So everything was okay.

So I put my stuff down and hunted down a café (which was much more difficult than it should have been. But I found a bunch of really fancy cafes, and CLEARLY I couldn’t go there in jeans, so I ended up wandering the streets for quite some time). Also there was a blizzardish thing today. Made walking difficult. But that’s okay.

Novgorod itself is pretty small. Even the kremlin is small. It’s really crazy to think about how old it is though, and how much history has taken place here. So I enjoyed just walking around the kremlin, being in a small church built in the 1500s, seeing old icons in museums, etc. I felt like I saw a lot today, which is good. The only bad thing is everything closes at like 5 or 6, even the churches, so after that I didn’t have any sightseeing to do.

Which actually was okay with me. I wandered around the town a little longer, stopped in a produktii (food) store to buy dinner (which consisted of a bulachka, an ice cream bar, and some apple juice, which was so much better than it sounds and was exactly what I wanted), headed back to my room, put all of my food products away in this snazzy little mini fridge the Hotel Akron provided me, and took a shower. Organized a bit. Watched Chocolat while having dinner. It’s now almost 10 and I’m ready to go to bed. Actually I was ready to go to bed at like 7, but that’s okay.

Tomorrow I’ll see more of Novgorod. Probably not everything, but I’m okay with that. My goal was to see all the necessities (which I’ll be able to do) and then as many churches as possible (which I won’t be able to do). But Novgorod has 30 churches. Making seeing all of them an unrealistic goal. Also I’ve already seen SO many churches and cathedrals here that I think I’ll forgive myself if I don’t see all of them. I love them, and they are SO pretty, but I can’t keep them straight anyway (except for the main ones, the little ones just all blur together). I hope the hotel has somewhere where I can store my luggage for four hours before my electrichka train back to St. Petersburg.

Speaking of which, I don’t know where my next hostel is located. And don’t know where there’s an internet café here. I think there’s a wifi café next to the train station, and I’ll probably need to have dinner anyway (at like 9 PM), so that’ll be a good choice. I can find the address and then actually find it. Sonya and Alya might already be there? Not sure. They’ll be there soon though, I do know that.

I hope my phone works when Deda’s friends try to call me back. It’s been REALLY annoying lately. I think I’ll just call them back at some point tomorrow just in case.

Also carrying all these bags around is like DEATH on my shoulder. Carrying around my black purse all semester probably wasn’t good for it either, but that AND a blue adidas bag? Man. I mean, I switch shoulders and everything, but my right shoulder is already messed up, and now I can feel it just…well, completely not where it should be. For example, I’m lying on my back right now and I can feel my shoulderblade jutting into the mattress. This is uncomfortable. I hope I can straighten this out when I get back, because if not, oh man. THAT will be a major problem.

Also, I didn’t thing this would be true before, but I think when I come back there’s going to be some major reverse culture shock. I’m not looking forward to it. I DON’T WANT TO LEAVE RUSSIA.

Saturday, December 29^th

So slept in till 9:30 today. Went and had breakfast at the café in the hotel (the same café, coincidentally, where Sonya and Alya had eaten the day before and I didn’t even know!) which was not very good. Well, the espresso was good. But anyway, went to see the art museum. Have I talked about museum experiences before? At every museum there are about 60,000 old women whose job it is to follow you around and make sure you don’t, like, destroy the art or something. So there’s always a woman sitting in every room closely watching you. And if there’s only a few women, they stand in the corner and follow you around as you look at things. It’s very unsettling. Also there were these women at the icon museum who were VERY concerned because I was evidently looking at things out of order. I mean, I might see something from a different church before finishing the icons from the first! What would we do? My entire opinion and icon experience will all out of whack (seriously, one woman for like 15 mins explained to me how the icons are grouped by church and time). I did not look at things “out of order” again.

Then I tried to go to the Chamber of Facets, which was closed. Tried to find an internet café to figure out the address of the next hostel (I need to start getting on that knowing-where-I’m-going thing before I actually arrive at my destination), but it seems the only working internet café is in the kremlin, which is closed on weekends (like, actual weekends, not the ones they choose). Walked around Yaroslav’s court. All the museum women there were really nice and friendly, except for one woman who yelled at me while I was looking for…some sort of museum, don’t remember. Also there was freezing rain in Novgorod today. Yesterday was a blizzard, and now freezing rain. This weather is AWFUL.

So I walked around some more. Then wanted to go to this Chocolate Café, but it looked too fancy for me. Why are there so many fancy cafes in Novgorod? I am POSITIVE the fancy café:people ratio is completely imbalanced. Anyway so then I was sad. And went back to this café and ordered borsht without sour cream, and got something that wasn’t borsht with sour cream. I picked out the sour cream but then tried to ask the girl if I could actually have borsht…and she claimed that it was, in fact, borsht. Her reasoning was “I ate it this morning”. I don’t care if you ate it this morning, that doesn’t make it borsht! It wasn’t bad though, so I really can’t complain.

OH. MY GOD. I forgot to mention this. So there was this photo exhibit around Yaroslav’s Court, about old Novgorod. So I went to see it. And there were these two women there, who, like all the other church museum people, were very nice. And then I saw this staged scene that I couldn’t really figure out…and one of the two women rushes up to me and explains how for only 30 rubles, I can have my picture taken with these scenes as many times as I want! And she can take them for me, since I’m alone, maybe, if I set up the shot with my camera, it’s digital so she probably doesn’t know how to use it (she said that, not me). Then she rushed to show me all these pictures of other people who had dressed up in strange costumes and taken pictures with wax figures, umbrellas, and chairs. So she was clearly very excited about this, so I figured I could spare the 30 rubles for 15 mins of entertainment for her. So she and the other woman fought over what I should wear (“no, she should wear the red hat, it matches the scarf!” “no, the black one would look better!” “No, she’ll wear the white scarf with that one!” “Well, fine, we can take lots of pictures though, let’s start with these one and then try the black hat”) and so on. Every time I had to set the zoom with my camera, but the woman didn’t always stand where I had stood, so a lot of times I’m really far away, or really close up. Also, even though I used image stabilization, they were always blurry. So after like 15 or 20 minutes and like 20 pictures, I have 3, non-blurry, completely ridiculous photographs. They also gave me a certificate with a kruglii stamp. Words cannot express the ridiculousness of this experience.

So then I went to the train station and bought my ticket for the electrichka. Sat in the train station, heard them say something about the train from Novgorod to St. Petersburg and watched as a lot of people got up. Decided that I would follow them and sat on a train. Hoped it was the right one, as I didn’t want to go back and check or ask anyone, and couldn’t understand the fuzzy voice overhead (and this isn’t from a lack of language skills, NO ONE could have understood what this guy was saying). 4 hours later I arrived in St. Petersburg. Mission accomplished.

Except I still didn’t know where I was going. But they had an internet place in the train station so I got on and found the address and whatnot. Except my time cut out right in the middle of facebook, so I’m hoping it logged me out automatically. That would be a disaster if not. This hostel is actually really really nice. In terms of decoration, anyway. Really comfortable. They supply towels. Nice kitchen. Free eggs, yogurt, and cheese (you really don’t know how big of a deal this all is. Free eggs! I could eat eggs all day long!). Although the 2 girls running it look a bit…ditzy. And some other girl staying here said they don’t really know how to do anything, so if there’s a problem they have to call someone else. They’ve done a nice job of hanging balloons and festive streamers, though. And they have wifi. Pretty great place so far. I would say it’s better than the one in Moscow, except the people here so far aren’t as fun and I have a major crush on the Moscow hostel owner (I’ve probably stated that already), who is not here in St. Petersburg.

I feel bad because I think I talked Sonya and Alya to death once I got here. I’m just so excited to see people who are a) not crazy Cubans asking me if I like them or b) Russian employees of the service industry or c) Russian women working in museum churches dying to take my photograph dressed up in ridiculous clothes.

I’m always thinking of things I want to note here but then forget. I need to write this stuff down.

End of Moscow 1 + beginning of St. Petersburg

2007-12-27T07:34:00.000-08:00

So later I came back to the hostel and just hung around for awhile. A little later the Australians came back from the ice hockey game, put on these ridiculous sailor hats, and started drinking and playing poker. It looked REALLY fun. They were singing all kinds of Christmas carols too (and Queen…not really sure where that one came in). Anyway it was really funny listening to them. They’re really funny in general. Good hostel-mates. Also one of them told me at 2 in the morning they ordered 3 large pizzas for like 1400 rubles and devoured them in like 5 mins, literally. Hahahaha. Silly Australians. (trix are for kids!)

So that morning I made myself a delicious omlet. And salad. And apple with peanut butter. And peanut butter and jelly. And tea. With jelly in it. And talked to the Australians for awhile before heading off to the Kremlin area. My day consisted mostly of churches and cathedrals. Which is okay, because I love them a lot. Almost every time I’m in one though I think about Baba, which makes it all sort of an exhausting experience.

So first was St. Basil’s. Very cool. And just crazy to think about how old it is (and it seems old on the inside) and yet on the outside it still looks like a toy. Then I was going to see Lenin, but I had my camera with me, and you can’t take your camera with you even if you aren’t going to use it. And there was no where to put it, and I didn’t trust the police officers to keep it safe for me. So I’ll come back next time. The history museum was also closed (Tuesday is their weekend day?), and the Armoury was sold out, so I can do all three of those together next week.

So I circled around the Kremlin until I found the ticket office. Bought a ticket. But then it was hard to get in because there was something going on with children and a Christmas tree (well, New Year’s tree in Russia). Most yolkas (new years trees) in Russia, like Sonya said, are wire with pine wrapped around it and lights. So they aren’t actually trees. But the one in the Kremlin was a real tree, although not a very attractive looking one. It was just big. So there were SWARMS of children everywhere carrying little festive blue boxes and militsionarii (policemen) were yelling at all of those who wanted to enter the Kremlin, but were not children. It was very overwhelming and I wished that they weren’t there. So many children that close to me makes me uneasy. I think I’d be more comfortable with crowds of angry Bolsheviks.

So I saw everything accessible in the Kremlin except for the State Armory and the Cathedral of the Annunciation, since it’s being restored. But oh my God. I talked about how I love Orthodox Churches. But the ones in the Kremlin are like 15 times better than I ever could have imagined. The tombs of so many people were in the Cathedral of the Archangel. It was sort of cool. And the Cathedral of the Assumption is unbelievable. I almost couldn’t take myself out of it. It’s SO amazing. Oh my GOD. Do they do Christmas services there? I’m going to be in Moscow during Russian Christmas. And I’m going to a Christmas Eve service, I’ve decided. I need to find myself a head scarf. So anyway, all of these churches and cathedrals are totally incredible. Even the little churches on sidestreets are amazing. WAHHH. HOW DO THEY DO THAT?!

So then I was tired and really wanted to just go back to the hostel but knew if I did I’d never make it out again. So I stopped somewhere and had some tea to just sit and warm up for a bit. Then I went wandering for the things I was looking for yesterday, but never found. And as I was wandering I saw some really cool buildings (this often happens), a GORGEOUS church (also often), another gorgeous church, and THEN…a gigantic tea house. My guide said it was closed to the public, which I didn’t believe, because how else would they sell tea? So I went in there and it was AMAZING. They had all kinds of teas-in boxes and loose leaf-and then all kinds of coffees and chocolates and a little thing of desserts and a place where they sold alcohol. I think there were 5 stations in all. It was amaaaaaaazing. So I bought a box of tea (the really good kind from Mongolia!) and 2 bags of loose leaf. This is so exciting. Do we have any tea houses around Middlebury? Or Cleveland? That would make my day.

So then I wandered back to the hostel, took a shower, talked to some people. It was fun. And I stayed up way too late just talking considering I had to get up at 7 the next morning to make my 11:45 flight. Oh, also, at one of the cathedrals I bought a CD of Russian Orthodox choral music. I know you’re all really jealous.

So I gathered myself the next morning, made myself another omlet with tomatoes and green onions which did NOT sit well in my stomach as I was lugging all of my stuff around the metro. Said goodbye to some people (I’m SO sad that this other girl from Irkutsk (as in, she’s actually from Irkutsk), Elvira, isn’t going to be there when I come back…she was SO sweet.)…etc. Said goodbye to the creepy Cuban guy. I HATE creepy people. Like SO much. UGH. Anyway.

Had my black purse, a пакет, and my blue adidas bag with me on the metro. It was fine, just sort of heavy, and it is SO hot on the metro. Then took a bus to the airport. Was like an hour early. Read some Turgenev in Russian (like, 2 pages). The Aeroflot flight was nice, they gave us some juice, croissants, chocolates, and tea. I was pleased. I was not thrilled with how the plane sort of shook as we were taking off and was at times not very smooth, but it didn’t crash, so I can’t complain.

So anyway, the night before I had sent an email to the St. Petersburg International Hostel because I hadn’t received any confirmation from them about my online reservation. So when I got to the airport in St. Petersburg and had no idea where I was going, I just hopped on a bus going downtown and wandered until I found an internet café. And then they said they had never received and online confirmation. So I didn’t want to go all the way there if they didn’t have any beds, so I tried calling. And my phone didn’t work. And all I had was a 1000 ruble bill, which is accepted, like, nowhere.

But I needed to have lunch anyway, so I had a nice business lunch at Pizza Hut, where they played the great hits of our time, such as “Sugar Sugar How You Get So Fly?” and other such classics. I hope the sarcasm here is sensed, as I’m laying it on pretty thick.

So then my phone still didn’t work, and I didn’t know what to do, so I got on the metro and went to the Mosckovsky Train Station (which is not too far from either of my two hostel options) and bought a phone card to try and call. Phone still didn’t work. People at the train station told me they couldn’t help me and sent me to find the MTS store, which was not possible to find. So I saw this gigantic MTS sign and went into the building under it. Which turned out to be a restaurant/bar. BUT the nicest guy EVER was there and I asked him if he knew where the MTS store is. He said no, but then went and asked someone else, and said he knew where someone could help me, offered to carry my gigantic blue adidas bag for me, and walked me to this cell phone store about 2 blocks away. Like, nicest guy EVER. AH. So they told me they didn’t know what was wrong and just had me buy a new SIM card, which worked out well. Called the hostel, they had free beds. Wandered around forever trying to find it. Finally found it. Was relieved.

It’s not really a hostel, it’s more like a really really really rundown hotel-ish thing. They have like a check in area, and individual rooms that have 2, 3, 4, or 5 beds. It’s sort of lonely. Not like all the other hostels I’ve been to (all 2 of them, but they have been totally fabulous). They also don’t have mugs in the kitchen, which means I can’t drink any tea. Oh well. It’s okay.

So I called my mom, organized my stuff, and went to a café. Unsuccessfully tried to download three seasons of Arrested Development. Had some hot chocolate and ice cream, but just about had a heart attack because the internet card they gave me was twice as much as it was in Moscow, and then I was afraid that I wouldn’t have enough cash on me and that I’d have to go track down a bankomat before paying, but turns out I just didn’t do the math. Okay. Came back and went to sleep.

It’s really cold in this hostel. I don’t like that. I also don’t like that I don’t know when it’s morning, since it was still dark at 9 AM. Which means I thought it was like 4 AM. I need to take note of that.

Okay, so I don’t know if anyone’s heard about the Moscow metro, but it’s really pretty. They have all kinds of sculptures and it’s made out of this gorgeous stone and whatnot and just looks REALLY really good. Some stops are better than others, but on the whole, it’s really cool. But at the same time, I can’t help thinking about how much money they must have spent on the metro and NOT on other, more important things. Anyway.

Also now is a good time to talk about the importance of пакеты (aka plastic bags). Everyone here carries their stuff around in plastic bags. Some are crappy plastic bags, which you buy for like 1 ruble, and others are much classier, like 10 rubles. The ones with handles and the thick plastic are the most desirable. But seriously, like EVERYONE carries their stuff around in plastic bags. Most people have 1 purse and 1 пакет. I wonder if I’ll keep doing this at home.

Okay, it’s time to buy some train tickets to Novgorod and see St. Petersburg.

Moscow. More detailed than Sonya's. But I'm not with Sonya, so that's not important.

2007-12-24T11:01:00.000-08:00

Okay so later we got back to the hotel, but as usual there was a guard there, so we had to register Joseph as a guest and they told him he only had until 12. So then we had to figure out something to do. I could go through this whole story but it’s not that interesting or important. Long story short, Joseph went down and paid for a single room. Then he wrote in his journal while Ivan and I used the free wifi and surfed facebook for like 2 hours.

So the next morning we had a fairly unappetizing breakfast before setting off for the regional museum of Tatarstan. This was much better than the regional museum of Yekaterinburg, and had very interesting things. I got tired of reading by the end though. Joseph and Ivan also endured like an hour long lecture from some guy who had this theory that all words were somehow linked to their corresponding gestures. And that it would be impossible to learn language without gestures. Which is probably true, but I don’t think the actual word can be linked to the gesture. Especially because not all words are the same in each language (although sometimes similar).

So then we went back to the Kremlin to see the museum of Islam. The woman at the front of the Kremlin let us in free a third time, which was really really nice of her. She said she was so glad that we liked it so much that we were coming back a third time, that she would just let us in free. There were way too many “that”s in the last sentence. The Islam museum was okay, not really very informative. Actually it sort of was, I just was way to tired to read everything and I sort of read, but didn’t really soak in. It’s okay.

So then we searched for a Café for lunch and found one that was not very good at all. And walked around some more, trying to find the Volga, but found the Kazanskaya instead. Actually we didn’t even find it, we just found its general direction. Took a taxi to the train station, which was amazing since it meant I didn’t have to drag suitcases everywhere. Our train was delayed. But we had a system in place at that point. Joseph stood at this little place at the entrance of the compartment where we could hand him all of our small bags, but was out of the way enough that other people could still get on. Then Ivan and I stored our giant suitcases, and came back for Joseph and all the little things. And even more exciting…WE DIDN’T HAVE A COMPARTMENTMATE. I don’t think you all understand how amazing that was to me. Like, SO amazing. Especially after how tired I was and how not amazing our last compartmentmate was. AND it wasn’t too hot, even a little on the cool side, enough to warrant using the blanket at night.

So we got to Moscow at 6:15, took an overpriced (but not gypsy) cab to our hostel. More like to the side of the road, where we then stood for about 5 minutes before someone working on the street directed us to the hostel. Oh, by the way, Moscow train station? WHOA. Like, way fancy. The place where you have to pay to sit (that was a bunch of rubber chairs and a little TV in Kazan?) was like, leather couches and a big screen TV and internet. They also had a pilmenia (aka a place that sells pilmeni). However, the Kazanskaya, Yaroslavskaya, and Leninskaya train stations were all right next to each other. Wouldn’t it make more sense to just have one gigantic train station? Not really sure.

Moscow is very big. A legitimate city. More like a gigantic wifi zone. EVERYWHERE has wifi. There are car dealerships with wifi. The McDonald’s has wifi. This is madness.

So we accidentally woke up the guy next to the hostel, and the actual hostel owner, with our 6:45 AM arrival time. And I think he wasn’t actually sure who we were until I asked if he received our reservation, to which he responded “probably…” and turned on the computer. But once I said something about hostelworld.com he remembered. Really nice guy. Speaks English well, I think. I’ve only spoken to him in Russian. So we made macaroni and cheese, had some tea, and just chilled out for a little while. Then we headed out to find wifi (which we found in, like, 3 seconds) and Joseph found a candy factory in Ivan’s Moscow guidebook. Ivan has the best guidebooks and I don’t know how I would have traveled around Russia without them. Anyway so the only problem is that this guidebook has completely wrong metro maps…like COMPLETELY. So we did a lot of circling around the Kremlin (we could see it from, like, every stop). But finally we found the Red October Candy Factory, which was really just a small chocolate store. However, I bought a box of chocolates that are actually quite good, which was surprising, because Russian candy on the whole is…less than fabulous. We also ran into the Church of Christ the Redeemer. I almost forgot the T there, which would have made it the Church of Chris the Redeemer, and we know that that just isn’t true.

So then Joseph only had about 40 minutes left, so we made our way back to the hostel, made more macaroni and cheese, and then Joseph left. Ivan and I sat around for a little while before heading off to find Arbat to do some souvenir shopping. They have some FANTASTIC stuff. A lot of it is souvenirs that are really cool, but I would never buy (the really fancy looking samovars, or the lacquered spoons and plates, etc) but some of the stuff they have is AWESOME. Like the strange kinds of matroshka dolls they have. Oh my GOD. I would explain them here but I’m buying some as gifts so no one’s allowed to know just yet! But AH. SO great. And then they have some cool T-shirts…I want to get one with Cheburashka on it. But they also have one that says “Che burasha” (as in Che Guevara) and Cheburashka’s holding an automatic. I’m sorry, that is hilarious. They also have one that says “I have been to Russia. There are no bears.” It’s not really that funny, but somewhat amusing.

Oh and THEN we met the most fantastic woman EVER. So she was selling these matroshka dolls and Ivan wanted one in particular (I won’t say which one, I don’t know if it’s a gift for someone? Anyway) and the woman didn’t have it, so she ran around to other stands trying to find it. So she found it for him, and was talking to us for awhile. But anyway she was SO nice so then I bought a matroshka from her, and then as we were leaving she gave us two little matroshka keychains as gifts! I don’t know. She was just SO nice it was crazy. And anyone that’s, like, friendly by American standards is a GEM in Russia. (Do people still use the word “gem”?)

Then we saw a Starbucks. This was insane. We went inside to look around. They’re exactly like starbucks in America, only the prices are more than twice as high. So we just sort of walked around and then walked out. I would say it was a good experience.

We also saw TGI Friday’s. Then went into a bookstore so I could buy some city guides to Moscow and St. Petersburg, since I’m on my own without Ivan’s Lonely Planet at this point. And I was excited because I found one that wasn’t too expensive for Moscow, and figured I’d get the identical one for St. Petersburg too. And then I went to pay for it and when she said the price I thought she said something different, (--60 instead of -600) and ended up paying way more than I wanted to. It turns out the St. Petersburg guide was twice the price of the Moscow guide, and then I was REALLY sad, and when I realized my mistake and asked if I could return it they said no. So I went from being really thrilled to really really sad. And then on our way back on the metro we got on at a different Arbat, went one stop, walked to the other arbat, went one stop, walked to another stop, went one stop, and so one. We probably walked just as much as we rode the metro. Also I love my furry boots but they are NOT comfortable to walk around in.

So then we went to the McDonald’s with the wifi which was fabulous. And wandered back and went to bed. However, IVAN, you did NOT wake me up before you left like I asked you to which means I didn’t get to say goodbye and THAT IS SAD. I’ll forgive you.

So I woke up at like 7:15 and sat in bed for about half an hour before getting up, brushing my teeth, and trying to find some sort of food store. I was really hoping for a “Bcyo Budet OK gypermarket” but there wasn’t one. So I walked for a long time before finding a place where I could buy bread, eggs, and an apple. Came back, took a shower, made breakfast, sat and talked to people, read. I’m probably going to check my email, read some of my Moscow guide, and go see things. Maybe later I’ll post this. Probably will call home tomorrow night, as it will be tomorrow morning’s Christmas in America.

I love this hostel, by the way. The owner is AWESOME and all the people here are really cool. Even the Australians, who complained about getting robbed by the police after they were dumb enough to go and smile and say hello when they were in Irkutsk. Who smiles, let alone greets, Russian police officers? It’s when I hear stories like that that I’m really glad I can actually somewhat speak the language. Although knowing the laws about fines and passports and embassies isn’t really that hard to do.

Oh, I forgot to mention, that the street vendors on Arbat are the easiest people to haggle with in the WORLD. In fact, you don’t even have to, they’ll do it for you. Like, I ask how much something is….well here’s a sample convo:

Natasha: How much?
Street vendor (of matroshkas): 450.
Natasha: *is in the process of inhaling, which is part of breathing, which is necessary*
Street vendor: Well okay I guess I could do 400.
Natasha: *looks at the street vendor*
Street vendor: Well, you’re what, a student? And students are usually on a budget. Okay, 350.
*pause that is longer than a second and a half*
Natasha: 300?
Street vendor: well….*pause. Probably 2 seconds*…Okay. *smile*. Here you go. Do you need a bag?

Natasha: How much?
Street Vendor (of T-shirts): 300. But I guess if you wanted we could go cheaper.

No, I’m going to turn down the cheaper offer and stick with the 300. Like, what?

Later:
So today I read my Moscow guidebook and decided that I want to cover the Kremlin, Red Square, and Kitai-Gorod areas before leaving for St. Petersburg on Wednesday (also I don’t know if I mentioned this, but the hostel where I’m staying is located in Kitai-Gorod, which I guess could be translated to Chinatown. Except the only part of China that is here is the guy from Hong Kong staying at this hostel. And a picture of a yin-yang on a poster. And a sushi restaurant, which is technically Japanese, but I guess it’s part of Asia, which is closer.) Anyway so I left today and just sort of wandered around. I started off in the direction my guide told me to, and came across this building that looked quite important. Turned out it was the ГУМ, so I went and walked around there for a bit, as I felt it was a necessary tourist activity. Turns out it’s more like the ritziest mall EVER. 3 floors of stores I would never go to. And lots of fancy cafes. But I guess it was pretty. I had to walk around like a Muscovite so as to conceal my foreigner identity, meaning that I had to look as if I was unhappy, knew where I was going, and was planning on getting there in a timely fashion. But I couldn’t walk too fast, or else I wouldn’t have been able to see anything. This was really all carefully planned and quite successful.

So as I wandered the streets I saw a lot of pretty buildings. It’s funny, there are a LOT of gorgeous buildings in Moscow. And I haven’t even been to that many parts of Moscow yet. But there are SO many. And then there’s also a bunch of Soviet-era ugly buildings. And ugly city-ness. But there’s so much that is SO pretty. And you can just be walking down the street and there are a bunch of ugly buildings and cafes and right in the middle of it all is an Orthodox Church. And if you’re not paying attention, you won’t even notice it, because it’s almost buried by commercialism.

I may not have mentioned this before. I LOVE ORTHODOX CHURCHES. I love the sound of the bells, of the people when they sing (choir? They’re usually sad sounding. Actually I think they’re always sad sounding, even when the Russians in the Orthodox Church rejoice, they aren’t entirely, or even partially, enthusiastic. In my experience anyway.), the smell of the candles and the incense, the icons, etc. I LOVE IT. Which makes Moscow a particularly good place to be, because there are like 18,000 Russian Orthodox cathedrals and churches. I always feel awkward though, because it’s not my church, and to be totally honest, I’m still not entirely sure about Orthodox Church etiquette. But anyway.

So I saw like 10,000 of those and they were all really pretty. I’m going to St. Basil’s tomorrow. As I was wandering around the Kitai-Gorod I found Moo-Moo café, which has cow prints all over it, and has all kinds of Russian food. Tatiana gave us a menu to read in class one day, so I wanted to go and experience the real thing. But then it looked sort of busy, and I was by myself, and I didn’t want to be the loser eating dinner by herself. 95% of the time I don’t care but every once in awhile I do. I was also sort of sad as I was walking around Red Square and watching the people ice skating (they have a rink in the middle…a Chocoladnitza is attached) and kind of wishing that I had a travel buddy, because ice skating alone just isn’t very fun. I actually like traveling alone, and doing a lot of the sightseeing stuff alone, but every once in awhile I feel like it would be nice to be with someone. Speaking of which, Denis’s phone isn’t working or something so I can’t get ahold of him, which is sad.

So then I was cold and a little bit tired so I stopped in a different Chocoladnitza (they are EVERYWHERE), but contrary to what I thought, it’s like a REALLY nice coffee shop chain. They have comfy chairs and a totally fabulous menu. I had some raspberry thing and some tea and was very, very satisfied with it. Their blini looked good too.

