Adventures in Vladimir
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Below are the 10 most recent journal entries recorded in the "ruskiblog" journal:[<< Previous 10 entries]
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11:48 pm
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The последный post - for now.
Whew! It's been a while since I've posted. After a wonderful, relaxing, family-filled stay at home, it took a red-eye flight to Boston, a bus trip, and a car ride, an all-nighter packing, one U-Haul rental, several sweaty hours of moving, lots of cleaning, many Goodwill trips, and lots of unpacking, but I am finally settled in the new apartment and as of today have internet access at home. Hooray! I think the new place and the new roommate are going to work out fine. Now if I can just convince the kitty to come out from under my bed...
Classes started this past week. I'll be teaching ESl for international graduate students, and they're a lovely group: bright, hardworking, funny, and curious. We spent most of the first class discussing American greetings - for example, the first bump, and the appropriate answer to the question "What's up?". I love my job.
This weekend I've been greatly enjoying the pleasures of life on the east coast. I hit up the farmer's market yesterday for heirloom tomatoes, cucumbers, radishes, chard, the last of the summer squash, and the first of the potatoes. After a day of bustling around with my roommate getting the apartment set up, we and two more friends drove down to the beach, to toss a frisbee in the surf and watch the sunset. Is there anything better than rolling up your jeans to wade into the waves, and feeling the sand shifting under your toes? Sitting with my friends in the fading golden light, I felt truly lucky to be alive in this beautiful place.
And with that, plus the very last of my Russia pictures, I'll sign off the russkiblog once more. It's been a wonderful summer - I've made so many excellent memories -but now the air is growing chilly and it's time to buckle down to teaching, studying, and of course, actually writing my paper.
Vladimir, I will see you again soon. In the meantime, I'll be at www.livejournal.com/bona_lector.
Current Mood:  content
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07:09 pm
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Earthquake!
Back in AK for the week, and got welcomed home by an honest-to-God earthquake yesterday morning. Wheee! I love my state. No moose sightings so far, but I'm hopeful.
Spent an absolutely lovely weekend in the bay area playing Rock Band (I rock on the drums) eating delicious Asian food of every description: dim sum, Korean hot pot, pearl milk tea, and upscale Thai...many thanks for Urse and Andy for hosting, and Ming for showing us the best food in Oakland. :) You guys make it worth the trip every time.
Finally, finally got the next set of pictures up here. Be forewarned: you have to wade through several cute baby pictures before you get to the dacha shots. You won't regret it. My friend Ira's daughter is really, REALLY cute. This is the second-to-last Russia slideshow, then I'll head back to my regular blog.
Sadly, my summer's just about over. One more week in Alaska, a quick trip to the state fair, and I'll be back to New Hampshire to move in to my new apartment with my new roomie, put on my new back-to-school pants, and start being a teacher again.
Current Mood: content
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04:31 pm
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Burnt, but better.
After two days of unpacking, laundry, paying bills, and generally getting resettled, the feeling of unreality has subsided. I've gotten readjusted to the idea that yes, I live here. And despite my (rapidly dwindling) supply of Russian chocolate, Russia seems a million miles away. Now I'm completely focused on finding a place to live when my lease runs out in three weeks. Thus far my panic level is fairly low, but I do head home to Alaska on Friday and I want to get it settled before then. Eeeeek!
Spent Saturday at gloriously seedy Hampton Beach, foolishly not wearing sunscreen and getting monumentally sunburnt. I am epically pink on my legs, shoulders, and back. Then headed down to Cambridge to spend some time with the lovely Rebecca Emily and her collection of entertaining friends. Thanks for the cupcakes, Beckmart!
Finally got roused from my melancholy enough to post my pics from St. Petersburg, mostly from Peterhof, because, well, fountains are pretty. There's a nice description of the grounds and history hereif anyone wants to know more about it.
Current Mood:  anxious
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09:44 pm
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Dislocation.
After a weekend in Pennsylvania with my wonderful family and two days with my sis and her adorable kitten in Brooklyn, then a rather exhausting day of bus and car rides, I am finally back in New Hampshire. And as soon as I pulled up to my house, I got hit with the weirdest feeling of unreality. Do I really live here? Is this really my kitchen, my bedroom, my closet? I dumped my bags on the floor and gratefully took my friends up on their offer of dinner, just to not be in this strange empty house that must have felt familiar at some point. Bringing the kitty home with me helped, even though he has really filled out this summer, so he looks different than I remembered. Still that odd distance, discomfort, dislocation remains.
