No Gray Hairs

To Conclude

2010-07-28T09:58:00.000-07:00

I had hoped that over the course of my journey through the Caucasus, I would be able to write more. But, unsurprisingly, Max and I rarely had time on the internet to do more than say hey to our parents and check necessary travel information.

Since the last time I wrote, many things have happened. I'll share one of my favorite days of the trip, since I won't be able to recount everything.

One day we needed to get from Azerbaijan to Yerevan through Georgia, since Azerbaijan and Armenia don't dig each other. It started with an outrageous taxi ride from western Azerbaijan to Tbilisi with a mysterious Moldovan who winters in Tyumen, in Western Siberia, and summers in Azerbaijan. Among the many services he offered as a driver, one was a three day car ride to Moscow, costing about $2500, begging the question of who exaclty would pay that much to be DRIVEN to Moscow, and why?

So after overhearing us talk about how we were going to eat lots of Xinkali once we got to Tbilisi, he decided he wanted some too and proposed we stop at our first opportunity, just over the Georgia-Azerbaijan border. He ordered 30 big dumplings. He ate 15, Max ate 8, and I ate about 6.5. Max and I were working on digesting for the rest of the day. The man was a Xinkali eating machine. He was silent as he went about his business, and we were bursting with questions about who he was and what he did, but he didn't really want to talk--only adding to the mystery. We shared our marshrutka ride from Tbilisi to Yerevan with two short Armenian ladies carrying with them approximately 27 bags of varying sizes. What was in those bags was anyone's guess. When we asked, they said something about sewing needles. Adding to their cargo, they bought three watermelons at our first stop. The watermelons rolled around the van for the rest of the ride, getting pierced by chair legs until the marshrutka floor was slick with watermelon juice.

We stayed in Yerevan for several days, resting and lounging in cafes, and from there we stopped in Dilijan, in the Armenian mountains, then went back to pass our last couple nights in Tbilisi, city of dreams.

I was thinking this was going to be a concluding entry, but then I got distracted writing about xinkali and the taxi driver and the watermelon ladies. I thought maybe I could write something that would Sum Up this year I've had. But basically life just keeps rumbling along, one day you're in Siberia, the next day it's Baku, and then all of the sudden it's Grinnell again. I hope I will be seeing the former Soviet Union again soon. In the meantime, it no longer seems appropriate for me to be blogging at Krasnoyarskhelen.blogspot.com. Maybe I'll start making use of my tumblr.

Anyway, thanks for reading, we'll be in touch.

Azerbaijan

2010-07-13T08:34:00.001-07:00

Max and I are in the city of Quba, north of Baku and not too far away from the border with Russia. Quba is kind of a sad little city, but it's famous for providing the opportunity to go eat shashlyk at cafes in the middle of the forest. We're staying in a very strange old Soviet hotel with a disgusting shared bathroom and a shower that costs extra, but it's all very interesting nonetheless.

We came here for a few reasons. One was to find and talk to the community of Mountain Jews living in a town right accross the river from Quba. The other was to go up to the village of Xinaliq, touted by the Lonley Planet as one of the most beautiful places in Azerbaijan. We have accomplished both of these goals. The Mountain Jews were very interesting and friendly, and Xinaliq was one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen. Tomorrow we're heading back to Baku.

Our time in Quba has been marked by nearly constant conversation and tea drinking with whomever we run into. People are exceptionally hospitable. Most of the time it's really lovely, and we've learned a lot.

We spent most of this morning going through the most horrendous negotiations I have ever experienced in order to secure a ride to Xinaliq in a timely and affordable manner. Amid the overwhelming chaos of the bazar from which taxis leave to Xinaliq, there was one moment that really brought me joy. I was standing around, eating a peach, waiting for our driver to find some more passengers, and a man walked by carrying two live chickens by the feet. He saw me looking at his chickens and said "do you need a chicken?" I said no and he kept going along his way. I thought this little scene was so funny I started laughing, but then a couple minutes later the chicken man was back. Again I was staring at the chickens, this time laughing, and he said "you really don't want one?" It seemed like a great way to sell chickens, just wandering around with them, holding them by their feet.

Anyway, I wish I had time to explain better or in a more decipherable manner what I'm up to. This trip is endlessly fascinating, no matter how sweaty we are by the end of the day.

Travels

2010-07-09T01:27:00.000-07:00

I've covered a lot of ground since the last time I wrote. Just as I said I would, I took a train to St. Petersburg. It lasted three days and I made a lot of friends, including a couple little boys with whom I played cards for hours and hours and hours. One of the boys had a hard time saying my name and called me Helli. It was cute. Then I spent some time in St. Petersburg, which was ok, and then I spent some time in Moscow, which was nice. Then I flew to Georgia, where Max and I reunited in a Tbilisi apartment.

I've been in Georgia for about a week and it's proved to be just as wonderful as I always dreamed it would be. After spending several days walking all over Tbilisi, soaking in Pushkin's favorite sulphur baths, eating decadent meals and a little too much khachapuri, Max and I headed on to Sighnaghi, where my former Russian teacher Amanda is now living. Amanda drove us all over the Kakheti region, Georgia's wine country, to some ancient churches and fortresses and past many villages and wandering cows. We had to slow down for lots of ducks to cross the road. After passing watermelon filled truck after watermelon filled truck, we stopped and ate a big juicy watermelon right next to the watermelon field at a little picnic table at the side of the road.

The next day saw more feasting and a little lesson in the Georgian art of toasting, more beautiful scenery, as well as the ancient cave city of Uplistsikhe. We went to Gori, the birth place of Stalin, and visited the very bizarre Stalin Museum. It's located in a big mansion with stained-glass windows, and tells the story of a hero-revolutionary with an exceptional talent for escaping from Tsarist prisons. The displays wind around a thick red carpet to end in a dark round room with a tiny bronze cast of Stalin's dead face in the center and a painting of Stalin in his coffin on the wall. It was a strange place and a strange experience.

After the Stalin Museum, Amanda and her friend, the expert vintner Gala, drove us back to Tbilisi and dropped us off at Dodo's guest house, where we planned to stay the night.

This country is easy to fall in love with.

Tonight we are on to Baku, if all goes according to plan.

GOODBYE KRASNOYARSK!

2010-06-21T17:16:00.000-07:00

I had something like a 24 hour layover in Krasnoyarsk between my train from Ulan Ude and my train to St. Petersburg. Now I'm really leaving!

Here are some nice Buryatia pictures:

The grand hotel Buryatia

A view of Lake Baikal from the train + cute little boy

Ulan Ude

2010-06-17T22:18:00.000-07:00

Here I am in Ulan Ude, the capital of Buryatia, a republic that borders Lake Baikal on the eastern side. The Buryats are closely related to Mongolians. They're also Buddhist, and there are a lot of Buddhist temples all around the city. Buryatia, like pretty much all of Siberia, is very beautiful, a mix of foresty mountains and expanses of steppe where buryat cowboys corral their cows and sheep around on horses.

I've been working with kids, 13-15 years old, teaching them English. We've been singing folk songs, mostly. "Charlie on the M.T.A." seems to be a favorite (it's also been a favorite of mine since I was a tiny child, so I find some satisfaction in passing it along). The kids are all really sweet and smart and easy to teach. I don't think I've ever met such a uniformally nice and interesting group of teens before.

I've been pretty much free in the afternoons, so I've had a lot of time to wander around Ulan Ude. It's a very clean and pleasant city, with the largest Lenin head in the world. I went to the open-air "ethnography" museum outside the city which displays examples of the dwellings of various peoples of the Buryat Republic; Russians, Buryats, and others. The coolest, in my opinion, were the Evenks and Soyots, who live in fur teepees in the winter, and have lots of cool shamanist icons and things. They have really got to be some of the toughest people on the planet to have been living in this cold wild place for centuries. Of course, there aren't many of them left. There was also a zoo there with Siberian animals--reindeer, wolves, a lynx, a yak, bears, and even a Siberian tiger. It was pretty cool to see reindeer and wolves, but the animals were living in really tiny cages and so it was also kind of sad.

I'm staying in the Hotel Buryatia, a very big hotel in the center of the city with an intensely Soviet feel that is both creepy and hilarious. It makes me feel a little like a traveling bureaucrat. The hotel is very quiet, and on every floor there's a lady that keeps the keys. I have to hand in and retrieve my key every time I come in and out, but the lady is always off somewhere cleaning someone's room or something, so I spend 5-10 minutes searching for her. And then she usually tells me to go open up the key box myself and take my key. It's a little counter-intuitive and makes me feel a little uneasy about security at Hotel Buryatia, but I think I'm going to miss these little absurdities when I leave Russia, so right now I'm savoring them, however inconvenient.

Next time I write will most likely be from St. Petersburg. I'll be spending most of next week on a train.

Too Much

2010-06-07T17:54:00.000-07:00

I think it's going to be hard for me to write in the coming weeks. There is so much happening, so many places to be, so many things to do, so many people to say goodbye to.

My mom came to visit me, she left today. We had a lot of fun, we did a lot of things. We went to a little city not too far away, Mariinsk. We got interviewed for the newspaper and we had a great party with a women's choir. We took a banya and the ladies sang to us. We thought we might get to have all these things happen at the same time, but unfortunately the only people singing in the banya were me and my momma.

Last week I said goodbye to my two favorite Hungarians, and it started to really set in that I'm leaving Krasnoyarsk. At the moment I'm realizing how much energy I've put into living here over the past year, and now that I'm leaving I'm not sure where to direct that energy. I'm focusing on the spectacular Caucasian vacation awaiting me in July, and collecting stories for my memoirs.

Unlike most of my Fulbright colleagues (I assume) I was lucky enough to have my mom help me pack and clean my apartment! She is also currently hauling a large amount of my things back across the ocean with her. This all significantly reduces moving-related stress. Thanks mom.