So then I wandered around trying to find other things…mainly more churches. But ended up taking a wrong turn somewhere and not understanding why I had made my way back to the Kremlin. I just figured that it wasn’t really important, since the Kremlin seems to be everywhere, instead of seeing it for what it was-a sign that I had taken a wrong turn. But I found this souvenir market, which was actually a bunch of kiosks (half of which were closed, since it was like 7:30) and looked around. I think I might go back tomorrow or next week when everything is open. This market was also right next to Red Square.

Okay. The experience of walking into Red Square is something that just absolutely cannot be recreated. Especially at night. Coming through the Resurrection Gate, and then seeing ГУМ and Kazansky Cathedral on the left, the Kremlin/Savoir’s tower and Lenin’s tomb on the left, and as you keep walking St. Basil’s comes into view. And it is all so big and so full of history gorgeous and SO BREATHTAKING. EVERY TIME. I hope you all one day come to Moscow just to experience this, because it is worth it.

I like Moscow a lot.

Kazan is the greatest place ever. Next to Siberia.

2007-12-21T12:15:00.000-08:00

I do not love Western Russia. It isn't Siberia. I might have already said this earlier, but I think Siberia is the Midwest of Russia. I love it.

I also STILL have trouble believing that there are cities bigger than Irkutsk in Russia. I think I've just hung around Lake Baikal for too long. Kazan is also a large city, with more than 3 main streets. Before I get into Kazan I need to talk about the rest of Yekaterinburg and getting OUT of Yekaterinburg.

So we went to the Regional Studies Museum, which was really more like a bunch of old things from Russia/Yekaterinburg put in a bunch of rooms with no real order to them. My favorite was the gigantic piece of wood from the bridge/platoon(?) they rebuilt like 10 years ago. Or maybe the very new looking iron patio set with the fake ivy and the iron garden gnomes was better. The people there also made sure that we went through "in order", although I'm not particularly sure what the order was.

Most of the people in the museums were nice. Most of the people in the train station were not.

So we gathered all of our stuff onto the train which took a ridiculous amount of effort and all kinds of people were snickering at us, to which I responded with large amounts of glaring. We were quite displeased to find we had a roommate (and were more displeased as the night progressed...more to follow), but he helped us store our gigantic suitcases so that was nice of him. BUT red flags for me-he almost immediately referred to us as "ты", which most Russians haven't done EVEN though we were clearly younger (we're still adults), and he was speaking in maternii (Russian's "swearing" language, I think it's much stronger and cruder than anything we have in English). He made sure to pull out his bottles of alcohol at the beginning of the trip (we're talking 2 PM Moscow time/4 PM Yekaterinburg time). We IMMEDIATELY decided that we're going to have to come up with some reason as to why we couldn't drink, and decided that religion would be the best option. So we told him we were Mormans. The only downside, is then he (and his brother/friend? who joined our compartment to drink) began to ask a lot of questions, which we didn't know the answer to. So we sort of formulated our own religion where we don't drink alcohol at all or do anything, really. They, of course, were RELENTLESS in trying to get us to drink with them, which we wouldn't, and got REALLY annoying. They also kept forcing food/tea on us, more on Ivan and Joseph than on me (maybe they realized that I was really quite irritated?), and doing other such annoying things. Such as asking me when I was going to eat. I replied with some sort of "How should I know, I don't have any sort of set SCHEDULE for meals, I'll eat when I'm hungry", which I think ended up working because he stopped hassling me about it.

But anyway they drank A LOT and talked A LOT (many words in maternii, I noticed, and about women in general...there were probably 4 or 5 toasts "to Natasha"), and kept trying to get us to go to sleep. At 5:30 PM. I realize this was probably an irrational fear, but I couldn't figure out WHY else he would try to get us to go to sleep so early-but I thought maybe he was trying to get us to go to sleep so he could steal something. I don't know. He didn't right off the bat strike me as a criminal, but then again, it's very possible, and this was CLEARLY not an honest/decent person. The most alarming was when he and his brother/friend decided that they wanted to get off the train earlier than their stop in order to accompany us to Kazan. Which was definitely not okay. Anyway, he passed out at like 6:30, so we layed down to go to sleep, but there was some pretty awful music playing that we couldn't turn off, which made it difficult. Then again, normal people don't go to sleep at, like, 7. Anyway he requested that we wake him up when we get up so he could accompany us. Obviously we weren't going to do this so we gathered our things as quietly as we could, and even managed to drag Ivan's suitcase out from under this guy's bed, but at some point we banged something and he woke up. But he just asked for his man-purse and went back to sleep, which was a HUGE relief.

So we dragged all of our stuff off the train, again, and tried to call our hotel, whose number had been suddenly disconnected. So Ivan walked to the hotel closest to the train station and found that it was a good hotel with not bad prices. We only paid for a double though, because Joseph didn't want to pay for a double and a single so we each had a bed, saying he'd sleep on the floor, which sort of turned out to be a problem (as I knew it would be). Anyway, it was a HUGE relief to be able leave all of our stuff in a locked room and take a shower.

Then we went to the Kremlin, which was AWESOME. I wasn't really believing what everyone said, that Kazan was a a really beautiful city, but that's probably because our window had a view of the train tracks. Anyway, so Kazan is the capital of Tatarstan. 57% of the city is Tatar, so a lot of the signs are in both Tatarskii (how do you say that in English?) and Russian. The city had its 1000th birthday in 2005, so they built this gigantic and GORGEOUS mosque in the middle of the Kremlin. They also have a Russian Orthodox Cathedral which is SO amazing. Like, icons everywhere, just...SO pretty. I can't even begin to describe it. So we walked around for awhile, saw a bunch of administrative buildings, went to the cathedral, saw the president's house, visited an art museum, etc. We went to a cafe for lunch and had pizza, while they played techno remixes of techno songs. Like, how does that happen? They choose the already techno-y songs and THEN remix them. Like, for example, "Like a Record" or "Barbie Girl". My favorite was the techno remix to the x-files theme song.

So then it was getting late, and we decided we'd see the Regional Museum of Tatarstan tomorrow (so we'd have longer than 45 mins, it should be REALLY interesting). We're also going to see the Museum of Islam tomorrow because it was closed today.

We went to a WW2 memorial museum which was REALLY interesting. I think History museums are in general really interesting, but it's cool to see them from a different country's perspective. Like, WW2 had such a greater impact on Russia than it did on us that it's sort of hard to even imagine. Like, the United States is a really powerful country and has been an important part of both world wars, but in each case we didn't really come in until the very end. And we didn't have the actual war on our land. Whereas Russia has been completely devastated (I'm talking specifically about world wars, not just throughout history in general, which is also very true). I think I find myself defending Russia more and more (and I think I already did that before I came here, I got called out during a history discussion once for doing that). But, I mean, MAN. The two papers I wrote this semester were about Americans on Baikal during the Russian Civil War, and Russia's international relations in between World Wars. I could go on and on about this but I won't because it probably isn't interesting, but things have really sucked for Russia. I can't really say that it isn't the country's fault, because a lot of it is, and I think it's going to take a LONG time to pull Russia together. But anyway, even the posters and newspapers were interesting to read. One of the "go to war and fight for your country" posters said "Kill a German-if you don't kill him, he'll kill you" which I thought was incredibly...well, I don't know. Did we have that kind of propaganda? I don't think so. I think I'm just used to the "defend your country" or "fight for your homeland" or "fight against (insert political regime here)". But just flat-out "go kill Germans"? whoa.

There were a lot of Germans in Irkutsk, and a lot in Russia in general I think, so it's nice to see that they've patched things up.

I hope people know that I'm not always serious on this blog and use a lot of sarcasm, so I'm not really as airhead as I seem.

So then we wandered trying to find this cafe that had a reputation for good and cheap blini. Which doesn't seem to exist anymore, so clearly it couldn't have been that good of a cafe. So I said I saw a cafe with a Julius Meinl sign, and they usually have good tea, so I said we should go there. Except then I didn't order tea, and Ivan and I ordered not very good blini, and this guy next to us started smoking this awful cigar and then some other guy came and it seemed that they were doing very important and illegal business transactions, so I'd say on the whole the experience was not so great. But then we walked back to the hotel and stopped in McDonald's, which is much like McDonald's in America. They even just write the names of everything instead of translating them. A chicken sandwich is not a "kuritznoi buterbrod" but a "chicken sandvich". It was a very trendy place too, very Chipotle mixed with Starbucks mixed with McDonald's feel. And now they have things with raspberries. Which means that, on the whole, was a positive experience.

I'll write more later. I'm really tired.

last entry for today.

2007-12-19T22:27:00.000-08:00

I hope no one thinks I'm like Russia schitzo.

Because I do still really really really love Irkutsk. And Siberia in general. I just hate Yekaterinburg.

continuation.

2007-12-19T22:21:00.000-08:00

So now we're sitting in the internet cafe and planning on going to the regional studies museum (where they have a lot of stuff about the Romanov family and old believers) and some railway museum next to the train station. We have like four and a half hours to do all of this. We'll probably have lunch in a cafe somewhere and sit in the train station some more. Oh, also, we tried to call the hotel in Kazan where Ivan sent them an email about ordering a room (every hotel we call says we have to send an email or a fax, so Ivan sent an email), but when we called they said they hadn't read their email in a week, maybe they'd read it tomorrow (today). Then they said they had free rooms but we have to book 2 weeks in advance. The moral of the story is that we have no idea what the hotel situation is going to be in Kazan.

I smell like smoke, which is disgusting, and I'm not entirely sure what from (other than Russia in general). I could also really use a shower. Anyway the second I get on the train (I HOPE TO GOD THAT WE DON'T HAVE A COMPARTMENT-MATE) I'm situating myself, maybe reading, and going to bed at like 6 PM, since we need to get up at like 5 am (Kazan/Moscow time) tomorrow morning.

I hate Russia. Or just Yekaterinburg. Or just the Yekaterinburg train station.

Although yesterday when we came to this internet cafe I wanted to buy a bottle of water (it's an internet cafe AND a coffee shop) but the guy told me he couldn't because he didn't work at the bar. So then I asked about a 40 ruble bottle of pepsi sitting in the fridge right next to the internet desk and he said he couldn't do that either. This country is ridiculous.

hmm.

2007-12-19T21:43:00.000-08:00

My love for Russia has rapidly decreased since leaving Irkutsk. Which will make going home an easier decision. Although I'm still pining for Irkutsk in a way that might be strong enough to convince me to stay.

Train ride was fine, mostly. Our little buryat compartment-mate named Edik was quite nice. And then we had another roommate for about 3 hours in between the hours of 12 and 3 (Moscow time) or 5 and 8 (Irkutsk time). We couldn't figure out why he paid the extra money for a kypee if he was just going to sit for three hours, and not even on the bed. He just put his stuff there and sat in the hallway. Then we got really neurotic that he stole some of our stuff, because we didn't wake up when he came in (well, I think Joseph did, but I certainly didn't and was very confused when I woke up and the compartment door was open). Nothing was missing.

Then all the outlets they have in the hallway don't actually work, which was sad, although not entirely surprising. I watched some Charlie Brown and Snoopy in English, then planned on charging my computer again to watch it in Russian. But my computer battery was low and the outlets didn't work. And I didn't want to run the battery completely out, I think that's bad, right? So I'm just letting it sit with like 15% battery power. and not using it.

Also there were a group of drunk Russian guys like 2 compartments down who were harrassing the girl with the food on the cart as she was coming by. I didn't actually witness this, Joseph did, but it made me very sad. Especially because this isn't exactly surprising in Russia, but would be completely appalling in America. I find myself comparing the two countries more and more as I become more displeased with the first after leaving Irkutsk. Also it was 10 in the morning, who gets drunk at 10 in the morning? That is a rhetorical question, since almost every time I've been in a restaraunt/cafe early in the morning (often now that we're travling, more on that later) there have been people drinking alcohol. I was almost ready to say beer at 8:30 AM is okay, even though it's not. But vodka? completely unacceptable.

So we got to Yekaterinburg and found out that the hotel where we booked a room AND Ivan's Dad booked a room for us didn't actually have our reservation. Then told us we'd have to pay for a single and a double, coming to about $90 a person. And telling us they didn't have cots (I DO NOT beleive that.) So we sad for a long time calling different hotels at 6 in the morning, then Joseph went over to the train station to see if they have places to sleep (often train stations in Russia have beds that you can pay for by the hour). They didn't have actual beds, but a little area where there are comfy(er) chairs and you can sleep there. We figured that would be fine, it's only one night, and we can sleep like 12 hours on the train if we don't get enough sleep. In theory this would have been fine. But didn't really work out that way.

Oh yea, when we got there this guy with a cart thing offered to help us with our bags, which was fine, but then told us when we got to the actual train station (like a 3 minute walk), told us that it would cost 600 rubles ($24) which was completely obscene. Joseph, being my hero at this point, yelled at the guy, and I should have too, but just didn't have the energy. Naturally we should have asked before he took our luggage but still. So we haggled him down a little and left. We should have just given him 100 rubles and walked away. Whatever.

So then we dragged all of our luggage across the street to the hotel (which was SIGNIFICANTLY harder than one would think, as my gigantic suitcase has wheels that don't really work in the snow (seeing as the snow packs itself on them and whatnot and I just have to drag it along), although sort of worked when there wasn't much snow, but I still had that, an addidas bag with everything I'd need for the rest of my stay in Russia (since I'm keeping my bag in the hostel in Moscow so I don't have to drag it everywhere), my gigantic black purse, and a bag of food). Then the hotel fiasco ensued and we dragged all of our stuff back to the train station. But I didn't want to leave everything (mainly my black purse with my laptop, camera, anything of value, etc and my plastic bag of food) so I ended up carrying that around with me always which was more of a pain and much heavier than one would think.

So it was then 7:30 in the morning in downtown Yekaterinburg, where nothing is open, because although this was a big city (like, 1.28 million), almost nothing is open before 9. (Also, for some reason, maybe because I was in Irkutsk, I'm always surprised when other cities are bigger than Irkutsk (other than Moscow and St. Petersburg, of course). There are SO MANY. Like, Yekaterinburg, Kazan, Novosibirsk, Omsk, all of these are bigger than Irkutsk. I feel like I'm some sort of weird Irkutsk enthusiast whose view of the sizes of Russian cities has been completely skewed...anyway). So we finally found this Italian restaraunt with breakfast. I had a badly cooked omlet. We noted that there are a lot of places in Russia that look like maybe they could exist in the US, but then you hear the dance techno remix music and see the guys drinking in the corner at 8 AM and realize that this would not occur anywhere other than in Russia.

So then we did a walking tour of Yekaterinburg and saw a number of interesting churches and monuments. Maybe the most interesting was the Romanov death site. It was weird though, because there was this iron cross symbolizing where they had died, but in the middle of this city with this big road and all kinds of commercial...well, things around it. It was just hard to imagine, seeing as we were in the middle of this modernized city. So then we went to a cafe while we waited for the icon museum to open, went to the icon museum, went to a really cool photography museum, backtracked to the Afganistan/Chechnya war memorial (really quite nice, actually), saw that the military history museum was closed, went to some sort of jewel/stone museum which was cool, went to a pilmeni cafe with not very good pilmeni, went to a fine arts museum which I actually quite enjoyed. Made our way back to the train station, had some soup at this uzbek food place, which was not that good. Bought some cards and decided we'd hang out and play cards, then go to sleep. Played cards for about an hour, and were EXHAUSTED (probably because we woke up at like 4 AM local time, and it was 10 PM local time) so we went to pay to sleep in this little area for 6 hours. Then the women there were VERY concerned because it was only 8 PM moscow time, meaning we'd wake up at 2 AM Moscow time and 4 AM local time. We assured them that this was okay, seeing as our body clocks were all out of whack anyway.

It's very hard to sleep with your feet on the floor. Russians have a THING with shoes on chairs, which I can understand, but I was afraid to take off my boots because I thought someone would steal them (probably a bit of an irrational fear, but not completely). Then it was hard for me to sleep because I was coughing a lot and worrying about my bags. I was sleeping on top of my bag with my laptop, which was quite uncomfortable, actaully. The other bag wasn't really that important, it just had food, but still. After like three hours I finally took off my boots and adjusted myself so that I could sleep comfortably, while still clutching my purse. So then they woke us up at 2 AM Moscow time (4AM local time) so we moved to another sitting room where they just had these metal chairs. I gladly would have paid for another couple of hours, but I guess Joseph and Ivan didn't want to, and I didn't want to be alone. So we relocated and went back to sleep.

Unfortunately we relocated to a place where the most evil woman ever was the hall guard or something. So they had these metal chairs, not really nice or comfortable or anything, but I arranged myself so that I could sleep comfortably and the woman came over and woke me up and yelled at me because my boots were touching some metal pole part of the chair. Okay, I can admit that they were definitely more off the ground than they should have been. So I rearranged myself so that I was sleeping in some sort of ball where my feet were hanging off the edge so that they weren't touching anything (I'd draw a diagram, but I'm not on my computer). So then like a half an hour later she came back and woke me up again to yell at me, but like actually yell at me, to which I responded that my feet weren't actually ON anything or touching anything at all, just hanging off the edge 6 inches from the ground, which made her even more unpleasant. To which I just rolled over into another position and ignored her and went back to sleep. But then I was uncomfortable, so I just took off my shoes and curled up in a ball and slept. So then an hour later (at like 6:30) she woke me up again, telling me that I had slept enough and that it was already morning. She, however, did not wake up and yell at the other 15 people around me sleeping. She also did something, not really sure what, where she woke up two other people and hassled them until they left. Or for one guy she got 2 security guards or something and they pulled him out. This woman was completely ridiculous. However, Joseph said she was completely pleasant to him, although he wasn't next to Ivan and I. So that was pretty much awful and I hated everyone at that point, and wished that my Russian was good enough (or that I was awake enough) to yell at this woman. Actually I was prepared for it if she came back to bother me, but unfortunately enough she didn't, so I didn't get to go off on my carefully formed rant about how she was a ridiculous human being.

So we arrived in downtown Yekaterinburg on the metro at 8 AM, again, and went to this coffee shop. I made the mistake of asking for the check too early, so then it was 9:10 AM and we had nothing to do. The museums we want to see don't open until 11 and the internet cafe didn't open until 10. So we went to a different coffee shop, where we could buy tea for like 10 rubles, and sat and played cards (well, I read Lonely Planet, Joseph and Ivan played cards). And then we came here.

And my internet is going to cut out in like four seconds. So I'll update more later.

AH.

2007-12-19T06:06:00.000-08:00

So I left Irkutsk on Sunday night. That day I ran around a TON, meeting with Tanya, Anya, Elissa, and Ilana, having my last cup of amazing tea in Cafe KoKs, went to a bookstore and bought Fathers and Sons in Russian, along with some Sudoku and a Russian Glamour magazine, then sat around the apartment, packed, took a shower, etc. That evening seemed to drag on but I didn't want it to end. I was so sad. My host family and I exchanged gifts (I gave them tapochki (translates to slippers, but the word slippers totally doesn't convey the cultural importance of them) and a bottle of cognac, they gave me a book about Irkutsk and this stone with this painting on it which is really pretty and I love a lot.

We had pozi for dinner (my host mother did that just for me) and left for the train station around 1 AM. As we were waiting for the train at the platform, it was SO eerie. And completely appropriate for leaving my beloved siberian city. It was really cold, but there was still really thick fog...we were all just waiting on the platform as we heard this train horn and it emerged from the fog and just seemed really large and overwhelming. We got on (there was some girl sleeping in our compartment who shouldn't have been there...there were three of us and one other kid but I guess his friend thought no one would be there...anyway, not important), settled, and then Mama Olya and Papa Yuri left and I was SO sad. And I was having one of those panicked moments where I was like...I JUST CAN'T LEAVE IRKUTSK.

And I'm still not sure I can. I DO not want to leave Russia. Also Irina Militievna called me Sunday night to wish me a safe journey and to say she was very sad that I wasn't coming back for 2nd semester.

AHHHHHHH. I DO NOT WANT TO LEAVE.

I might not.

sadness.

2007-12-15T22:00:00.001-08:00

Wednesday, December 12^th

Okay, a couple very important points:

a) I went online today at Café KoKs and ended up spending a lot of money for 2 hours of internet and a lot of tea and some pasta, but it was all worth it because I got to talk to Gabe and Dave online which was beyond fabulous.

b) I’m listening to “Mmm Mmmm Mmm” by Crash Test Dummies, which is the weirdest song EVER. It’s about, like, really bizarre things that happen to 3 kids and then the chorus is this guy humming. You should all download it and experience it for yourself.

c) Once I heard about that song on “I Love the 90s”, where they have a bunch of people talking about random things. So, that wasn’t really the point, the important question is: What do I have to do to be on a show like that? Like, I realize I have to be famous or something, but if I were to get to that point, what do I have to do after that? Like, what qualifications are needed for them to say “You know what, you look like you would have a GREAT opinion on Chia Pets. So, what do you think of them? How about jelly shoes?” Would it be sad if that was one of my main aspirations in life? Please don’t answer that.

d) I made my hostel reservations in Moscow. Which means I have a place to go once I arrive and don’t need to wander the city with all of my bags at 6:30 AM. Also I’m pretty sure it’s the best hostel ever, it’s possible that I’m exaggerating, but I really don’t think so. It had awesome reviews, it’s like RIGHT next to Red Square, they have wi-fi and free breakfast (I think?) and it was like $15 a night, except for after the first of January when the price jumped to $25 a night which is still not bad for a place in Moscow next to Red Square. I’m just saying.

e) I bought my airline ticket to St. Petersburg. At first I was really excited because it said they had a $60 round trip ticket available, but then there was another $60 in taxes and fees. But I’m okay with that, because my research tells me that it’s about the same price as a there and back train ticket. Now I just have to find an Aeroflot ticket office in the next 24 hours…eek?

f) I booked my hostel for my first night in Petersburg, aka my only night before I take the train to Helsinki. I didn’t book the nights for when I’m back from Helsinki because Alya and Sonya are going to be there, and it’d be pretty sweet if we could stay in the same place.

g) Hostel options in Helsinki suck. They’re all about the same price ($50 a night), and the ones actually in downtown Helsinki have not SO great reviews, where the ones that are sort of far away from downtown Helsinki have only sort of okay reviews. So the moral of the story is I tried to make a list of pros and cons, then got tired and just abandoned the Helsinki hostel booking process. I’ll come back to it later.

h) I only have a couple more things to do before my trip is completely planned. Then I can do really awesome things like make budget sheets and lists of exactly what I want to do and schedules for when I’m there. This is going to be excellent.

i) Karrina and I were BFFs before, but now I think we might be the same person. She also doesn’t like extended amounts of eye contact. Just a little bit at a time. JUST LIKE ME.

j) My cat at home doesn’t like eye contact at all, which is sort of weird.

k) I totally lost my voice, probably from talking on the phone with mom last night for 45 mins, but this has worked out in my favor (with the exception of being up all night coughing and being in pain) because 1. when I gave my little presentation about my paper in Baikalovedene I’m pretty sure only half of it was understood, which maybe made it seem like I knew what I was talking about, because hopefully that half was the coherent half. 2. It means other than that I don’t have to talk much and 3. It means the waitress at Café KoKs suggested an exceptionally wonderful kind of tea.

l) We’re still taking my temperature.

m) I still have three pages of paper to write, in Russian, and this is not very good.

Am I like SO hot, Gabe?

Thursday, December 13^th

I am so tired. But I finished my paper, and it was 12 pages. I think it’s actually okay, as long as he ignores the lack of grammar…and that it might not actually be Russian. I think if I had finished with enough time to have had an actual Russian read through it, it might have been okay.

But anyway, so I planned on getting up at like 7:30 so I could go to the internet café, do spell check, and print it. But I shut my alarm off after it went off, had the most bizarre dream EVER (including hotel lobbies, skipping class, Russian professors, Hawken Alum breakfasts with blini, people I didn’t particularly want to see, and climbing through windows and passageways to avoid teachers), and woke up like an hour later. Which is the time I usually wake up to make it to class by 10. At this point there was NO way I was going to make it, so I didn’t really rush, just got ready at my usual speed. Then went to the internet café to do spell check and print (which was unnecessarily complicated, by the way), and maybe check email and facebook. So I was like 45 mins late to grammar class, and felt bad about that, but not that bad.

Then we had this little tea party with the other international students where people, like, sang things and read poems and whatnot. It was sort of weird, actually. And then these three Russian girls wanted to teach us a song and some games, and it was like we were in Kindergarten again. Seriously. I was like, this is ridiculous. Also they taught us how to play spin the bottle (I think that’s a universally understood game), but everyone was supposed to just kiss each other on the cheek, which is not really that big of a deal. But this other girl was acting as if this was clearly not okay, so…I don’t really know where I was going with that, but that’s okay.

Then went to the Aeroflot office to pay for and pick up my ticket (round trip Moscow to St. Petersburg, cheaper than round trip on the train, oooooohhhhhh who is so excellent…that’s right, I am). That was overall successful. I had to wait a long time, but they had comfortable chairs, so I was fine with that. I also feel like having an experience with Aeroflot is necessary in Russia, so I’m looking forward to this, as painful as it may be. Ask Eddie about how many times he had to get his ticket signed when his flights were changed. Sort of ridiculous.

Then booked my hostel for the rest of my stay in St. Petersburg. I’m staying with Sonya and Abby at the Crazy Duck hostel, which as much as the name scared me at first, seems like a pretty good place. The only thing I have left to get is train tickets to Helsinki and Yaroslavl and housing there. Whoa. Almost totally planned.

Then I met Tanya at Domino. We were only there for like 20 mins, which is the perfect amount of time. We’re supposed to meet later this weekend. I’m supposed to text her about that, actually, but my phone isn’t letting me text which is SO annoying.

Then I had my last Phoenix meeting. It was really sad. Also there were only like 8 people there, which made it sadder, because there were a lot of people I didn’t get to say goodbye to. And I got all kinds of email addresses, so that was nice.

Okay I’m exhausted and going to sleep.

Friday, December 14^th,

Okay, before I go on and on about how much I love Russia and am so sad to leave and have been SERIOUSLY thinking for the past day about what would happen if I just didn’t leave, and stay the year, I need to tell everyone that the rap music playing at Café KoKs right now is APPALLING. Like, completely ridiculous. I mean, I know most people here don’t understand the obscenely vulgar lyrics playing right now, but OH MY GOD. I DO. Also the vulgar song that just finished was sandwiched with “Sorry Ms. Jackson” by Outkast, which is also a ridiculous song, now that I listen to the lyrics. Oh man. Okay, anyway.

So I feel totally fine until I return to the apartment, when my throat starts itching and I start coughing uncontrollably the entire night. Then I’m really tired the next morning. Anyway, so I coughed a lot last night and this morning when my alarm went off, I hit the “stop” button and prepared to get up. And then woke up at 9. THIS IS THE SECOND DAY IN A ROW. And this has NEVER happened to me before (in Russia). So I rushed to get myself ready and left the apartment without eating breakfast, which Papa Yuri was not so thrilled about, but thank God my host mother wasn’t there because it would have been the apocalypse. No joke.

Then we took a grammar exam where we were unsure of the answers, because a lot of times it can vary based on context (well, her friends came to visit her, but are they still there? Did they visit her on foot or by car? And other such dilemmas). But on some sections if we asked enough she just gave us the answers (Well, of COURSE you would use this pair of verbs, etc. etc. etc…). She also left for a REALLY long time and we’re pretty positive that it was because she wanted this test to be a collective effort, but we still have some academic integrity left. Russia hasn’t squelched all of it.

