I got so many train tickets

Feeling Momentous Feelings

It's christmas in Siberia and no one cares. Or so it seems. Actually, almost every person I know in this city has remembered that today is my Christmas and has sent me Christmas wishes.

I spent this evening having dinner with my father, my two Russian teachers, and my dear Hungarians Istvan and Mark. It's nearly 2010, and in a few days I'm heading out of the -40s to the +20s, to Egypt, where I will see both my favorite Maxes.

I spent all Christmas day giving exams and trying to convince myself to give credit to students who really don't deserve it.

It's been a strange semester, as I might have expected. It's the turn of the decade, I'm 23, feeling kind of almost like a grown up, but not really wanting to feel that way. I'm living in Siberia, liking it, not knowing what's next. I'm getting ready to run back and forth across the continent a few times in the next month--in addition to going to Egypt, I'm also crossing Russia on a train.

So that's the state of the union over here. Merry christmas and a happy new year.

I took a brief jog over to Irkutsk this weekend with my dad, who is visiting. On the way there, the train car we were in was full of Army boys heading home after their year of service. On the way back, the car was full of Army boys on their way to Moscow to begin their year of service.

One of the things I like most about train travel in Russia is how close you are forced to be with the people around you. You have to share space, you often end up sharing food, and a lot of times you end up sharing lots of personal information about yourself just because there is nothing to do but chat.

Being in the car with the army boys made me feel like I was in on someone else's pivotal life moment. One of the boys unexpectedly ran into a girl that he knew. She didn't know he was heading off to the army for a year. He kept asking her where she was going, and all she would answer was "to visit someone," he finally got her to say to what city exactly she was going, but even then she wouldn't tell him who she was visiting. She asked the boy if he had gotten married and he said "No, she's waiting for me." I heard a story like this recently that ended with the soldier returning only to hand back to the girl, who had been waiting for him for a year, all the letters she had written him, and then leave without explaining anything.

It just seemed strangely intense that about ten minutes ago he had said good bye to this girl, and now here he was speeding off towards Moscow, there she was watching the train disappear at the Irkutsk train station, and here I was knowing all about it.

Faculty of International Business

Now that I'm nearing the end of the semester, I'm faced with the daunting task of giving my students grades. I only have two groups that I actually grade, and thank god. I've been giving them points, for attendance and homework and stuff, according to what the other teacher who teaches this same class laid out for me at the beginning of the semester. I think there is some sort of conversation that should take place during the "giving credit week" where I say "I grant you credit!" or "write me six essays and then I'll grant you credit!" or something. The whole thing seems to be very negotiable. I don't know whether I just give them credit, or whether the amount of points they have is relevant. I keep asking everyone I can--Ira, both of my Russian teachers, the department head, my students--HOW exactly it is supposed to work, but I'm just not getting any closer to an answer. Plus I have students coming to me who have attended one class all semester, saying "What do I need to do to pass the class? Can you give me some extra assignments?" In my world, if you don't come to class EVER you don't get credit, and it is also just a pain in the ass for me to come up with all sorts of extra work for these kids and then to actually look at it when they turn it in. But I'm not going to try to fight a system that I don't understand. I'm just going to enjoy complaining about it.

"my problem with the internet"

I don't really have a problem with the internet. I love the internet, it just sometimes makes me feel like my apartment is a little floating bubble located nowhere/everywhere.

Also, every time I talk to Riley I get a little overwhelmed by how intense her life is in Tyva.

Saw a little boy on the bus today with a very little cellphone. Made me wonder: is it better if the size of your cellphone is proportional to the size of your body?

Things I've Done This Week

1. Gave a presentation at a conference on Human Resource Management. Needless to say my topic was not at all related to Human Resource Management since it's something that I know absolutely nothing about.

2. Was asked to give a toast at the dinner after the conference, gave a really awkward performance, and realized that toasting is an important skill here and it's something I need to work on.

3. Had a really satisfying trip to the grocery store, bought bread, cheese, a light bulb, a french press, and some lotion all in one store. Had to speak to a different cashier lady in order to acquire each item. Felt like I was good at living in Russia by the time I was done, even though I'm not good at giving toasts.

4. Bought some really expensive but legitimately good coffee from a coffee shop to make in my new french press and have been having much better mornings as a result.

5. Saw the movie Анти–Киллер д.к. Любовь без Памяти. А guy got his eye gauged with a faucet and there were lots of moments that made me squirm a lot and cover my face. Also a really intense sex scene where all you saw were the two peoples' faces in a mirror in a really nasty bathroom. Жестокий.