I can't really write anything coherent at the moment. I'll try to pass on interesting events now and then until I land back on American soil, at which point I think I will no longer feel I can continue blogging at krasnoyarskhelen.blogspot.com, save maybe some kind of insightful summation of how much I've learned over here in Siberia. But honestly I have a feeling any such attempt won't come anywhere near doing justice to the strange and beautiful year I've passed in this mysterious land.

2010-05-27T02:06:00.000-07:00

I seem to be entering a period of transition. This morning I was feeling very emotional, mostly good emotions. I almost burst into tears three times, instigated by things like the oil spill and scheduling my last English conversation club.

I have been having a really wonderful week, I made my English club sing folk songs with me, I've been enjoying the summer cafes, and for some reason I've been feeling like a pro at speaking the Russian language. I've also been working on a project that has been giving me an immense amount of satisfaction. It's the beginning of something Max and I will hopefully complete together. Right now it mostly involves me interviewing my friends about how they feel about the Soviet Union and things like that. It's a good excuse to discuss my favorite topic (Russia) and it's led to some really special conversations. Hopefully it will become something more.

I'm leaving Krasnoyarsk on June 12, and then I've got quite a schedule. I'll be moving around the country for a couple weeks. First I'm going to Ulan Ude to teach English to children, then I'm meeting Riley in St. Petersburg. I memorized Katyusha (a favorite patriotic folk song) last night so we can sing it together while walking along the canals in St. Pete and enjoying the 3am sunset. Then I'm heading on a trip to the Caucasus that I've been dreaming about literally for years.

But now I've got to go meet my Hungarians and my Russian teachers for some celebratory pelmeni and vodka.

Typical Night

2010-05-23T09:30:00.000-07:00

On Friday night my fearless Hungarian cohorts took me along to their new favorite place in Krasnoyarsk. It's a club called "Three Days of Rain," supposedly the hot spot for Krasnoyarsk's upper echelon. The inside looks like something from "Sex and the City," with an all white lounge-bar area where handsome young bartenders with their names embroidered on their jackets make fancy cocktails. Under the bar is the dance hall, where a female DJ wearing not much of a shirt was spinning mad jams and lots of ladies wearing a lot less than the DJ lady danced around on counters.

Apparently it's necessary to have some kind of cachet to be allowed in, if not beauty and wealth, a foreign accent also works. The first time my friends were there they ordered exclusively in English, despite the fact that they speak fluent Russian. In his own words: "I asked for a long island iced tea. I said Strong. Very strong! And it was very strong."

Waving around their foreignness got the boys an invitation to the VIP table where an overweight man with the nickname of a beloved cartoon character chills every night with ladies and whiskey. When I met this man he instructed me on how to live a healthy life. "Think about your children!" he said, as he scooped up a couple ice cubes from the neon blue ice cube pit in the middle of the table and poured a young lady a glass of Jameson. This guy is supposedly a big deal, rolling in dough, etc. so I was surprised when he asked me the same question that lots of people ask me: "Is it better there?" I would have thought that, at his VIP table, in his VIP club, with his blue ice cubes and ladies and Jameson, he would not be thinking about how life is probably better in America.

What a strange strange world we all live in. Getting down at Three Days of Rain, I once again found myself thinking "HOW did I get here? WHAT AM I DOING HERE?" It was fun, it was fascinating, and it was kind of horrible.

I was happy to wake up in the morning and have my last class with my favorite students--to remember all of the good people I know and remind myself that obsessive grooming and Mr. Cartoon Character are not all there is here.

2010-05-18T18:59:00.001-07:00

This is a picture of an abandoned kolkhoz way out in the Tuvan steppe.

It seems like I should write about my experience in Tuva a little bit, but I've been putting it off because I don't really know what to say. It's all kind of a jumble of moments in my brain, and I don't know quite how to organize them into a blog post.

First, a little background. Tuva is a part of Russia, but there certainly is a very different culture there. Tuva is isolated--accessible only by taxi from the nearest train station and a few flights into Kyzyl. It's not nearly as hooked up to the modern world as most of Russia, with limited internet access, etc. Kyzyl makes Krasnoyarsk seem like a booming modern metropolis. Which I guess it kind of is. So, what to say?

Tuva was one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen. Maybe it was really the most beautiful place I've ever seen. When I was looking out the taxi window on the way from Kyzyl to Abakan I felt like I needed to DO something. That is to say, it was so beautiful I didn't know what to do. I needed to save it or something. I just wanted to somehow take it in, fully appreciate the magic of that landscape.

But there was more than just majestic mountainous steppe in Tuva. Riley's students were very impressive. We saw Tuvan wrestling and a buddhist temple. Tuva claims to be the center of Asia, which is I guess why it regularly gets down to -60 in the winter.

There was one day when Riley's students took me and my ETA compatriots out into the country, to a shepherd encampment. We rented a bus, and at a certain point it was necessary to turn off the road and into the steppe. We barreled along, about every ten minutes stopping to strategize around a gnarly pocket of mud and give the bus a good push. Our driver faced this obstacle course with impressive calm, never seeming to get annoyed or doubt for a moment that he would, in the end, get us to our destination (and back--in the dark). Eventually we had to stop and walk the rest of the way.

We were travelling along with a group of young throat singers, who played and sang all the way to and from the shepherd camp, and gave a little concert in the evening. Up at the camp we participated in a traditional goat slaughtering and hung around, chatting and chewing on goat parts.

It was an experience I never imagined I could ever have. At one point I got to take a little horse ride around the field. Horses are historically a very important part of Tuvan life--and are still the way people get into the wilderness to herd their livestock. It seemed like people enjoyed putting foreigners on horses, this opportunity came up several times. My horse jaunt lasted about 7 minutes, but during those minutes I thought to myself "if only the 7 year old Helen, riding on a carousel, spinning around in a safe little circle, thinking about open fields and galloping horses and beautiful strange spectacular things, could have known that someday she would be here! In the Tuvan steppe! On a horse! While the sun sets! Getting ready to eat boiled goat intestines!"

Whew. Like I said, what a trip.

It's a big big country

2010-05-15T00:34:00.001-07:00

This morning I got back from a week in Kyzyl, capital of Tuva, a little republic scrunched in between Mongolia to the south and Krasnoyarsk Krai to the north. Russia occupies a ridiculous proportion of the world's landmass, and in all of that space there seem to be hiding unending mysteries.

2010-05-05T08:22:00.001-07:00

If there is an upside to over six months of unrelenting winter, I suppose it's that the good weather, when it finally comes, feels like a dream. Krasnoyarsk is set up to enjoy being outside. Since it's been warm enough to walk around for a while without feeling like I'm dying, I've found endless places to hang around outside that I'd never noticed before. On every square now there are tents set up where you can buy beer and sit around. It's kind of like the whole city is one big cafe.

This evening I went downtown, and it seemed as though there was not a free park bench in the city. People were grilling shashlyk all over the place. It felt like the whole city was having a barbecue.

And then there's the kind of magical thing that happens in the northern parts of the world where, after months and months of darkness, the days all the sudden stretch for 16, 17, 18 hours. These days, the sun sets around 10pm, and the days are only getting longer.

This evening I stumbled upon a military parade on Revolution Square. I assume it was a practice run for the big celebrations for Victory Day on Sunday (May 9th). Victory Day is probably the second biggest holiday here after New Years.

I'll be celebrating Victory Day in Kyzyl, just 100 or so miles from the Mongolian border, in the Republic of Tuva.

Pictures

2010-04-28T01:13:00.000-07:00

Last week I got an email shipment of scans from the lab in Obietown. I can't really explain how grateful I am to them for doing this for me. Here are a few of the pictures, kind of rough scans, color is a little weird. But this is Siberia, it's quite beautiful and mysterious, and it isn't anywhere near as cold anymore. Most of these pictures are from November/December.

2010-04-27T20:08:00.000-07:00

I need to start carrying a camera around so I can document it when I see a lady who's dyed her hair apparently to match the outrageous color of her coat. Colors spotted so far:

2010-04-26T19:04:00.000-07:00

The past week was full of activity, due to a visit from a certain Cairo-based journalist. In an ironic twist, the weather turned impossibly beautiful yesterday, the day after Max left Krasnoyarsk to return to sunny Egypt. Nonetheless, during his visit we managed to explore all sorts of corners of Krasnoyarsk that I hadn't yet quite made it to. Somehow the two of us attracted more attention than I ever have speaking English on the street before. Once, while sitting in a stolovaya, a group of rowdy kids at a table next to us handed Max a cellphone. A thickly accented voice on speakerphone asked him "What are you doing in my city?!" and then eventually "Please give phone back to my friend."

We went to a million places, climbed a surprising number of mountains (2), walked around enough in the rainy cold (but warm enough to rain!) that it started to feel kind of warm. It was a special time. Now that it's bearable to be outside, I'm noticing again how this city is full of lovely little courtyards and places to sit in the sun. The next month or two around here is going to be lovely.

Speaking of the next few months, I now officially have a return date back to the USA. Around 10pm on July 26, I'll be once again standing on the solid, fertile ground of Iowa.

What a trip!

Transpolar Theater

2010-04-15T08:07:00.000-07:00

From the history section on the theater's website (my own shoddy translation):

Solzhenitsyn called the Cultural Education Section theaters “Serf Theaters”. And indeed, within the theaters, culture was built by claw-hands. If some cadres were not sufficient, someone in the camp management chose artists from among those living in freedom. The director P. V. Varpakhovsky remembers how, while working on the Verdi opera “La Traviatta”, the camp boss for some reason decided to hold the premier on March 8^th, and he expressed alarm at the sound of the choir. “ 'Don’t worry,' comforted his benefactress, a music lover, 'In a week we will have the whole academic capella from Estonia.' ” There is no question that the arrested singers imbued the choir with tragic pathos…

The story on the theater's website is interesting, always trying to balance between telling the story of an incomprehensible human tragedy, and the story of the birth of a creative project that continues to this day.