Then in Speech Practice we had to read some things and answer questions, and then fill out a chart with all these faces on it…Like those “how are you feeling today?” posters where there are like 70 smiley (or not so smiley) faces and moods under them. So, my vocabulary is relatively limited when faced with such a task, and I ended up writing things like “He’s really bitter” or “He’s suspicious of the person next to him” or “he’s ready” or “he’s laughing and crying at the same time” or “he’s lost his mind”. I know, you’re all blown away by my brilliance.

Then after class we rushed to put together teacher’s gifts. And I had to run and find flowers and get 4 bouquets of them, which took the girl a ridiculously long time to put together and I was like way late for our lunch thing with Elisabeth and our professors. It was so sad. We’re, like, LEAVING. But Vladimir Konstantinovich said it’s possible to do Grad School here…Anyway. So everyone (PS the main lyrics of this song playing right now is “don’t let the system get you down.” What?) talked a lot and we gave gifts and they gave us gifts and we had lots of toasts with juice. And I was really sad. And wanted so badly to just be like “ELISABETH I CAN’T LEAVE”, but held back and didn’t. This softball season had better be good or I’m going to regret not staying SO MUCH. I wish I didn’t have to make that choice. AGH.

And Eddie showed his tanker hat to Pavel Alexandrovich, who then wore it and posed for a picture. Alexandra Vladimirovna was in the background holding flowers. It is a completely ridiculous picture, that Sonya and Ivan now have and I need to take from them. Also Ivan had my grey pants and Nike shirt that I thought I had lost long ago! I thought I had left them in Ulan-Ude and was SO sad about it (my grey pants, my absolute FAVORITE pair of sweatpants, which I’ve worn so much are pretty much worn away and should never be worn outside of the house but I do anyway), but Ivan found them in his suitcase! And then I remembered that after I swam in Baikal once, and didn’t have a пакет (more on their importance in Russian culture to come soon, or just check out Sonya’s or Alya’s blog), so I asked Ivan if I could put them in his пакет with wet clothes. And then forgot to ask him for them again. And then thought I had lost them. Yay!

I wonder if I’ll harvest plastic bags at home the way I do here.

Oh my God, the sadness.

And I didn’t get to say goodbye to our sort of German friends. Irina Militievna said that they were sad we left the tea thing early yesterday. And then I was sad because I totally would have stayed and hung out with them, and even given up my Aeroflot reservation had I known. SADNESS. SO MUCH SADNESS. I might send Amrai a text message and ask for everyone’s emails. WAAAAAAA.

Then I went with Sonya to the train station to try and buy train tickets to Helsinki from St. Petersburg, which turned out to be an impossible task. The number of different ticket counters and places to go is completely ridiculous. Anyway so I tried to find out if the dates I wanted were available, and the really nice woman (actually, I think by Russian standards she was really nice, because she helped, but by American standards still not so friendly) that was there last time was NOT there this time. So I wasn’t sure if a) there were no trains going to Helsinki in general b) there weren’t any trains on that particular day c) there weren’t any available spots on the train d) I couldn’t buy tickets at this particular window e) I couldn’t buy tickets in this particular building or f) I couldn’t buy tickets in Irkutsk. So, that was wildly unsuccessful, and as much as I tried to get them to explain the situation to me, they were still very short with me and unhelpful in general. So I ran away from the situation, pretending that it would fix itself if I waited a day and then returned. So, that’s the plan.

Then I went to Tex-Mex to reserve a table for us tonight where we’re going to have dinner and maybe speak English! Elissa and Eddie and Ivan (I think?) and I have expressed interest. I think we’re going to see how the others feel about it. We wanted to invite Irina Militievna, because…well, just because. Also she said something about how she wasn’t allowed to speak English with us, and how that was unfortunate…and she’s always asking how to say things in English in class…which leads us to believe that she speaks English, which I was NOT aware of, and now DESPERATELY want to speak English with her. Like, SO MUCH.

Then I went to Café KoKs to use their internet and accomplished none of the things that I wanted to accomplish, especially because the internet cut out early. But they had the MOST delicious fruit tea EVER, so that was nice. I’m also trying to figure out how far away JFK is from the Newark airport. Far? Possible to get there inexpensively with a bunch of baggage? I would have answered that question, but the internet cut out. Also I looked for flights from JFK to Cleveland and found flights that connect in Orlando and Houston, but nothing…well, helpful. I know this is completely ridiculous but I’ve been invited to be part of a panel at Old Trail on the 9^th at 2:30. So if I could do that it would be GREAT. Especially since Alex is gone from there now, I’m really looking for any excuse I can to go back, since they’re few and far between. I’d feel weird just, like, going without reason.

Went to Tex-Mex. Everyone was there, which was SO GREAT. And LYONYA AND ANYA came. It was so great. And we walked around for a LONG time in the cold before going to Domino. It was just really nice, and we’re going to a pozi place tomorrow which is pretty much fabulous. Also…

LYONYA AND ANYA ARE WORKING AT MIDDLEBURY NEXT SUMMER. I’ve decided, like immediately, to apply for a scholarship for language school (since I didn’t get the FBI internship). If I get it…oh MAN. Sarah said she might go too (SARAH THIS WOULD BE AMAZING, THINK ABOUT IT) AND I think Lyonya said that Tatiana would be teaching during the summer too. Oh my God, like, I can’t even process the amazingness that would occur. And I’d be able to COMMUNICATE this summer! Oh man. OHHH man. I might even download the application, like, tomorrow. Of course, that would mean that by the end of my senior year, I would have been studying with very little break for more than 2 and a half years. That is a LONG time. That’s okay, I’ll live. Oh man I hope I get this scholarship.

Okay, I have soooo much to do tomorrow and should really go to sleep. Also, I wonder if people read this blog and think I’m completely insane. I think a good number of people (as in, more than my parents and the other students in Irkutsk) read my blog. So, I wonder if people I’ve met before thought that I was some sort of respectable human being, and then read my blog and are like…yea she’s insane. It’s completely possible, and perhaps even likely.

I need to make a list of all the things I want to do before I leave, because it’s a lot.

Also let’s play a game called most annoying thing in the world. (Let’s play another game called count how many times Natalie way exaggerates on this blog). Question: what’s the most annoying thing in the world? Answer: this obnoxious cough that won’t go away. It’s not even like I’m sick anymore, I just have this lingering cough that keeps me from, like, sleeping.

Saturday, December 15^th

I ran around A LOT today. Joseph and I met with 2 Russian girls. Then with Sonya. Then with Ivan. Then we waited a long time for Eddie, Lyonya, and Anya. Then I went to the children’s home with three of the girls from Phoenix and we said goodbye to each other and it was really sad. And I went to the train station with Eddie, Lyonya, Anya, and Mama Mila to say goodbye to Lucy and Adrienne. And I still have a million things to do tomorrow but want to be back by 4 because I think my host family is doing some sort of goodbye thing for me, which is very nice of them. Oh my God in 24 hours we’ll be waiting for a taxi to pick us up and take me away from Irkutsk. Tonight was the last time I’ll watch “Dances on the Ice” with my host family.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Like, longest blog entry ever. Natalie, please get a life.

2007-12-11T22:59:00.000-08:00

Thursday, December 6^th

Today was pretty much all around fabulous. I think that I’m in that stage (actually Eddie and I talked about this) where I’m pretty much loving everything because I realize I’m leaving soon. I’m like “oh, that cold dirty stone half-lit hallway I walk down so often! Oh how I’ll miss you!” Anyway. My day was fabulous.

So I was an awful student and decided to skip class and instead go to the movies with my Russian friends. Well, Russian friend and her friends. This turned out to be an excellent choice, since Eddie told me that a significant part of class was spent talking about squirrels (Sonya has an irrational fear and hatred for them) (well, fear OF them, hatred for them). I figured the cultural experience of spending time with Russian friends was more important than an hour and twenty minutes of Baikalovedene. Well, maybe not, since we watched a movie in English. They’re having a British Film Festival, and for a week they have a movie every day-in English in the morning, and in Russian at night. So they all take English and wanted to try to understand. Well, at first I couldn’t even understand because their accents were so thick. But I caught on after like 20 seconds. The movie was called “Vera Drake” and it’s about this woman in the 50s who gives illegal abortions to young girls that can’t afford regular abortions. I won’t tell you the end but it was really good and really sad (I thought).

So then I went to the library and photocopied some Russian stuff for my Baikalovedene paper. After that I tried to go to Café KoKs to use their wireless, but they were closed until 3 to do repairs. So then Sonya sends me a text saying I should come to the mezhfak, because there’s going to be a cake and mini-celebration for Lucy’s birthday. But I had already told Elisabeth that I got sick, so I couldn’t. And Sonya told me that Elisabeth said even so, I should come. Then she told me that Elisabeth didn’t really believe I got sick. Which I didn’t. So I came, and we waited for Lucy and Adrienne to finish class, but they somehow ended up leaving without us noticing (we were in the room next door) so then Elisabeth had to track them down. No one really needs a play-by-play of these events, so I’m just going to say it was fun.

Then I went to Café KoKs and used their wi-fi. And found 250 pages of information (in ENGLISH!) about my Baikalovedene topic. AND Pavel Alexandrovich told me I could use American sources. Which means that although I HAVE Russian sources…I don’t really need to use them. I’ll probably try to read them, but this time I’m SURE I’ll know what I’m talking about. They had an ENTIRE book online. Free. This was fantastic. The only thing is that I’m probably not going to read 250 pages of material in, like, a day. I also found a bunch of Russia Hostel sites online and I’m SO excited right now. I found a Moscow hostel like, RIGHT next to Red Square for $25 a day. And I think free internet and laundry (or maybe that’s the other $25 one, but the other one is only like a 15 min walk from Red Square). They were the two highest rated on this site, I think. I am beyond excited. So, I’ve got my train tickets there, but now I want to find out exactly when I’m going to be in each city so I can book hostels. I’d like to buy my train tickets in advance too, actually, if possible. I’ll hodi to the vokzal zaftra and find out. (I’ll go to the train station tomorrow to find out).

So then I went to the SPO Phoenix meeting. They talked about a bunch of stuff and then we played this game. There were two teams, and we had to design this TV channel and have an emblem and name, 2 ads, the news, and the weather. Note-this is a group that runs a summer camp and goes to children’s homes, so all the games we play are designed for different groups of kids. We play and then discuss strengths, weaknesses, appropriate age groups, what to do, etc. Anyway my team’s station was called GlamTV, and I was supposed to do the weather. But they wanted me to do the weather in really fast English and then say “Nu shto? Ice?” I don’t get it but it’s supposed to be some spoof of a popular commercial. Anyway. So that was fun.

Then Ivan and I met Eddie for 9 PM Tex-Mex. When I walked up to the table there was this slippery part and I NAILED my knee. Like, on the very corner of this bench. It hurt SO bad. And is hurting more to move it as it continues to swell. Once the initial pain went away it wasn’t so bad, but it’s worse now that it’s…well, swollen. UGH. I didn’t tell my host mother. I didn’t want her to give me vodka or something. Actually there’s nothing you really can do for something like that except for, like, ice and ibuprofen, but she would probably tell me to rub vodka all over it and then gargle some onion/garlic mixture or something. Kind of like when Eddie had a cold and his family made him heat lamp his tongue.

There was something else I wanted to talk about but don’t remember what. Let’s talk about how much my knee is killing me. Oh wait, that wouldn’t be very fun. Well, you know what else isn’t very fun? MY SWOLLEN, BLACK AND BLUE KNEE.

Oh wait, let’s talk about how I watched the movie Jerry Maguire (is that how you spell it?) last night. I thought it was alright, but I have this problem with potentially okay movies with characters I don’t like. I just can’t REALLY like a movie if I don’t like the characters very much. It wasn’t that I didn’t like the characters, I thought they were okay, it’s just I HATED the relationship between Tom Cruise and Renee Zellweger. Is that how you spell her last name? I don’t know. Anyway, it’s not just that it was unbelievable, but completely ridiculous and didn’t flow in any sort of coherent way (I thought). Like, I realize that Tom Cruise’s character is supposed to have this being alone phobia, but who just decides to propose to someone in order for them to stay? Like, he was GOING to see her that weekend. That’s what, like, 4 days away? And then who takes a proposal like that seriously? And then who suddenly has this moment of clarity at a football game and then everything’s okay and his intimacy phobia just magically goes away? I mean, I know a lot of movies are fairy tale fantasies like that, but at least sometimes it’s like, okay, it COULD happen. But here I was like, this is just completely ridiculous. It’s like as much as I love Anchorman, and think there are a lot of parts that are SO funny (ignoring the stupid parts) I just don’t like EITHER of the main characters. It’s not even like they just have flaws that can be forgiven, I actually don’t understand how anyone can spend time with them. These kinds of personal feelings of mine have a tendency to get in the way of movie enjoyment. I feel like that happens for everyone though, right? Please say yes.

Other than that I guess it was okay. Maybe I need to watch it again.

Oh, talking about reverse culture shock too. Eddie mentioned in his blog that he doesn’t think he’ll really have reverse culture shock…I don’t really think I will either. I mean, I’m going to be really happy to be back, but I’m still going to really miss a lot of Russia and probably have some pretty intense anxiety about not knowing when I can come back, but I wouldn’t call that culture shock. I don’t really think I had much culture shock coming here either. As neurotic as I am about a lot of things, I actually adapt pretty well to different environments. I mean, I didn’t expect my life here to be like my life at home. I didn’t expect anything to be the same, really. A lot of times I was pleasantly surprised. And a lot of things were/are frustrating, but I don’t really think that’s culture shock. There are certainly cultural differences, many of which I don’t love, but I wouldn’t call that culture shock. I dunno. I went through an “I hate Russia” phase and I think now I’m in an “I love Russia” phase but I don’t think I’d call this culture shock either. Anyway I don’t think I’ll be not experiencing reverse culture shock because I haven’t assimilated myself (because I definitely have), but because I do remember what it’s like in America. Like, I can picture all of these things now. And I have adjusted to life in Irkutsk, but it’s not like I’m going to be surprised when I walk into the grocery store. I’ve been there before. I know what they have. I do thing it’ll take a little bit of getting used to using English for everyday tasks (what do you say when you go into stores? I’ll have to think about that again), but I don’t think there’s going to be this enormous reverse culture shock. But then again, maybe there will be. I just think it’ll be good but a little strange to be back. I’ll need time to reorient myself.

Friday, December 6^th

Omigod in 10 days, 14 hours, and 34 minutes I will be leaving the Irkutsk train station. And I will probably be sad. But, I will also have finished ALL OF MY PAPERS AND CLASSES. And that will be nothing short of fabulous.

I need to text Eddie and Ivan but don’t have any money on my phone. To put money on my phone, I need to go out. And sitting on my bed in sweatpants listening to Christmas music just feels like a MUCH better idea.

Later today we’re meeting some of the other international students to go have a late lunch/early dinner before going to the theatre. I’m excited, it should be fun.

Ahhhh and Ivan just sent me a text message I can’t respond to. I suppose this means I need to leave the apartment. I could go read somewhere, but I’d want to go somewhere where I don’t feel awkward with my computer. Maybe my favorite coffee shop? Maybe.

Later:

I think I’m getting sick. And that, my friends, would suck a LOT. Especially when I have one week left, with a paper and some tests. And we were planning (still are planning?) to go to Listvyanka on Monday. And ice skating on Sunday. Not only do I have actual work to do, but a number of social obligations (I’m just so popular).

Saturday, December 8^th

Yea, so I’m sick. But I lived through last night, which was fairly fun. We went to this café before going to the theater with some of the German kids from the other international group at the mezhfak. I’m really sad that we’re just now meeting them, since I’m just now leaving. But it was fun. The play we saw was completely bizarre. It was this guy, who finds this dog and brings her home and spends all of his time with her and is neglecting his wife, and she gets mad at him, etc. This went on for like 2 and a half hours. And I was feeling continually worse as the play progressed.

So then I came back and didn’t tell my host mother I was sick, just had some tea and went to bed. But ahhh. You know how when you’re sick, you have really weird dreams? So I was having these completely bizarre dreams and kept waking up thinking that there were cardboard boxes all over my bed. It was this weird dream/hallucination mix where I had to describe how I felt in English, and we had to somehow translate it into Russian, and as we were doing this we were piling more boxes and papers on top of me. As in, I would say how my knee hurt, and then they’d put a stack of papers or a cardboard box on my knee. Completely bizarre. So I feel a little better today, but not a whole lot. I think I’m still going to go to the children’s home, since I didn’t go last weekend, and I’ll feel like a flake if I don’t go again. I may end up leaving halfway through though…I guess we’ll see. Ughhhh.

Oh, also, I’m sucking on these cepacol cough drops, but I think they’re not really helping my throat that much…just making my tongue really numb.

Later that night:

So I ended up not going to the children’s home because my host mother found out I was sick. I was really cold so I put on a bunch of clothes and then she said “well, maybe you’re cold because you’re getting sick?” and I didn’t say anything and she goes “AH you’re sick we’re going to have to take your temperature (this goes on and on)…” so she takes my temperature and it’s like 37.5 (which is…like 99.5, SO not that big of a deal), and then says I shouldn’t go anywhere today. I’m sure if I had fought with her over it she would have let me go, but I didn’t really want to argue. I wasn’t that desperate to go. So I texted Anya and Sonya and then went to lie down. I took some motrin too. My host mother also made me some really good cranberry morse (basically smashed up cranberries with hot water and sugar) and tells me it’ll make my temperature go down.

But later she kept trying to take my temperature, and it had gone down (probably because I had taken motrin) to a regular temperature. But she kept telling me it was because I wasn’t doing it right, and needed to do it again. So after like the 3^rd time, when she left I just stuck the thermometer under my computer until it hit, like, 37.8 (100.4). I also read a lot about my paper topic. I think now I’m going to watch Jerry Maguire again; maybe I’ll like it more the 2^nd time around. Then I’ll probably read some sources in Russian, and maybe around 11 start my paper. Gahhhh

Sunday, December 8^th

Still sick. Though not as much. Actually I think it’s one of those things that sort of morphs into something else as it goes. My throat hurts less, but my nose is running more. Oh well. This isn’t so bad, because it means I have to sit in bed all day and write my paper. I’m also not going to watch a movie until I have at least…..4 pages of paper. Maybe five. We’ll see.

Also sad because I think we were all planning on going to Listvyanka tomorrow and I probably won’t be able to go. Even if I felt sort of okay, I feel like being in a banya when sort of sick is probably not a great feeling. The heat and then the cold and the steam and everything all together would probably make me want to die.

So they’ve been building these ice sculptures all over the city, and they’re really cool. There was one that they finished that was an entire playground and kids were playing on it. Then on the main square they’re working on something and carving ice statues. They literally just have giant blocks of ice and put them together. It’s SO cool. Unfortunately they’re not finishing the one on the square until around the 26^th, and I’ll already be gone by then L

Also my host mother asked me where I’d be on New Year’s. I said probably in St. Petersburg. And then she specified “Well, our New Year’s-that’s the 31^st of December to the 1^st of January.” Isn’t that everyone’s New Year?

A few hours later:

Oh my God at this rate I’m never going to finish this paper. I wrote, like, an intro paragraph and a topic sentence for my next paragraph and decided it was time to reward myself with a two hour movie. Maybe I’ll take a shower soon. AHHHHH.

So my host mother has been giving me these really good little orange things. They’re like, REALLY tiny oranges. She’s given me like 25 of them. No joke. They’re REALLY good though.

Does anyone else get really sentimental when listening to “Snoopy and the Red Baron”? Because I do. Also, how much do I love Bing Crosby Christmas music? And Nat King Cole and Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra? Are there people that don’t love their Christmas music? Do these heathens exist? Ahh so great. I wonder if my limewire works in Café KoKs? I’ll find out tomorrow. Things I want to download: MORE Christmas music, awful songs I’ve heard here but am now really sentimental about because they remind me of Russia…and other things.

Oh my God I just realized that a month from now I’ll be at home. A month ago I just finished my first week of classes after coming back from Mongolia. It feels like it was so long ago but at the same time SO NOT THAT LONG AGO. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Russiaaaaaaa what are you doing to meeeeeeee

Sometimes I wonder whether or not I should have stayed the full year. I sort of wish it could have been an easy decision to make.

Also, the Lonely Planet guidebooks have the most RIDICULOUS pictures on the front. Has anyone else noticed this? Like, who chooses these pictures? The one on the front of the Trans-Siberian Railroad book is this smiley Mongolian man, completely outfitted in traditional Mongolian clothes, arms crossed, with nature in the background. And he is like REALLY smiling. I mean, I know the thought of the Trans-Siberian Railroad is exciting, but who is THAT delighted about it? And on the front of the Russia and Belarus one (this is 10,000 times better) is this scruffy, old-believer looking Slav with this open mouthed grin and not all of his teeth. Why are not all the people I meet in Russia like this? Like, do you think this was some sort of inside joke by the authors? I would be THRILLED if it were.

Oh my GOD. I just tried to take a shower and my host mother flipped out, saying that you should NEVER take a shower when you’re sick. It makes everything worse. I told her that I take showers all the time when I’m sick, and I even feel better, and she said no. I think I just have to wait until she’s at work tomorrow morning. I hope my host father doesn’t flip out too. He doesn’t seem like the flipping out type. Our conversations are usually restricted to him telling me about someone on the television, and my responding with “hmm” or “oh, really?” or “Oh, I didn’t know that”. And I thought I could bank on my being like “well, you said no yesterday but didn’t say anything about today…” but she told me I couldn’t take one tomorrow morning either.

Monday, December 9^th

Still sick. Still housebound. I was going to wash my hair and if my host mother flipped out, say that she told me I could wash as long as I didn’t take a full shower, but I didn’t really want to test her. Also my host father said I shouldn’t go anywhere today…I was going to meet Lucy at Café KoKs and then Tanya at Domino. I probably could have fought to do that do, but I didn’t really have the energy. So I just called them and told them that I was still sick.

Also when I took my temperature and showed it to my host father, saying I didn’t have a fever anymore (37.1=98.78), he told me that once I hit 37 it meant I already had a fever, because that’s where the red dot is. NO. The little red dot means that’s your normal body temperature. AHHH.

It’s probably good for me to sit in the apartment all day, since I really need to finish my paper. At first I was like “Ooooohhh, two extra hours, that means I can watch a movie!” but I really really really need to finish this paper, like NOW.

Also Spongebob needs a bath first thing when we get home.

Also I had the following conversation with my host mother:

Natasha: *sneezes*

Host mother: Why are you sneezing?!

Natasha: Because I have a cold.

Host mother:…logical.

Also in the past 18 hour period I’ve probably had about 45 of those little orange things.

So when my host mother heard that my temperature was 37.1 (like, 98.8) she kept telling me that this was not good and she didn’t know what to do and so on and so forth. And then I said it’s really not that bad, my regular body temperature is 37, so 37.1 is not a big deal. And then she flips out and tells me that is absolutely not true, a normal body temperature is 36.6 (97.8) and I told her that my average body temperature, in Fahrenheit, is 98.6. Then I showed her the little converter thing on my phone and that it was 37 degrees, and she still didn’t believe me (not that that was very convincing, I just thought it might help). And then I told her she could take my temperature as often as she wanted, but it wasn’t going to get any lower than 37 degrees.

I haven’t yet told her that I’m taking a shower tonight, but I’m going to. I already told her I’m going to class tomorrow and I haven’t taken a shower in three days, there is NO way I’m going to class tomorrow without taking a shower. And if she fights me on it, I’ll tell her that I either take a shower now, or I take a shower in the morning after she’s left for work and go out with wet hair. She’ll be so mad but I’ll win.

Also all of the electricity went out for like 2 hours. They were VERY upset that they didn’t turn on the chai-nik earlier, because the water in it was cold at this point, and how are we going to drink tea with cold water? Nadya and Papa Yuri kept touching the side of it, as if maybe if they touched it often enough it would magically heat up. They also tried turning it on, as if it was the only electronic appliance that would work in a power outage. It was weird, actually, because they watch a LOT of TV, so I was like…what are they going to do? They sort of just sat there. My computer ran on battery power, so I could keep writing my paper. That was excellent.

Okay, time for the shower fight. Update soon to come.

Update:

Well, THAT was met with little to no resistance. I just got a number of disapproving looks and “this is just AWFUL!” from my host mother. Success!

I’m doing my work and listening to one of the mixes I have on iTunes…and it’s almost weird to listen to. I feel like for such a long time I haven’t just relaxed and listened to English music that wasn’t Christmas music (which I have been listening to quite often lately). It’s strangely therapeutic, in a way. Most of the English music I’ve listened to in the last 7 months has been Christmas music (most recently), this one mix I have with 7 songs on it, and running mixes. But this mix is one I haven’t listened to in awhile. MAN. I haven’t heard these songs in SO LONG.

You know the phrase “don’t judge a book by it’s cover”? Well, do you think the same goes for apples? Like, “don’t judge an apple by it’s skin”? (would we call that skin? The outside of the apple?) The apple I have right now is really scratchy. How does that happen? Do we think it’s safe? If this is my last blog entry ever, you’ll know what happened.

The apple was quite tasty. I am still alive.

AMAZING how music can alter your mood and how you’re feeling.

Tuesday, December 11^th

I wanted to post this today, because I wanted to go to Café KoKs and use their wi-fi, but everything flipped out and I didn’t have time, and forgot to save this to my flash drive, so there we go.

I was in possibly the worst mood ever today, which is impressive seeing as it was my first time out of the apartment in, like, three and a half days. You’d think I would have been ecstatic. But no. Everything everyone was saying was irritating me, especially the improper use of adjectives we were learning in class, which is pretty extreme, considering most of the Russian words in my vocabulary are misused, and they were new words, so we were not familiar with them, so we were bound to misuse them. Anyway. I just actually thought I was going to die sitting there listening to everyone talk.

And then these two Russian girls came in. We had talked a couple weeks ago, after that “Russia through the eyes of foreigners” conference. I was supposed to find them one day but couldn’t find them. Anyway I guess they found our schedule and where we would be and sought us out. They want to do something this weekend. This is all very nice, and I realize I should be happy about this, but I’m in Irkutsk for like 6 more days. The effort it takes to make new friends, especially in Russian, just seems like too much for me to handle right now. I mean, I think they know I’m leaving. I said our semester ends this week and then we’re leaving. My Russian isn’t exactly perfect, but I’m pretty sure that was understood. It’s not that I just don’t want to go bowling with them or whatever, I just actually don’t have time. And I feel bad blowing them off, so I don’t want to do that. But I actually don’t have time. I’m not really sure what I’m going to tell them.

Tanya is being fairly ridiculous as well. She wants to get together, which is fine, but we were planning on meeting on Saturday and then I got sick. And then I was housebound. And now I have class and a paper to write and teacher gifts to do and things to just, you know, finish the semester. And when we’re free, we’re free at different times. Well, she’s sort of acting as if this is all my fault and I’m blowing her off and not making time or whatever. Basically she’s acting really irritated. But I can’t really do anything about the fact that I don’t have time.

So we had Speech Practice, then Grammar, then Speech Practice again (since we didn’t have class on Friday). So then we got our test results back from Baikalovedene, which caused my mood to plummet even more. I think I was the only person (correct me if I’m wrong) that actually read the course handouts Pavel Alexandrovich gave us, and probably spent the most time studying. I did A LOT of reading and studying for Baikalovedene. I don’t know if I just studied the wrong stuff or what, but I had one of the worst grades in the class (then again, there are only six of us, and I only know how three others did, but it’s pretty much always guaranteed that Sonya did better than I did, so I guess I could say I know at least four people did better than I did). Eddie, who didn’t read any of the course things or even really study, got 16% higher than I did. This is no one’s fault but my own, but I was pretty bitter at the end of class. He didn’t give us grades or anything, just told us which ones we missed. But still. Then Eddie and Ivan and I had to watch this movie for Film class, which was good actually. I had seen it before. But that time there were subtitles. Anyway.

