Adventures in Vladimir
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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in the "ruskiblog" journal:[<< Previous 20 entries]
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02:17 pm
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Stupid koshki.
I had a hard time sleeping last night because the street cats were in full howl right outside my window. Normally I feel sorry for them, but at 2 am I was wishing for some big heavy boots to throw.
Three of the teachers left this morning, so it's quiet and a bit sad around the AH today. I put up some pictures of Suzdal and other sights from the past week, including the little monument to Michael Jackson that did appear after all but was quickly whisked away.
If the weather cooperates I'll be off to the dacha this weekend. I can't have fireworks but I'll at least be eating barbecue. С празднкиом! Happy Fourth of July, everyone.
Current Mood:  tired
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11:26 am
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Не очень плохо! Not too shabby.
Had my first Russian lesson with my old Russian tutor, Tanya, yesterday morning. She said (I don't know how truthfully) that I hadn't forgotten anything and that she was proud of me. Yay! She was definitely dealing me some tougher vocab words then she used to, and though I'm still making tons of mistakes with case endings (stupid genitive plural) I can usually fix them when she points them out. So overall I felt pretty good about myself. Especially because I had a long involved conversation with my host dad after dinner on the subject of alcohol and the merits of, say, beer versus cognac, which is all he drinks. I've gotten used to my host family's sense of humor, enough so that I can understand their jokes and even contribute one of my own once in a while. I really enjoy being around them.
Weekend recap: On Saturday we finally got some sunshine after several days of rain, so my host dad and sister took me to the park whose name I can never remember because it’s a long, complicated date - I’ll just call it Gorodskoi Park. Turns out that in the back of the park they have these incredibly old Soviet era kiddie rides, all metal painted bright primary colors, little airplanes and cars and swings and whatnot. Ksyusha and I rode on a kind of mini roller coaster, pleasantly creaky and stomach-churning.
After that my friends Larissa and Vova picked me up for a trip to Suzdal, a gorgeous small town often overrun with tourists about twenty minutes away. We walked around, looked at all the lovely old churches, checked out the souvenier stands. The babushki were out in force selling their wares - it’s a pretty common sight by the side of the road or at a market here to see old women sitting on wooden crates selling whatever they’ve got, mostly fresh fruits and vegetables or flowers or sunflower seeds. We bought some pickles, which the babushka scooped out of a big wooden tub and gave to us in a little plastic bag. It's a pretty sweet life - walkin’ around in the sunshine, eatin’ a pickle. When we had our fill of gazing at the cathedrals, we stopped for soup in a cafe. I had solyanka, a kind of hearty meat soup, with sour cream and dill of course.
Back in Vladimir I had a totally different culinary experience - my first trip to "Мистер Гамбургер" (Mister Gamburger), a kind of imitation McDonald's. The menu was simple and hilariously transliterated - my favorites were probably the "Мистер Чикен" chicken fingers and the "Чизбургер де люкс". Heh. I opted for a молочный коктел (milkshake) and картофль фрис(fries), which were both awful.
Sunday it was back to the banya and then relaxing around the house. Every time I go to the bany it seems a little less weird to sit around with my host family in a bathing suit and drink tea. This time Yarik and Ksyusha taught me to play Durak, a popular Russian card game.
Oh, and another forgotten pleasure of life in Vladimir - reading all those books I always meant to read by raiding the American Home's small library of classic literature. I read Tess of the D’Ubervilles last week (not recommended on a gloomy overcast day) and have started on Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
Current Mood:  content
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01:37 pm
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Odds 'n' ends
Put up some random photos from around town. Not much to report - it's been raining for the past two days so I've been hanging out at home with my host family. On Wednesday my host mom took me to a somewhat bizarre event that was half an Indian music and dance concert and half an introduction to the teachings of a famous yoga practitioner. I think the guided meditations, which involved holding my hands over various parts of my body and asking my "Kundalini mother" for various things, would have been less odd if I had understood any of the explanations.
My current food obsession is with my host family's practice of eating dill. Just dill. On a plate. Big stalks of it. It's pretty awesome. Very refreshing, and I dig the feathery texture.
Oh, and apparently one of the TV news stations called the American Home this morning to inquire if people were leaving flowers and candles here as a tribute to Michael Jackson. Nope. But it's amusing to be thought of as a mini-embassy.