Even more odd, up until now it's Russia that has seemed like the dream - a lovely, insubstantial memory. Or maybe it's more that it's so concretely the past now, I've made such a clean break from it, since I can't interact here with anyone who had been to Vladimir or the AH or knows anything about them. I dove back into the world of my family and friends, metro cards and bus tickets, chicken fingers and outlet malls. Even eating the dried apples and candy Ira's mom packed me off with couldn't make it seem real. A trek out to Brighton Beach to get pierog and salat, despite the thrill of having the clerks understand me and respond in Russian (progress from three years ago!), just emphasized that this is really America - too mixed together and romanticized.
In my sister's apartment, or my cousin's, or my friends', I didn't notice a sensation of not-home, because, well, those places are perfectly comfortable and familiar but they aren't my home. Sitting here, this life in New Hampshire feels like the dream, the untruth, and all I want to do is go back.
Probably it'll be better in the morning.
Current Mood:  melancholy
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05:25 pm
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Longest Thursday ever.
Back in New York now at Chelsea’s apartment in Brooklyn. My flight took off at noon from Moscow, was in the air for ten hours, and landed at two pm in New York. Time travel!
We ended up going into Moscow late Monday night to walk around the beautiful parks, with the fountains lit up red and gold, and MGU and GUM both lit up like fairy tale castles. It was beyond amazing - a lovely warm night, with all the young people out strolling around, walking through Red Square where so much history has taken place. I can’t believe how fast six weeks went by. It’s always sad to leave, but this time I know I’ll be back, hopefully within a year or two, and that makes it easier.
Here's a list I put together waiting for my flight to board at Sheremetevo, half a world away from here.
Things I’m going to miss about being in Russia:
-getting mistaken for a Russian. I love it when random people on the street ask me the time, or when the next bus arrives, or whether this is the line for Delta, because it means I don’t immediately strike people as a foreigner. Not that I always understand the question, or am able to answer it, but still. Blending-in success! Of course, the minute I haul out my American passport everything changes. I hate that look of mild annoyance on the faces of the airport staff when they see a blue passport and realize (sigh) they’ll have to deal with this one in English.
-not getting mistaken for a Russian. At the Fakel market in Vladimir, I attempted to buy cucumbers from a garrulous middle-aged guy and messed up some case endings. He told his partner to pick out the best cucumbers for the инестранка (foreign girl), asked me where I was from, and then gave me a free cucumber to eat while I walked around. He then proceeded to ask my friend Amanda if she was married, and if she might want to marry him. Totally worth the 18 rubles I paid for the cucumbers, I think.
-that feeling of being somewhere between centuries. I get it looking at the cathedrals, standing in Red Square, shopping at the market. I had it at the dacha, after the banya, steamed and scrubbed, wearing a worn-soft old housedress of Babulya’s, washing dishes at the outdoor faucet under the raspberry bushes. I felt like had stepped back into the fifties, or the twenties - some time long past.
-feeling passive knowledge turn into active knowledge. During the last year of Russian classes, doing workbook exercises and cramming for vocab quizzes, I developed a base of grammar and vocabulary that was just laying dormant somewhere near my hippocampus (or brain stem, or whatever). Every day, watching TV, listening to people talking, reading signs, I saw words and constructions that I recognized, and I could actually feel the information shifting to the front of my brain. Cool.
-listening to stories about Soviet times and Perestroika. My Russian has finally gotten good enough that I can understand a lot of what people are saying, if there’s context and they’re patient. I spent a lot of time sitting with Babulya, looking at her photo albums, all those serious-faced women with their scores of children and home-sewn dresses. I also got to hear some stories from Natasha about making do during Perestroika. Sasha’s job took him to the seaside, where red caviar was cheap, and she talked about eating nothing but caviar sandwiches for weeks on end (much to the envy of her colleagues, who were eating kielbasa - she ended up swapping them lunches!).
-Russian women’s clothes. Sparkles, ruffles, short skirts, and absolutely insanely ridiculously awesome shoes. Sitting in the park for an hour is better than a fashion show. Though I will be happy to stop feeling short, fat, and poorly shod all the time. Which is not unrelated to...
-the food. I think anyone who’s been reading this blog knows how I feel about Russian food: the chocolate, the keffir, the tvorak, the blini, the soups, the salads, the homemade jam, and the heavenly black bread. I don’t know how Russian women manage to eat so little of it.