Blues Run the Game

2010-04-13T18:11:00.001-07:00

I've started to be somewhat preoccupied with something called the "Norilsk Transpolar Drama Theater named after Mayakovsky" (Норильский Заполярный Театр Драмы им. Маяковского)

It's a theater in the city of Norilsk, a mining city and former Gulag hotspot in the far north of Krasnoyarsky Krai, within the Arctic Circle. The theater was founded as part of a labor camp, and all the people who worked in it were prisoners. But they were known for doing some avant-garde stuff, and some important actors and directors were arrested and sent to Norilsk because the big boss over there wanted them to work in the theater.

It's a truly absurd and fascinating story. Sadly, everything I know about it I've learned either from my Russian teacher or the theater's website (the theater is still fully functional). And there's no chance I can go check it out for myself any time soon because the only foreigners allowed in Norilsk are Belarusians.

2010-04-12T02:02:00.000-07:00

I just read a blog post by my fellow Russia ETA Nicky, in Belgorod, on the idea of being "Russian". Since the internet is all about conversation, I thought I'd write some of my own thoughts on the subject.

Nicky says:

"Most of my students here can trace their families back through Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and sometimes even as far as Mongolia. Somehow in the sea of my infinite ignorance I had lumped all of these countries together, supposing that their shared governance under the Soviet Union had somehow translated into a shared identity and sense of nationality. This is not the case. People here are quick to point out the small yet significant differences in culture, history, tradition, language and the main point – politics. The real kicker is that during the Soviet period all of the national boundaries disappeared, and people moved quite freely throughout the Union. But with the fall of the iron curtain rose the walls of separate nations, often trapping Turkmenis in Russia, Russians in Ukraine, et cetera, et cetera. Now you can find little hamlets of ‘immigrants’ all over Russia, working and living here as though they were home."

Just as Nicky has, I've talked to students who were born in Kyrgyzstan, whose parents came from Uzbekistan. Sometimes they are quick to point out that even though they may have been born in Central Asia, they are "Russian." But I also have students with distinctly German, Georgian, or Armenian last names who I suspect would not hesitate to call themselves Russian. Russia is, and always has been, a multinational country. Within Russia's borders there are many ethnic groups and semi-autonomous republics. Just check out this post by ETA Brendan on various ethnic groups singing "We Are the Champions" with traditional instruments, or read Riley's blog about life in the Republic of Tuva. Many of these peoples have been "Russian," i.e. citizens of Russia, for about as long as there has been a Russian nation, Soviet or otherwise. The question of ethnicity vs. nationality vs. citizenship is complicated all over the world. I just met a German guy, about my age, who lived in Kazakhstan until the fall of the Soviet Union. His name is German, and his family maintained their German identity despite at least one generation growing up in Kazakhstan (I don't know the details). At the first opportunity, his family moved back to Germany, and now he's here in Krasnoyarsk on the German version of an ETA. But there are probably other ethnic Germans who stayed in Kazakhstan, intermarried, and now might consider themselves Kazakh.

Some people's attitudes towards immigrants here seem to me to be very similar to some attitudes towards recent immigrants in the United States. It seems silly to me to say that a new American citizen is less American than someone who's family has been there for a few generations. The US is a nation of immigrants, and being American means being a citizen of America. Being Russian is certainly a little more complicated than that, but it is a similarly large, diverse, and often proudly multinational country (once again, check out those "We are the Champions" clips).

When I studied in Moscow, one of my teachers told us about some survey taken on Russian people's most and least "liked" nationalities. Topping both the "most-liked" and "least-liked" lists were Ukrainians and Jews. A lot of Russians are Ukrainian or Jewish or both, and I suppose a lot of Russians who aren't Ukrainian or Jewish don't like Ukrainians and Jews. But basically it all starts to seem a little absurd.

It has also been pointed out to me that, while there are nouns in Russian for a "Ukrainian," a "German," an "American," a "Muscovite," or a person from most places in and outside of Russia, there is no noun for someone who is ethnically Russian. The adjective "Russki" means Russian, the adjective "Rossisski" means Russian as in the country of Russia. There is a noun from the word "Rossisski": "Rossiyanin," which means citizen of Russia. But there is no noun from the word "Russki."

When you start to get into it, heritage and citizenship are a complicated combo in most countries, and probably especially in Russia. Maybe some of my Russian friends have some comments on this subject?

2010-04-09T21:30:00.000-07:00

My latest internet habit is checking the weather forecast several times a day to see if things are going to be getting warmer, if the weather people have changed their minds. Today I noticed a funny thing on the yandex site. There's a little box with the forecast in the corner, it says "if you don't like the weather, pull the lever" then when you pull the lever it spins around like a slot machine, and lands on the same thing that was there before. Now it says "Just carry on". I guess sometimes you land on different weather, which seems silly.

LOVE IS NOT A POTATO

2010-04-09T01:24:00.001-07:00

my kitchen, looking a bit more lived in than the last time it showed up on this blog

Today on the bus I was thinking about why I haven't felt so much like posting in this blog. Yesterday I almost wrote something about watching people get dressed at the pool, and then decided it sounded too weird. Although now it's going to sound even weirder because I'm not going to explain what I meant. I also thought about posting about this conference I went to this week, but it seemed boring and like it wasn't about anything. The pool post made me feel like I'm some kind of nature observer here, like I don't really live here and just spend my time taking notes on the crazy Russians and their crazy habits. And the conference was just something interesting I did, but didn't involve any good stories.

I think this posting dilemma exemplifies my situation here at the moment. I know that I'm leaving soon. I know that Krasnoyarsk is not my permanent home. I've known that all along. Siberia is a strange and fascinating land, and I love sending little tid-bits back to my friends and family in the U.S. But I guess the funny thing that's happening, and it is probably inevitable when one lives someplace for just one year, is that now that the time to leave is creeping up, I'm realizing that I've known these people for a while, and that I have a real little life here. I don't really feel like a visitor anymore. And yet, soon I'll be gone. I can't believe I've been here for over seven months. I really can't believe I'm going to leave in two or three (you can tell how much I've planned my next steps). It's harder to write about weird foreign things that happen because this place just isn't as weird and foreign as it used to be.

So there you go. I'm gonna try to turn this thing around before it becomes exclusively misty-eyed reflections on my time in Siberia.

As I said, I've still got a while out here.

p.s. the title of this post is my favorite new phrase, which I saw on a sign from the bus yesterday. I think it's the title of a play.

Feeling big feelings off in the corner

2010-03-26T02:29:00.000-07:00

There is this couple that, for at least the last month or two, has been spending most of the day sitting outside the international office. The office is on the fourth floor of the main building of the university, kind of off in a corner. I suppose they feel like it's private there. Or something.

Every time I go into or walk out of the office they are in various states of happiness, sadness, love, anger, etc. The girl lies with her head in the boy's lap, talking talking talking, while he stares longingly at her. They stand and look into each others' eyes, arms around each other, while the girl talks and the boy stares longingly at her. The boy sits, staring longingly, the girl walks around talking more angrily, with more energy. Now they are just sitting, holding hands, staring, and not talking.

I'm kind of fascinated by them, and kind of deeply annoyed. They have such a weird dramatic little thing going on, and I love to watch it. On the other hand their relationship makes me a little nauseous.

But I can't decide whether I would be sad or not if they suddenly disappeared. The ladies in the office and I have discussed rigging up some kind of hidden camera and starting a web reality series. We've also discussed strategically giving them unpleasant glances every time we walk by so maybe they realize that our little corner of hallway isn't their bedroom. But probably they don't care. They are pretty deep in their feelings and each others' faces.

And my guess is they like to be watched, or they wouldn't be there.

But don't they have other stuff to do? Like classes? Jobs?

SICK DAY

2010-03-21T23:06:00.000-07:00

I think it's because yesterday I walked around outside without a hat. I should have listened to the babushkas! Also, yesterday I bought honey, lemons, and ginger before I even got sick. Prescient.

Activities for today:

1. Downloading all of Kate Bush's full albums

2. Reading "Best American Short Stories of 1999"

3. Trying to figure out for certain if the new health care bill will mean that I can go back on my parents' health insurance

5. Reading internet arguments about hot-on-the-internet writers like Tao Lin and Emily Gould, watching them argue with each other, get argued about, argue with people arguing about them, etc. Love good internet arguments. I would put some links in here but I'm too lazy and weak.

2010-03-21T07:10:00.000-07:00

Oh! what excellent songs

Some thoughts on my feelings

2010-03-21T06:43:00.000-07:00

Something I'm really good at is being nostalgic. Recently I've started to realize that there are far fewer days ahead of me in this city than behind me. This has made me start pondering my first strange krasnoyarsk days.

I was living in the dormitory, and when I first got here I spent most of my time in my room listening to Middlesex. I had no internet, almost no acquaintances, and nothing to do. I ate a lot of mushrooms I bought from old ladies on the street until one day I had a stomach ache and lost my appetite for mushrooms. I had a lot of dreams in which I died, and dreams in which I said goodbye to my parents and close friends over and over and over again.

The first night I slept in the apartment I live in now, my neighbors above were having their weekly Monday night rager. Their conversations were so loud I dreamed that they climbed into my apartment through the balcony and were sitting in my room laughing at me in my sleep.

I kept finding various maladies that convinced me I was deathly ill. Like I took a bath and decided my thigh looked purple. And one day I woke up and my knees hurt so much I could hardly walk. It was really weird, but it didn't last very long. It did, however, convince me my body was falling apart.

I guess remembering my weird feelings is a strange form of nostalgia, but still, I look back on those hazy days of the past fondly.