Current Mood: mellow
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03:35 pm
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Кошки!
While I was eating lunch after yoga today (kefir, black bread, and salat - yum), I heard the tiniest little meow coming from our backyard. I looked out the window and saw a teeny little all black kitten, and his calico mama giving him a bath. SO CUTE. I watched him romp wobbly-legged around the backyard for a bit, 'til his mom got tangled up with some other kitties and tumbled off into the bushes.
Currently the American Home has no cat in residence, as the former one took off for parts unknown sometime last year. The staff puts out food for several local street cats who mostly live under the steps of the restaurant next door, including the calico mama. I haven't been able to pet any of them yet but I'm going to keep trying.
Yoga, incidentally, has been excellent - surprisingly expensive, but the teachers are seriously tough. I was sore all over (in a good way) after Monday's class. Both of the teachers have actually studied in India, and are pretty badass. I can't understand most of what the teachers say but fortunately most of the poses are familiar to me and the teachers are plenty comfortable simply picking up my body parts and putting them where they're supposed to be, which I appreciate. Plus I'm learning some interesting commands: relax your neck, release your arm, tilt your pelvis forward. Попка в переод! :)
Current Mood: calm
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11:27 am
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How the other half rolls.
On Saturday I went with my host family to visit their friends' "dacha". I say "dacha" because, to me, that word conjures up the image of a small wooden house, probably over a hundred years old, maybe with electricity, definitely without plumbing, with a big garden for vegetables and a small banya and a babushka in a head scarf sitting on a bench out front. Possibly chickens. Or goats.
On the other hand, I am now hanging with the rich crowd, so this "dacha" was an enormous brand new house with the biggest flat-screen TV I've ever seen, and a yard the size of Texas, big enough for two vegetable gardens, a flower garden, a hothouse, a shed, a swing set, a banya, an above ground swimming pool, and a small fishing pond. Seriously. It was standing in a row of the kind of dachas I'd been imagining, in stark contrast.
I have to say, I adore my host family but this is a completely different experience from staying with most Russian families. My host mom tends to cook very modern, slightly Americanized food - delicious, I don't mean to complain, but not especially Russian most of the time. I think I'm the only one who notices. Well, no one craves authenticity like a foreigner. And I did get to banya it up with a venik and eat shashlik.
On Sunday I got to meet up with two of my former students/friends and stroll around Vladimir a bit. It was strange at first to see them again. Why is it that we think that when we leave a place somebody hits the pause button? Wishful thinking I guess. Of course life continues, people grow and change and make mistakes and learn lessons and have babies, and when we met them again they have lived just as much life as we have. Even here in sleepy Vladimir.
So, I think it's evident by my philosophical rhapsodizing that I'm exiting the honeymoon phase. I get frustrated sometimes at only understanding half of what anyone says, and only being able to expres myself like a four-year-old. I'm feeling homesick during odd quiet moments - I miss my family and my friends and my cat. Today I'm glad to be at work again, moving forward with the textbooks, keeping myself busy, reminding myself that I'm here for a reason.
Current Mood:  thoughtful
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11:53 am
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A channel to the cosmos?
After dinner last night my host father asked me if I believed in Darwin's theory. Um, yes? Well, he doesn't. I think he said it was because there are still monkeys around now, so clearly they didn't become us. Even if my Russian was good enough to argue about evolution, I think I might leave this one alone. He went on to explain that there's life on other planets, and that aliens directed us to build the pyramids so we could communicate with them. At least, I think that's what he said. At this point my host brother came in and the two of them started arguing about the pyramids, the Sphinx, aliens, and parallel universes. I heard the words solar system and Milky Way a lot. There was much waving of hands and the internet was huffily consulted. My host mom came in to check on me, and I told her not to worry - this is better than television!
Current Mood: amused
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12:59 pm
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No, there weren't subtitles, thank you very much.
I dreamed in Russian the other night, something that hasn't happened to me in a long time. In the dream I was shouting for my host family to come see the snow falling in the middle of the summer. I guess it was inspired by all the hail we've been having. It was reassuring to have a sign that I have integrated the language to some extent, because my skills were thoroughly put to shame yesterday afternoon. We had a group on students from a local high school come to visit the "real American house", a pretty common event. One of the current teachers, Alex, and I were asked to be the token Americans for the kids to practice on. The kids (and for that matter, the teacher) ended up talking to us the whole time in Russian, and I had to be rescued several times by either Alex or Olya. The teenagers talk so fast!