6. Went with two friends to a dermotologist/cosmotologist where they were getting a consultation on a face cleaning. Mostly just went along to keep them company, but since I was there I got a little consult of my own and the lady told me I need a cleaning because my students are probably noticing how my nose is dirty. Then felt self-conscious but after examination decided that my nose isn't really that dirty.

this is how I cook when no one is watching

I made myself the weirdest dinner. I don't know what I was thinking. This is how it happened:

I started out with very few options, almost no food in my kitchen. Shredded beats and carrots, boiled up some buckwheat kasha, added garlic, lemon juice, salt, pepper, honey, to the beats and carrots. That tasted weird so I added soy sauce and a hot pepper. That tasted weirder so I added the rest of a jar of tomato sauce. Surprise surprise, still tasted weird, so I added a lot more honey, then I added the kasha and fried it all up together. I was starting to feel like I was 11 and at a slumber party and making that thing that I was going to dare my friend to eat. At a loss and unable to imagine my dinner without a healthy helping of dairy, I threw in a glob of the "creamy" cheese I accidentally bought hoping it MIGHT be cream cheese back in September. Luckily it will never go bad.

I'd rather not think about what kind of logic led me from one decision to the next, but somehow the resulting purple pile of mush tasted kind of ok. The only way I can describe the flavor is Mexican-ish. It tasted, inexplicably, like the insides of a bean burrito. So... I ate it.

Siberian Wares

Somehow I managed to not find the central market until now. It's amazing. If anyone wants some wooley things for christmas, let me know. As for me, I'm not sure I'll be able to resist buying myself a pair of those furry beaded boots.

And inside there are rows and rows of tables piled high with raw meat. It's a pretty serious scene. Someone was pushing around a cart full of cow heads. There were entire lamb carcasses lying out on tables. Piles of beef livers the size of my head. Unfortunately my camera lens fogged up so much when I went inside I couldn't shoot it, but I promise there will be pictures of the meat to come.

the fun park in winter

The mayor of Krasnoyarsk seems to be most notable for his love of goofy decorations. There are lots of little light up sparkle trees downtown, and in the summer there are potted palm trees in all of the big squares. Right now they are building ice villages in every region. My favorites of these touches of flare by far are the big animal bush sculptures. Above are some siberian shrub giraffes. Near my university there are some moose, and there are definitely some elephants that I have seen around.

Why am I here?

Almost every person I've met in this country has, at some point, asked me this question. I still don't really have a satisfactory answer. There are a lot of reasons. I generally try to start at the beginning, the last semester of my senior year of high school. After being assigned Crime and Punishment in my AP English class, I burned through the Brothers Karamazov, Anna Karenina, the Idiot, Master and Margarita, and Doctor Zhivago. Every weekend I boiled myself and my family a big pot of borsch, which I ate while reading, and as a result my copies of all these books have little specks of purple on the pages.

My love affair with Tolstoy is always hilarious to new Russian acquaintances, but I guess the point is that I fell hard for Russia, or at least for some kind of idea of Russia. This love joined with a lifetime desire to really know another language, a skill that always seemed to me like keys to a magical alternative reality.

So when I went to college, I started studying Russian. And then I kept studying Russian, and then I studied Russian in Moscow, and then I was about to graduate from college and needed to figure out what to do next. So I decided to go back to Russia.

That's the story I tell, and I don't know if it helps anyone understand better why I'm here. I don't want to be a diplomat or an investment banker or a professor of Russian literature. I'm not working towards some specific professional goal. I just really like Russia. I like the old ladies and their fuzzy headscarves and hats that look like hair, I like drinking vodka with pickles and beer with salty dried fish, I like all the different kinds of fermented milk products, I like riding the trains, I love the incredible expanses of unoccupied land, I like getting so hot I can hardly breathe, slapping myself with a tree branch, and jumping into icy water. There are so many things about life in this country that are illogical and unnecessarily unpleasant. But I even kind of like the things I don't like about Russia. Russia is huge and strange, saddled with contradictory histories, straddling almost an entire hemisphere. It's not like any other place.

So what am I going to do with these Russian language skills I've labored so long and hard to achieve? I have no idea, but probably something interesting. At the very least, I'll keep in touch with the friends I've made in Krasnoyarsk. And maybe I'll finally read the Brothers Karamazov in Russian.