So I wanted to go to the train station to buy more train tickets (to and from Yaroslavl…I could probably do that in Moscow, but if I can do it here, I might as well), as well as go online to a) book hostels and b) buy my plane ticket to St. Petersburg (or to Helsinki, as I’m now thinking of doing, and then just taking the train back). I don’t really know what I’m going to do in Helsinki yet. Anyone have any suggestions? I’m going to be there alone, and before Ivan or Abby or Sonya are there. I guess I’ll look some stuff up online. I’m hoping that if I stay in a hostel there will be all kinds of friendly travelers like there were at the Golden Gobi, and we’ll all hang out together, and it’ll be great. This probably won’t happen. These are all things I wanted to do, but didn’t get to do, because I didn’t have time. And wasn’t allowed of the apartment after Friday. But I’d like to arrive in Moscow knowing that I have a place to go. Yes, that would be nice.

So, does anyone know if when iTunes does play count, if that includes the ipod? I’m pretty sure it does, but not positive. My most played songs right now are my Christmas mix (not surprising) and 7 other songs I have on a mix (a 7 song mix, how great) that I played the entire summer whenever I was in my car this summer. But the most played song, which is not surprising to me, is Mama Mia by ABBA, which I have played an ALARMING 73 times. That is a little bit ridiculous. Especially considering the fact that I have it on a CD and when I went through my Mama Mia love phase, I was listening to it on CD. At any rate, the number of times I have listened to that song is completely insane. I don’t really have favorite songs or anything (I just like a lot of songs), but I think one could define “favorite song” as “song listened to most often” in an iTunes song analysis, and I wouldn’t want to go around telling people that my favorite song is Mama Mia by ABBA. I think I just did though.

Today for Speech Practice we had to write an essay about our reflections on Russia. Well, that was one of the choices, and what I wrote about. The thing is, it is SO HARD to put into words how I feel about Russia or what my experience has been like. SO HARD. Like, you have to live here to really know. You really do. And then I started getting sad because I still suck at Russian, even though I’ve been speaking pretty much all Russian for the last 7 months. And then I started regretting stupid things, like not watching more Russian television with my host family. I’m leaving Irkutsk in 6 days and I’m really sad about it. I really am. Oh God, now I’m thinking of this awful song they played so often on the Russian music video channel…even though the song is in English. “Can we bring yesterday back around? Cuz I know how I feel about you now.” Oh Russia.

I need to stop listening to emotionally charged songs on my iTunes, such as Enya and Sarah McLachlan and…in my case, Snoopy and the Red Baron. Oh God what is wrong with me.

I’m also REALLY sad I didn’t get to go to Listvyanka with everyone else on Monday. Maybe I’ll go on Sunday. But it won’t be the same without everyone else. Maybe some other people will want to go with me? I’ll ask. Oh God. What if I don’t get to see Baikal again before I leave? What if I don’t go to another Banya?

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

Okay, this is ridiculous, it’s 9 PM and I need to do my homework and write my Baikal paper.

Update:

Okay, I called my mom and talked to her on the phone for 45 mins, which made me feel a lot better about leaving Russia. And reminded me of all kinds of wonderful things there are in America.

Prior to that I had some tea. Immediately following that I also had tea. So it’s now 10:30, I have very effectively put off my homework and paper. Time to get down to work.

I’m listening to “Under Pressure” by Queen and David Bowie. You know how sometimes songs can remind you of specific times? Well, this song reminds me of leaving Language School at the end of the summer. Ends of things always come with lots of crazy emotions, but I remember just feeling really relieved driving away from Middlebury at, like, 9 PM at night. I’ve never really quite put into words how I felt about Language School. I don’t really want to, because I dunno, it didn’t really go as I had planned and there are a lot of things I would have done differently in retrospect. Same with Russia. But, I guess in retrospect it’s always like that, right? Hindsight’s 20/20. Can’t know everything.

I’m wondering if my plane flight out of Moscow is going to be as anxiety-ridden as my plane flight here. My flight here was pretty awful because I had NO idea what to expect when coming to Russia. I was pretty nervous, even though I knew everything would be fine. And I also knew the exact time period I would be here. Well, on the way back, I know what I’ll be returning to, but I’m going to be anxious about what I’m leaving behind. And when I can return to it, which is still unknown. Maybe a few months, years…decades? I hope not.

Fabulousness.

2007-12-06T01:36:00.000-08:00

Okay, I’m sorry, this is the funniest thing ever. It also warrants a diagram.

So Sonya, Eddie, Ivan and I all met at the sailor café for a little break from work. This was fun. We talked about all kinds of things (professors, major requirements, ridiculous computer hacking scams). So then we left (this is a great story so far, I know). Anyway Eddie and Ivan and I were waiting for the 84 marshrutka. So, universitetskii is the end of the line for 84, 61, 64, and 4 (I think that’s all of them…) Anyway so we’re waiting at this stop where there are usually 15 #84 marshrutkas waiting. But this time there weren’t any. But one pulled up, and so when the driver stopped to let his passengers out the entire crowd ran over to the marshrutka and were trying to get in. The driver yelled at everyone, said they couldn’t get in, and that they should go wait where they were waiting before (the place where people usually get on, like 10 feet away). So most of the time they park, stop for a little break, and then go. That’s what I figured this guy was planning on doing. So the crowd moves back to spot a. And then the marshrutka pulls up 10 feet, everyone shoves each other out of the way for a spot on the marshrutka, it fills up, and leaves. Please see diagram.

Anyone who does not understand the hilarity (or the ridiculousness) of this situation clearly doesn’t understand anything. I burst out laughing, like a LOT, and even after I was on the marshrutka I was still laughing, which didn’t make me look very good in the eyes of the Russians. Oh dear God. That was hilarious.

Those diagrams probably weren’t necessary, but I don’t so much feel like writing my paper right now. I already have 5 pages, I only need 5 more (well, I have 4 pages, but we agreed to double space it instead of 1.5). Also it’s not so much that it needs to be good, it just needs to be 10 pages of Russian that may or may not be about my topic. I dunno, though. Mine is like, SO bad.

I’ve watched American Beauty twice in the last two nights after I was done paper-writing. I actually really like watching movies late at night on my laptop. I get really super neurotic though that someone’s going to find me (like it makes a difference?) because I can hear floorboards creaking. Sometimes it’s the cats. Sometimes it’s random family members getting up to go to the bathroom.

Also, my host father has started smoking in the bathroom. He doesn’t smoke in the rest of the apartment, just in the bathroom. But a lot of the time you can smell it in the rest of the apartment, and these cigarettes smell SO bad. Like, SOOOOO bad. And I don’t want to go to the bathroom anymore because it REEKS and I can’t breathe in there. Plus all the cigarette smelling molecules stick to my hair and my clothes and then I reek. This is a sad situation.

Okay, I’m going to write for another…I don’t know. And then watch a movie. I’m going to say another hour and a half, and then I’ll start my movie at midnight (or after my host father goes to bed). I’m completely off of any sort of sleep schedule, but for right now I’m okay with this because a) if I start a movie really late, it means my host family doesn’t know about it and can’t yell at me (for not doing my paper (they wouldn’t actually do that), mainly for not watching it on the regular TV). I like watching movies in bed. And b) because that means I’ll sleep late, and maybe my host father will be a) out and about or b) at the very least, not in the kitchen anymore, where he spends most of his time in the mornings. Meaning I can not eat a whole lot, which would be fabulous.

Okay, commence paper writing. AHHHHHHHH I HATE THIS.

Monday, December 3^rd

I’m having a moment.

Well, I WAS having a moment, when I was listening to John Lennon’s “So This is Christmas” and some version of “O Holy Night”, but now “Chipmunks Roasting on an Open Fire” is playing, which sort of kills any sort of peaceful pensive moments one may have. But anyway, I was reading Ivan’s blog entry (go to his blog! He now has FIVE entries!), and reading his description of the library system (which is entirely accurate) and thinking about that, and the marshrutka encounter yesterday, and just generally about Russia’s ridiculousness, but then realized that I’m going to miss everything a lot when I come back. I can’t really explain it. I anticipate Russia feeling so far away because when I’m home, I’m not going to know when or how I can come back. It’s going to be so much more difficult than it was the first time. And right now I don’t feel like America is that far away, because I know I’ll be returning soon and all I have to do is get on a plane in Moscow. But coming back? I think once I’m home I’ll feel like Russia is really far away. Which it is. Despite how much I’ve complained and about how completely ridiculous and illogical Russia can be, I will miss it. I sort of have warm fuzzy feelings about Russia right now. It’s sort of like….Chris, actually. Difficult at times, but we love him anyway. And like it when he’s around, just not ALL the time. So Russia can be difficult at times, and I like being here, but wouldn’t want to live here forever. Much like Chris, Russia wouldn’t be Russia if it were fully functioning and developed.

Christmas music moments are ALWAYS better when it’s dark and snowing. Less so when it’s ridiculously hot in the apartment and Papa Yuri is smoking in the bathroom.

I’m fairly proud of that earlier analogy; I was going to use a diseased cat analogy, but I think this one worked much better.

OH MY GOD NATALIE WORK ON YOUR FLIPPIN PAPER.

Hours later:

AHH I found banana chips in Russia! I don’t think they’re hard to find, actually, but I was just pleasantly surprised. They’re called bananovie chipsy. Okay, I bet I’ve talked about this before, but it’s still amusing to me. So in English, when we pluralize (is that a verb? I just made it a verb) we add “s” to the end of words. Well, in Russian, they add “y” (an eeee sort of sound). Which means that in Russian, you have one chips, but more than one chipsy. One chips! Hahahahah, how humorous!

And in about 4 minutes I’m going to stop playing freecell and go take a shower. And then finish my paper. I MUST FINISH MY PAPER. BEFORE I DO ANY MOVIE WATCHING. I’m going to have how many hours on the train to watch movies? That’s right, a lot.

Tuesday, December 4^th

AHHH I just thought about the actual moment I’ll be leaving Irkutsk and got REALLY sad. Like, really sad. WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME.

I also just read all of the literature they gave us on reverse culture shock. It is HILARIOUS. Here are some excerpts:

“You might have also experienced a greater amount of independence, both academically and personally, than you previously knew in the United States.”

WHAT?! WHO HAS LESS INDEPENDENCE IN THE US THAN IN RUSSIA?! Are they, like, in jail?

“Stop, take a few deep breaths outside the door, and only *then* go into your first Safeway (Grand Union, Giant, whatever). Keep moving steadily as you go up and down the aisles; do not stop and leave yourself stranded, just looking… at… all… the… things… Keep your mouth resolutely closed. Do not drool. Do not try to buy everything. Do not tell the first store employee you see that though he/she doesn’t realize it, this is the greatest store in the world. This person will think you very odd. Go alone, not with your girlfriend/boyfriend—unless he/she has *also* just returned from Russia, in which case the two of you will have to try to act as your own Overeaters Anonymous support group. It’s OK to feel weird, and you’ll be doing plenty of that; but there’s no reason you have to feel weird and fat at the same time.”

This is pure brilliance. That’s all I have to say.

I listened to some ABBA today and am now listening to some Phantom of the Opera. GOD I LOVE THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA. SO MUCH. I think before I leave Irkutsk I might download a) some Arrested Development episodes, and b) some more Phantom of the Opera songs. AHH THEY ARE SO GOOD.

This smoke is killing me. I feel like CRAP. I’m not sick. I just have no fresh air and my lungs are being filled with cancerous smoke molecules. AHHHHHHHH.

I JUST FINISHED MY PAPER!!! And I have EXACTLY 10 pages. That’s right, EXACTLY 10. Tomorrow I have to fix a couple things, do a bibliography, and print…but other than that, I am SO set. I’m probably going to leave the apartment like woah early in order to do all of these things. I could watch a movie tonight if I really wanted to…but I won’t. I should sleep. Or maybe not….I do need a break after that paper…

Wednesday, December 5^th

I forgot to document Irina Militievna’s ridiculousness from yesterday. She’s usually completely ridiculous in her stereotyping (as many Russians are), and is actually a fairly good representation of the stereotypical Russian woman. She scolds Sonya all the time for not using makeup, saying that she will never find a husband if she doesn’t paint her face. But anyway, the topic turned into different nationalities (this is common, actually, especially in Speech Practice, when entire units consist of comparing cultural stereotypes, specifically Russian and American ones. At the same time though, a lot of the American stereotypes we read about were pretty true). Anyway, Irina Militievna asked Sonya what kind of heritage she had, and she replied “American.” Irina Militievna laughs and asks how that’s possible, since our country is so young (true). Then Sonya said she didn’t know. Irina Militievna was shocked and not pleased with this answer. I myself was wondering how this could be, especially because all the time in elementary school we did “where we came from” charts. This was like a big deal, and always unfortunate for the adopted kids, since they often didn’t know. I think Sonya must have gone to some really, for lack of a better word, extremely politically correct ish school, since I think she mentioned sometime about how they never celebrated Halloween because it would offend those that believed that Halloween is evil, or something. This is sad because Halloween is a gigantic candy holiday, and to deprive children of said holiday is, in my opinion, simply cruel. Anyway back to ethnicity. I was also surprised, since I know my ethnicity mix down to the 16^th. So we talked about that for awhile, then Irina Militievna said something about how Germans are ugly, which surprised me, since I’ve never seen an ugly German (note: my experience with Germans is limited to the 2 at the mezhfak, Christine, and the Lufthansa flight crew…I’m sure there are more, but I don’t actually know that they’re German, they’re probably part German and some other American mix. Onward). Elissa then asked what made them ugly, and if it was because they had a lot of hair. So then we were using different verbs, and one of them was to worry, or be afraid of, or something, and Irina Militievna asked if I was afraid of children, and I said no (or something along those lines)…she then replied that I should be, since every year they have problems with foreigners impregnating and becoming pregnant. I practically choked, which is impressive, because I didn’t even have anything in my mouth. We came to the conclusion that these foreigners are generally not the Americans here on the Middlebury program (except for one kid that had two girlfriends, though neither of them were pregnant), but mostly the kids on the other program. She said that they often come and get married, because they fall in love. She also said that people come to Siberia to run away from problems at home, because everything is great in Siberia. I also almost choked there, but held back. I sort of half ranted about how this was absolutely ridiculous and these people had lost their minds (actually that’s impossible because I think I said they clearly didn’t have a mind in the first place). She sort of shrugged it off as an “these things happen when you fall in love in Russia” as if the whole situation is completely acceptable. This is one of those subjects that I have particularly strong feelings about, and probably could have fairly well argued in Russian, but Irina Militievna is one of those people that thinks she’s always right (to be noted further), plus I didn’t really feel like it. She also said it was completely acceptable, after all, she had her first kid at 19. Okay, I think this is more of a cultural thing, because a lot of people here do marry and have kids way younger than we do in America, and if they want to do that, then by all means, go ahead. But the whole irresponsible fling/accidental pregnancies thing is another story. I’m not going to go into it.

So then later she said something to the affect of “all Americans are healthy and happy” or something, which we very much disagreed with, as we pointed out that America has its own problems as well (at the same time though, I’m not sure they can even be compared to the disaster that is Russia). So then we tried to explain all of this, and she just said “Guys, I’ve been (verb that doesn’t really translate into English-socializing/working with?) Americans for 30 years” with this “oh, please, you guys don’t know anything” voice. Eddie then pointed out that although she has, in fact, met a number of Americans, he has most likely met more. Being from America, and all. Her ENTIRE experience is based on the Americans that come to Irkutsk to study. She’s never been to America. We then said that this very SELECT group of students that she works with are certainly not regular average Americans. Probably because they study Russian and voluntarily go to Siberia. So, anyway, that was annoying.

I just looked at Chucha for a long time and made little kissy faces at her, and she leaped up on the bed and is now sitting on my legs. If only all cats responded that way.

15 mins later:

So then Chucha moved up to my chest and sat there for a good long time, purring. What a fantastic creature.

Anyway so today was a NIGHTMARE. I am so tired. First we had Baikalovedene, which was fine, actually. Although Pavel Alexandrovich said that he graded our tests, but didn’t give them back. He said we all answered at least half of the questions right. I’m like, oh, great, okay. Eddie thinks since he didn’t give our tests back it means we all get 5’s. I think it means they’re so horrendous that he doesn’t want to give them to us because of the sadness that will occur.

So then we had to talk to Vladimir Konstantinovich about not being in class because we had to meet with our mainstream professor. We knew he’d be okay with it but I still feel bad. So we’re getting the movie tomorrow and watching it…sometime. So then I went to Web Ugol to print out my paper. I had to find a couple things on the internet and did spell/grammar check, but whenever I tried to type something new, instead of just letting me type it, all these letters started disappearing. I was NOT pleased. Later Sonya told me that I have to hit “insert”, but seriously? Like, what is this. Why would that problem even exist in the first place.

So I was there for a way long time and printed out a lot, because I also printed out Sonya’s blog entry, thinking that I’d read it in the little coffee shop near the History Department. Then I had no time, went straight there, and we met with our professor. She actually more or less read our papers while we were sitting there, and then asked bizarre questions. Only some of them were bizarre, actually, but most were completely unrelated to the topic. She asked me who the first American journalist was to write about the Russian Revolution. Eddie knew. But…is that like common knowledge?

So then she gave us all 4+’s (which is like a B+), which I was NOT thrilled about. Granted, we did absolutely nothing except for show up for class and write a paper, but still. We were expecting a 5 in our mainstream class, and based on what past study abroad Russian students have said, it’s not an unrealistic expectation. So I was not happy about that one. My GPA is not happy (not that GPA is really that important anyway).

She also gave us a 7 question test, which was NOT multiple choice. Now, I think I more or less know Russian history, but this did not go well. First of all, it was in Russian, so I wasn’t always sure what she was talking about, and a lot of times she wanted specific dates. Sometimes I just guessed, especially when I didn’t understand the question. Sonya, Ivan, and Eddie actually somehow did fairly well, where as I got 2 questions right. So that sucked. It wasn’t like she graded it or anything, but I was like…come on.

So then Ivan and Joseph and I went to the train station to get our tickets. NIGHTMARE. First we were looking for a schedule. We were directed to many different places, and finally had to go outside and around into a different part of the building (why aren’t they connected?). Then when we got there and waited in line, the woman told us that a schedule didn’t exist. So then we had to write down what we wanted (Irkutsk to Moscow, with a day in Yekaterinburg and Kazan). So she wrote us a list of possible trains and we had to sit down and figure out which ones we wanted. Then one of them didn’t have any room in 2^nd class (the one we wanted), some of them were way too expensive, and there were all kinds of other difficulties. So we finally agreed on which trains we wanted based on departure and arrival times and whatnot. Especially important was whether or not we’d have to be paying for hotels/hostels/beds in the train station. There were a lot of people and we had to talk through a window and it was a gigantic headache. Also it cost $250. I am less than thrilled about this. Granted I have a good spot on a train across 5 time zones and don’t have to pay for hotels on those nights or for overweight luggage, but still.

Anyway, so our classes end on the 14^th of December (Friday). So we’re here all day Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and then our train leaves at 2 AM Sunday night. We arrive in Yekaterinburg on the 19^th (Wednesday) at like 5 in the morning. I’m actually okay with this, we can go to sleep really early and then just hang out for a long time. The only thing is Russia isn’t like America where there’s always somewhere to hang out at all hours of the morning. Like I know in Burlington, when I would sometimes take the 9 AM train to NY for Easter or Thanksgiving, I would end up on MiddTransit at like 5 in the morning because that’s when other people were going (and it’s cheaper when you share). But there’s a little diner nearby where you can go. I’m not positive that’ll be the case in Russia. But anyway we’re there all day Wednesday and most of the day Thursday, we leave at 4 in the afternoon on the 20^th. We then get to Kazan the following morning at like 7 AM (Friday the 21^st). We’re there all day Friday and most of the day Saturday, leaving Kazan for Moscow at like 6 PM. We then get into Moscow Saturday, the 23^rd, at 6:15 AM. We at first thought that since we’re coming in to these cities early we could just spend the day there and get on the train again in the evening, but we had already gone through a ton of stuff trying to figure this out, plus hotels/hostels in Kazan/Yekaterinburg will be significantly cheaper than anything in Moscow. Plus these will be pretty cool places.

So I’m sure you all really wanted to know about that. So now I have to figure out when I want to go to Yaroslavl and St. Petersburg/Helsinki. And when I want to be in Moscow. I think I want Yaroslavl to be a one day thing, if possible. I’d like to spend a lot of time in St. Petersburg and Helsinki. AHHH I need to get on this. I found an $80 flight there and back though (Moscow to St. Petersburg), which is so excellent.

I just took a break to open the window, чтобы air out my room since it’s INFESTED WITH SMOKE. That’s sort of an exaggeration, you can’t actually SEE the smoke, but it smells awful and makes it harder to breathe. Grr. Also Chucha and I cuddled for awhile.

I’ve decided to do nothing tonight since a) I didn’t have enough time to go to the library, and therefore didn’t get any of my materials for my Baikal paper b) I have no homework due tomorrow c) I was sort of productive today, in terms of finishing my mainstream class and buying train tickets and d) I need a break (because my days in Russia are just SO busy). I’m going to take a shower soon, watch a movie, and crash. BED. SO GREAT.

I have 4 pages. I need 10.

2007-12-01T22:36:00.001-08:00

Now that I’m writing term papers in Russian, I’m back to hating everything.

I work RIDICULOUSLY slowly. And since all of my information is in English, there are some things that I don’t know how to translate (like the names of places). So that’s not good. Also it’s not even just the language that’s bad, it’s completely disorganized and I’m not entirely sure if all my information is okay…also there are probably major differences in what the Russians would say happened and what the Americans would say happened. So, it’s probably going to be fairly obvious that all of my information was in English. If I weren’t practically positive that she’s going to give us all 5’s, I’d be completely flipping out right now. Oh wait, that’ll happen next week when I need to write my paper for Baikal.

Yesterday my host mother gave me this dessert thing, she called it….I don’t even remember, something weird in Russian, but I think it’s more commonly known as bits of fruit in sugar water. Not altogether bad, though.

wah travel!

2007-11-29T23:01:00.000-08:00

It’s official. I’m coming home on the 8^th of January. And, like I said before, I was sort of sad that I’m not coming home earlier, but would know that when all is said and done…I AM SO EXCITED.

Okay. So I’m pretty sure I’m leaving Irkutsk around the 15^th or the 16^th. I’m taking the Trans-Siberian to Moscow…I told Ivan and Joseph I’d be going with them, but the thing is, I really want to stop in some cities on the way and I think they just want to go straight through. Colleen told me I have to go to Kazan, and I’d like to go to Samara and Omsk and some other places…I think I’m going to make a list of all the places I can go and then choose. Ivan let me borrow his Lonely Planet guidebook, which is the best thing in the world. I think I’ll choose a couple cities (no more than 4 or 5) and…it’ll be excellent. The only thing that sucks is at this point I’ll still be carrying around all of my luggage.

So then I arrive in Moscow. First thing to do is to find a luggage storage place where I can put my gigantic suitcase so I don’t have to lug it around Western Russia (I’ll have my black handbag and Adidas gymbag, which should be more than enough-I don’t really need much with me). Elisabeth said they should have somewhere I can store it at the airport, which would be incredibly convenient. I don’t even know how to travel around Moscow with luggage. Alone is fine, they have a metro system, I can read. Ack.

So then at that point I’m not sure. I’m definitely going to Yaroslavl for a couple days. I need to coordinate that with Alya and Sonya, because Alya (having lived there for four months) knows Yaroslavl and what’s fun to do, etc. So at some point I’m going to St. Petersburg, probably for a week or so (because everyone says St. Petersburg is amazing and I can spend a week in the Hermitage alone). BUT, here’s an interesting fact that I didn’t realize-Helsinki is only a 6 hour train ride from St. Petersburg! I mean, I knew it was close, but I didn’t realize it was THAT close! So I think I might go to Helsinki for a day or two. Other places I’ve thought about: Novgorod, other cities in the Golden Ring, Estonia, Latvia, Belarus…AH. SO MANY POTENTIAL DESTINATIONS.

Also, did you know that coffee shops in Russia don’t open early, as one would think? So I was planning on waking up early and studying more for Baikalovedene in one of those coffee shops (actually studying more wouldn’t have helped anyway so it’s not THAT big of a deal that I wandered around Irkutsk for a half hour), but they weren’t open! Also it wasn’t even that early-like 9. I mean, I realize that coffee shops are an all the time destination, but don’t most people drink coffee in the morning? Like, who wakes up at 11 and decides that they need their coffee THEN? Anyway I was not thrilled about that and ended up at the morskii café at 10:30 in the morning, getting strange looks from the girls working there (who were not dressed up in sailor costumes, maybe before lunch is too early for that kind of ridiculousness).

Also I saw this music video for a TATU song called “Not Gonna Get Us” (Nas Ne Dogonyat in transliterated Russian). Okay, a lot of Russian music videos are completely bizarre. But this one takes the cake. These two girls hijacked this burning semi-truck and are driving around some frozen part of Russia with it. They drive through lots of barricades and this truck is on fire for a surprisingly long time without blowing up. Then they show pictures from their childhood. Then back to the burning runaway truck. Like…WHAT?! Also I’ll have you know that all TATU songs are completely ridiculous, especially the one about them being in love with a robot.

I should be a) sleeping or b) doing my homework for speech practice, but after my week of frantic Baikal studying and information gathering for my papers, I need a breather. I watched Ocean’s 11 today…for the 85^th time. I would be so much more tempted to watch these in Russian if they didn’t have completely AWFUL dubbing. Like, SO bad. And most of the time it’s one voice for everyone. I completely don’t understand how anyone can prefer dubbing to subtitles. I mean, COME ON.

Okay, that’s all for today from the Strange Russian Occurrences front. Also I’ve noticed that as I speak more and more Russian, I am considerably less able to use prepositions in English. Oh, also interesting-I sort of figured that after the Middlebury program was over I’d overload myself with English…but I actually think I’ll be overloaded myself with RUSSIAN. Like, every once in awhile I listen to English music…but I think once I’m traveling I’m going to pick up some trashy Russian detective novels, get lots of music from Sonya, and just soak it all in. Maybe I’ll watch the horrible Russian dubbed versions of the movies I have. Then again maybe not.

Also random, but I HAVE to remember that when I look at hotels and hostels and am outraged at the price of 600 rubles per night, that anywhere in the United States it would be nearly impossible to find a hotel for under $50, ESPECIALLY in a major city, which means that a very nice hostel for $24…is really not bad.

Friday, November 30^th

Oh my God it’s already the 30^th of November.

I’m sitting in Café KoKs, with working internet. This is great. I also have about 15 web pages, in English, about Soviet Foreign Policy in the 1920s and 1930s. I’ll search for a few more, and then I think that’ll be fine.

I also need to plan out my trip which is going to be SO EXCITING AND FUN. Now that I’m actually, like, leaving Russia, I’m sort of sad….also we told Elisabeth to tell Pavel Alexandrovich that we only want to come to tea time with the professors if he’s going to be there.

Today some guy was creepily looking at me on the marshrutka. I wasn’t sure if it was because I was a girl, or if it was because he noticed me looking at him (because he looked EXACTLY like Kevin Spacey).

This fruity iced tea is really good, and they have actual pieces of grapefruit and apple in it. I want to pick them out and eat them, but that wouldn’t be very классно.

Also, SONYA, I'll have you know that you know way more about the history of the belii dom than I do, so you'll have to fill in those details.

This internet cafe is so slow it's driving me INSANE.

2007-11-29T01:33:00.000-08:00

The internet at Café Koks didn’t work today when Lucy and I were there. That was very, very sad.

The adjustment phase is going relatively well. I think. We have yet to be in the apartment alone though, which…a) hopefully won’t be too uncomfortable and b) hopefully I’ll be able to understand him when he asks more questions about the swamps of New Jersey.