I do feel for the local English teachers - many of them haven't really studied English (this one, for example, apparently spoke excellent French) but have been basically conscripted into teaching English by the increasing demand for it. Even among the ones who have studied English, very few could afford to actually travel to places where it's spoken. I think they do the best they can with limited resources and under strict guidelines from the government. But still, I felt like a real idiot gabbling out my awkward sentences in front of them.
Yesterday evening I reunited with my second host mom, Dr. Ira, who is really more like my host big sister, as she's in her mid-thirties. We had a wonderful evening catching up and looking at pictures and gossiping in our special brand of Russlish.
Today is Russki obyed - Russian lunch made for us by the staff. They are all a-bustle in the kitchen and wonderful smells are drifting up the stairs.
Current Mood: concentrating
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12:47 pm
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Wheee!
I spent the weekend getting reacquainted with all the various pleasures of life in Vladimir. If you want to skip straight to the pictures, they’re here. First up: Russia, the land of many holidays. Friday was Russia’s independence day, so in the morning my host father Andrei took me, my host brother Yarik (a diminutive of Yaraslav), and sister Kyusha (Ksenya) out to see the celebration downtown. It wasn’t much - a stage set up with various pop music acts, some tents selling souvenirs and shashlik and pierog - but it gave me a chance to see the city center. Not much has changed - a new shopping center, the old grocery store Grossmart replaced by a new one called Atak, more advertisements. You can still buy ice cream on every corner, which was fantastic because it was 28 degrees most of the weekend - felt like 90 or so. Plus crazy ridiculous thunderstorms and hailstorms once a day or so and in the middle of the night. Fortunately it’s cooled off a bit yesterday and today.
In the evening we went to Andrei’s friend’s house to eat shashlik. That house, if possible, is even nicer than my family’s. I seem to have gotten in with the wealthy crowd this time around. I happily stuffed myself with chicken while heated political and philosophical debates raged on (aided, I think, by cognac and vino) and the five-year-old daughter did my hair.
On Saturday it was Yarik’s 15th birthday, so he went off with his friends to see a movie and eat pizza, and we girls explored a very pretty garden not far from the American Home. Saw a couple of wedding parties at the Golden Gates, the cars with the ribbons and plastic rings decorating the hoods and roofs, the girls with their poufy white dresses, the guys wearing suits and sashes, and everyone pleasantly tipsy. In the evening three of Yarik’s friends and his grandmother came for cake and ice cream, and everyone gave lengthy toasts. I wasn’t able to beg off toasting duties but they did let me give mine in English, as Yarik, his friends, and his mom all speak English quite well. Then the boys headed out on the town, and I went to hang out with the American teachers. It’s always interesting to meet other people who’ve made the same life choices that you have, and find out what their reasons were and where they will go next.
I should pause and explain that any time you leave the house to spend time with your friends you are said to гулать (gulat), which literally means to go for a walk. Because the main entertainment here for young people actually is walking around in the city center with their friends, the word гулать has come to mean, basically, to hang out. So I гулалась while sitting around my friend’s apartment drinking beer!
On Sunday the whole family plus one of Yarik’s friends piled into the car and went off to the university’s banya, which you can apparently rent out for private use. This banya had, as usual, a small steam room, a larger tiled room for washing up with a small cold pool, and then a room to hang out and drink tea or beer. The men and women took turns - basically you sit in the steam room as long as you can stand it, then dunk yourself very quickly in the cold pool three times (my host mom kept hollering for me to do it faster) then dash back into the steam room. Then rinse off and go drink tea for a while. And repeat. It’s awesome. While in the steam room you can also hit yourself or your friends with the venik, the bunch of birch leaves, which detoxifies your skin (or at any rate smells fantastic). I just love it. You feel so good afterwards, clean all the way through, alive, healthy, and nicely drowsy.