Finally, most importantly, the people. I’m going to miss my funny, intelligent, generous coworkers at the American Home. I’m going to miss the brave and always interesting individuals who choose to teach there. I’m going to miss my wonderful friends in Vladimir, who welcome me into their lives for however long I stay. And I’m going to miss all the Ivanovs: from Babulya who called me мая милая девушка and asked God to keep me as I traveled down to little Varia who can’t yet pronounce my name. I’ve really been blessed in my home away from home.
Current Mood:  contemplative
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01:31 pm
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Na dache.
Finally managed to get pictures from my last week in Vladimir posted. Kodakgallery is being weird and won't let me rearrange them, so they aren't in the order I'd like. Oh well.
Our trip out to the dacha on Friday was entertaining - after a two and a half hour drive, we finally turned onto a little dirt road and bumped along another few minutes, finally in sight of the dacha...only to be confronted with a massive pile of sand blocking the road, right where the workers left off the night before, apparently. So we turned around and found another road, which hadn't been used since the spring, and was completely covered in head-high plants. And we plowed through that mess in a Subaru hatchback with wildflowers flying everywhere and Babulya crossing herself every minute. Wheee!
The Ivanovs' dacha is a slice of heaven - quiet, peaceful, and ridiculously, lushly, abundantly green and growing. They've got pear and apple and plum trees, cherry trees, at least four different kinds of berries including red and black currants, a vegetable garden with peas and cucumbers and carrots and green onions and lettuce, and of course every kind of flower you can imagine. Of course, as enamored as I was of the nature, the nature didn't have much love for me. I was so excited about this wealth of produce that I literally ate myself sick on Friday and spent most of the afternoon laying on the porch swing feeling sorry for myself. Bleah. On Saturday I'd recovered enough to go swimming in a nearby reservoir, and help Ira's mom pick berries, tons and tons of them in the afternoon. Unfortunately, the horseflies were out in full force, and I was the newest and most interesting blood. As I was standing in the berry bushes, swatting away horseflies and pricking my fingers, I somehow also managed to step in a nest of biting ants. Back on the porch swing I went. But in the evening there was the banya, and shashlik, and I finally, at long last, got to roast a zeffir, which is the closest thing here to a marshmallow.
Another quiet day at home today, and hopefully off to Moscow tomorrow.
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07:06 pm
[Link] | After a manic last week which included finishing up all my work at the AH and saying goodbye to all my Vladimir friends, I made my way to Moscow on Friday night and then to Krasnagorsk, where I am staying with the wonderful Ivanovs.
Ira and I went to St. Petersburg for three days, mostly so I could see the fountains at Petergof, and boy were they ever worth it. That place is spectacular, and we had a glorious sunny day to walk around the park and tour the palace and take lots and lots of pictures. We had a pretty hilarious marshrutka ride back from Petergof, as the marshrutka was so packed that I ended up in the front squished between the driver and his daughter who was collecting money, handing things back and forth. The driver, who himself wasn't Russian - maybe from one of the 'stans - alternated between shouting into his cell phone, weaving through traffic, and asking me questions like, "So, Micheal Jackson died, eh? He did a lot of operations to his face, didn't he?" Surreal, and awesome. We spent the other two days walking around the city, exploring the cathedrals, and poking our heads into the expensive boutiques. I also got to eat at Teremok, which I kind of missed. It's basically Russian fast food, McDonald's except they serve blini and kasha and borsh.
We stayed with her cousin, who has a tiny room in an обшижитие, where the toilets and kitchen are communal. Naturally there wasn't any hot water, so I got to wash my hair upside down in the sink while Ira poured boiled water over me. Russki extreme! Still, it was comfortable and awfully convenient, being a stone's throw from the train station.
After two days of relaxing, eating delicious homemade Russian food (силедка под шубе!), listening to stories from Ira's Babulya, and playing in the playgrounds with Ira's gorgeous almost two-year-old, we're off to the dacha for the weekend to pick raspberries. Wheee! I can't believe it's almost over.
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01:21 pm
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The birthday haul.
Earrings: 2 pairs (plus one matching necklace)
Russian children's books: many (plus a book-on-cd of poetry)
Russian films: 1
Chocolate bars: 5
Roses: about a dozen (from three different people)
Toasts: too many to count
Poems written especially for me (!!!): 1
Basically, I have the nicest friends and family in the world. I feel so loved. :) Thanks to everyone who made my birthday fantastic.