Eddie, Lucy and I had coffee at this little place near the square (also near Tex-Mex). I thought it was very nice, and probably a good place to do homework…which is key, now that I don’t ever have alone time in the apartment.

Children’s home today was okay. They were kids of all different ages, so it was sort of difficult (and at the beginning they didn’t want to play with us), but in the end it was fine. I also love being with all the people from my SPO Phoenix group. We went out for tea afterwards too, so that was fun. We’ll be back next Saturday. As for tomorrow…I don’t so much want to go, to be honest. But I probably will.

Tomorrow we’re meeting at Café Fiesta (grrrrrr) to study for our Baikalovedene test on Thursday. I don’t really know what we’re going to study, because he said he was going to ask very broad questions, but…whatever, we’ll see.

Then at 5 I’m going ice skating! With the SPO Phoenix people. I’m excited. Joseph and Ivan might come too.

Still need to figure out winter plans. Like, I want to see Moscow and St. Petersburg and Yaroslavl…but I also want to go home. I dunno. I think I’m just ready to leave Russia. The interesting thing, though, is that I’m NOT ready to stop speaking Russian all the time. I’m afraid I’m going to forget a lot of it when I go back home. And I don’t want to do that. I haven’t really figured out how to solve this problem, but we’ll see. I think that’s a good sign though (that I’m not ready to stop speaking Russian all the time), and hopefully I won’t regress too much when I go home. I probably will, but I think I’m coming to terms with that. It’s not like this is going to be the best I’ll ever be at Russian.

Sunday, November 25th
AHHHH I HAVE ALONE TIME! Mama Olya told me this morning that “If you come home later and no one’s here…” and I immediately perked up. She even told me when she was leaving! Meaning I could plan this all out! Wooooo! Nadya and Papa Yuri (Yura? Not sure) went to see Natasha, and Mama Olya went…well, somewhere. So I left our Baikal study group early (I don’t think we were really accomplishing much anyway) to come here and hang out by myself. And it is wonderful.

I was a bad person this morning. First of all, I didn’t end up going to the children’s home…and then I didn’t give any money to this guy begging on the street. I don’t want that karma coming back around.

My winter plans seem to be taking shape. I think Joseph, Ivan and I are going to go on the train to Moscow. I don’t know if we’re going to get a 4 person compartment (maybe a fourth person will come?) but I think I’d rather just do the 6-person, open compartments. It’s only $80 that way. I think we’re going to go to Yaroslavl too. Then Joseph’s going to Copenhagen, and Ivan’s going to Helsinki. I’ll probably to go St. Petersburg, and I think Sonya and Alya are going to come at some later date. This is probably not interesting to anyone but me.

Several hours later:
So….we didn’t really go ice skating. There were SO MANY PEOPLE. Like, it was ridiculous. And no one was willing to stand in a line or anything, they all just shoved each other out of the way. Like, seriously? It’s ice skating. Anyway, so we got shoved aside, and waited a long time, and then decided to go to a café. So that was good (also, evidently cocoa with milk is just hot milk…what?). Then we went back, stood in line, and they told us we’d have to wait another hour. So I left.

And I went to the internet café and looked up flights from New York JFK to Cleveland on January 1st or 2nd. And they aren’t obnoxiously expensive. So as soon as I talk to STA travel…woo.

I’ve been trying to keep good posture lately, because I never really stood up straight to begin with but it’s gotten way worse while I’ve been in Russia. And it is like WHOA uncomfortable. And my shoulder/neck muscles are tense to begin with, but now? MAN. Also I’m not really sure I’m doing it right, because I still feel like my shoulder blades are sticking out and not sitting flat on my back, the way they should be. Also every once in awhile I need to shake out my shoulders and then reset myself, and that just looks weird.

Again, several hours later:
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. I just called STA travel and they have NOTHING between December 23rd and January 6th. So now I have to decide whether I want to cut out early (and be home for Christmas?) or hang around for what could be a very long time. ESPECIALLY if I’m going to be traveling alone for a large amount of time. I think I’m going to just suck it up and stay until the 6th. I know I’ll hate myself later if I was in Russia and didn’t see Moscow and St. Petersburg and Yaroslavl. And I’ve heard that I could stay in St. Petersburg for, like, ever. Why are so many people flying on New Years Eve/Day? Seriously? I figured that NO ONE would want to do that and I’d have no problem. AGHHH.

Okay I think I’ve already decided. I’ll go for the 6th, and ask them to put me on some sort of wait list if something else opens up before that. Can they do that? I would think so.

Five minutes later:
Okay, freakout SO over. This is going to be great. I can spend a long time in Moscow and St. Petersburg and I’ll have a great time…is anyone going to BE in Moscow or St. Petersburg? At first I thought that there would be a ton of people but they all seem to be slowly dropping out. Sad.

Monday, November 26th
I was SO productive today and it felt really good. Actually, to be honest, I wasn’t really all that productive, but….more so than usual. Sonya, Ivan and I went to the library and found the books we needed for our papers. I photocopied the parts I need from one and the other three will be here tomorrow. The library system somewhat makes sense, we just had to have it explained to us. They have search catalog, just like us. You can search for books, articles, etc by author, title, keyword, etc. A thing will pop up telling you what they have and a little code for it. The only thing, is that the main library (where we were) doesn’t ACTUALLY have many books. Like, in the whole library system, they have 3 million. But in the actual library? Not so many. What you have to do is order them from the gigantic building NEXT to the library, and they’ll deliver it the next day (or in an hour). Which means that most of the library is sort of inaccessible. Or it could be somewhere else, like at the Geography Department. You also can’t take books out of the library, you have to read them there. Which is why I had everything photocopied. Oh, you also can’t photocopy, you have to have someone ELSE photocopy it for you. Anyway I found the two books I need for my mainstream (she said we wouldn’t need more than two…in fact, she seemed surprised when we said we were actually going to do the paper) and two for Baikalovedene, which means I have more than enough (Pavel Alexandrovich gave me another one and some websites). So by tomorrow afternoon I should have all of my “research” done…which means I’ll have a bunch of information sitting in front of me. In Russian. Oh, good. AGH.

Yesterday I went with Joseph and Eddie to this café/bar type thing. Okay, we decided that even if we TRIED, we couldn’t explain the experience of being in a Russian bar. It just can’t be done. And you remember how I said that a lot of strange things in Russia don’t even faze me because, well…almost everything is strange? Yes. Well, remember that, it will be referenced later.

So we went to this bar. You could see the smoke in the air. There were blacklights everywhere and a dance floor in the middle. They had a strange man in the corner who controlled the music/sometimes badly sang. There were about 5 awkward Russians dancing in the middle of this gigantic dance floor. It was a Sunday night. They had the prices of all of the dishes on the menu (I guess if you broke any of them? Anyway). The music was this awful techno stuff. And I’m looking around at all the different people in this bar, wondering why they were there, and then did a double take.

Why were there two 10 year old boys sitting in the corner? What? And then in the other corner-two 10 year old girls. Was this a coincidence? Were they just there because their parents were boozing on a Sunday night? THERE ARE CHILDREN AT A BAR!

Other than that, I would say the experience was pretty standard.

After the library Sonya and I went to the little coffee shop I went to with Lucy and Eddie. I thought it was an enjoyable experience. And this guy that was staying at the Golden Gobi with us was there. WEIRD. At first I didn’t notice him, and then I looked again, and he was just like “hello.” So he’s going to Baikal for a week and then coming back and wanted to get together with us, so now he has my number. He also said he’s going to Vladivostok to get a visa for China, since he was turned down for one in Mongolia (WHAT?! I didn’t even know that could HAPPEN) because he said he wanted to go to Tibet. Is that true? Can you get turned down for a Chinese visa because you said you wanted to go to Tibet? Also this was a conversation in English, so it’s not like there was something lost in translation.

So things with the host father are better. He’s sort of this cute little Buryat guy. I feel bad, I think he’s lonely and wants someone to talk to. He told me the history of two musical groups today. I guess they left the Soviet Union at some point and came back in the 90s. Also this morning before I left to go to the library, he asked me if I was going somewhere and seemed slightly disappointed when I said yes. So then he sat down on the couch and watched TV.

BUT-he did leave the house this morning around 9:30, when I immediately jumped out of bed and was able to put back my breakfast so I wouldn’t have to eat all of it. EXCELLENT. BEYOND EXCELLENT. And I showered and washed all of the dishes before he came back. But anyway, when I came back from the library and asked him how his day was, he was thrilled to show me what he had been working on. I’m not entirely sure what it was he was working on, but I think he fixed the sink (it was broken? He said something about how the water could peacefully run now, or something), and part of the counter was pulled away from the wall and hanging out with the refrigerator on the other side of the kitchen. I also actually REALLY like the music he’s listening to right now. It’s like, the Russian Tom Waits. But actually just now Mama Olya came home and yelled at him to turn it off. Also sad.

I feel bad because Nadya and Mama Olya are yelling at him a lot (well, he’s only been home for two days, but yes). We were watching this ice skating show (where professionals get matched up with celebrities and they have this competition and every week one pair is eliminated), but anyway he was explaining to me who the people where (“And that girl, well she’s a professional figure skater and her husband, that guy right there, is her trainer. Her partner is an actor, usually on…”) and was interrupted by Nadya yelling at him because I’d already been hearing this for two months from her and Mama Olya. But I don’t mind, he can tell me again if he wants to.

Two hours later:
I am now officially web registered for:
Soviet and Russian Politics, The Civil Rights Revolution, Psychological Disorders, and Russian Culture and Civilization II. I’m not especially enthusiastic, but I think my schedule will work out. At first I was worried about not having morning classes, but this means I can get up super early and be really productive for long amounts of time (and I’m GOING to do that-after doing nothing in Russia for an entire semester I’m ready for like, crazy amounts of productiveness). The only thing that sucks is that means I’m going to want to go to bed at like, 9:30, and on Monday nights I have class until 11. I think that’s just a screening though…maybe I can just watch the movies on the weekends…we’ll see. Also my cursor just went insane, that sucks. Is it possible to have to replace touchpads? Maybe I just need a new mouse. I don’t have one right now.

Tuesday, November 27th
So this morning as I ate breakfast, my host father had coffee and sat with me, very nice of him. But he turned on the TV (TV is on for all meals here) and turned it to the music video channel. I’m not entirely sure why, but I definitely would have preferred the news or something, as it was somewhat awkward as in the background of our conversation were rappers talking about their many girls and other doings. Granted, most of them were in English so he didn’t understand any of it, but still. I think he turned it on for my sake, thinking that the music video channel is something I would enjoy…but it created quite the awkward atmosphere. Anyway.

Today in class Irina Militievna pulled out the email Lizi sent her (she printed it) and then taught us how to say “a person from San Francisco” (It’s, like, Sanfransizetz or something). She then told us that Russians have many interjections, such as Oh! Ah! Wah! and Ba! but Americans only have one, and is this exasperated “ugh” sound. We all found this hilarious, had NO idea what she was talking about as we have a) never used this strange sound and b) have never spoken to her in English. Then for the rest of the class we used an absurd amount of interjections, most of them being obnoxious exasperated “ugh” sounds, or BA!. Actually Eddie did most of the noise-making.

Then when I went to go to the library they told me I couldn’t take my own books in. I found this ridiculous, got very upset, and left.

But that’s okay, because then I went to that coffee shop that I fell in love with and fell in love with it even more. The really cheery waitress (I KNOW, in RUSSIA!) Tatiana was there, and it was great. And I WASN’T the only person there alone reading! There was another Russian guy that came in and just had some coffee and read. Also sometimes they play strange music, but today they had fantastic coffee shop music, and “The Sounds of Silence” (sound? Not sure) by Simon and Garfunkel played. That, like, REALLY did it for me. I was so happy. And then later they played “Puttin’ on the Ritz”, which was just like an extra treat. And then I started to get sad, because although we have Starbucks and Caribou Coffee and even a ton of cute, little independent coffee shops, I’d never been in one quite like this. They had a food menu, a LARGE variety of coffees and teas, and, well, I dunno. I’ve just never seen a coffee shop like this in the United States. Also I don’t ever remember seeing “coffee with Bailey’s” on any menu in the US, which is my new favorite coffee drink. It is SO good. So I got sad, thinking about how soon I would have to leave this wonderful little coffee shop.

I started feeling that way about my host family too. I think that’s a good thing.

I’m still freaking out about the paper writing, but I’m going to worry about that AFTER our Baikalovedene exam on Thursday (AHHHH). Irina Militevna ALMOST assigned us a term paper about some sort of grammatical concept, but when she saw the panic on our faces, she decided not to. Excellent.

Okay, back to Baikal.

Also, as my trips to the library have increased, I’ve seen SO many people running along the road next to the river. I mean, I know people told me it was POSSIBLE, but I didn’t think anyone actually did it! If I weren’t so busy, and so out of shape that running in front of other people would be completely embarrassing, I would totally run along the Angara.

Wednesday, November 28th
This is like the neverending blog entry. I need to post this pronto.

I feel a little bit better about our exam tomorrow…but not THAT great. It’s multiple choice and hopefully not too hard. I’m sort of tired of studying at this point, even though I REALLY need to be studying more. Eh.

Also I’m trying to call STA travel and for some reason it isn’t working. This worries me. AHHHH GET ME BACK TO THE UNITED STATES.

Thursday, November 29th
Okay, our exam for Baikalovedene? HARD. He let us use a dictionary though, which helped…but, STILL. Like, I actually studied, and didn’t know most of the answers. Some of them were ridiculous though so it was easier to narrow it down…but still. And it’s sad that Pavel Alexandrovich is going to be like…they don’t know anything. He took pictures of us today, by the way. We were like….awwwwwwwwww. Sad that I’m never going to see him again after two weeks.

But I feel a lot better now that that exam is over…except now I have two papers to write. Eddie wrote 2 pages yesterday, which I think is incredibly impressive. I need to gather more info, which means I need to go to the library again. AHHHH.

Still working on getting my ticket changed. I think I’m going to have to just settle for the 8th. It’s a bummer right now, because I am sick of Russia, but I know once my classes end and I’m actually traveling I’ll be glad to be here (in Russia, not Irkutsk). But once I DO get back, all of my time is going to be spent whipping myself into shape for softball….

I should probably go to the library now. Or at the very least, the internet café. My host father keeps asking me if I want to eat, which is probably my cue to exit the apartment.

Veb-oogl.

2007-11-24T03:20:00.001-08:00

Is where I am right now.

Lucy and I are killing time before we gather in front of "Hotel Angara" and decide what we want to do on this lovely saturday night.

For some reason Papa Yuri got up at 6 AM. He didn't go to bed until at least 1. Then later he told me that he had a lot of newspapers. I didn't really know how to respond to that.

Here's the question: how long do we think I need in each city? St. Petersburg and Moscow? Yaroslavl would only be a couple of days. I'm trying to plan my winter. Thoughts? Advice?

THREE MORE WEEKS.

2007-11-23T19:54:00.000-08:00

Friday, November 23rd
I always thought that I was one of those people that could never watch movies again and again and again, but evidently I am. Since I don’t want to buy more movies, I’ve just been watching the same ones over and over. And you know what? They’re interesting every time. Then again, it’s only the 3rd or 4th time, I don’t know how many more times I can watch them. I also feel really bad because poor Sonya is sick at home with nothing to do and I forgot to bring her Little Miss Sunshine and all of my other DVDs. L

It’s like 30 degrees here, which is ridiculous. I wore my black buckle shoes, but forgot how they tend to kick up mud on the back of my pants as I walk. I think I might leave them here when I go. It’ll also make my suitcase significantly lighter, as they weigh about 5 pounds.

I also bought a new lighter. I sort of want someone to ask me if I smoke, just so I can say no and explain that the only reason I have a cigarette lighter is to roast marshmallows. I went for the classy one this time; 48 cents instead of just 40. It has a little cover and lights itself. The only thing is I have to be careful to keep the lid thing away from the flame, because then the plastic melts and a) smells bad and b) when I closed the lid and put it down, the melted plastic hardened and then I couldn’t open it again. Well, I can now, but I had to play with it for a good 15 mins. Definitely worth the extra 8 cents.

I’m going to another children’s home tomorrow, but honestly, I’d rather just sit and work on my papers. I think today I’m going to get all of my other homework out of the way so I can study Baikal and get a good amount of paper done.

I am VERY tired right now. I don’t want to interact. I just want to sleep. I’m trying to figure out how long I’m going to be in Moscow/St. Petersburg/Yaroslavl before I head home. I don’t want to be there for so little time that I feel like I didn’t get to do everything I wanted to do, but I also don’t want to be there for so long that I feel like I’m wasting my time. I doubt I’ll feel like that, but still.

I seriously don’t know how I’m going to do these papers. This requires doing research. Research requires reading a lot, selecting what’s important, condensing information, etc. Now, in order to do that, I need to know what it says. I can’t select what’s important if I don’t know what everything means. If you knew how long it takes me to translate the handouts we have for Baikalovedene, you would understand how insanely large this problem is. AHHHHHHHHHHH

Two hours later:
Oh my God.

So that period of time before everyone came home was like, the calm before the storm. I had watched one movie (Ocean’s 11), and thought about watching another one, but didn’t want to look like a complete lazy bum when everyone came home. I should have, I definitely should have.

So I’m wondering where my host mother is, because she called at like 4:30, as usual, telling me to eat soup, and that she’d see me in the evening. She usually comes home around 5:45. 5:45 came and went. So I’m sitting, enjoying my free time, thinking that I should have watched another movie (I feel weird watching movies when everyone’s here. I feel like I’m occupying their TV…because they watch TV all the time. Like, ALL THE TIME. Anyway.), and the doorbell rings (well, more like buzzed, but that’s okay). And I look through the peephole and see two people. At first I thought it was just two random people, but then Mama Olya said “Natasha, it’s me” (like she does every time, but it was DELAYED this time, I don’t know why.) And a realization washed over me like a wave.

My host father has come home.

Now, one would think this would be not a big deal. But it IS. Because it means I am NEVER GOING TO BE ALONE AGAIN (well, for 3 weeks anyway, but that is a LONG time, my friends, a LONG time). And I remember this afternoon, when I was telling myself that I could run some errands and such, thinking “no. I should go back to the apartment and enjoy my alone time, because soon Papa Yuri is going to come home, and I’m not going to have any.” It is a VERY good thing that I did that. I got a good 5 hours of alone time today. But anyway, this means there will be no more flushing of kasha down the toilet. There will be no putting back sandwiches. There will be no talking on the phone in the morning (that actually happens rarely, because I call home rarely, but still) (also I probably could still call in the morning, but it feels different when you’re alone, even though I know he doesn’t understand a word of English). He’ll be there when I leave in the morning, probably nagging me to wear the dublyonka. He’ll be there when I come back. AHHHHHH.

Mama Olya also told me that he loves to talk. So he’ll probably tell me a lot about Siberia and history. This would be fine…if I could understand one word he said. Now, I know my Russian isn’t perfect, but I can’t understand ONE word. He speaks in this really low gravelly voice and his words are not clear at ALL. This was the conversation that took place at the dinner table:
Papa Yuri: So where do you live? (this was phrased strangely though, not the typical “where do you live?”, I don’t exactly remember how he phrased it though.)
Natasha: Um…*look of confusion*
Papa Yuri: State.
Natasha: Oh. Ohio.
Papa Yuri: Do you have grandparents?
Natasha: Yes.
Papa Yuri: Where do they live?
Natasha: New Jersey.
Papa Yuri: huh?
Nadya: NEW JERSEY.
Papa Yuri: Oh. Is it watery there?
Natasha: Um…not very….
Papa Yuri: Do they have tornadoes?
Natasha: No, it’s far away from Oregon. (Note: in Russian, the word for “tornado” sounds much like “Oregon”.)
Papa Yuri: (Again asks about tornadoes)
Natasha: (looks at Nadya, the in-house translator from incomprehensible Russian to sort-of comprehensible Russian).
Nadya: Tornado. Very strong wind.
Natasha: Oh, no, they don’t really have them there. Sometimes we have them in Ohio though.
Papa Yuri: (again asks about tornadoes and water. I don’t understand why he wanted to know about the water distribution in the state of New Jersey, from both the sky and the ground, but that’s okay).
Natasha: (Looks at Nadya)
Nadya: Tornadoes, but with water.
Natasha: OH, hurricanes. No, those are mostly in the South.
Papa Yuri: (asks something else about wetlands).
Natasha: (looks at Nadya)
Mama Olya: We can explain later.
Nadya: Well, like, ground, where it’s wet…
Mama Olya: And you can’t go there.
Natasha: OH (like, swamps). No, those are also mostly in the South. I don’t think they have them in New Jersey.

So we had a nice almost discussion about hurricanes and wetlands in the state of New Jersey. Oh wait, no we didn’t. Every time he asked a question it just sounded like mumbling and grumbling. Also, who asks such bizarre questions?

Papa Yuri: Do you like Irkutsk and Russia?
Natasha: Yes.
Papa Yuri: What state does Caroline live in? (Caroline lived here last year)
Natasha: Maryland.
Papa Yuri: And when does she finish school?
Natasha: In February.
Papa Yuri: Oh, that soon. (something incomprehensible about degrees and future plans)
Natasha: Oh…I don’t know.
Nadya: She doesn’t know Caroline very well!
Papa Yuri: (mumbles something) Caroline…Sarah…Oh, Sarah?
Mama Olya: Yes, it’s Sarah that Natasha is good friends with. But she already finished.
Papa Yuri: She probably forgot how to speak Russian.
Natasha: That’s what she told me.
Mama Olya: We spoke on the phone in Russian.
Papa Yuri: (more incomprehensible grumbling)
Natasha: (doesn’t know if this grumbling is directed at her. Sits and smiles)
Mama Olya and Nadya: (blatantly ignore everything he is saying)

Okay, aside from all of that, here are some interesting notes. When I talked to Mama Olya on the phone at 4:30, she didn’t say anything about her husband coming home. Like, did he just call her cell phone and say “Hey, I just landed in Irkutsk”? I mean, I know they were having trouble tracking him, but MAN. Also, Mama Olya’s sister called twice for her. She didn’t know what was going on either. But despite all of that…if your husband or father came home after 6 months of being away, wouldn’t you be happy to see him? Nadya and Mama Olya are REALLY not thrilled. Nadya’s really irritated and short with everyone and Mama Olya is, well, just not thrilled. It seriously feels like all the joy has been sucked out of the apartment and it is now a grey, dreary place. Right now they’re all watching TV in silence.

I mean, Eddie’s host father may be insane, but at least he sounds alright, I think…right? Papa Yuri just sort of lurks around. This is going to take some getting used to.

I’m gonna need to find somewhere where I can just hang out and do homework. I thought about it for a LONG time and absolutely couldn’t think of anywhere I could go to just sit and do work. It’s weird to do it in coffee shops and restaurants. I’d just have to be roaming the streets. I’m going to have to find the white house (library), like, SOON and figure out whether or not I can just hang out there. I think I can, because you’re not allowed to take books out, you have to sit in there and read them. But I also don’t think you can bring anything in other than a pencil and some notebook paper…I dunno, I guess we’ll see (yea, aren’t Russian libraries great? You can’t take books out, you can’t take books in. Sweet.)

Other things worth noting:
Yesterday Mama Olya told me not to wash the dishes in the morning.
She also told me I couldn’t have a trash bag in my room next to my bed, which is ridiculous, considering I only put wrappers and floss in there. Her reasoning for this was that she was doing something (I don’t think vacuuming, but some sort of cleaning) and it was just there.

I'm sorry I write so much.

2007-11-22T22:08:00.000-08:00

I think I successfully avoided my host mother, I just hope no one saw me on the street. At this point I think I’m being overly neurotic. And feel like dying. I still have homework to do.

Update: host mother came home, appears as if she suspects nothing. My defense is that I’m very, very tired.

I’ve already watched 2 movies today. I keep watching the same movies over and over again, but I think I’m okay with that. Speaking of which, I love You’ve Got Mail. I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen it, but it’s simply fabulous. It reinforces my love for so many things. New York, fall, books, coffee. I love everything about this movie-the cast, the soundtrack, the colors, everything-from Meg Ryan’s haircut to the twinkle lights in the windows. AH. I’m sorry, I sound ridiculous.

I love snow, the color yellow, down comforters, twinkle lights, pumpkins, autumn, that crisp smell when it starts to get cool, sweaters, skirts, early mornings, window displays, reading the paper, email, coffee shops, books, book stores, suits, taxi cabs, scarves, park benches, flowers, long coats, literature, tea, New York, being able to sit alone in a coffee shop and read, boats, comfy chairs, mystery, grocery shopping, pictures, springtime, lunch dates, soup, fruit, hardwood floors, streetlamps, umbrellas, a cold and rainy day every once in awhile, white button-downs, friends, coffee mugs, sunshine, bikes, the song “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”…all can be found in You’ve Got Mail. Sorry, that was unreasonably long and unnecessary, I just felt the need to share that.

I just about had a heart attack. I hear snippets of phone conversations, and don’t completely know what’s going on. So, my host father is supposedly coming home soon (he works somewhere in the taiga from April until November). Interestingly enough, no one’s really sure when he’s supposed to be back. At first my host mother said the beginning of November. Then like, 2 weeks ago she warned me that he’d be coming…sometime. It’s almost the end of November and he’s still not here. I actually think this is somewhat of a problem, I heard my host mother calling a bunch of people trying to find out where he is. I think she was crying too. I could imagine that that would be stressful, not knowing what’s going on with your husband, when he’s coming home, or if he’s okay. And since she freaks out and worries 15 times more than regular human beings, this has to be pretty intense anxiety. Anyway so the point of this (before the tangent) is that I hear snippets of phone conversations and the host father could be coming home soon. Well, earlier in the evening I hear my host mother yelling at someone on the phone because she’s been expecting them for something. Then I hear her tell Nadya “He’ll be here in 15 mins.” Note, this is at 10:30 at night. So I start freaking out because I’m thinking the host father is coming home, now ALL of my freedom will be gone instead of just most of it, I’m not going to be able to flush my kasha down the toilet in the mornings and put back my sandwiches, I’m going to have to eat EVERYTHING, I’m not going to be alone in the afternoons, I’m so not ready for this! So then someone calls and the host mother says “yes, I’ll come let you in”. I assume that this is necessary because they about a month ago changed the locks on the outer door. The host father probably doesn’t have a key. But then I notice on the phone she’s using “Vy” and not “ty”. You wouldn’t use the formal with your own husband, right? So I’m now not so much freaking out, just a little more confused.

And in walks this guy in some sort of worker outfit. He comes, measure’s Nadya’s window (which they half replaced about a week and a half ago), says he’ll come tomorrow at 2 PM, and leaves. WHAT?! It’s 11 at night! Who does that? What kind of window man has those kinds of hours? And it’s not like he was just in jeans or something, he was fully outfitted to replace windows. Also, did they just not measure the window last time? WHAT IS THIS?! So, moral of the story is, I’m still confused, relieved that my minor freedoms haven’t been taken away yet, and Russia is completely ridiculous right now.

Oh, also, Monday at the SPO Phoenix I shared my mini peanut butter packs (thanks mom)! They were all really excited and I was really excited and it was great. Except at the time I had my splitting headache. They all weren’t sure how to eat it though, and I got to explain the many applications of peanut butter. If we were playing sports, but in, like, a food world, I think peanut butter would be the utility player. You can eat anything with peanut butter. That’s not actually true, now that I think about it, but whatever.

We also played this horrible game where we had to act out a fairy tale. We were each given parts with what we needed to do, and then we were supposed to interact for 20 mins. First of all, once I figured out what we were doing, I wasn’t really sure what I was supposed to do. And then I understood everything, just didn’t know what to do, because I’m a horrible actress and my vocabulary is relatively limited. That didn’t help the headache.