Yesterday evening after the American Home I went with my host mom to a truly amazing concert. The Vladimir orchestra was hosting a famous pianist named Denis Mantsuyev, who at thirty years old has already played in most of the concert halls I’ve ever heard of, including Carnegie. He played a gorgeous Shostakovitch piece, the Concert for Piano and Orchestra Number 2, and then two little encores, a sweet peaceful lullaby and an outrageously fast version of Peter and the Wolf. Just extraordinary. Tonight I’m going to another concert, a children’s choir singing Russian folk songs. My host brother plays the piano and sings in the famous Vladimir boy’s choir, so he always has the lowdown on the good concerts. I have to say I totally lucked out with this family.
Current Mood: happy
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05:48 pm
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Duck!
It is HAILING right now. Seriously. It's been clouding up for an hour or so and now it is pouring rain, thundering, and little tidbits of hail are battering the windows. Look out below!
I woke up early this morning to a fantastic thunderstorm, lightning in every direction only a second or two apart and great rumbling bursts of thunder. So far inland I think Vladimir gets the violent weather. I watched it from the sweet little balcony attached to my room, with the gauzy Russian lace curtains brushing up against my ankles in the wind.
Today I went to the ATM to withdraw rubles, lots of them, and then went to the little produkti across the street for black bread, vinagret (a kind of salad with beets, carrots, and potatoes) and kefir. So frickin' happy. Mmm.
Today I saw all the staff again, including the directors and my old Russian teacher. I got kissed a lot. I'm hopefully going to be studying a bit while I'm here. I also met with Olya to discuss my work here for the first time. It's going to be really interesting and useful. Also, it turns out the teachers are still here and will be until the end of June, so I've got plenty of company. Hooray!
My host brother, Yarik, turns out to be a really sweet-tempered leggy fourteen-year-old, and both he and my host mom are quite proficient in English (certainly more so than I am in Russian). The whole family is just wonderful, very chatty and interested in everything. I'll have plenty of time with them this weekend, as we have a holiday tomorrow (the Russian independence day). It's shaping up to be a very good two months.
Current Mood: happy
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05:28 pm
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home again, home again
Back in Vladimir for the first time in three years. It's pretty surreal. The home is the same (mostly - some furniture rearranging), the staff is the same (mostly - Olya dyed her hair red), and the city is the same (mostly-lots of new stores have sprung up, though my host mom says the economic crisis has forced many of them to shut down already). The flight was uneventful, half-full, and involved personal video screens. Oh, except we weren't allowed to get off the plane until some "medical personnel" scanned our temperatures to prevent us bringing swine flu into Russia. Um, you guys? Swine flu is over.
One long hot car ride later and I met my host family, who are super sweet and live in a seriously kickass brand new apartment. My room is big and comfortable with its own little balcony, and my eight-year-old host sister talks a mile a minute and is fascinated with my jewelry collection.
Work starts tomorrow - right now, it's time for tea. :)
Current Mood: so happy
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02:00 pm
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Return to the Russkiblog
Leaving for Russia in 27 hours. Ура!!
Current Mood: excited
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10:14 am
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And thus it ends.
Taught another fun swing class on Sunday, Charleston kicks this time, though it was sad to say goodbye to the kiddies. They were so lovably enthusiastic.
Last day of work was Tuesday. Whoohoo! Now it's just getting ready for the trip. Not that there's much left to do. Backpack that actually fits me--check. Sandals you can hike in--check. Tetanus booster--check. Anti-malaria meds--check. See, Urse, I do listen to you and the CDC.
And one of the last checks on the list--switching back to my old livejournal account. I can't in good conscious keep using the Ruskiblog, since Vladimir is definitely not on this trip's itinerary. Ya lyublyo tibya, Ruskiblog, no para skazat da sveydanya. It's on to the next adventure.
Anyone who wants to follow along should check out http://www.livejournal.com/~bona_lector. I'll be posting travel stories and photos there.
Current Mood: nostalgic
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12:06 pm
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Daily blah (that's for you, Jane!).
Apologies for the technical difficulties. Hopefully I've got them figured out now.
I will be very glad to be done with this office job and doing something more mentally stimulating before my brain shrivels away entirely. Fortunately Chelsea dragged me along with her Monday night to a showing of "The Russian Dolls", a truly awesome and funny French film. Nothing like subtitles to de-atrophy your brain.
In other news, I got my Hep A shot yesterday and started on the typhoid pills. Aside from my upper arm being pretty sore last night, and having to cough up a lot of money to the travel clinic, it was a surprisingly easy and painless process. My current debate is about anti-malarials. I've read that they can have side effects that are worse than just getting malaria. Also, does anyone know anything about travel insurance?