I've gotten quite used to this place, and it seems like I came here so long ago. I think since I've been here they have even built a new smoke stack next to the other smoke stacks I can see from my apartment.

It's Educational!

2010-03-21T04:07:00.000-07:00

Learn about all the cities in Russia/watch adorable claymation

I went to a lecture by the director of these cartoons at the Big Cartoon Festival going on this week in K-yarsk. It's been brightening up my life significantly.

I want to go to this place

2010-03-15T20:32:00.000-07:00

"Wherever we had been in Russia, in Moscow, in the Ukraine, in Stalingrad, the magical name of Georgia came up constantly. People who had never been there, and who possibly never could go there, spoke of Georgia with a kind of longing and a great admiration. They spoke of Georgians as supermen, as great drinkers, great dancers, great musicians, great workers and lovers. And they spoke of the country in the Caucasus and around the Black Sea as a kind of second heaven."
-John Steinbeck A Russian Journal

2010-03-12T22:40:00.000-08:00

Someone decided to decorate the garbage chute.

Soup smelling.

Happiness is Hot Soup

2010-03-12T08:56:00.000-08:00

Today so many good things happened. First I got my replacement bank and credit cards in the mail (lost my wallet a while ago). They arrived at the international office while we were busy celebrating a birthday. Nothing like cake and champagne and credit cards laid out in front of you.

Later, the Hungarians finally made me Gulash. Along with a little bit of Istvan's family made fruity palinka liqour, it created a beautiful warm happiness in my stomach and brain and made my apartment smell much better than usual. They told me how in the village gulash is stewed in a big cauldron, like witch soup, and it takes a really long time so you have to drink a lot of palinka while you make it. I'm glad I got a little taste of this tradition.

Then, in the midst of gulash preparation, my internet magically came back to life! SO HAPPY ABOUT THIS. A little scared it might disappear again. Dear internet: I will never never take you for granted, I promise, don't leave me.

I'm feeling very happy to be once again 100% hooked up to all the channels that allow me to feel comfortable with my position in the world. I'm also feeling well fed and ready for bed.

Upping the Beat

2010-03-08T01:46:00.000-08:00

of my blog.

Here are some nice things:

It's WARM. SO WARM.

This cafe plays nice music

It's international lady day, so congrats to me for being a lady (and to all the other ladies of the world)

This cafe has a variety of kasha called "Rice Mosaic," haven't tried it, but I like the name a lot.

When I was walking to the bus this morning, I kept smelling coffee grounds. Doesn't make any sense, but still nice (unless it means I have some kind of neurological disorder)

2010-03-06T22:44:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I returned from a refreshing week in Novosibirsk spent talking to large groups of students about my hobbies and how I got myself to Russia, giving lessons on the words frenemy and bromance with the Siberian ETA elite, meeting new people, getting new ideas, and playing an epic game of rummy (it's not over yet!)

Now I'm back home and, frustration of frustrations, my internet has mysteriously stopped working. Once again, the internet people have no idea what to do with me because of my incomprehensible macintosh computer, and I'm not feeling optimistic about having internet again within the next week. But I'll survive, and probably get some good work done.

I'm starting to feel like I've been in Russia for a while and some things that usually don't bother me are really getting on my nerves, like being addressed as "girl" all the time. It's normal, but it still annoys me. Especially since it is usually because my elbow is in someone's face on the bus or something. An honest mistake in a crowded space! People just aren't that civil to each other in public here. And in a way I dig that there's no sugar coating, no niceness just to be nice, but at the same time, it seems like life might be more pleasant if people were nicer to each other in trivial social interactions.

But I've got a lot of projects and the weather promises to be ABOVE 30 for the whole week. So things are good.

Kind of Miss Wal-Mart

2010-02-23T03:56:00.000-08:00

Today was the Day of Defenders of the Father Land or patriotism or something like that. Also known as Men's Day. At any rate, it's a national holiday so I didn't have any classes. Instead I headed downtown to do a little shopping/get out of my apartment. All I really needed to get were some hair clips because I've gradually lost all that I brought with me over the past 6 months. This seems like it shouldn't be much of a task, but it was surprisingly hard, and brought me face to face with one of the most annoying things about Russia.

First of all, I couldn't find anything without rhinestones or roses or butterflies or other weird girly stuff on it. But more frustratingly, even if I had found something suitable it would be behind a glass case somewhere amidst a pile of other crappy little trinkets, and I would have to have a long awkward conversation with the saleswoman in order for her to give it to me:

me: "Give me hair thing, there" [btw it's totally appropriate to say "give me"]
lady: "this one?"
me: "no over there"
lady: "this one?"
me: "no those silver ones"
lady: "these?"
me: "no under those" etc.

EVERYTHING in this country is behind a glass case. It doesn't matter if it's a nail file or a pearl necklace or shaving cream. Buying stuff generally involves pointing and knowing the name of that thing. In fact, I had an embarrassing episode in Egypt when I was trying to buy lotion. The lotion was in a case and I did my usual point and mumble routine, but the sales lady thought I was a weirdo because the case was unlocked and I was supposed to just take it out myself.

Anyway, today I really wished I could just go to Wal-Mart, where I know I'll be able to find some normal hair clips, as well as shampoo and nail polish and whatever else I need, and I won't have to point at anything, and I will only have to go to one cashier with whom I will not need to have any kind of a conversation.

In the end, I didn't get any hair clips, but I did get a pair of shoes that I like a lot. So that makes me happy. Also, both of the Hungarian boys are finally back and in action. I met them for Man Day sandwiches and that also made me happy.

Language

2010-02-19T23:58:00.000-08:00

The other night while hanging out with some of my colleagues from the international office, the subject turned to a particular Russian word and its current overuse in conversation. The word "смысли" most literally means "sense" like "in what sense?" and is a common response to all kinds of questions/statements. My friends were mostly accusing each other of being responsible for each others' use of the word. But it was interesting for me, and I started thinking, as I often do, about how communication changes when you are speaking a foreign language all the time.

It's hard for me to tell what's normal and what makes you sound like the Russian version of a valley girl. I pick up the conversation habits of the people around me, but I don't have a very good idea of what I actually sound like in Russian. I guess what I really sound like is foreign. Still, I wonder how long it will take me, if I ever get there, to be able to adjust my speech for casual and formal conversations, to navigate the subtleties of communication, like knowing if someone is being passive aggressive or things like that. At the same time, there is a certain freedom that comes with speaking a language at the level that I speak Russian. I can basically say whatever I need to say, but I can't worry about using the right tone or being delicate because I don't know how.

On the other hand, I am basically incapable of making jokes and if I ever try it results in confusion and awkward miscommunication.

The mysteries of Siberia

2010-02-17T08:02:00.000-08:00

Found a little tiny roll of toilet paper inside the roll of toilet paper:

Is it ok for me to talk about toilet paper on my blog?

Weather

2010-02-14T01:34:00.000-08:00

It's hard not to always be saying something about the weather when you live in a place where the weather is undeniably pretty awful for a large portion of the year. I try not to dwell on the cold too much, but I'm going to allow myself a quick weather post anyway.

All I really wanted to say is that today and yesterday were two of the warmest days we've had since the end of November. It was about 14°F outside today, and I felt ready to start wearing my fall coat. I was sitting on the bus thinking "Wow, it really feels like Spring! It must be so warm! I wonder why there is no snow melting." Then when I checked the weather back in my apartment I realized it is still 100% winter, with temperatures that I would have considered quite cold back in Ohio.

So there's my thought for today.

Oh! Also, ate a lot of blins this afternoon with my buddies Katya and Yana, and I encourage my friends back home to make themselves some pancakes today to celebrate Maslenitsa.

Pikra

2010-02-12T01:01:00.001-08:00

It's the end of another week in Krasnoyarsk, and this one has been pretty laid back. Yesterday I went on a tour of the Baltika Brewery here (what was once the independent company "Pikra") as a part of the International Office's orientation events for five new Czech students. It was fun to tour the brewery of a pretty crappy beer company with a bunch of Czechs. There was clearly a lot of Czech beer pride in the air, and there were several moments when they started explaining different beer related things to the guide. The tour concluded with a tasting, but they didn't even give us beer from the tap and a lot of it was luke warm. Nothing to help the fact that the beer is pretty bad to begin with. But it was fun to see a million 2 liter plastic bottles of Arsenalnoe, and they gave us big Baltika bar glasses at the end. Also got that thing on my finger in the picture below--it's a little tube that will eventually become one of those 2 liter plastic bottles and keep some delish beer tasting fresh.

I'm in a particularly stay-at-home kind of mood at the moment, but I feel ok about it. It's cold and I've got lots of nice food and tea and movies and books.

Coping Mechanism

2010-02-09T01:40:00.001-08:00

Even though it's only the beginning of February, the refrain I keep hearing around here (and saying to myself) is "when will it be Spring?" Siberians might be used to these long rough winters, but I don't think that means they enjoy them.

Listening to these guys while pretending the lamp in my kitchen emits tropical sunshine has been helping my winter blues.

It's Real

2010-02-06T08:37:00.000-08:00

I thought it was just decorative, but turns out its a real, out of commission rocket! Cool. Love you Aerospace University. More info here

Space Jams

2010-02-05T03:48:00.000-08:00

I went to my friend's graduation ceremony this afternoon and was thrilled to hear the Star Wars theme song playing in the background as the young cosmic experts walked accross the stage. Why didn't I get that at my graduation? Would have been so much more epic...

I forgot to mention

2010-02-04T10:39:00.000-08:00

Probably the biggest surprise I got coming back here was the gigantic red-tipped rocket-monument that now towers imposingly over the main campus building. It was erected in celebration of SibSAU's 50th anniversary, which is this year. The university's main building is 7 stories high, and this sputnik is a good story or two taller. It's got some serious girth too. The whole scene strikes a stark contrast after the stately Euro-Academic style of Tomsk, but I feel pretty satisfied with my ultra-macho-cosmonaut variant of academia.