Wednesday, November 21st
So next time I’m sick I’m just going to flat out be sick (I wasn’t really sick so much though, because migraines/headaches aren’t like the flu or a cold or something). The avoiding the host family and worrying about being seen on the street and actually dragging myself out of the apartment for three hours (which was entirely unnecessary, by the way) was way more work and effort then just convincing them to leave me alone. Also, mom, I did take an Excedrin, but then it made me really nervous and jumpy and I started hiding under the bed when I heard the cats playing with a bucket, thinking it was the key in the door. Is this extreme? Yes. I really think the Excedrin was too strong (I can’t remember the last time I had that much caffeine at once) and made me think that these things were necessary. So I ended up leaving the house an hour and a half before they were supposed to arrive (did I already mention that? Probably.)

My host mother just gave me an extremely long-winded rundown of what leftover dinners are. Because I’d never heard of one before.
Mama Olya: Tonight we’re going to eat all the food we have! We have to. It’s been in the fridge and we need to eat it all.
Natasha: Okay. Sounds good.
Mama Olya: You see, all the food we’ve had for the past little while we haven’t eaten all, and it can’t sit there forever, so we’re going to have to eat it all now. It must be gone by the time dinner is done. It’s all of the food I made this week (explains the various food items, which I am actually familiar with, having eaten them just a few days ago).
Natasha: Okay. I’m ready.
*10 mins later at the dinner table*
Mama Olya: So I was cleaning today because the window man was here, and I noticed that I had all this frozen meat but I didn’t manage to make anything (man, if I could only directly translate the verb успеть and how it’s used in conversational Russian), but then I realized that we needed to eat this food that I made earlier, because there’s a lot of it in the fridge, so I decided we would do that tonight, and that’s why we’re eating all of these different things and we have to eat them all.
Natasha: Yup.

The other thing was that she made me scrambled eggs with noodles. I’m pretty sure she made the noodles yesterday, which means they aren’t going bad anytime soon, and we probably don’t need to eat them. Also the eggs probably could have been saved as well. So my dinner wasn’t really leftovers at all (except for the soup, which to be honest, tasted a little funky).

This morning I just about had a heart attack when I walked out of the apartment and realized that I only had a 500 ruble bill. You can’t pay for a 10 ruble marshrutka ride with a 500 ruble bill. So I panicked for a second, thinking I needed to find a bankomat or something small to buy, and I would be late for Baikalovedene and I HATE being late for class, and then I had a moment of clarity. My stop has a kiosk (as all stops tend to have) that sells phone cards. How convenient! I probably could use a phone card! I managed to purchase my 300 ruble phone card (which should last me the rest of my stay, I think), hopped on the 64 marshrutka, and was even 15 mins early for class. Excellent. Joseph and I talked with Pavel Alexandrovich, who may be one of my favorite Russians that I am in contact with (maybe that’s because we’re only in contact 2 hours and 40 mins per week). Joseph seemed to have had a number of catastrophes in the last, like, day and a half, most of them involving balalaikas. And then Pavel Alexandrovich smiled and said “I had a catastrophe too!” and told us this story about how he needed to return a book to his colleague, the colleague got sick, and now Pavel Alexandrovich is teaching this other guy’s class (like, substituting). I don’t know if that is the catastrophe or if I just missed something (clearly I missed something, there had to be more than just that). Maybe the catastrophe is he didn’t prepare anything for the class. He also gave us websites to find information for our paper.

Then we talked about more projects that the Soviets started (and rarely finished). One of them was that they wanted to build a dam and control the water level of Baikal based on how much water they needed to use for energy purposes. Pavel Alexandrovich said that this would be disastrous for some reason, I think some sort of plankton would die off for some reason and the galamyanka wouldn’t know what to do if the plankton were a few meters higher than they should have been. That’s probably not true, but that’s what I got out of it. The other thing he explained (that I clearly did not fully understand) was that they were cutting down these pine trees (“like the ones we have at Christmas and New Years,” Pavel Alexandrovich explained) and just putting them into the river so they would flow into Baikal. Then when they were in the lake they would gather them with boats (well, they’d tie them together with ropes). This plan didn’t work evidently because the pine trees kept drifting apart, even with the ropes. I’m not really sure what the point of this was, but, as Pavel Alexandrovich explained, most of these projects didn’t really have a point to them.

Okay, that’s something I completely can’t understand. So the Soviet Union started all of these projects, but never really thought them out. It would be one person’s idea, and then they’d start it. It didn’t really matter where they did it or whether or not it would be beneficial. But then if the person died, and no one else cared about it, they’d just drop the project. Or, most of the time, they didn’t have the money to finish it. So there were like, thousands of these half done projects, and they kept starting new ones. Like, how is there a collection of people that don’t think that is absolutely ridiculous? What a waste of money! Great job, Soviet Union. Also, cutting down pine trees and then throwing them into the river so they’ll flow into Baikal and THEN gathering them? They were already gathered! It’s called a forest!

Okay, enough of that. Sometimes it baffles me how a country could have been so ridiculous and disorganized. And sometimes still is. But it just seems like no one cares; all of the people we’ve talked to (which, truth be told, is a limited amount of people, but STILL) don’t seem to care. They don’t know what the government is doing, what any of their politicians think, what would be best for the country as a whole…it’s this idea that if it’s not affecting them, it doesn’t matter. And they don’t THINK that it affects them but when the entire country is, well, as it is, it DOES affect them. How can they not see this?

Sorry, I think that was me being, like, WHOA American.

Tomorrow we have this conference where all the foreign students get together and talk about their experiences. See, it wasn’t until today that someone fully explained this to me. Everyone had been talking about this conference and how it was this huge deal and we HAD to say something, but no one told us what we were supposed to talk about or what it even was until today. I guess the point is to figure out what they could improve on and how our experiences differ. We’ll be there, the Koreans, the Chinese, and the Germans. They also said that they invited the Russian students, but about 10 will probably show up. For some reason we’re in the giant lecture hall, which intimidates me a little bit. When we asked Vladimir Konstantinovich when it started, he said maybe 1:30, but that may vary because it takes time to gather everyone (this is something else I don’t understand. People aren’t, like, sheep. They don’t need to be gathered. They just need to bring themselves to the conference at the appropriate time. Again, the disorganization). I’ll let you all know how it goes. I’m actually interested to see what the other students have to stay. They live in dorms, not with families, so I’d like to hear how that is.

Then tomorrow we have Thanksgiving dinner at Elisabeth’s. I’m making homemade peanut butter cups (I think. I have the peanut butter, and the marshmallows, but the semi-sweet chocolate chips I couldn’t find, so I just bought 2 dark chocolate bars. I’m pretty sure this is going to be a disaster).

We watched the most God-awful movie today. It was like 2 ½ hours long, where a bunch of people are working in an office and this geeky looking guy with thick glasses (looked like one of the professors in the physics department, actually) pursues his boss, who is this woman that looks A LOT like a man. For the last like 10 mins of the movie they’re screaming at each other and throwing things and chasing each other, trying to hit each other, etc (this was quite the pathetic office fight scene, stacks of paper and telephones being thrown), and the guy tries to run away but the woman is still trying to attack him, then he gets into a cab and she follows him, so as the driver is driving they’re smacking each other in the backseat, and then he kisses her and everything is okay. WHAT?! It was awful. I wanted to die.

Also China is a no-go. It’s just way too expensive and would be way too much time and just impractical. BUT it means I can come home earlier…J. And I can hang out with Jenna a lot at home. So now the question is…do I want to be home for Christmas? This would limit my traveling ability around St. Petersburg and Moscow and Yaroslavl….but I might just want to do that.

Okay, I’m off to make homemade peanut butter cups.

Update: Okay, I don’t think that was as much of a disaster as I thought it would be, but I guess we’ll see. I think I burned it a little bit, but hopefully it’s not noticeable? Also I greased my pan with a marshmallow. There aren’t any napkins or paper towels in the apartment right now. I tried to use toilet paper, but it sort of disintegrated as I was greasing, and little blue paper bits were in the butter. And I didn’t want to use my fingers, so I just used a marshmallow. I am SO resourceful.

Thursday, November 22nd
Happy Thanksgiving!

So we’ve been talking about all these projects they had in the Soviet days, and today we talked about some sort of land distribution. I don’t really know. I think they redistributed animals too. That’s probably not true, but they did try to introduce flora, fayna (how would you write that in English?), and some sort of fish that would eat mosquitoes to keep people from getting malaria. I think that all this reintroducing of animals would through off the balance of the food chain, but Pavel Alexandrovich didn’t seem to think so. Also there was some sort of tie between capitalism and what we do with nature, and he said that they couldn’t do that because capitalism couldn’t survive in Russia (or maybe it just wasn’t there? I also think capitalism is struggling here), so this was socialism’s solution to their nature problem (reintroduce animals and create specialized land zones). I don’t really know what the problem was to begin with, but that’s okay. Also Stalin wanted to plant a giant wall of trees along the southern border of Russia to protect Western Russia from the strong winds coming from Central Asia. WHAT?! Like, who comes up with that? I can’t believe these people ran a country for so long. Actually, I can, because he just killed anyone that disagreed with him, and Russia ended up a disaster, as one would expect.

Pavel Alexandrovich is still completely awesome though. Despite the fact that earlier in the semester he told us that different types of galamyanka couldn’t mate with each other (well, they physically could, they’re the same species, but different types), and his explanation was that it was the same way that different races of humans couldn’t mix. This led us to believe that it was, in fact, possible, for these galamyanki to interbreed (is that a word?), as well as wonder whether or not all Russians think like that, or just him.

Today there was a major conference, “Russia through the eyes of foreigners” (roughly translated). I think it went sort of well, but it was REALLY long. Like 2 hours. A lot of Russians were there and they said they thought it was interesting. Vladimir Konstantinovich and Alexandra Vladimirovna were especially pleased. They took my essay to do something with it. Not really sure.

I’m off to Thanksgiving dinner with my burnt homemade peanut butter bars! I’m going to buy ice cream and hope that drowns out the burnt flavor.

Further update: Thanksgiving was great. I'm going to another children's home tomorrow but would sort of rather start working on my paper and studying for my TEST we have in Baikalovedene Thursday! ahhhhhh

ugh

2007-11-19T20:26:00.000-08:00

I feel like crap.

Can you get a headache from thinking too much? I think you can. I did homework in Café Fiesta today with Ivan and Eddie. My goal was to never go back again (after they were being so ridiculous about the wireless internet, and everything else in general), but there really isn’t anywhere else we can just hang out and do homework. So I went, and got 10 mins of internet. Then I couldn’t reply to Eddie’s text message (or Ivan’s) because I didn’t have any money on my phone. In about 10 mins I have to leave to go to a meeting that I really don’t want to go to. I don’t have to, but I should. It’s good for my language development to be with actual Russians my age. Plus they’re all very nice. I don’t know.

Oh, also this сукa (you can look that up in a translator, I’m not providing the translation for that one) in Café Fiesta told us we had to move tables because we didn’t pay the 90 rubles to sit there (they have regular tables, and then tables with these weird couches). I’m pretty sure she was just doing it to be…well, a сукa. I HATE people like that.

I started thinking a lot about Russia after reading Eddie’s blog and got really sad. It’s hard to describe the experience of living here. On the one hand, I (especially now) am just like “GET ME OUT OF HERE”, but on the other hand, I’m ALWAYS thinking about when I can come back. I think I’m just getting really frustrated with stuff. There are all these people I’m ready to say goodbye to NOW, but I still have four weeks left. I feel like I do and I don’t want to have ties to Irkutsk once I leave. I do, because when (eek…if?) I come back it’d be nice to have friends that I’d kept in touch with. But at the same time I just want to leave, and not have anything to do with Russia for awhile. I just already feel done. I have no motivation to further immerse myself (though I don’t know what else I would do…I go to my clubs, hang out with Russian people, went to the children’s home…I guess the point is that I don’t feel especially motivated to do these things).

And just when I thought I had gotten one of those “goodbyes” out of the way, Evgenii/Zhenya emails me. After he left for Olhon we exchanged like, maybe 3 text messages, but other than that I hadn’t talked to him. And then out of the blue he emails me. Evidently he’s trying to find another job and another apartment. But anyway he told me that as soon as he finds a new apartment, he’s going to have a housewarming party and I’m invited. He also wanted to know if I wanted to go somewhere (like, Listvianka? Olhon? No idea). This is nice of him…but no thanks. I mean, honestly, a) housewarming party-being in an apartment with a bunch of 25-35 year old Russian men? Um, thanks, but no thanks. B) GOING somewhere? Absolutely not. Anyway, I had thought (hoped) that he had just lost interest and not called, and that I wouldn’t have to do anything, but now I need to make myself very “busy” for the next four weeks. Actually I have two papers to write, so that won’t be hard. But seriously, why on earth would someone be interested in this random foreigner than can only half speak the language? Like, can he not find any Russian girls to hang out with?

And then I’m thinking of things I would have done differently, and I really regret not being able to spend more time with Leonya and Anya. But I don’t even know how I would go about doing that. Even now…I mean, what would we do? I feel weird asking if I can just come over and hang out, and whenever any one of my friends comes over here it seems like a big deal and I’m just never really relaxed (actually this has happened twice…once with Sonya, and once with Leonya/Anya/Eddie). Like, what do he and Eddie do when they hang out all the time? It makes me sad that I don’t live with him. I don’t know. It’s an upsetting situation for me and even though I still have four weeks left I don’t know what to do about it.

The moral of the story is that I have a splitting headache, am tired of everything and everyone, still have homework to do, and two papers in Russian to write. I am terrified of this. Just so you all know, I don’t speak Russian. Actually most of the time I’m just anxious and afraid with waves of absolute terror and panic every once in awhile. 10-20 pages in Russian. Times two. I think that it’s not the writing so much that scares me, I think I can do that, it’ll just be slow. It’s the research and gathering information that scares me. Also my course scheduling is going nowhere and is very frustrating. This would be so much easier to do if my class wouldn’t be so difficult and conflict with each other and if I were on campus right now.

Okay, sorry this entire entry was me whining and complaining. On the upside, my friend Anya might be in the US this summer!

Later updated: I can’t remember the last time I’ve had a headache this bad. I think it might be a migraine, actually. I used to get migraines a lot in high school but haven’t had one in awhile. I actually shouldn’t be typing because it certainly isn’t helping. I’d say that if I feel like this in the morning there’s no way I’m going to class, but then I’d have to do something between, like, 1-2:30 so my host mother/sister don’t catch me at home, because then they’ll think I’m sick, and then they’ll a) want to take care of me and b) say it’s because I don’t wear enough winter clothing (also I wore half of what they wanted me to today and was sweating profusely. I even had to take off my hat so I didn’t overheat). I don’t feel like dealing with that situation.

Tuesday, November 20th
If I wanted to go to class, I should have left 20 mins ago. I still have a splitting headache, and if I feel like this NOW, I can’t imagine what a 30 min marshrutka ride and 2 hour and 20 min grammar and speech practice classes would do for me. I think I’d be dead at that point. But now I’m terrified that my host family is going to catch me here, so in about an hour I have to leave the apartment and…do what for 2 hours? All I want to do is climb back into bed. I think the only thing worse than being sick (I’m not really sick though, I just have a migraine) is being sick and then having to PRETEND that you’re not. UGH.

Also there’s no electricity in the apartment. Not really sure why.

Further update: I'm now at the internet cafe hiding out from my host family while they come home and eat lunch. Except I left the apartment ridiculously early because I was so neurotic about it (I left around 11:45, they'll arrive at 1:15). So I have this splitting migraine and another hour and a half before I can go back. They won't even come back for another 45 mins. This is almost worse than just sucking it up and being in class. Also leaving early was entirely unnecessary, because they're more or less very predictable in what they do. But what if today they weren't? Then what would I do?

This sucks.

bleh.

2007-11-18T23:37:00.000-08:00

Okay, I am a champion marshmallow roaster. That is all.

Also we have no cold water in the apartment, making it hard to take a shower (which I haven’t done in three days). I tried, but my host mother insisted that I couldn’t because I’d burn myself (even though I told her that the “hot” water coming out of the faucet is really more lukewarm). I think it’s hot now though. But enough is enough. I’m willing to risk scalding myself for cleanliness.

Actually I won’t scald myself, I’ll just put a bunch of water in little tubs and wait for them to cool off before using them. Yea, so not hard.

Being at the children’s home was also surprisingly good for my Russian. I was playing with this one girl, Dasha, and we were coloring (well, she didn’t really want to color so much) but she kept telling me what she wanted me to draw. Sometimes I could, and if there was a word I didn’t know, I’d have her color it to show me. This means a) I was learning new words and b) it gave her something to do.

The sad part about all of this is that I look at a lot of the cute little boys and think that in 15 years, they’ll probably be sleazy Russian men.

Karrina still loves me, just as an update. Oh, and my host mother just told me that marshmallows are food. Fruit is not, but marshmallows are. Also the other day when she asked me what the most important part of my body to keep warm was, she told me my legs (I said head, since how much of your body heat escapes through your head? Like a lot). She told me if my legs weren’t warm then soon my face, sinuses, and teeth would start hurting. She also told me to ask my Dad, since he’s a doctor. She also just yelled at me for eating marshmallows, because it clearly means I’m hungry, and should be in the kitchen eating soup.

See, now I’m thinking that I might just not come back to Irkutsk after I leave for Moscow, like, the day after classes end. If I could get Middlebury to just reimburse me for my plane ticket from Irkutsk to Moscow…that would be fabulous. They also said they’d pay for a train ticket instead, but train tickets are WAY less expensive than train tickets…so I’d sort of rather just buy the train ticket myself and have them reimburse me for the plane ticket.

Obituary

Purple “Cricket” Swedish Match Lighter

Born: November 18^th, 12:35 PM

Died: November 19^th, 2:13 PM

Lifespan: 40 marshmallows

I’d give a eulogy, but I don’t really think that’s necessary.

2007-11-17T22:04:00.001-08:00

Do you ever feel like you need to crack your ribcage? Like, the way you feel like you need to crack your knee or something? I do. Like, that spot right in the middle, probably where surgeons would crack open my ribcage to get to my chest cavity (let’s hope that’s actually never necessary).

Sarah told me that when my host father comes home my alone time in the apartment is like GONE. Which is really, really sad. I only have four weeks left, so it’s not really THAT big of a deal, but still. She also said he’s probably going to feed me breakfast, which is a MAJOR problem because it means I actually have to eat it all, instead of skillfully putting it back/flushing some down the toilet (you all think I’m crazy right now, but it’s actually the ONLY way to escape eating it. The psychology of the food culture here is actually insane. Did that make sense? Not really, but that’s okay).

Whoa. Only four weeks left. That is weeeeeird. I need to write 2 term papers. That’s not really okay.

Today was a good Russia day. Also I had something more important to say but forgot.

Friday, November 16th
For the first time ever, I almost wished I were a smoker, because then I’d have a lighter over which I could roast my newly acquired marshmallows. But I am not a smoker, and do not have a lighter. I’ll need to get on that. I tried over the stove, but it wouldn’t get hot enough. Also I’ve tried to do that over candles, but then they tasted like lavender or fresh sea breeze, and I didn’t really like that.

So then I tried to make a nice melted marshmallow/chocolate/peanut butter mix, but it quickly turned into a gross goopy mess.

Also Eddie’s host mother yelled at the cat for not eating enough. No joke.

Later tonight we’re going to a bar around the main square. Although it’s probably only like a 10-15 min walk for me, I’ll probably end up taking a taxi home. I’m a bit apprehensive about walking alone at night along back streets. It’ll be nice to just hang together, though the search for an inexpensive bar/restaurant/place with a social atmosphere is still on.

Saturday, November 17th
So last night was fun. Not really a whole lot to say about that.

Today we went to the children’s home. Sometimes I didn’t really know what to do with them, or really understand what they were saying, but that’s okay. They were really cute and were glad we were there. Of course, for some reason, I started carrying one little kid around on my back and then they ALL wanted to be carried around, so for like 20 minutes we were just running around this little room with small children on our backs. We’re going back tomorrow, so that’s good.

Afterwards we went to “Blin’OK,” which is somewhere I had wanted to go for quite awhile. I had a blini (a blin?) with bananas. Sonya, Ivan, Adrienne, and I went with this girl named Vika (from the Rotary club, Russian girl) and Mary (here on a Fulbright). It was all very nice.

My host mother keeps yelling at me because I’m not wearing enough clothing. She doesn’t believe that I’m actually warm when I go outside. At this point I almost just want to suck it up, freeze, and wear my pea coat all winter just to irritate her. So now she keeps telling me that we should buy a new coat if I won’t wear the dublyonka. I told her it isn’t the coat itself, it’s that it’s not cold enough yet. There aren’t any other Russians wearing dublyonkas yet, and I’m warm in my pea coat. Anyway I promised that when it hits minus 20, I’ll start wearing the dublyonka, but until then, I wear the pea coat.

I mean, I wouldn’t particularly mind wearing the dublyonka now, except for the fact that I’d probably stand out a lot. At this point I think I’m just trying to prove a point. Like, I have little control over what I do in Russia because I CAN’T BE INDEPENDENT, so I’ll control what I can. This mentality is also seeping into my mealtimes, as I’m refusing more and more food. Actually I’m just getting more stubborn in general. It’s usually a good sign when she’s upset with me, because it means I’ve done something good for me (like, not eaten disgusting amounts of greasy food, not sweating to death, etc). When did I become such a ridiculous passive-aggressive person? Oh yea, Russia will do that to you.

Sunday, November 18th
Just got back from the children’s home again. It was nice, but still sad when you think about the whole situation. The place where we go isn’t really a home, it’s more like a daycare kind of place (called the detskii sad, or literally translated, children garden). They live in these homes that are like, 20 kids in an apartment with an adult to take care of them. They’re like 5 or 6 but developmentally way behind where they need to be. Vika wanted to get people from her club together to do a New Year’s/Christmas thing for them.

In other news, I bought a lighter today and have begun to roast marshmallows on a fork in the kitchen. I have my marshmallows with tea, naturally. I don’t know exactly how long lighters last. I mean, first of all, I don’t really have experience with them, but second of all, they’re generally used to light something really quick and then be turned off. They don’t usually sit and burn so as to roast, say, a marshmallow or something. I think Nadya thinks I’m insane.

Okay, I’m going to roast one more marshmallow, and then I’m off to the internet café to post this.

Short update: On the way here, I saw some guy taken out by ice. And the Russians told me that I could wear heels because they don't have ice in the winter. Yea RIGHT.

YAY!

2007-11-15T23:03:00.000-08:00

Everyone needs to read the comment my cousin Allie left me under the "more worthless thoughts" entry, because it's probably the best comment I've ever received.

Thanks Allie :)

More worthless thoughts.

2007-11-14T23:39:00.000-08:00

When I’m feeling as if I’m especially sick of Russia (which is often these days), I buy pirated DVDs. This happens rarely, actually; I’ve only done it a couple times. But still. You can get them for less than it costs to rent one at Blockbuster (which is fairly expensive, now that I think about it). But anyway it’s really wonderful and they’re very cheap and I can watch them as often as possible. I’m watching Little Miss Sunshine right now. I also got Traffic to watch at a later date, although I’m not entirely sure that will work wonders for my mood.

Today I ate an apple with peanut butter. Then I just ate peanut butter. The lack of non-stale bread in this house is a bit unfortunate. Now that I have peanut butter I’ve been substituting peanut butter and jelly mini sandwiches for my breakfast. Mmm. Yes.

Tried to organize a lunch to talk about going to the children’s home. Sonya was the only one who showed up. I didn’t think Ivan would come (nor should he) since it was his dad’s last day in Irkutsk…but I dunno about the others. Joseph was probably still at the dacha. Who knows. I was sort of irritated…but I’m often irritated, so whatever.

Also Karrina is definitely in heat, but it doesn’t matter, she still loves me a lot. I’m sure we’ll continue to be BFFs once this passes.

I really don’t want to do my homework. And I need to so I can start writing this 10 page papers. Aghhhhhrrrrrrrgggggg.

I’m gonna go belly buzz Karrina now.

I am like totally worthless. I need to start planning activities in the evenings, so I can still enjoy time alone at home, but do something somewhat productive. I just sit here and play games. Ugh.

Maybe if I had told the FBI about my recently acquired Sudoku and FreeCell skills they’d have wanted me.

Next day (November 13th)
Today is Sarah’s birthday! I would love to call her but don’t have her home number…I’ll get it soon.

Update: Mama Olya called Sarah to wish her a happy birthday, but I didn’t get to talk to her L. Sarah….I’ll call sooooon…Also I think we woke her up.

Today on the marshrutka this woman didn’t shut the door all the way, and when the van started moving again it flew open…everyone just sort of sat around looking at it (I don’t really understand why the woman next to the door didn’t do anything…or the woman who didn’t shut the door correctly…) but anyway, the driver just looked at it and hit the brakes just enough for the door to shut (but not enough for all of us to fly forward, thank God). It was awesome. I was beyond amused. He was also nice just in general, dropping people where they wanted along the route instead of just at the stops. And he didn’t even yell at this girl who had a 500 ruble bill (a sin on the marshrutka, since each ride is only 10 rubles). He just said he couldn’t change it and let her go.

Yesterday and today have sort of been, like, “one of those days”…except there were two. All of these things alone are no big deal, but when you put them together, and add the fact that these days I’m generally just in a bad mood and sick of Russia, it’s basically like the end of the world. First of all, Sonya was the only one who showed up to our meeting yesterday. Not really a big deal. THEN they didn’t have blini bananovii rai (banana paradise) at Domino’s. Then later today, I was just in general irritated in class, and find out that I guess there’s already a children’s home that people are going to? Why did I not know about this? (At the same time I realize I was supposed to be doing more about this, but still, the slowness of the process wasn’t exactly all my fault). Later I went to Café Koks to use their free wifi and for some reason the door was locked. And I couldn’t get inside. Then the cursor on my computer was like not at ALL working, and so at last I figured I would just sit down and watch a movie.

And then I realized I bought “Traffic” in Russian. In ONLY Russian. Although the disc SAYS it’s in English OR Russian with English OR Russian subtitles, it doesn’t. It has Russian dubbing…or very quiet English and THEN Russian dubbing. This is ridiculous.

So I watched Little Miss Sunshine. Again.

Every time I open my computer I think I have something worthwhile to write, and then I see my “blog entry” document and realize that I actually have nothing to say.

But since I haven’t really been sleeping much, I’ve decided that it’s ridiculous to just lie there and sleep and not do anything. So I’m going to be really productive tonight. I’m reading right now, but I’m also going to fold and put away my clothes and clear off a place on my desk to work (I think this is a better choice than having it be my toiletries table).

Karrina is just sort of rolling back and forth on the floor and it’s really funny looking. Also my cursor is spontaneously flying all over the screen.

So, it’s finally gotten cold here, but it’s not THAT cold. I mean, I guess it’s cold compared to what I’m used to in November, but it’s definitely not too cold. At night/in the morning it’s like -15 C (5 F) and during the day it’s like -5 or -10 (14-23). Granted, it’s cold, but it is NOT dublyonka weather. My host mother insisted that I wear my dublyonka and my fur boots. But my regular boots and black pea coat are quite warm. Also, they keep saying that everyone’s dressing for winter, but I have not seen ONE dublyonka. I’ve seen some fur coats, but I think that’s like a middle level in between the regular coat and the dublyonka (and a completely unnecessary middle step, as far as I’m concerned). Also I asked my Speech Practice teacher and SHE said that although technically the weather is cold enough to wear a dublyonka, none of the younger people do it because it’s too early. Have to wait. She also says it’s no big deal just to layer and wait a couple weeks until everyone else starts wearing their dublyonkas. It’s maybe cold enough to switch my regular hat for my zhivotniya (again, this means animal in Russian, but the meaning is entirely lost in the translation. Also we (mainly Sonya and I, or maybe just me) refer to our hats not as hats, but as zhivotnie. As in, we’re wearing our zhivotnie today, not our hats. This is important because my hat has so much fur it actually might be a full zhivotniya. Hard to tell). Anyway there is no real reason for this rant, the point is that I’m standing firm and wearing my “fall” clothes but NOT freezing and I will not back down. She keeps saying she doesn’t care what I wear but she won’t drop it so it’s clearly some sort of big issue.