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12:11 pm
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Look, Thanksgiving came early.
Yesterday I taught a lesson at the teen swing club which left me profoundly grateful for a few things:
1. I am not a teenager anymore.
2. I will never have to be a teenager ever again.
3. I will never have to date (or dance with) teenage boys ever again.
The kids I taught were overwhelmingly enthusiastic, delightfully open-minded, and massively uncoordinated. At least, the boys were. An hour of teaching them the Jitterbug Stroll produced a lot of smiles and giggles but not much resembling the actual Jitterbug Stroll. Plus, several of the boys had yet to be introduced to the magic of deoderant.
From a teaching perspective, it was very satisfying. I even got a high five from one well-mannered young gentleman, who proclaimed me to be an "intense teacher" and my lesson to be "awesome". Go me.
But oh these kids are so insecure. They are so consumed with their place in the social pecking order that their eyes practically brim with anxiety. It's almost painful to be around, and yet here I am contemplating a life working with these creatures. Still, it's reassuring to see clearly delineated the distance between me and them.
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01:45 pm
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A little validity question.
Last night a massive joint effort between me, my mom, and my sister (well, mostly my mom) produced a delicious Russian meal for us, one of our neighbors and three of Chelsea's friends. My mom cooked up two huge batches of borscht, standard and vegetarian, and Chelsea and I made hochipuri. It wasn't nearly as complicated as you might think, since we used pre-made puff pastry, so it was mostly mixing up a bunch of cheese (mozzarella, feta, and cottage, for the curious) and baking. I contributed a cucumber/tomato salad that my second host mom and I ate for dinner pretty much every night in the spring. My mom spread some caviar on dark bread and busted out the pickles for appetizers, and we had ourselves a scrumptious dinner.
Two of Chelsea's friends studied Russian in college, and one of them lived in St. Petersburg, so they're both well-versed in the language and culture. At the beginning of dinner we reminisced together about the horrors of verbs of motion and the travesty of rampant alcoholism. But as dinner turned into tea and cookies, they started talking about Soviet films and I quickly got left behind. My Russian simply wasn't good enough most of the year for me to watch movies, so I'm limited to the one or two movies we watched in my lessons. And as they moved from films to music, and from music to geography, I started to feel really ignorant, and honestly, more than a little fake. Here I've been mooning around all nostalgic for Mother Russia, and all the time I haven't begun to tap the vast cultural wealth of the country.
And that makes me wonder about the validity of cultural experiences. Clearly I didn't get as deep into Russian traditions and society as I would have if I had spoken Russian at all when I arrived. We talked about this a lot at the American Home. We used to make fun of the older Americans who showed up at the AH complaining about the impossibility of finding "a decent cup of coffee", by which they meant the exact kind they drank at home, and turned up their noses at all the wonderful black teas. But do you have to go completely native to have a "valid" experience? My year in Russia didn't turn me into an expert or change my life completely, but an awful lot of interesting things happened to me. What's the yardstick for experience?
Current Mood: thoughtful
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10:58 am
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I wasn't born yest--oh wait, I was.
Spotted at the Alaska State Fair last night: a pile of about eight little pink piglets, some spotted and some striped, all extremely squinty-eyed and kinda fuzzy, with a sign saying they were born on Thursday. Cuteness OVERLOAD.
Actually, the overload might have come at the pen with the baby dwarf goats, or the plastic tub full of baby chickens, geese, and ducks, all peeping madly.
I have discovered that as I get older, certain aspects of the state fair fade for me. The rides look more painful and less fun, the booths full of cheap imported stuff and lumpy hand-knitted mittens look less enticing, and the teenage bands sound more ridiculously untalented. But there are two things that will never fade: the baby animals, and the food.
Ah, fair food. Nothing compares to your deliciously unhealthy glory, that glory of which we taste but once a year. Sing an ode to barbecue turkey legs, elephant ears, salmon quesadillas, corn on the cob, monster cream puffs with chocolate and berry sauce, corn fritters with honey butter, and my personal perennial delight: a chocolate-dipped waffle cone bowl, filled with hot fruit and ice cream, melting into a gooey mass of sheer sugary heaven.
Hooray for the fair.