Back at it

2010-02-04T03:03:00.000-08:00

I arrived back in Krasnoyarsk today at 12, and couldn't have wasted time if I tried. By 3 I was at the university, meeting with people, trying to rearrange my schedule so as not to be teaching on saturdays, getting an emergency translation correction assignment, handing over documents to get myself all officially situated again, etc. It was a little overwhelming, but I saw a lot of faces I'd missed and was warmly greeted by some of my favorite students in the halls.

It's always a slightly shocking transition to start work or school again after as long of a vacation as I've had. But one can't be on vacation forever.

It's been an excellent January, and I feel lucky that even though I had to say goodbye to Oberlin, I still got to have a winter term. Phase II of my January travels began with an action packed couple of days in St. Petersburg with Fulbright colleagues Matt, Brendan, Riley and Kevin (stationed in Vladivostok, Tomsk, Kyzyl, and Novosibirsk, respectively), followed by a few days of Fulbright seminar in Moscow. Throughout our time in the capital cities, we played hours and hours of cards, and spoke English together with a special kind of ferocity bred most likely by the glut of native speakers to associate with in our provincial outposts.

The end of the Moscow conference put Brendan, Riley and I on a train back to Siberia. Train life was so soothing I felt like I could potentially have made it all the way to Vladivostok. We continued to play a lot of cards, sang some songs, ate lots of products, slept a lot, and made a new friend who wanted to know everything we could tell her about the Caribbean--which wasn't much.

Two days and two nights rolled right by, as did a solid chunk of the Russian Federation, and we popped up in Novosibirsk without a very clear idea of how we were going to get to our next stops. Brendan and I left Riley at the train station to head home to her Tuvan clan, and began some complicated negotiations with taxi drivers to get back to Tomsk. We eventually agreed on a scheme that involved taking a taxi to catch up with the last bus which had left a half hour before. As crazy as it sounded, it worked out ok and we made it to our destination. The next few days involved more cards, more relaxing, more jokes about words, and then, at long last, it was time for me to head back to Krasnoyarsk.

So here I am, and here I will be for a while longer. Stay tuned.

2010-01-19T05:32:00.000-08:00

A little more detail on our excursion to Port Said.

There and Back Again

2010-01-17T22:50:00.000-08:00

Back in the Yarsk, spending 15 minutes arming myself against the cold before leaving the house, keeping a constant eye to the sky on the lookout for falling icicles, breathing the icy air and savoring the few rays of sun that make it in through the haze. My trip to Egypt was too action packed to thoroughly describe, so I'll do a little review list-style:

1. Passed many nights at Horreya and Stella Bars, drinking the exeptional Egyptian brew "Stella" with Max S. and Max W., talking mostly about Egypt, Oberlin, and the future. The fact is I went to Egypt for the company, and the company was exceptional.

2. Max and I went to Siwa and saw what I can only imagine must be the most beautiful Oasis in the world and the surrounding Great Sand Sea. It is a truly spectacular place--historically, culturally, and aesthetically. I felt like I was in a cartoon.

3. I ate some good food despite the fact that Egypt has a pretty abysmal culinary tradition involving a lot of pasta with a side of rice on bread, and that I was constantly fighting to keep my poops solid (TMI?) Some highlights were a delicious pigeon stuffed with rice on a bed of grains, camel stew, and a mountain of fresh, tasty, and incredibly cheap crabs in Port Said on the Suez Canal.

4. We met a real British ship captain at the bar in Port Said. He told us about big ships and how there used to be brothels all over the place and how he had a wife and "uh... four children" in Thailand. He didn't seem totally solid on the number of children he had out there in Thailand and we couldn't really figure out how he was swinging living simultaneously in Port Said and on his rice farm in the tropics, but we were thoroughly charmed by his Irish sailory-ness and his Irish sailor tattoo.

5. I saw the pyramids with Max W. while Max S. was busy being a working man. We got swindled despite our best efforts to avoid it and we got followed around by crowds of dudes with camels trying to sell us camel rides. But nonetheless we succeeded in seeing the pyramids. They're pretty spectacular even though navigating the hustlers and tourists is kind of a nightmare.

That's not really all, but it's all I've got for now.

Upcoming: St. Petersburg, Moscow, Transsiberian Railroad, Fulbright comaraderie

Egypt so far

2010-01-04T04:21:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure I could have chosen a more radically different place to go on vacation from Siberia than Egypt. Although Egypt is actually a very popular vacation destination for Russians, when people ask me where I came from, telling them I came from Siberia feels kind of like saying I came from Mars. And when I think of Krasnoyarsk, the blue light, the frosted trees, the sun crawling across the horizon all day, the steaming Yenisei, it does seem like another planet.

I arrived here just in time to ring in 2010 on a party boat on the Nile, and since then I've seen the mangled faces of ancient Egyptian Pharaohs, Tutankhamun's golden death mask, two enormous mummified crocodiles, and marveled at how much energy went into death in Ancient Egypt.

It seems like all you need to open a business here is a little bit of space and some kind of something to sell. I walked past a storefront the other day that was completely empty except for one enormous lamb shank hanging from the ceiling. The shop keeper was just standing under the shank giving it some gentle pats. In every nook and cranny of the city there is a collection of men sitting, chilling, drinking coffee. I love a culture that loves to sit, and Max and I have spent a lot of time going from coffee shop to juice stand to coffee shop.

One of Max's favorite places, a bar called Harreyyia (which I am definitely spelling completely wrong) might be the best beer drinking space I have ever encountered. It's great for people watching, always full of a diverse collection of ex-pats and eccentric old Egyptian men, and the waiter likes Max so much he gives him a poke in the ribs every once in a while. They offer one kind of beer for about $1.50 a bottle and an endless supply of what I like to call peni-beans, a funny pickled bean beer snack. I'm starting to think I could happily drink only Stella beer only at this place for the rest of my life. Although honestly I could do without the peni-beans.

Tonight we're heading into the desert, to Siwa, a complex of Oases near the Libyan border where the locals speak Berber, not Arabic. Alexander the Great once traveled to Siwa to consult the great Oracle of Amun, which (who?) was so powerful that entire armies tried to get to Siwa to destroy it and were swallowed up by sand storms. We're going to bike around, swim in hot springs, and go sandboarding.

My life is ok.

I got so many train tickets

2009-12-25T19:36:00.000-08:00

Feeling Momentous Feelings

2009-12-25T09:26:00.001-08:00

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.

2009-12-22T10:08:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-18T05:05:00.000-08:00

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"

2009-12-14T07:31:00.000-08:00

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.

2009-12-13T02:20:00.001-08:00

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

2009-12-11T10:55:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-06T02:48:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-05T20:14:00.000-08:00

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.

2009-12-05T20:05:00.000-08:00

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?

2009-12-02T00:33:00.000-08:00

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.

Learnin'

2009-11-30T06:08:00.001-08:00

Basically the way I teach my classes is by making my students read articles about things I think are interesting and then making them explain in detail everything I've ever wondered about Russia. Today I learned about all the different varieties of Russian villages, and there were a lot more than I knew: derevnya: basic village, selo: basic village+church, posyolok: a little bigger, posyolok gorodskovo tipa: a "village of the city type." There was some argument about this last one. It seems like it's a really tiny town, but the people that live there don't necessarily grow cabbages and raise pigs, they might just live in apartments.

And then there was the sovkhoz/kolkhoz, which some students argued shouldn't be considered. Those are the remnants of soviet collective farms, they are groups of villages that continue to share some collective land that they cultivate together. "Basically they don't know that the Soviet Union ended," explained one girl.

I'm pretty sure I learn more from them than they learn from me.

2009-11-29T00:11:00.000-08:00

The hours of real daylight are very few these days, I took these pictures at around 2:30 pm. It doesn't get dark until 5 or 6, but most of the day feels like evening.

Traffic Jamz

2009-11-28T09:01:00.001-08:00

Traffic jams in this city are a big problem, always. But the past couple days the problem has become extreme. On Friday my friend waited two hours for a taxi to take him from the center of the city to our Thanksgiving celebration on the right bank. Another friend walked for an hour home from her university instead of sitting in traffic for three hours. My friend Istvan and I waited for an hour at my apartment for a taxi to transport us and five or six bags of food to another apartment. Usually you can count on a taxi coming within 15 or 20 minutes. Where we were headed was only about twenty minutes away but it took us another hour to get there.

The next day the same problems confounded Irina's birthday party. We had to call six taxi companies before we could find one that would even send a taxi to our side of the river.

It seems as though the reason for this constant gridlock is that it has been snowing here pretty much non-stop for about a week now and the roads are in a bad bad state. It's not a snow storm, it's just a steady snow fall, and it's really starting to pile up. Walking around town or riding in a car feels like trekking around the woods. The snow piled up so slowly and steadily that I didn't really even notice how much there was until I was in a bus that spent 15 minutes spinning its wheels before finally successfully pulling away from the bus stop. All this snow and traffic makes driving a free for all. Cars drive on the trolley tracks to by-pass the traffic, and another bus I was on took a detour onto the sidewalk and through a parking lot to get to the next bus stop. It seems the vehicles here have very good tires.

2009-11-26T03:55:00.000-08:00

I went to visit a school today where my friend Inna works. The kids gave me these presents, they painted them themselves. One girl asked for my autograph. It made me feel nice.

Thoughts on teaching and time

2009-11-23T07:08:00.000-08:00

When I was in 8th grade, I had something like 5 different math teachers, one after the other. The reason was that some of my classmates kept scaring them off. I remember that two of them were teaching for the first time, and I'm pretty sure they left the profession. The first teacher's main strike against him was that he had no ears, he was born without them and he had prosthetic ears. He explained it to us at the beginning of the year, but it was too juicy of an abnormality for 14 year olds not to torture him for it.