It’s so not that cold. And Karrina so loves me right now.

November 14th
I GOT MY PACKAGE TODAY!!!! It had quite a journey. From Cleveland it went to England, and then to Moscow, then Novosibirsk, then back to Moscow, and then to Irkutsk. Good thing there wasn’t anything breakable in there, because I don’t know WHAT they did to the box, but my little peanut butter tubs were somehow torn out of their packages and one of my jelly belly boxes got stabbed open and there were jellybeans everywhere. But it’s okay, because everything was there, and YAAAAAAAAAAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I now have lots of peanut butter, marshmallows, and jellybeans. Karrina and Chucha were very curious as to what this mysterious package was. I’ve folded all my clothes and now I’m reorganizing my room. Since I actually have more than a half hour of reading to do, I probably will want to use my desk. But now I’m writing and playing freecell because I folded clothes for like ten minutes. Time for a break.

My host mother came home early. That is sad because I was so looking forward to being in the apartment alone. Also I just noticed that Karrina is like, really, REALLY soft. She probably would make a good hat. That’s the most awful thing I’ve ever said.

One of my marshmallow packages says it’s “award-winning”. Who gives awards for marshmallows? I mean, I like them, and I like making smores, but this is certainly not a food worthy of an award.

I cleaned off my desk and it’s actually quite nice. I was a little skeptical, because I don’t like working somewhere where the table/desk is too low. In fact, I prefer it to be higher than normal. The desk:chair height ratio of this unit is superb.

Thursday, November 15th:
Today I wanted to do all KINDS of things on the internet. So I’m sitting right now in Café KoKs (this very upscale New York-ish place with free wi-fi) and I ordered myself a nice little lunch and a glass of wine. And internet. Except the internet isn’t working, and now I’m sad, because I look pretty weird having lunch alone. I should have better thought this out.
The other people here include:
Some guy and girl that look like they’re on a date.
Two girls.
This old looking Buryat guy and this young looking not-Buryat guy.
Four men, 2 older, 2 younger, that are probably part of the Russian mob.
Oh, then me. All by myself.
I’ve decided I’m going to watch Traffic in Russian. At the very least it’ll be good for my language development, and I have seen it once so I sort of remember the storyline.

More updates. This is me not doing homework.

2007-11-11T21:54:00.001-08:00

Today marks the first time I’ve ever seen mandarin oranges in plastic packaging. They’re like individually wrapped fortune-oranges. I think they’re from China or something. I don’t really know.

Also we were eating dinner and some comedian came on and started making fun of America. I actually didn’t understand anything so I could neither laugh nor be offended, but then the following conversation took place with my host mother:
Host mother: So, do most Americans like Bush?
Natasha: Well, I’d say a little less than half. Our country is pretty split down the middle. We have two main parties.
Host mother: Oh, we have elections coming up. We have 11 parties.
Natasha: Well, we have more than just two, but they’re very small and don’t do anything. It’s really only the main two that are important.
Host mother: We have 11, but still don’t know anything. No one knows what’s going on. I suppose it’s the same way with your country.
Natasha: mmm….no, we pretty much know what’s going on.
Host mother: Well it’s all the same. We have elections, but it doesn’t matter, because the population can’t do anything. We don’t know what’s going on and there’s nothing we can change. I’m sure it’s like that with you too.
Natasha: No…actually people can change anything.

Russia is a sad place that way. I think there’s almost this strange, simplified version of looking at things. As in, the greater picture or greater idea is just too much to think about. Moreover, I think they see it as not worth thinking about since they think that there is nothing they can do. Any conversation we’ve had about before and after is always overly simplified. It’s like when Sonya asked her host mother if things were better now than during communism, she replied that kielbasa was cheaper then…but now she can fly to Moscow and out of the country, so that’s nice. And in Mongolia, where the only good thing about Democracy was that more money might be coming into the country, but all the bad things that happened were also the fault of Democracy. It’s so overly simplified it kills me. I feel like so many people we’ve talked to here are so tunnel-visioned about everything. There is no greater world view.

I almost had a minor heart attack when my NEW power cord started beeping and not charging my computer. But everything is fine now.

Also Sonya and I went to the KoKs café today, where they also have free wireless (well, I say free, but it’s really “free”, because you have to buy, like, a coffee or something). I liked it a lot, it was very modern and upscale but still felt comfortable. It’s a little too upscale, though, so I won’t be going there often. But I would prefer to go there on a Friday or Saturday night instead of a bar.

I think this Christmas music is unhealthy for me. I just seem to have these associations attached to this mix of Christmas music that I have, and it’s making me want to live out those mental pictures. I’m reminded of finishing finals, lots of snow, being in Cleveland, running to the sounds of the Tran-Siberian Orchestra, driving at night, walking at night, Christmas shopping, Christmas tree decorating, etc. It’s sort of interesting that I’ve formed these associations based on things that have only happened in the last 2 years, but that’s okay I guess. Anyway, for some odd reason I’m especially reminded of driving Jetta around, perhaps on Pleasant Valley, going up to Blockbuster to get a movie on a winter night, and being stopped at that stoplight around 77. These are very odd associations, but as I think about them, I realize that I’d rather be doing that then being frustrated with the kind of life I lead in Irkutsk. I think it’s that I feel like such an unproductive and worthless person. My host mother won’t even let me hang up my own clothes to dry. I can’t go and exercise every day. I just don’t lead a productive, independent life and it’s driving me crazy.

I’ve looked at some travel stuff for the end of the semester. But I’m almost at the point where it’s like-how much am I going to want to travel? I think at that point I might be so tired I’ll just want to go home. But then it seems stupid to go home that early, especially when I’m just going to be sitting around and working out (although that in itself might be a good enough reason). And then I think to myself that there are things that I don’t have to see right now, because I’ll surely be coming back to Russia in the near future. But what if I don’t? What if all of a sudden all of my plans (very, very vague plans, but still plans) change and I never get the opportunity? What if I apply for a job that’ll put me in Russia for awhile, but I don’t get it? And then I’ll hate myself for not taking advantage of the opportunity I had earlier. Sigh. If anyone has any advice I’ll gladly take it.

Also evidently my host father is coming home soon (did I mention this before)? If I didn’t translate this incorrectly (which is entirely possible, considering we talked about his profession at the very beginning of my arrival in Russia), he does some sort of mining or panning for gold or something in the taiga, and is only home for half of the year. So she said that I shouldn’t be alarmed if I come home one day and there’s an unfamiliar Buryat man in the apartment. She even offered to show me a picture just in case. This means I have to go through another process of being used to someone, but I’ve already become comfortable with my host mother and sister and feel like I’ll be going through that uncomfortable phase all over again. I actually don’t think that’ll happen. But what I DO worry about is that he’ll be home all the time. My favorite times ever are the times after class when I’m alone in the apartment and can just sit or do homework or read or watch Vinnie-Pookh (hard h). That time will be nonexistent if he is here all the time.

I’ve heard he loves history, and will probably show me all of these history books and talk about all kinds of stuff. We’ll probably get along well. I should invite Eddie over too, as he is also a history major (actually Eddie is a history fanatic).

Back to the strange Chinese orange in the plastic package. On the back it has this very bad English translation…I think it’s trying to describe the orange. It’s absolutely hilarious. This is what it says:
mandarin is king of Orange, contain of protein, sugar, vitamin and inorganic salts, etc., sorts of composition, especially contains rich maize element, Vc, Vp, and carotene. Resistant to cancer, health spleen, moisten lung, relieve a cough, it’s appearance beautify, juice savory, flesh delicious, Not only is nourishing product, but also is preserve your health. It is good foods for health.

That made my day.

Now that I have a working computer, I just write worthless things.

2007-11-10T23:23:00.000-08:00

So I’ve been reading Abby’s blogs about Archangelsk and it makes me really excited to be potentially traveling alone for awhile. I can’t decide, however, when I do this enormous amount of traveling, whether or not I want to bring stuff to read in Russian or in English. Maybe both. My plan was to read great Russian literature, but the language question is the hard part. I’m pretty sure that if I had a dictionary next to me, I’m fairly competent enough in Russian to read books. However, the English versions would save me much irritation. However, I am going to have A LOT of time, and reading in English isn’t going to be great for my language development. Anyway.

Some guys are here putting in a new window in Nadya’s room. It’s loud and the cats are scared. This, however, gives me an excuse to close my door and not do anything but read or do homework or plan my course schedule or anything, really, except eating.

Also Karrina all of a sudden absolutely LOVES me. She’s in my room all the time, she jumps into my lap whenever I’m sitting in the kitchen, she slept at the foot of my bed, she’s been rubbing up against my leg, purring a lot, etc. And the thing is, I don’t think she’s in heat right now (which was the explanation as to why she was so affectionate before). We’re totally in love. Maybe she knows I’m leaving soon and wants to get in some quality time before I take off for bigger and better things.

Further update: Just got back from Tanya’s. It was very nice, actually. I really liked her mom and her little sister. We looked at pictures, had pilmeni, blini, and tea, and watched this very long (hour and half) video tour of St. Petersburg. I then looked at more pictures and various things. We talked about various natural disasters, and she showed me her belly dancing costumes. I realize she’s sort of crazy sometimes, but I think I have a number of weird friends like that. I can’t really say no to anyone, so anyone that’s persistent enough is probably going to end up being my friend. So it is with Tanya. I don’t really know what happened in that process of us becoming friends, but it’s fine. I don’t think she has that many friends, actually, so I can be her friend for my last month and a half. And even once I’m back home. Actually, sometimes I think I’d have better relationships with some of my friends if we were to put 13 time zones between us. Anyway, the point of that is, Tanya and her family are really very sweet, and I had a good time.

And I think because of that on the bus on the way back I was having one of my “I love Russia” moments. Where I was on the bus listening to awful techno, and moving very slowly, and all these Russians were sitting around me, but it still felt quite peaceful and nice.

This was all entirely destroyed when I returned home. I am now currently in one of my “get me the hell out of this country” moments.

So I came back, and naturally I was offered food. This is fine, this happens often, it’s sort of like “how are you?” in English. But then my host mother asked what I was doing, where I was, etc, so I told her that I had this friend from our history class and I went to visit her. And she flips out and tells me that it’s totally unsafe to be going to this girl’s house in a region that I don’t know and did I ask Elisabeth about this, don’t I have to do a form, didn’t Elisabeth talk about this during orientation, what if they had wanted to kill me, I need to give her an exact address of where this is located and shouldn’t be anywhere when it’s dark. First of all, Tanya is this like 17 year old girl who is, although somewhat strange, completely harmless. Second of all, I AM NOT 12 YEARS OLD. I’m not socially inept, I know how to read people, I’m not going to some ax-murderers house (the chainsaw story makes this point somewhat ironic). I am a fully functioning adult who is INTELLIGENT enough to be making her own decisions. I’m not completely clueless, I am, in fact, able to get myself out of situations (INCLUDING those with creepy men, this is actually not at all related to the subject but just so everyone knows I’m not stupid and not about to get myself into a situation that I can’t get out of, ie being raped by some creepy Russian), and Tanya is not what I would call a threatening situation. They walked me to the stop, made sure I got on the bus, etc. This is a completely fine, normal, and actually GOOD situation (interactions with Russians that are only sometimes insane!), I don’t need to be treated like some stupid 12 year old that’s going to get into the sketchy car with the guy that has candy. JESUS CHRIST.

I knew I would have problems with this lack of independence in Russia, but why do all of the other American students here have so much more freedom than I do?

I have a lot to do but seriously can’t bring myself to do it. I don’t want to do anything but just sit and watch movies (which I can’t do) or read a book (also can’t do). I have a very strong desire to look at an atlas, as maps are always interesting and more or less understandable in all languages. Tomorrow Sonya and I are going to find the new wi-fi café, I also plan on finding the belii dom (white house, which is the main Irkutsk State University library, and is actually yellow. I don’t remember why it’s the white house and not the yellow house, I think it was painted over or something, but yellow house is also slang for a mental hospital or something). I’m going to do lots of work there and hopefully hide there for long periods of time when I don’t want to be in the apartment. I actually have 2 ten page research papers coming up, so that’s a really convenient excuse to just live there for like a really long time.

Did I mention that I’ve gone completely off the deep end? I think I have mentioned this before, actually. Well my host mother told me that in Washington, D.C., they already put up the giant Christmas tree. And I went on this long sort of rant about how it is WAY to early for that, it’s always unacceptable to do anything Christmasy before Thanksgiving, and even after Thanksgiving, it’s still early if it’s not December. This, of course, makes me a COMPLETE hypocrite because I’ve already started listening to Christmas music. I don’t know how this happened, usually I absolutely refuse to do anything like this before December and even then I usually don’t get around to it until my finals are over (giving me, like, a week to prepare for Christmas). But maybe this year when Christmas comes around I’ll actually be ready to stop listening to Christmas music, instead of when that usually happens in like mid-January.

Now I sort of want to be home for Christmas.

Updates from the last couple of days

2007-11-09T21:03:00.000-08:00

I finally downloaded part of the course catalog. The whole catalog would be way too long, and to be honest, I’ll probably just be taking History and Russian classes. MAYBE one of my four classes will be some sort of elective (although said elective MUST fulfill a distribution requirement). This means that soon I will be sitting down with all kinds of charts, figuring out a) what distribution requirements I need to fill b) what major requirements I need to fill c) what classes I’m interested in d) what kind of schedule I’d like e) which professors I like and f) what I most likely want to take senior year (which is the semester after next-CHOKE-when did that happen?) and I will take all of these things into consideration to make the perfect schedule for next semester.

This is a lie, it won’t be perfect, because half of the Russian classes I want to take aren’t offered this year. As much as I love the Russian Department, perhaps we need more than 5 professors. Or maybe they should all be here at once instead of rotating when they go on sabbatical.

Enough of that. The other subject catalogs I downloaded are Psychology, Political Science, Sociology/Anthropology, Philosophy, Religion, Math, and Physics. I’m excited to get back to something that resembles an organized and independent life.

One of my biggest frustrations here, I guess, is trying to decide how far I want to go with Russian. In theory, I’d like to get a Master’s degree and actually use it in my professional life. On the other hand, as of right now, I can’t express any complex thoughts, and that is very frustrating. In order to really get better, I need to be speaking ALL THE TIME. Even when we were in Mongolia for a couple days and spoke English, when I came back I had already regressed. It felt like my tongue was swollen. Also I’m going to have to speak as much Russian as possible when I get back to Middlebury, in order to not regress much. I’m considering doing a Russian thesis (in Russian), which would take place in the spring of 2008. So I’d be starting this thesis, in Russian, about one year after returning from Russia. I’m afraid that in that amount of time I’ll forget so much. But maybe not. I find that things I can do in order to not regress would be reading books, listening to music, talking, watching movies, etc all in Russian. But I usually don’t have enough free time to do that in ENGLISH, let alone in Russian. How much time do I want to spend on learning Russian? The other thing is that if I were to actually get a job where I spoke a lot of Russian, I could see myself living in Russia for a couple years at some point after college. But I certainly would want to return to the United States. Long story short, I think I’d rather speak English in my daily life (as in, after college, after maybe living in Russia), but I’m afraid that once I start doing that I’m going to seriously regress. I’m going to have to give up some English to make room for Russian time. But how much do I want to give up?

Okay sorry that was completely without (erg, I know EXACTLY how I’d say this in Russian, I can’t even speak English anymore) meaning? Completely meaningless? You get the point. I’ve also been thinking about what happens when I move into my own apartment. I guess it’ll be like playing “House”, but for real. I’m not worried. I’m responsible and intelligent enough to handle it. I also get really excited about the thought of matching juice glasses from Target.

Update: So I went through my pages of courses and finally came up with 21 to choose from. Well, actually, I already know I’m going to take Tatiana’s class, so that’s 1…so I guess I have to choose 3 of 20. I should actually say 3 of 18, because if I were to do one physics class, I’d have to do both at the same time, and that would be 2 of the 3 courses I need to choose from, and I don’t think I can just take 2 physics classes when I still need to finish all of my requirements for the History and Russian majors. Sigh. I’m still not ready to give up the idea of being a physics minor, but at this point, there’s probably no way I’d be able to do it. Sad. So instead of doing my grammar homework, now I’m going to figure out exactly what requirements I need to fill-both distribution and major requirements. This is the best form of procrastination ever.

Further update: To my great surprise and delight, I discovered that I have already (or will inevitably soon) fulfilled all of my distribution requirements except for 1. I have also fulfilled all of my Russian major requirements except for 2, both of which I have to take fall of senior year and can’t take spring of junior year. I have fulfilled 7 of the 11 courses I need to take for history, and only still have to do a 100 level course (which hopefully I can waive that requirement), a reading seminar (which I will probably take next semester), and 2 pre-1800 level courses (which I’m hoping I can use an AP credit for one, and my history class in Russian for the other…which would also put me up to 8 of the 11 classes I need to take). Therefore, planning this semester is going to be much less stressful than I thought. As of right now I should take Tatiana’s class, 2 history classes (one of them being my reading seminar), and then my 4^th class can be whatever I want it to be. I need to check out the times for all of these, because that is WAY important. One class may be better than another just by the description, but if the better one is a 3 PM class and the other one is 9 AM, I’m gonna go for the 9 AM. I also need to see if the professors are good. MAN I wish I had internet access right now. Oh, it’s 11 PM, I should probably do my homework.

Friday, November 9^th: I am in like the worst mood EVER today. I forgot my Speech Practice homework at home, which is SO annoying, especially because I did in in advance and spent a long time on it (as in, not the night before). It doesn’t really matter that much, she just asked that I bring it in on Tuesday, but still. Then our grammar teacher was especially unpleasant today. Actually I don’t think that’s true, I think I was the one that was especially unpleasant (not to anyone else, just to myself, so she seemed more unpleasant, but it was really just my mood). THEN Sonya and I went to Café Fiesta to use wi-fi, and they told us we couldn’t. There’s more to it than that. First, everything was fine, we would buy our little cups of tea and use the internet. Then they told us we would have to buy 100 rubles worth of food in order to get a half hour of internet (which would be like $4 for a half hour of internet and a lot of tea...but the tea isn’t really what we want). So then there were times when we could just avoid the two girls who would say that and everything would be fine. Or, we could order stuff from the other side (one side is like pizza/soup/food, the other is like dessert/coffee…the dessert/coffee side has the internet code printer), show them our receipts, and they’d print it for us. But NOW, after we each bought a slice of pizza (well, I bought borsch), they told us that we have to buy something from the dessert/coffee side in order to use the internet. IT’S THE SAME EXACT CAFÉ! It’s not like one side is it’s own separate business. So then we left, and are in search of that other internet café (which we have yet to find). I think I’ll seek it out tonight, or maybe tomorrow.

So, also, like ALL of the classes I want to take are 3-4:15. And the ones that aren’t are at the same time. I have a list of like 16 classes, and pretty much all of them are 11-12:15 or 3-4:15. There’s one that’s 8-9:15, another that’s 10, etc. But still. I don’t want afternoon classes, especially since I don’t want it to mess with my softball schedule. I don’t know. I’m still trying to figure it out, it just sucks A LOT. I might be able to make this work though. I do like getting up early, and I work really well in the morning, so maybe it’s better if I still get up early, work out, do work/read, and then go to class. I dunno, we’ll see. But like, why are Tatiana’s Culture class and Beyer’s Lit class at exactly the same time? Like, those who want to take the culture class probably would be interested in the Lit class as well. The department is only so big. (On the other hand, there are probably going to be only 4 people taking the Civ/Culture class…since it’s in Russian).

On the plus side, Ivan’s dad is here and we’re all going to dinner tonight. It should be really fun. We’ll also probably be speaking English, which although is not good for my language proficiency, will probably be a stress reliever.

Update on classes: So I think I have this figured out. The only problem is, if I can’t get credit for a) the history class I’m taking right now for credit and as a pre-1800 class b) my AP US history credit as a history credit and also as a credit for a pre-1800 class c) my Soviet Politics class for the second half of the Traditional/Modern Russia requirement for the Russian major and d) be exempt from taking a 100 level history class, I’m going to be taking nothing but Russian and History classes my senior year. Which I guess would be okay with me, as of right now I can’t really find any other classes I’d be dying to take. Also I find it unlikely that I won’t get credit for anything. But you never know. At any rate, I will graduate with all credits needed, I just might not be able to take some random class that I find that sounds interesting. I guess I can live with that. Also that’s a worst case scenario.

I think something about the cold of Mongolia threw my brain all out of whack, because now I have this very strong desire to listen to Christmas music. Problem is, now I’ve returned to Irkutsk and it’s warm. Like, really warm. But I still want to listen to Christmas music. This is unusual, because I’m normally VERY anti-Christmas music before December (when is it okay to use hyphens with that? I’ve completely forgotten these very important rules).

So just got back from dinner with Ivan and his dad (and Joseph, Sonya, Eddie, and Adrienne). We all had a really good time, even if the place where we were eating had the loudest, most obnoxious music ever. It looked like it would be a nice quiet dining experience, but the music was more nightclubish. Also there was a herd of very awkward middle-aged dancing Russians. So in a bunch of restaurants I guess they have this person that just stands in the corner and sings. It’s supposed to be live music but I don’t think it’s very good. Sonya said this is what her host sister does in the Chinese restaurant near where she lives. I now want to go there really really badly. I also learned that my blog is reading material for…a vast number of people in the Eastern/almost Southern part of the United States. Good to know.

We also had a long discussion about the events of Olhon. I feel like it’s not really worth talking about anymore because we all have different perceptions of how much danger we were actually in. Some downplay it, others don’t. I happen to think it was a very bad situation, but I don’t really think we could have done anything differently. Also, as a side note, I know everyone makes fun of me for being a spaz at times, but I think I’m pretty good in crisis situations and am able to read situations in general. I think my biggest problem is that I don’t ever want to be mean to people, which is often necessary in Russia.

So I guess this evening I’m going to Tanya’s house. I don’t quite know what I’m supposed to do. I guess this will be an interesting cultural experience.

In other news, my host mother let me wash my own dishes after breakfast today. I consider this a great victory of mine, as she usually forbids me from doing such productive tasks.

Updates from the last...day and a half?

2007-11-07T23:41:00.000-08:00

Did I mention how impossible it is to cross the streets in Ulaan-Baatar? It’s terrifying. Far worse than Irkutsk. This main road didn’t really have stoplights (or maybe they did somewhere far, far away) so there was always constant traffic, and even though they’re supposed to stop when there’s someone in the crosswalk, I’m fairly sure that there were a number of drivers who had no intentions of letting me live (is that English? I don’t think so. But is it understood? Hopefully). There were six lanes total, and you had to cross the first three lanes, wait in the middle, and then go when there was a space. I, no joke, thought I was going to die. It was ridiculous. Most of the time I just waited for other Mongolians to cross the street. They know best, I guess.

This morning we arrived in Irkutsk at like 7:30. I didn’t think my Russian had gotten that bad after just one week, but it seems as if I actually can’t speak Russian. Both our speech practice teacher and my host mother said that we definitely forgot how to speak. Who would have thought?

Got my power cord today. Computer and I have been enjoying our reunion. In fact, right now I’m typing this blog entry instead of writing about American/Soviet relations during WW2. Whenever I’m on the internet I always forget what I have to do, and then immediately after it’s gone I remember. For example, I researched the wrong movie for my homework assignment for film class. I also wanted to email like 8 million people, but also forgot. I have information for a different movie though, unfortunately all in Russian. I can deal, I guess. I mean, the point of my being here is, after all, to learn Russian.

My host mother said I lost weight in Mongolia. I fear this means she will be feeding me twice as much in order to get me back to where I was. I didn’t actually lost weight, I have no idea what she’s talking about.

We spent 12 hours at the border and they didn’t even look at any of our stuff. I have no idea what they were doing. Also people kept trying to get us to keep their stuff in our compartment (what were they trying to smuggle?) and we had to refuse multiple times.

Also, I’m still trying to figure out my travel plans. There are two goals: a) spend as little money as possible and b) not waste a whole lot of time, in order to (MAN I wish people in English understood чтобы phrases, it’s just so much easier) get home faster. There are a bunch of places I want to go, but I’ll end up traveling in a giant circle, which is fine, I guess, but I’d prefer something a bit more economical. At the same time, however, I don’t want to just hang out in Irkutsk with nothing to do for two and a half weeks. Also I might end up riding the Trans-Siberian from Moscow all the way to Vladivostok (not all in one trip, however).

Places I want to go in Western Russia: St. Petersburg, Moscow, Yaroslavl, maybe Stavropol. I think I’d do that for awhile, then take the train to Ulaan-Baatar where I will hang out, get a visa to China, and then go meet Jenna there. After that I could either just fly back to Irkutsk, or I could go to Vladivostok and take the train back. And then home. It would be so much easier, though, if I could do the whole Ulaan-Baatar-China-Vladivostok-Irkutsk thing first, THEN fly to Moscow and hang out there, and then go home. But that would mean I’d have to hang out in Irkutsk for 2 ½ weeks with nothing to do, and we don’t want that. Those 2 ½ weeks could be better spend at home, recreating the not worthless person I once was. Russia will do that.

Update: I have come to the conclusion that in order to do this assignment I need to have watched the movie, which I didn’t, because I missed our last class due to illness. I guess I’ll just talk to Vladimir Constantinovich tomorrow and see if I can turn it in later. That would be pretty much great. In the meantime, I think I’ll do other homework, and then go to bed early so I can get up early and…well…I dunno, do things.

I need more mental stimulation. I could probably find quite a bit if I were to do my homework, but I’m really busy being in love with my computer right now. That’s a total lie, I’m not busy with anything at all. I think I’m getting frustrated with the restrictions Russia puts on my ability to be a productive and worthwhile human being. Of course, this is not completely Russia’s fault. I could be productive if I put more effort into it. But Russia also kills any and all motivation to be productive. Where as at home or at school there are an infinite number of things I could do to be healthy and productive, in Russia, I have to first seek these things out (they are very hard to find. I’m having trouble coming up with an example), then I actually have to work with Russia itself and other Russians in order to complete said project. And in most cases the working with other Russians part is the one that makes everything pretty much impossible. For example, something as simple as going to the gym. I know this trainer dude is only trying to help, but I keep politely refusing it and he still insists on helping. I just want to be left alone on the elliptical, do some lifting, space out for awhile, etc. But he insists that I use this machine, and then this one, and then this one, and then I should do this, etc.
Next example: swimming. That I could do without an actual person, since I can’t really hear them when I’m underwater (unless it’s Jerry. I could always hear Jerry when swimming). However, this too is an incredibly hard task, since I think I have to go to like 18 different doctors to make sure I’m in good enough health and have decent skin in order to swim in the pool (what am I going to do, spread around some sort of weird skin disease? I don’t even know). I hope the pool isn’t full of STDs. (Kidding). (Maybe).

The children’s home we already know has been sort of a slow moving disaster.

I’m just going to sum this up and make a list of restrictions that are found in Russia:
1. Ridiculous time restrictions (you can only go to the gym between 9 and 5…who is free between 9 and 5?)
2. Ridiculous health restrictions (pool).
3. Other people bothering you (which is SO ironic, considering that Russians in general don’t talk to each other the way Americans do, they tend to keep to themselves more).
4. Host family.
5. Host family.
6. Drunks on the street.
7. Host family.