Current Mood: satisfied
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12:59 pm
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So much HAPPINESS.
This is for my American Home peeps...
I just went into the little cafe next to the Russian gift shop downstairs for lunch, and pretty much stepped back into my host mom's kitchen. On the menus: piroshki, blini, vareniki, and pelmini. On the shelves: all the cookies and candies I love, including vaffli. Spoken behind the counter: Russian. Playing on the TV in the corner: VINNIE PUKH!!! So I sat, ate my pelmini with dill and mayonnaise (the good Russian kind), and watched the episode with Ee-yah's birthday. It was one of the happiest 20 minute periods I've had since I've been back.
And just to make you all more jealous, guess what they have for dessert: chocolate sirok!
Current Mood: ecstatic
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12:34 pm
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And thus shall the festivities commence.
Just got my plane ticket--I'll be in the bay area from Sept. 22 to Oct 1. Who wants to hang out?
Current Mood: happy
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09:45 am
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Back in the swing of things (ha).
Spent this weekend reacquainting myself with the pleasures this country has to offer. Friday night my mom, my sister, and I went to a screening of the best British TV commercials since 1975. It's extraordinary how much the technology for making commercials has changed in the past 25 years--the talking animals from the late 70's were hilarious. And yet the basic requirements of a good commercial haven't changed at all; surprising twists, humor, and cuteness still reign.
Saturday I reconnected with a bunch of high school friends, and realized that time warps do exist outside of Star Trek. All it takes is a bunch of people whose basic relationships to each other haven't changed in seven years and, hey presto, a rip in the space-time continuum, allowing you to party like it's 1999 only with more alcohol. Strangely, it was more melancholy than satisfying.
Yesterday I helped Katie and Dustin, the people from Stanford who I met a few weeks ago, teach a lindy hop lesson to a bunch of varyingly talented high school students. Seriously, some of these kids could hold their own in the bay area swing scene, and some of them still can't remember to rock step. It's going to be wicked fun to take over for a couple weeks when Katie and Dustin leave. I think a little Jitterbug Stroll is in order.
After swing, I indulged in another Great American Pastime: my dad, my sister, and I tossed the ball around at my old elementary school. That's right, the rain has let up for the first time since I have been home, and we were able to while away the last few hours of daylight to the comforting thwack, thwack of ball into glove. Ah, how I missed it.
Current Mood: thoughtful
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06:21 pm
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Practikovating.
Yesterday, in a hopefully not futile attempt to keep my Russian from disappearing, I had lunch with one of my sister's awesome friends who studied in St. Pete for a semester, and we spoke Russian more or less the whole time. All those familiar feelings washed over me: low level frustration and agony with little flashes of inspiration and triumph. We're at about the same level of fluency, though her vocabulary is definitely bigger, so I think it was pretty satisfying for both of us. Dusting off all those case endings and verb tenses felt like good, non-threatening exercise.
And it was a great warmup for my evening v gosti at the my real honest-to-God imported Russian friend's house. Katya is married to Eric, the oldest brother of one of my oldest friends, and the two of them very kindly invited me to practice Russian with them and their super adorable 19 month old girl Sonja. Now, Katya talks a mile a minute, and Sonja just kind of babbles, so between the two of them I was lost a lot. But then that feeling was pretty familiar too. My moments of greatest clarity came when Katya was speaking to Sonja, using the kind of language one uses for a person not yet out of diapers, i.e.e simplistic and very repetitive. Sigh. Fortunately Sonja is one of those cheerful little toddlers with the big eyes and the bald head and the winning propensity for bringing you all of her toys one at a time until you've got a great pile of them in your lap, so I didn't feel left out. She even got the hang of my name by the time I left, a trick guaranteed to melt the iciest heart.
Probably the greatest pleasure for me (besides the cream puff Sonja got halfway through before deciding it would be better if I ate that one) was being wrapped again in the snuggly blanket known as Russian hospitality. Katya and Eric haven't seen me in a long time and don't know me extraordinarily well, but they opened their doors without a single hesitation, put on the teapot and broke out the cookies. They asked me a lot of questions about myself and seemed fascinated by the answers. They tactfully overlooked my tons of language mistakes, and included me in their family jokes. When I left they told me to come back anytime--no need to call, just show up. That's the kind of evening that will put a big smile on your face, won't it?
Current Mood: happy
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