The same thing happened my sophomore year of high school with a french teacher, also just out of college and teaching for the first time. My classmates terrorized her so badly that the counselors had to come in and conduct group therapy with my class. They made us pass around a talking piece.

After seeing these idealistic young people crash and burn, I promised myself that whatever I might do in the future, I wouldn't teach teenagers.

So now I guess I'm a teacher, but don't worry, I'm not about to say that my students are sucking the youthful life force out of me. My students are actually pretty great, and I like teaching. But sometimes they just won't stop chatting with each other and I have to do some scolding. That happened today, and it was annoying, but it reminded me of those teachers that my peers pounced on way back when. And then I thought about how funny it is that these days it's me standing in the front of the classroom.

Striking a Deal

2009-11-19T06:23:00.000-08:00

There isn't really any recycling in Russia, but there is some kind of bottle deposit program that I don't really understand. Mostly what I don't understand is where you take the bottles and who gives you the money for them. I see people standing outside sometimes with crates of bottles, and I guess they are collecting them, but that's about as much as I've figured out.

I always feel bad about throwing away glass bottles, and I've thought about trying to crack into the bottle deposit market, but now I don't have to. This morning I was carrying out the trash on my way to work. It had been a while, and I had accumulated several bags of glass bottles. My neighbor must have heard me clanking in the hallway, because she came out and, I assume, asked me if I was going to return the bottles. I didn't understand that question really, but I eventually figured out that she wanted my bottles. So I gave her my bags of bottles, and promised to leave all future bottles I might collect outside her door. This works out great for me--I don't have to lug bottles down nine floors, and I get to feel like I'm kind of recycling. I guess it works out for her too because she gets some bottles.

Recap

2009-11-14T19:07:00.000-08:00

It turned out our swine flu vacation was extended for another week, so I decided to take a couple days to see some other Siberian cities, specifically Novosibirsk and Tomsk, where fellow fulbrighters Kevin and Brendan were slaving away with no swine flu vacation.

Some thoughts/things that happened:

1. On the train ride to Novosibirsk a lady I was sitting next to gave me some sap to chew on. It tasted like trees.

2. Novosibirsk's regional museum is almost as good as the one in Krasnoyarsk. I got to feast my eyes on some shaman coats.

3. In Novosibirsk they have nice Irish pubs and I went to one.

4. Tomsk is adorable, they play choral music in the park and it's super mystical.

5. Tomsk is home to some of the best blinis I've had in Russia.

6. It's hard to go back to work when you haven't had to do anything for a long time except be with nice friends.

Siberiana

2009-11-08T08:49:00.001-08:00

I got my serious winter coat today. It kind of makes me feel like a princess.

A Guest

2009-11-08T08:29:00.000-08:00

Helen and Sam (my visitors) frequent the Russian baths in New York, and they became acquainted recently with a woman, Anya, who works there. When they told Anya that they were going to Krasnoyarsk, they found out that she has a brother who lives here, and she gave them his number. So today we decided to call Yuri. Within a half hour of calling, he had driven over to my apartment. It was kind of exciting for me to attempt to entertain the Russian way, if only on a small scale, and we prepared a passable tea set-up (honey, jam, tea, chocolate).

Yuri doesn't speak much English, so I got to play the translator, a role which I thoroughly enjoy. He hung out with us for an hour or so, and it was lovely. We three twenty-something Americans had such comfortable, interesting conversations with this sixty-something Russian man, despite the seemingly immense age, culture, and language barriers.

I continue to be amazed by how kind people here are. Yuri helped us decipher some documents related to Helen's family history, which she has been investigating, including one in Hebrew. And tomorrow his son is coming to take Sam and Helen to see the big dam nearby while I'm at work. He also showed us the right way to eat the smoked fish Sam and Helen got at Lake Baikal.

Да Здраствует Октябрь!

2009-11-06T23:47:00.000-08:00

This morning I stopped by Revolution Square in the city center to check out the celebrations for Great October Revolution Day (which is today). There were 100 or so of Krasnoyarsk's fur-clad elders gathered on the square with red flags and red flowers and big smiles. I got there just at the end, in time to hear them play (and sing along to) the Soviet national anthem. I must be a sucker for nationalistic music or something, because I felt weirdly emotional when the song started playing. All the babushkas and dedushkas looked so happy, and when the song ended they all hugged each other. I don't harbor any Soviet nostalgia (it's sort of impossible given my age and citizenship), but I felt a little heart-warmed by the whole scene. Maybe just because I rarely see members of the demographic represented looking anything like happy. I also loved the lyrics to the song that was playing as they all dispersed: "Lenin--so young! Lenin--so young!"

I had a funny/embarrassing experience later while I was walking around the center. Some people were standing on a corner, they stopped me and asked me whether I thought the power of business or social organization was more... something, didn't quite understand. Then they gave me a ball and led me to a plastic stand thing with a hole on either side, "power of business" written on one side and "social organization" written on the other side. I didn't really know what was going on or what I was supposed to do. I thought "ball... hole..." and then I threw the ball. The ball didn't go into either hole, of course. Then they all laughed at me and told me I was just supposed to put the ball in one of the holes, thereby expressing my choice. No need for hand-eye coordination. So, I made my choice. And I'll leave it to you to guess which choice I made.

Weird World

2009-11-04T20:10:00.000-08:00

gourmet magazine closed
for some reason this makes me feel very anxious and sad

BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS BOOKS

2009-11-04T04:06:00.000-08:00

I just finished the one real novel I brought with me from home (The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro, in case you were interested). Luckily Helen and Sam brought lots of books along on their Eurasian expedition and might leave a couple for me. But even with this small potential replenishment, I was in a vulnerable state when I went to the "Krasnoyarsk Market of Book Culture" today. I met my Russian teacher Elena Ivanovna there, and we spent several hours looking at what the many publishers had to offer. The book market isn't really just a market. There are lots of talks and readings, and there was some serious contemporary art music/poetry/noise music/but not that noisey/spoken word stuff going on too. The noise/poetry/art music group might have been interesting to watch except that they really had no stage presence, and the girl standing making sighing noises into the microphone looked like she could be giving a class presentation or introducing the next act at a talent show or something. No artsy intensity-- disappointing.

Anyway, Elena Ivanovna and I were good at encouraging each other to buy things. I got five books, four of them in Russian. My purchases were rather ambitious. I sometimes forget that the fact that I can read the title and can tell that if I could really read Russian the book would be interesting doesn't mean that I will actually be able to read and enjoy it. But, I figure it isn't that bad for me to have more interesting books in Russian than in English. Maybe I will finally really, really learn this language!

This is what I got:

1. Collection of Solzhenitsyn short stories
2. A book about Stalin era politics in Siberia and the Urals. Even though this is really the kind of book I would have a hard time getting into in English, I just felt like I needed it.
3. A book about Soviet and Stalinist film
4. A book called "There is Light Everywhere" that is a collection of stories and excerpts from novels and memoirs about living in a totalitarian system. It's published by the Marina Tsvetaeva museum in Moscow. It's actually a kind of reader for high school students and should probably be at a pretty reasonable level for me.
5. "Unforced Labors" by Ariadna Efron and Ada Federolf. This book I bought in English translation, also from the Tsvetaeva museum publishers. Their publishing company is called "Return" and all of their books have to do with the Gulags and political repression. Happy stuff. The Tsvetaeva museum ladies got excited when they found out I was American and gave me lots of postcards as a present for "coming so far."

The whole day was lovely, and put me in a very good mood, even though all the books I bought have to do with prison and totalitarianism. But I just drank some kefir and ate some dried fishies, and I'm feeling in general like this is the place that I live, and I like it.

SWINE FLU VACATION

2009-11-02T18:45:00.000-08:00

I haven't really figured out how scary this whole swine flu thing actually is, but it is making some waves here in Krasnoyarsk. Yesterday I went to teach my class, and five girls sitting in the back were wearing surgical masks. Every time I had a little cough (left over from my thoroughly blogged about illness last week) they cringed and tightened their masks around their faces. Then, about halfway through the first period I had with the group, someone got a message or a phone call or something telling them that the university was closing for the rest of the week in order to give it a good rub down and get rid of all the swiney germies everywhere. They could all go home at the end of the period. Everyone was obviously really happy about this, but it seemed like the girls in the masks were legitimately relieved that they could leave the germ infested university, go home, and lock the doors of their apartments against the swine flu.

I happened to have a second period with this same group, and during the break they were all furiously discussing the situation and whether they should stay for the rest of my class or not. This conversation was happening in Russian, and one girl kept saying "explain it to Helen! explain it to Helen!" Luckily I understood all by myself, and wasn't too confused when everyone rushed out and forgot to explain it to Helen. Three devoted (and brave?) students decided to stick around, and the rest of class was pretty nice, actually. Now what am I going to do all week?!

HALLOWEEN

2009-10-31T01:55:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I invited my English Club to my apartment to celebrate halloween. It was pretty fun. As you can see, I got a Russian flag painted on my face. In this picture I am eating a blinchik so as to be extra Russian. Now my dear visiting friends are slumbering sweetly in the other room. I'm looking forward to showing them Krasnoyarsk--if they ever wake up ;)

Side Note

2009-10-29T02:15:00.000-07:00

I saw this on iheartphotograph today, it's from a collection of "propaganda photographs from the u.s. office of war information that are on the library of congress website. they were made by a photographer named alfred t. palmer around 1942"

It's kind of amazing how much the posing and gestures of the people feels similar to contemporary staged narrative photographs. cool stuff.

Back when the weather was fine

2009-10-27T07:43:00.000-07:00

...two weeks ago

"TNT [television station] Best Antidepressant!"

that's just not how I feel about television stations

СНЕГОПОД!