Spent Friday night at my lovely friend Lyuba's house with her charming parents, eating meat and potatoes and pierogi and blini with homemade jam. Her father, as it turns out, is a long-time amateur poet and he composed a beautiful poem for me which I mostly understood and completely treasure. I also managed to catch a cheesy American horror movie (no subtitles - whee!) at the recently renovated movie theater downtown. Pricey, but definitely comfortable, and I understood more than I expected to.
Saturday I went with my host family to Suzdal, to see an exhibit of gold - icon decorations and the like. We spent the afternoon wandering around the monastery taking pictures, drinking medovukha (sort of like beer made from honey), and feeding sunflower seeds to the pigeons. In the evening I met up with some former students at a cafe and we ended up...bowling! First time I've done that in Russia. I won two games in a row. :)
Sunday I spent in the nature, hanging out on the bank of a river watching the butterflies and well, eating (it's what we do for fun here). Gorgeous sunshine, a peaceful spot, and nice company = a lovely afternoon. I'll be very sad to go.
This week is going to be manic saying goodbye to everyone and trying to finish up my work before I leave - probably not going to get any photos posted, but we'll see.
Current Mood: busy
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02:03 pm
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Life is good.
Not much to report over the past week - a lot of working, a lot of crappy rainy weather, a lot of playing Uno with my host family (this has been surprisingly helpful for my vocabulary, as I think I will never forget the verb "to skip"). Obama's visit has been all over the news. My coworkers have been making a lot of hilariously snarky comments about the "typical Russian breakfast" Putin served him, which apparently included eggs with black caviar, some kind of expensive fish, and pelmeni (dumplings) made with - get this - quail (I think they said quail). In other words, the kind of food a typical Russian will probably never see in his lifetime.
Today is again gray and rainy and blah, BUT:
there are kittens playing in the backyard;
my coworkers not only remembered my birthday but bought me a really pretty pair of earrings, which I am currently wearing;
I have already drunk champagne today and expect to drink more tonight; and
I have birthday-celebration invitations for tomorrow night and Monday already.
So I figure I am one lucky girl. Wheee!
Current Mood: happy
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04:59 pm
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Зоболела, чут-чут.
Bleargh. It is raining and cold and I am feeling headache-y and sore-throat-y right now.
I spent the weekend with my former host Ira in the derevnya (village), where her mother and brother live. I am a big fan of the derevnya, where chickens strut down the peaceful roads and every family has a garden full of potatoes and strawberries. We'd been planning this trip for weeks, but unfortunately this turned out to be a record-settingly cold weekend, with temperatures around 10C. We showed up and Ira's mom immediately swaddled me in soft, worn-out old exercise pants and a huge winter sweater. I have to say, sometimes I get annoyed by the constant mothering by every woman (person, really) in sight, and sometimes it's really really nice. Especially the part where they are constantly feeding you - fresh baked pierog, brimming cups of berries with milk and sugar, handfuls of sunflower seeds. And honestly there's not much else to do on a rainy day, but relax and eat and watch TV and eat and play chess and take a nap and eat again and go to the banya. Which I did. Twice. There is just nothing better than the real wooden banyas.
We spent a lot of time with their neighbors, including the kindly gold-toothed patriarch, Sergei Ivanovich, who for some reason absolutely adores me and likes to lead me around by the arm and show me things, or quiz me about Russian history, or explain various mysteries of the universe, such as how to heal someone by laying your hands on them and sending "your little people" into them. I have mentioned that many Russians are a bit superstitious, yes? He also made some amazingly delicious shashlik for us, which we ate with dill and green onions right out of the garden, and then sang Russian folk songs around the table. Oh, and they had a day-old litter of three tiny kittens with the weensiest little paws and tails I have ever seen.
The whole weekend was like an antidote to my first taste of Globus, the brand-new German shopping center on the edge of town, which I visited for the first time on Saturday and absolutely loathed. It's basically a Super Wal-Mart, with the same horrible chemical smell, fluorescent lights, blaring music, and manaical crowds of bargain hunters. I get that it's incredibly convenient - it's not like I don't shop at Target in the States, so it's pretty hypocritical of me to get in a huff - but oh how I hated to see the encroachment of the big box store on Russia. To me, big box stores represent the absolute worst of Western culture, with everything cheap and disposable and wrapped in plastic packaging. As I've said before, it's the province of the foriegner to demand the preservation of the quaint, inconvenient traditions, while the Russians are embracing modernity wholeheartedly. Still and all, it made me so sad. As soon as I feel better I am going straight to the central market to buy something from a babushka.
Current Mood:  tired
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