Also the other day we were talking about something, and got onto the subject of how American kids play “House”. Then Sonya (I think it was Sonya. Maybe it was someone else? I don’t really know) says, “So, what do they play in Russia? Ugly Soviet Block? As in, like, who wants to play the drunk in the stairwell?”

I should stop ripping on Russia. It’s not really that bad. I want to go back to Café Fiesta and start making travel plans on the internet. I could, in fact, because it’s open 24 hours, but I’m not allowed out after dark (this is an exaggeration. I have been out after dark. I just haven’t asked to leave the apartment after dinner on a school night because then I’ll have to face the Grand Inquisition and I just don’t have the energy for that. It’s only on Friday or Saturday nights, when I actually do leave the apartment for good reason, that I have to be back by like 11:30 so as not to be killed by the dangers lurking in the streets of Irkutsk). I want to distract myself with travel plans.

AGH! I need to work on my schedule for next semester too. Oh my gosh this is going to be so fun! Something I can organize! WOO!!!! I should have downloaded the course catalog today. It’s okay, I’ll do it tomorrow.

Oh, did I mention that Mongolia is one giant farmland? It was actually amazing, there would be these herds of horses and sheep and goats and cows and camels (sometimes together, sometimes not…and once a herd of yaks) and they would just roam the steppe. In fact, I wonder how they know which herd belongs to which ger-dweller, and what they do if their herds decide to mesh together. The first night we slept in a ger we woke up the next morning to find like 200 sheep in the yard. Just chillin. Actually at first they were all in a pen, but the pen door was open, so within 15 mins half of them were out of the pen, but still just hanging around together.

Also I’ve reread some of my past entries and realized that I do have a tendency to recount everything that happens in extreme detail. I thought Sonya and Ivan were making fun of me and exaggerating saying that I tend to include the exact time of events and entire conversations, but turns out that I actually do that. For example, the note about dinner our first night in Mongolia. Did any of you really want to know about the various types of meat we ate? Probably not. My bad. Feel free to skip over those. I will probably continue to write with that much detail though, so be warned. When I’m writing I have a tendency to think that all of these things are important.

We went to the Baskin-Robbins today and I was SORELY disappointed. Although they have whipped cream, which is a plus, they have not such a great selection of flavors. And they also don’t have the important flavors, such as chocolate chip cookie dough, mint chocolate chip, and rocky road. Like, what kind of Baskin-Robbins is this? They also had $7 milkshakes. Who’s going to pay $7 for a milkshake?

My lack of motivation has reached an all-time high. I don’t really have that much to do. It’s only 8:00, and I don’t have class until 11:30 tomorrow. I could very easily get a lot done. I just don’t want to. And it’s not even that I don’t want to, if I were in an environment where I felt like I could work, I would. I just don’t like working in the apartment. And then since I can’t escape anywhere to work after dinner, I get more bitter about doing work in the apartment. Then I don’t do it. I really like working in Café Fiesta. I haven’t tried working in other coffee shops because I’m afraid they’re too Russian. I’ve never seen Russians just sit and work in a café before. I asked Anya about it, and she said it rarely happens. But all of the foreigners flock to Café Fiesta, so I don’t feel so weird about it.

So, do the employees at Café Fiesta think there are way more foreigners in Irkutsk than there actually are? Because if all the foreigners go to Café Fiesta all the time, but the employees think they just go there as often as they go anywhere else, do they think there is this way huge number of foreigners in Irkutsk? Even if they did it wouldn’t really make much of a difference. I’m just curious.

Today I ran into like EVERYONE in the street. I ran into 2 people from my SPO Phoenix group and then Tanya right outside of Café Fiesta. She invited me over to her house on Saturday (I think this is like, a big deal). Should be good.

More Mongolia

2007-11-03T19:42:00.000-07:00

So karaoke was pretty fun, even if I can't sing. This hostel that we're staying in is awesome, there are all these different people from all these different countries that just sort of hang out together. I'm really looking forward to coming back in 2 months.

So I guess Joseph was meeting up with one of his Russian friends who was also in Mongolia, which turned out to be a gigantic disaster. She had told the Rotary Club that Joseph and all of us would be coming with them, so they arranged homestays and stuff and then grilled Joseph when he went to dinner with him. This is completely bizarre because a) Ivan, Elissa, Sonya and I have never BEEN to this rotary club b) Joseph never ever said ANYTHING about going with them and c) he talked to her about how we were all going, staying at this hostel, going on this trip, and invited her to come with us...why would she think we were with them? Anyway we came to the conclusion that this was clearly not something lost in translation, this was some sort of mistake on her part/their part (they never even said anything to Joseph about it, she KNEW that he was coming with us and we'd be staying in this hostel, etc) and then she said something like "Joseph, if you don't understand something, just ask!". Anyway it's fairly clear that whatever they did they blamed on Joseph because of the fact that he's the foreigner in the group. I'm not explaining this very well but it was completely bizarre.

Later after karaoke I took a shower without flip flops. Whether or not I now have foot diseases is still unknown.

So the next morning we were picked up by our two Mongolian guides in this crazy military vehicle. One of them looked like a GI Joe, and the other was sort of like a Teddy bear (since we don't remember their names, this is how they will be referred to from now on). GI Joe had this tendency to just talk and talk and talk in Mongolian while driving, but Teddy Bear didn't always answer and he wasn't on his phone, so it sort of left us wondering a) what on earth he was talking about and b) who he was talking to. The next couple days we traveled around the steppe, rode camels and horses (horses for like, two hours, which made my feet FREEZING...I actually thought I had frostbite), and slept in gers (yurts). The first place we stayed had this Mongolian couple and they were SO cute. The man had this crazy pointy elf-like boots on. Anyway they were clearly very concerned about us being cold (for good reason) so they came and tucked half of us in before we went to bed and wanted to be COMPLETELY sure that we had at least one sleeping bag and giant blanket. Well, the fire went out pretty early that night and it was absolutely freezing by midnight...making it very hard to sleep. By 4 AM I had all of my layers on but was still so cold that I just sat up and waited until morning, when the mongolian woman came in and started the fire again.

Our guide was this amazing cook, so that was good (much of what we ate was made out of vegetables, something we haven't had in awhile, living in Russia and all). The next night we agreed to keep the fire going. We went to bed at like 10, and then I woke up at 11:30 to add more wood to the fire but it had already gone out. Words cannot explain the depression that set in at that point, when I realized I couldn't start the fire again (couldn't find the matches, the wood wouldn't catch fire from the coals, and the coals just turned the paper to ash instead of lighting them). Seriously. I was so sad. So that night was fairly cold too, but I slept better. The third night we kept the fire going until about 2, and then someone came in at five.

Our 2nd night we stayed at this ger with this feral mongolian child. His father took us around on horses and was the smiliest person I have ever met in my life. He said "good! okay!" all the time. Really great. Then this kid was like, INSANE. He just ran around the steppe with his little blue cart and screamed a lot. Sonya gave him a keychain to get him to close the door when I thought my feet were going to fall off, which was very nice of her. Anyway Joseph has some videos of this kid. He's crazy.

The next day we went to a monastery and ran into our Australian/English friends! And THEN they were staying at the same ger compound-like place with us! Crazy coincidence. We also watched this concert of this Mongolian guy who played a bunch of instruments and could do throat singing. It was really really good. Then we found out instruments are only his hobby, he actually works as an air traffic controller (I didn't even know they HAD an airport in this little village!) He only had one CD to sell, which I bought. Everyone else is going to copy it onto their computers and then I'm going to send it to our English/Australian friends.

So we got back and took a shower and whatnot before getting some stuff for dinner and going to the internet cafe. It was actually really nice to just chill out for awhile. BUT on the street Joseph ran into the Rotary Club president of Ulaan-Baatar, who went through this whole thing about how there must have been some misunderstanding and whatnot. We tried to explain that we never even gave any indication that we'd be traveling with Rotary Club of Irkutsk, nor did they ASK us (why would they just assume? Also Adrienne asked us if we wanted to and we told her no), nor had we ever BEEN to a meeting (only Joseph has). Anyway he didn't really listen well and insisted that we call him the next day. So the next morning we went to the local history museum and then called him. He then went into this whole thing about how he was going to call the Russian girl, Olya, and when Joseph tried to explain that we don't have a whole lot of time he didn't listen and just said he'd call back later. Anyway we're going to lunch today at 1, so hopefully that'll be fine. It is all completely bizarre.

Later we went to this puzzle museum, which was really interesting. There are like 18,000 chess sets there, all handmade. Some of them are like, civil war chess sets, Mets/Yankees chess sets, different animals, etc. Some of them are puzzles, and when you take them apart the box/board is accessible.

Later we had our little halloween celebration, with candy, chocolate covered apples, and orange-O-lanterns (no pumpkins here). I thought it was fun, and a lot of other people in the hostel came to hang out. But there was this COMPLTELY obnoxious and arrogant guy from England, who later walked around the city with us. This guy just loved listening to his own voice. It drove me CRAZY. We ended up having some sort of philisophical discussion, which was really annoying actually because half the time he would just be arguing for the sake of arguing, as opposed to actually defending one of his own viewpoints. We were also talking in circles, which I tried to explain, but he didn't beleive. I finally said that we weren't going to come to any conclusion about this and would have to just agree to disagree. He then asked me what I saw in some statue on the local square, and was not thrilled when I said that I saw a metal box with feet and hair. Very simplistic of me. I hate art. (That's not really true, just modern art, and when I'm in a foul mood I don't really want to analyze what this stupid statue "means to me")

Also I bought a hat. I was going to get it here or in Irkutsk, but it's the best one I've found and it's SO WARM. I think it's made out of rabbit fur. I love it a lot, but I don't love how much I had to pay for it (at the same time though, I wouldn't have found a much better price, but still). I think later we're going to lunch, maybe some palace, gathering food for the train, and leaving tonight around 7. Wheeeeee back to Irkutsk.

okay so more on Mongolia, my favorite country in the world.

2007-11-02T05:13:00.000-07:00

So we were on the train for a very long time, talking, reading, listening to music, etc. I love the train SO much. However, I think Sonya and Ivan did not love this particular train so much because I kept opening the window to let in cold air and then couldn't close it again.

We spent like 3 hours at the border before the guards even came to check our passports. Elissa and I wanted to find a place where we could buy some juice or something, and saw a store beyond the fence but weren't sure if we could go there...so we just sort of wandered for awhile until we found a hole and crossed through. Instead of juice, however, I bought an entire 2 liter of Sprite, which I think is okay because juice in Russia is really more like flavored corn syrup, so the sprite was probably a better choice.

Then we were worried because Ivan lost his migration card (like, weeks ago, but it didn't matter until now). So we went through this elaborate explaination about how our coordinator told us we didn't need to carry it all the time and could just have photocopies, how we all had ours and Ivan just wanted to keep his card safe at home in Irkutsk and forgot that we would need it when crossing the border, etc. They can't technically keep you from crossing the border but they can keep you from coming back in. So after all of that, she just looks at him, gives him a new migration card, and says "next time don't forget. Hurry up and fill out a new one." Wow. Excellent. Also the customs officials like didn't do anything except require that we move all of our stuff around. Then one guy talked to us for a really long time. Before I realized he was a customs official I thought he was trying to steal something. Sonya laughed at me a lot, as this was my first time actually going through customs.

When we got to the Golden Gobi, it was like 7 AM and we sat down and had this AMAZING bread with butter and jam and really good tea. I think we sat there for like an hour and a half. It was so good. We then decided on this 4 day 3 night tour around the sub-Gobi. Later we tried to walk around and take money out of banks/ATMs, which didn't work. We freaked out for about 3 hours (me especially because I wanted to apply for a visa to China, and could only do so between the hours of 9 and 12). Well, finally at like 1 everything decided to work and we could take our money out. Unfortunately I was too late for the visa (and couldn't apply any other day since we were leaving at like 8 Tuesday morning and coming back at like 4 Friday afternoon). So I'm going to come back to get my visa before going to China, which will actually be good. It's cheap to take a train to China from here, and I'll really like just relaxing. This is a great place to relax (I think). Everyone at our hostel is great and it's only $5 a night.

THEY HAVE PEANUT BUTTER HERE. That was pretty exciting. Hershey's syrup too. We went to the black market to find hats and slippers (tapochki) and Joseph wanted to find a coat. People there were RIDICULOUSLY agressive. I was pretty excited though, because they all thought we were Russian (since we speak Russian to each other). I don't know why I find that so exciting, probably because every other time I speak Russian everyone IMMEDIATELY knows I'm a foreigner and don't really speak the language. Anyway Sonya tried on a number of hats, one in which she looked like an ice princess, and another which was just completely ridiculous. She asked me what I thought and I told her she looked like a zhivotniye (animal, in Russian, but this phrase on the whole is much better in Russian than in English). The hat-seller understood and got mad at us and wouldn't talk to us the rest of the time, which is saying a lot since before he was pretty insistant on us buying his hats.

Later we had a tour of the city with this girl that knows Ivan's aunt. She was REALLY nice and it was a really cool tour (although REALLY cold!). We saw a monument to unknown Russian soldiers, which had a mural with all kinds of pictures of Russians and Mongolians working together. You could also see the entire city from there. Later we saw a gigantic Buddhist statue and their main square with a statue of Ghenghis Khan. It was sort of interesting the way she (and I assume many other Mongolians) viewed democracy. As in, it's good as long as it's bringing in money, but otherwise it's corrupting the country. She said something about men womanizing, and later Sonya was like "oh, yea. Socialism definitely would have better controlled that." I thought it was funny.

Later we were at a really really REALLY good restaurant that was really cheap. Sonya ate sheep, and Joseph ate horse. I stuck with chicken.

Also they have a RIDICULOUS currency. The dollar to whatever they have (turmeg or something?) ratio is 1:1180. Ruble:Turmeg is 1:47. Like...what?

Later we returned from the restaurant and found a bunch of other hostel people there. Some guy from Sweden named Bjorn (Bee-yorn...is that how you spell it? I dunno) and some guy from the Netherlands invited us to a Karaoke bar with them, so Elissa, Ivan and I went. Another girl from Sweden and a guy from Germany came too. I had a good time, even though I can NOT sing and everyone else could. We asked the Swedish guy how things were here, what he was doing, etc, and this was his answer:
Bjorn: Yea, things are pretty cool, I don't really remember what I did today, or a couple days ago, or yesterday, it all just flows really....(I bet he is heavily abusing drugs)
Sonya: Yea I think we were on the train all of those times.

Brilliant.

Anyway I have way more to say but want to get back to our awesome hostel.

I'm in Mongolia!

2007-10-29T09:45:00.000-07:00

I can't write a lot right now. In fact, I'm just killing time before Ivan and I walk back to the hostel. Long story short: I'm in love with Mongolia and never want to leave and didn't quite realize how cold and uncomfortable Russia was until I LEFT IT.

So my host mother, as usual, cooked a ridiculous amount of food for the train. As in, on the 2nd night, with some food from some of the other students, we managed to put together an entire dinner for four. Ivan, Sonya, and I were in one compartment, and Elissa, Joseph, and some Russian guy were in the one next to us. No one came to claim the 4th place which was EXCELLENT, because we had lots of room and a compartment all to ourselves. Also Joseph and Elissa could come and chill and not spend lots of time with the Russian guy. I would imagine it would be slightly uncomfortable at times.

So, after the first like, hour (of a 34 hour train ride) Sonya and Joseph decided it would be a GREAT idea to mess with this compartment of Australians (actually there were like 3. In fact, there were more English speakers in our wagon than Russian speakers. Also more Mongolian speakers than Russian speakers. I think there were maybe like 4 native speakers of Russian, if that. Anyway). They wanted to talk to them a little bit but not a whole lot, so they just came and spoke to them in this thick Russian accent and told them they wanted to "practice their English". Evidently this was hilarious (I didn't actually see), but they eventually caught on that something was up (Elissa heard them talking..."Okay well we know at least ONE of them is Russian but the other one is DEFINITELY American.") However, before they caught on, one of them stopped by our compartment to ask us a question and I almost died.

Australian: Train...Leave (hand motions involving some sort of swishing motion)....5 o clock? (holds up 5 fingers)
Sonya: Nu...dey...look at...passport...4 o clock.

I nearly died. More later.

I'm writing more because I have nothing else to do.

2007-10-24T23:48:00.000-07:00

So I'm really excited because I'm going to get my visa for CHINA in Mongolia so I can go and meet up with Jenna! This is going to be fabulous. It's almost November, which means I really have to start thinking about my travel plans for the end of December/beginning of January. I'm actually really excited. I think there are going to be a lot of people in Moscow/St. Petersburg around Christmas/New Years too. WHEEEEEE!!!

So Sonya and I walked about the Targovii Complex around the History Department yesterday. She showed me how very strange it was. There were like, 10 stores (2 of them selling fur coats), and around they had little couches and tables and a car. One of the couches was like 2 hands next to each other, which reminded me of Buster's hand chair in Arrested Development. Maybe when I get my power cord I'll download some off of itunes.

So, there's this girl, Tanya in our mainstream. She sort of has this weird fascination with foreigners, and we think she doesn't really have any actual Russian friends. So she texts me a lot and after class last week she asked where I was going afterwards. I told her to the bus station to ask about tickets to Olhon. She told me she'd walk with me, which is fine, but it's pretty far. Anyway, we walk, everything is nice, and then she asks me what I'm doing the next day. I tell her I have class in the morning but we could probably meet up in the afternoon if we wanted. We agree to do that, but then she wanted to know exactly WHEN I was going to class ("When are you going to Universitetskii (area where the mezhfak is)? 10:30? I'm going before 11! Let's go together!"). I don't quite understand, since she doesn't live near me. We'd have to meet at some agreed upon stop, then sit next to each other on the marshrutka, and then I'd leave to go to class. I completely didn't understand. But I said fine, we agreed to meet at the central market and go from there at 10:30. So I get a text message at 10:20 saying she can't get there in time, but let's meet at the corner of Lenin and Karl Marx, she'll be there in 20 mins. First of all, it's about 15-20 mins from me, and THEN we'd have to walk to another stop, and then go from there (usually a ride on the marshrutka is like 30-45 mins). So I really don't want to be late and I'm sort of irritated, but we meet up, ride, and I end up not being late. But then we meet up for lunch, and afterwards I say I'm going to the gym. "Like, right now? Where is the gym? Downtown? I'll ride with you!". Then she later asks when I'll be done at the gym. I say probably around 5. At 5:05 she starts calling me, and in 40 mins calls me SIX TIMES. I call her back. The conversation is as follows:

Natalie: Sorry, I had my phone on silent and didn't hear your calls!

Tanya: It's okay. Where are you right now?

Natalie: I'm leaving the gym.

Tanya: So you're downtown? Right now? Walking? Where are you going?

Natalie: I'm on my way home.

Tanya: oh...you're going home. *VERY clear dissapointment*

Natalie: Yea, I have to eat dinner quickly and then I have a meeting at 7.

Tanya: Oh, so you're busy later tonight.

Natalie: Yea, sorry.....

*long awkward pause*

Natalie: so....where are you?

Tanya: I'm at home. Bored.

Natalie: Oh....sorry. Well, yea. I'm on my way home.

Tanya: Okay. I guess I'll see you later.

It was more awkward than it seems.

Also every time I leave the (new, upscale, almost like something that could be found in America) gym, all of the women (and also some of the men) yell at me for leaving with wet hair. They also ask me if I want tea. Only in Russia does your monthly gym pass come with free tea after every workout. Things are even less awkward with the trainer that I don't really want help from but who continues to watch me as I work out. Only problem is I have no idea what any of their names are.

Also I need to be going more often but it's SO HARD. I think next time I'm going to get the pass that let's me go in the evenings, when I'm more free. Also I'm going to be spending like 4 hours a day at the civic center when I come home. This is ridiculous.

So, I realize I'm sort of a weird person, but I DON'T understand this whole homesick phase thing. Like, I'm here, and yes, there are some things that I'm frustrated by that I wouldn't be frustrated by if I were in America. But I'm not like ACTIVELY missing home or Middlebury. Like, yes, I'm excited for next semester and being back in the states, but I'm not finding myself sad here because I'm not there. Does that make sense? I just keep reading these comments where people are like "I MISS MIDDLEBURY AND HOME SOOOOO MUCH!" and yes, these places are without a doubt better than Russia. And yes, I would STRONGLY prefer it if I had independence and flexibility. But I'm not feeling this strong "missing" feeling that people keep describing. I don't know, maybe it would be different if I were going to be here longer. But I'm not going to be here for that much longer. Then again, I find that I don't actively miss things in general. The only time I experience that heartbreaking "homesick/missing" feeling that people describe is when I leave situations I will never be in again (for example, after my Washington Workshops program) or people I will probably never see again. Anyway the point of this is that I probably have some sort of mental imbalance. No big deal.

But my mom is sending me peanut butter, marshmellows, and jelly bellys soon, which is ridiculously exciting. I want to show my host family and all of my Russian friends.

I wrote a lot more yesterday before the internet cut out and this internet cafe and lost the last part of my entry. I saw THE BEST (well, what I thought was the best) kiosk the other day. It was entirely devoted to baby food. But then sonya told me she saw a kiosk entirely devoted to cat and dog food, so I guess that's better.

I get really excited about seeing people I recognize in the street. I realize that it's not THAT big of a deal, and Irkutsk really isn't that big of a city, but I feel like I see people I know everywhere. I've run into Elissa and Ivan in the street a couple times (well, we see each other like all the time, but still), I recognized some guy I rode the marshrutka with, this guy that checked our coats at Old Cafe (while coming out of the internet cafe, but I don't think he recognized me, which is unfortunate because we talked for like 20 mins), this girl from SPO Phoenix, Elissa saw Sasha, and so on and so forth. I don't know, I just get excited about it.

We went to the Zemfira concert on Tuesday night. It was really good, actually, I quite enjoyed it, and would like to return to this nightclub. This may be difficult, considering that my host mother doesn't want me out after 11. Sasha was there too (how does this happen? How does he end up where we end up so often? well, only like 3 times.)

These guys at the internet cafe are ALWAYS here and listen to this song that's really upbeat and when I first hear it, sounds like a techno remix of a song from The Phantom of the Opera (I'm completely blanking on which one right now).

Also I'm going to meet some people at a bar to listen to jazz music. I'm wearing a polo shirt and a sweater. This would probably be inappropriate attire in an American bar, but in a Russian bar, this is like completely unacceptable. Oh well. I don't really care, nor do I have appropriate attire for...well, Russia in general (by "appropriate" I mean ridiculously ugly clothes with high knee boots (actually I do have those...) and miniskirts (...actually I have one of those...)).

Random thoughts

2007-10-24T23:19:00.000-07:00

These are all things I meant to post like a week ago, but then I was busy and in a chainsaw fight and I didn't really feel like I could talk about nothing when I just returned from the Siberian edition of The Shining.

So I had this really bizarre dream the other night. I was with a bunch of other people, and everyone had to have this brain surgery, but I REALLY didn't want to. I guess it would have no effect on anyone but me, and I was forced into it. Someone knocked me out and they did this surgery and it was this slow process where I lose my mind. I woke up before I lost my mind, thank God, but what does this say about me? or about RUSSIA?!

I bought a pair of boots. I love them. They have fur. Nadya said she assumed I was not a member of Greenpeace (is that how you spell it? I don't know, because I'm not IN THE GROUP). We laughed about it. Unfortunately I couldn't go off on my tirade about PETA people in Russian. I actually tried in an essay at the beginning of language school and failed miserably. (That was my "social problem". That there are PETA people in existence. Sad, that all the other social problems I couldn't even BEGIN to talk about...but I know how to say "animal" and "love" and "importance", and with some other words I could describe how ridiculous the entire organization is). The funny thing is, when I was buying boots I was looking for some that I could wear at home and in Russia (therefore I did not buy anything with heels, which actually made the process much easier, since 85% of all women's boots have heels). I also figured that I wanted fur, which narrowed it down even more, making this a fairly simply process. However, I'm not sure how successful I'm going to be when I try to wear fur boots at Middlebury (oh the irony! I wanted something I could wear in America as well! ha). Although I guess if someone confronts me about it I can then go off on my PETA hatred speech.

Eddie and Lyonya and Anya came over after that, and we sat in the kitchen and drank tea and ate lots of cookies and talked for like, 2 hours. Every time Karrina sat on my lap Eddie asked me if she was going to become my new pair of boots. He is so evil. But then we walked around Irkutsk for awhile and it was all very nice. I don't see Lyonya and Anya enough and it makes me sad.

We bought our train tickets to Mongolia!! Wow, I leave in like, 2 days. I'm really excited though, except our tickets were SO expensive! $90! I realize in the states that would not be THAT much, but this is Russia. Everyone said they were supposed to be, like, $40. And that's only there, not back. I guess I can't really complain because we're staying in this really upscale hostel for $5 a day with free internet, breakfast, and washing machines. Also Ivan has a friend of a cousin who wants to give us a free tour around Ulaanbaatar. Then we're going to the Gobi Desert. In, like, less than a week I will be riding around Mongolia by means of camel. Yes, you're jealous. And on the train we have an actual bed and a table and a compartment, not just a seat like on the Amtrak trains I take. But still, I'm in RUSSIA, things like this are supposed to be cheap.

Okay, let's talk about food again. Russians have like 8 million variations on the meat/dough pocket. Let's make a list:
Pilmeni: very small, sort of like totellini. You boil this meat/dough pocket.
Pozi: Also boiled, but with a hole in the top, and bigger.
Something that starts with an M: Also like Pozi, but a little flatter with a covered top. Also boiled.
Pirashki: smaller, oval sized meat/dough pocket, fried.
Something that starts with a b: like pirashki, but a small hole in the top, circular, and flat.
Cheburek: semicircle, flat, meat/dough pocket, deep fried.

This list goes on and on and on, but you would think you could only do SO MUCH with a ball of meat and some dough. The funny thing is that they SWEAR these are completely different foods with completely different tastes. I guess I can understand the difference in taste if it's fried or boiled, but seriously? When the shape is different (as in, oval vs. circle)? Puh-lease.

Let's talk about ridiculous ringtones. First of all, Russian men seem to have a very strange concept of masculinity. For example, a man purse and very fashionable, pointy, elf-like shoes are completely acceptable. Chocolate is not. Anyway, so I'm riding on the Marshrutka and I hear "Hollaback Girl" by Gwen Stefani. I had hoped this atrocity had not escaped the United States borders, but evidently it had. I figure it's the cell phone of this cleary very fashionable and hip devushka (girl) sitting across from me. And then this like 45 year old, slightly balding man next to HER pulls out his ringing cell phone. Like, what middle aged man has a Gwen Stefani ringtone?

So, we know how my host mother freaks out about everything, for example, if I'm out on the streets at night after dark (have I talked about this situation before? Not that it's a big problem now, but I'm sure it's going to put some severe restrictions on my clubbing/nightlife when I return from Mongolia). She sent me off to the train station in the 40 degree rain in a full length winter coat and snowboots. She freaks out if I'm not wearing a hat. And yet when I told her about the chainsaw story, she was completely unfazed. It was like "oh, right, yea, the chainsaw, and then what? Was it cold there? Did you guys have snow?". Like, WHAT?! This is completely ridiculous.

Also, I came back last night and had dinner, and then sat down to do homework. I'm sitting on the couch and Mama Olya brings me this plate of grapes and pears. I thank her, and then she asks me why I didn't take any myself, and goes on this tangent about how I need to be taking it myself and not by shy and I should always be eating fruit. I reply that I didn't because we just ate dinner. She and Nadya look at each other, then look at me, and she says "Fruit isn't food."

WHAT?! EXCUSE ME?!

"You could say that if I handed you a plate of cutlets."

Wow.