2009-10-25T22:01:00.000-07:00

This morning I awoke to this lovely scene outside my window:

I love the Russian word for snow storm (though this isn't really a snow storm), because the most apt translation seems to me to be "fall o' snow" (снег=snow, под=fall)

I'm not sure how well the picture captures it, but it is really one of those lovely snow falls where the snow flakes are big clumps, and the look like they are coming from all directions, kind of floating around in the air. It makes me feel very cozy, if a little stir crazy, in this bed that I've been sitting in for the last 30 hours.

Imagine how good this blog would be if I wrote as much when I was doing something as I do when I am doing nothing.

Feeling loved

2009-10-24T22:03:00.000-07:00

Irina and her mother came to me this morning with

1. bananas
2. oranges
3. lemons
4. grapes
5. little pancakes
6. milk
7. jam
8. nuts
9. vitamins
10. another kind of vitamins
11. something for cough
12. nose drops
13. something for temperature
14. ibuprofen

and instructed me not to go to work tomorrow.

sick, hilarity ensues

2009-10-24T08:11:00.000-07:00

I was feeling pretty awful all day today. In the evening, Ira came over and we found that I had a fever of 101°, then we looked up the symptoms for swine flu and decided that I definitely had it. Ira's mother called the doctor, and a few minutes later a 21 year old boy in scrubs showed up at my door with Ira's father. He asked me lots of questions, but it seemed like most of them had more to do with details about my life than with my illness. He needed to know my address in the United States, what my job is here, etc. For a while it seemed like he was trying to suggest that I had carried this disease with me from the U.S. I told him I'd been here for two months, and I didn't think I'd carried the swine flu with me from Ohio (especially because there are over a hundred cases of swine flu in Krasnoyarsk).

He did that classic thing people do when they are talking to a foreigner. He would speak normally with Ira, and turn to me and say about twice as loudly "IS YOUR THROAT SORE?" or something like that.

In the end, he concluded that I didn't have swine flu, and was sick because of the Siberian cold. Ira asked him what we should do and he said something like "you don't know how to take care of a cold?" Then he made a list of things to drink and pills to take, including tea with jam and hot milk. The whole time Ira's father was giving him a hard time for being so young.

Once again, I'm grateful to Ira, and very thankful that I live in the same building as her and her family.

2009-10-24T03:03:00.000-07:00

This week was full of excitement at Siberian State Aerospace University. The long awaited Conference on International Management and Marketing in Higher Education finally took place. I gave my presentation and I think it went well. The head of the European Council for Business Education said I did a good job, but he also told me that I need to be more formal. Next time.

It's a relief to have it all finished with. The conference was kind of fun, it's always nice to have a break from routine, but I also got really tired of sitting, sitting, sitting, all day listening to people talk in Russian. It's hard enough to pay attention to things like that in my native language.

Now it's the weekend, but I'm staying home feeling rather ill. I'm taking the opportunity to catch up on the news in the USA (i.e. trying to figure out what that balloon boy story was all about and finding that I really don't care--surprise).

Connection

2009-10-20T06:37:00.000-07:00

Things I will do less of now that I have internet in my apartment:

1. Read
2. Sleep

The Saga Continues

2009-10-18T02:42:00.000-07:00

For friends and family wondering whether I have yet installed internet in my apartment the answer is no.

The hook-up men came, were thoroughly confounded by my "American Windows" computer, and told me to call in the specialists. They did, at least, install the cable. Now once I find my specialists, I'm good to go.

Getting Artsy in my Apartment

2009-10-18T01:24:00.000-07:00

You know how I love blurry things.

A couple of choice Russian absurdities

2009-10-16T06:48:00.000-07:00

1. When there is some kind of traffic accident, no one makes any attempt to move their cars. The cars just sit there in the middle of the road while the drivers argue about who hit whom and wait for police and insurance representatives to show up. Sometimes these little accidents cause traffic to stop for a mile. When I went into my apartment at 6pm this evening, there were two cars sitting in the middle of the road, one having bumped into the other. When I walked out at 8:30, the two cars were still there, the drivers sitting in the drivers' seats, despite the fact that I'm pretty sure both cars were still driveable.

2. Yesterday on the desk of the Guard-a-Robe (coat room) at the university there was a sign that said "not working." It was as if some kind of machine had shut down. The room was half full of coats, and two ladies were sitting behind the counter, hanging out. I thought at first it might be a lunch break or something, but walking past a couple hours later to find it still not working, it seemed as though something had.... what? gone wrong? Despite the presence of labor and space, which I'm pretty sure are the only things the Guard-a-Robe requires to work, everyone would have to be hauling their coats around that day.

I love/hate this country.

Hard Life

2009-10-16T06:15:00.000-07:00

I feel like a real russkaya these days. The weather got really cold, and the days got really short, and it all seems like it changed... yesterday. Now I go about in hat, scarf, gloves, boots, russian coat, and I look like a zhenishina. I don't yet know how I feel about this swift change. Just last week it was °60 and sunny in the afternoon (still struggling with Celcius, embarrassingly) and now it's snowing. But I guess that's what I get for moving to Siberia.

This week my beloved colleagues in the international office have been working overtime in a big way to prepare for this huge international business conference that's happening next week. I am giving a presentation at this conference and I have to say that in all my years of studying and pondering the future I never really saw myself presenting at a conference on international business held at Siberian State Aerospace University, but I'm excited about it.

What this conference frenzy has made me think about more than anything is how little people get paid in this country. I can't imagine that what the girls in the international office get paid works out to anything near minimum wage in the United States, especially when they are in the office from 10 am to 10 pm. The thing that is so baffling here is that it doesn't even really matter if you are well-educated and capable and do everything that needs to be done to make a comfortable place in the world for yourself. You still get paid nothing because everybody gets paid nothing. You are still going to be just scraping by, hoping for the basics.

Nothing in Particular

2009-10-14T05:28:00.000-07:00

Today I spent the better part of the day killing time at home awaiting the internet men to come hook me up. Sadly, hook up didn't happen. I'm back in Pitstsa Milano, using Safari because their internet can't handle Firefox. It'll have to be a short post because the international office has started outsourcing their graphic design work to me, and I've got to find some pictures on the net before my computer runs out of batteries.

Life in Krasnoyarsk is settling into a familiar schedule. I manage to be busy most of the time, and most of the time doing things I enjoy. This, I guess, is basically what one needs to be content. I've stumbled upon a crowd of international teachers of English, including a couple Americans named Matt, that I hope to see more of in the near future. My Russian lessons with my new teacher Elena Ivanovna are excellent. Most of the time we just discuss interesting things, and I speak very carefully in order to maintain correct grammar. Today we went over time a half hour. I really enjoy speaking with her, and we had an instant bond because if I were Russian, I would have the exact same name as her, down to the ochestvo.

I was also charmed when one of my students wrote her homework, a short composition on "where I would take a vacation in the U.S." connected to a geography lesson from the week before, on South Dakota. "If I went to the United States, I would go to South Dakota." I tried to explain why that was funny to me but, as usual, it didn't really get accross. The only thing is, I think all of my students copied their homework out of an encyclopedia. How am I supposed to react when a girl who can hardly answer the question "where are you from" tells me in perfect English that she very much wishes to visit the open-air museums of cape cod?

Photos from the loud park

2009-10-10T03:41:00.000-07:00

"Corporate and Family relaxation: GLADIATOR: Center for active relaxation: PAINTBALL"

Pretty picture, red things and smoke
I think I'll know I've lived in Russia too long when I stop finding this funny
Our Lenin is a good one.

Happenings

2009-10-08T22:32:00.000-07:00

Found out today, after doing a music listening activity in one of my classes, that Russians have been missing the B-52's. I don't even know what made me decide to include them, they aren't a group I listen to or think about much. But somehow my instincts served me well, everyone dug the B-52's in a serious way.

Two important personal successes in the realm of Living Alone in a Foreign Country:

1. Last night I made an extremely delicious meal for myself: half a chicken and half a bottle of red wine in a pot for a long time, onions, tomatoes, garlic, red pepper, a little bit of sausage, etc. It met the standards of a 123 feast, and half of it is waiting for me to eat for dinner tonight. (thanks to Max, by the way, for the suggestion).

2. Irina came over the other night and I realized at a certain point that we were having a really serious and interesting conversation ALL IN RUSSIAN. I’ve got a long way to go with my Russian skills, but the fact that I have built a real friendship in a foreign language makes me deeply happy (not least because I have a real friend).

Bad habit I have developed recently: Finding endless humor in English translations from Russian/funny text messages. I know it’s wrong but it feels so good to actually know my own language. Besides, I get laughed at all the time for my Russian.

To Moscow and back again

2009-10-08T00:05:00.000-07:00

Moscow was a fabulous break from Krasnoyarsk, but I was happy to find that I'm glad I am living in Siberia, not only because Moscow sucks away rubles with incredible efficiency. Krasnoyarsk is a nice, calm, interesting city with a lot going on, and here it is necessary to speak Russian to get around. Living only in Moscow doesn't provide much of an understanding of what life is like for most people in Russia.

Now I'm back, it's time to settle into Krasnoyarsk again. I have some projects, including finally taking some pictures for the blog, and also taking out the 4x5 for a spin (are you listening Pipo?) I'm also working on organizing a Halloween party for my English Club. Luckily I've got a couple enthusiastic members intent on having some fun, so I think we will be able to figure something out.

But what I must focus on most of all the next couple days is getting some rest! It turns out twenty ETAs in one hotel equals very little sleep. Add to that essentially two overnight flights, to and from Moscow, and I am amazed that I continue to walk around speaking Russian and teaching English. On my way back from the airport Wednesday morning at 6 am, my taxi driver wanted to take me to the little church on a hill in Krasnoyarsk (pictured on the 10 ruble bill) where there is a view of the whole city. "It's very beautiful at night!" he said, even after I told him that I'd already been there three times, at night and during the day. I had to explain that since I had just gotten off an all night plane ride and was supposed to be teaching in a few hours, all I really wanted was to go right home to bed. Though it was a strange proposition, I'm quite sure he just wanted the инностранка to see Krasnoyarsk's special sites.

Things and Other Things

2009-09-30T05:27:00.000-07:00

My life in Krasnoyarsk has somehow become almost chaotic. I am always running around. I'm not sure how or why I have become so busy, or even if I am busy. I think I might just use my time badly, i.e. spend a long time making myself breakfast. At any rate, it's not entirely a bad thing. Life feels like it's moving along. My apartment is getting cozier and cozier. When I think about snow falling outside my windows, it almost makes me look forward to the famous Siberian winter.

I just had my first slice of pizza in Russia. No news there, it tasted totally normal.

Speaking of normal, I appreciate how in Russian, when someone asks you how you are, or how your new apartment is, or how your sandwich is, or how your new boots are, you can just answer "normal." It feels so honest.

New Home

2009-09-22T23:03:00.000-07:00

A couple days ago I moved into an apartment. I'm thrilled to be in a permenant location, thrilled to know that I will not be lugging those enormous bags anywhere for quite a few months.

My kitchen is already full of dishes. The apartment was fully furnished, including silverware. On top of all that, I inherited several huge bags of household items from the last Fulbrighter here, and a Czech student who studied here last year. Everything I could ever thinking of needing was there--an iron, a shower curtain, a bathroom scale, an automatic teapot, a toaster... and even some little boxes of buttons and tape and kopeks. All of these belongings make me feel quite at home and remind me of old 123, another rented home full of years and years of other people's clutter. The only difference is 123 was also full of friends. I very much need to have some guests over to appreciate my new home.
My view from the ninth floor is, as you can see, excellent.
I fold out the couch to sleep. It's annoying but the bed is comfortable. Behing the curtain next to the window is the door to my weird little balcony. You have to be standing to see out the window there, but it is still nice.
In addition to having a new home, I bought some soy sauce. I can't wait to add some new flavors to my diet. In anticipation of moving, I haven't bought a lot of cooking things I usually use and have been seasoning mostly with salt. No pepper.

Hopefully I will be updating again soon, but at the moment I don't have an internet connection in my apartment and so internet visits are infrequent.

2009-09-20T06:34:00.000-07:00

This weekend I spent some time at the dacha of a new friend, Vova, with several of his friends and my fellow international students. We made shashlyk, we spent time in the banya, and the next day we had a big lunch with dacha vegetable soup. It was quite an experience. My favorite part, however, may have been the drive to the dacha. The scenery here is incredibly beautiful. It doesn't look like any other place I have ever been.

So many students!

2009-09-16T03:42:00.000-07:00

The most complicated part of my job here is keeping track of all the different classes I am responsible for. As I am a language assistant, and not a real teacher, most of my groups have English classes with me once every two weeks, and at other times with Russian teachers. My classes are all basically conversation/American culture classes. That's great, it's what I expected. What I didn't expect is that I would have eleven separate groups of students in three separate departments: "Management Tech" "Economics" "International Business" "Humanities/Business/PR" (as you can see, I haven't quite figured out exactly what that last one is... and I guess that is four departments?). I teach one to three classes a day, but I am never going to learn my students' names because after a couple minutes of calculation I realized that I have close to TWO HUNDRED different students.

It's too bad I couldn't focus my energy on a few groups, actually get to know them, and actually help them significantly with their English. But I guess this way everyone gets a little bit of face time with the native speaker?

Anyway, as I've said before, teaching is quite a job. I hope I'm doing ok. In all of my classes there are some very smart, excited kids that make my job a lot easier.

A few words, not about Russia

2009-09-15T06:26:00.000-07:00

Whether it was with the rotating cast at 123 S. Professor St., crammed with four people into Alexa's and my two-room firelands apartment, or even living with Valya in Moscow, I am used to sharing close quarters with a number of people.

Now, I am living alone for the first time. I like it sometimes, though it means having the same thing for dinner several days in a row. I find it almost impossible to cook a portion appropriate for just me. And it's not just the portions that are strange. When making dinner with someone else, it is unlikely that I would let myself have mashed potatoes and carrot salad for dinner. But with no one but me to object to eating only side dishes, it makes a rather good dinner.

Other than at meal time, living by myself feels very natural. Just something else to add to the list of things that are new about my life these days.

Krasnoyarsk is for lovers

2009-09-13T05:36:00.000-07:00

Today I took a lovely walk along the Yenisei. On every bench there was a couple or a mother and a baby sitting, soaking in the good weather. Krasnoyarsk is growing on me more and more. It's nice to be in a city not built around the assumption that everyone has a car. On every street there is a shoe store, a clothing store, a real grocery store, a taylor, etc.

Irina and I went to buy some things. She needed dress-pants for work, and I needed to buy the first phase of my winter clothing. The climate here requires a fall regime and a separate, more serious winter regime (very warm and even warmer). Today I bought my October to mid December/March and April coat. I also bought some very nice black wool gloves, of a sort hard to find in the U.S., but plentiful here. Later I will have to buy a December to February coat, and also some big wool mittens from the Babushki on the street. The fact is, I love winter, and I find all these winter clothes very exciting.

There is a more western-style mall on the edge of the city, but in the mall we went to, the stores were more like stalls, and many were not clearly marked with a name (just a coat store next to another coat store, some more expensive than others). There are boutique-y clothing stores that sell all variety of things; pants and coats and sweaters and hats. But there are more places where you just buy jeans, or just dress pants. There are plentiful shoe stores, of course, but also wallet stores and glove-hat-scarf stores. Once I had sorted out that I was looking for a "palto" and not a "kurtka" (a long coat, rather then a short coat) I soon found something. It is a rather Russian looking brown tweedy wool coat. I'm quite happy with it, though it only goes with a few of my scarves. It extends to my knees and would certainly be warm enough to brave an Iowa or Ohio winter. The coat I bought was made in St. Petersburg, a mark of quality according to the woman who sold it to me, and also according to Ira. I believe them, they certainly know how to make winter clothes in this country. They also have the most impressive and tantalizing selection of leather boots I have ever seen.

A nice weekend

2009-09-12T23:22:00.000-07:00

Can you imagine a more Russian scene?

I had a nice weekend, hanging out with Ira, Sergei (from USA), and Istvan, Victor, and Mark (the Hungarians). There are plans in place to visit a new acquaintance's family dacha next weekend--something I have wanted to do for as long as I've known what a dacha is. Shashlyk and a Banya... I also played durok for the first time in Russia.

Krasnoyarsk is a fun, laid back city. Now I am trying to figure out more successful ways to practice conversation than what I did in a couple classes last week. My attempts last week mostly dissolved into chaos. Although, remembering my own time in language classes, those kinds of activities often seem a little chaotic. But maybe there's some learning happening there too? I hope so. Teaching is hard.

another beautiful view of the Yesnisei and the Oktyabrskii Bridge

Comparisons, More Mushrooms

2009-09-08T06:42:00.000-07:00

I took some photos today along the river, from Tatyshev Island (or was it Otdykha? Not sure...) Over the week that I've been here I've begun to romanticize my semester in Moscow, and miss my Moscow compatriots. I yearn for those Thursday nights spent discussing all the messed up things we'd seen throughout the week over "bezplatnyi" at that seemiest of ex-pat hangouts, the Boar House. I think it is a symptom of being in a similar, but different place, with less of a built in social network.

Though I wish that I could skip over to Red Square and experience the majesty when I need to remember why I am living in Russia, I think Krasnoyarsk has a lot going for it. For example, in Moscow there are four 17-year old policemen on every street corner waiting to check your documents between sms's, and I assumed it was like that everywhere. But here the only police I've seen are traffic police. I have to admit this makes me feel more comfortable.

People in Krasnoyarsk climb up mountains for fun. Also, my foreign speech has been met far more frequently with smiles here than it ever was in Moscow. But Moscow will always have a special place in my heart. I'm very much looking forward to spending a few days there in October.

In other news, this is what I had for dinner: pelmeni, dacha mushrooms, and homemade dacha butter (the abundance of village produce is another thing I love about Krasnoyarsk, I'm looking forward to purchasing milk from a tank on the street)

I also went to aqua-aerobics class at the pool tonight. It was totally fun, and I think it is going to be great for my arthritis.

2009-09-07T05:11:00.000-07:00

Today I had my second day of classes. I think it went well. We spent a long time having a question and answer session about America and why I decided to come to Krasnoyarsk. Whether or not I "believe in Christ" also came up. It was altogether pretty fun (but don't worry, we later had Real Class and did some serious reading). The most complicated factor seems to be that some students have significantly weaker ability in English than others. As I try to encourage the weaker students to participate, the stronger students just answer questions, and if I try to push the quiet kids to talk, it just ends up being like I am picking on them. After class I spoke with two girls who seemed to truly not understand much of what I was saying during class, and they assured me that they enjoyed it very much anyway and learned some interesting new words. I don't know whether I believe them.

The other major event of my day was a trip to the University's swimming pool. As with almost anything in a foreign country, it was a bit of an adventure. First I was pushed from Kassa to Kontroller to Kontroller to Kassa, before I finally figured out that I had to pay 30 rubles (about $1) for a medical screening. At first I thought all I had to do was pay the thirty rubles, until I found myself in the screening office. A lady there took a quick look at my bare back and declared me fit to swim. I also met an Aqua-aerobics instructor who, upon hearing that I am an American English teacher, asked for my phone number. A few minutes later I seemed to have agreed to trade Aqua-aerobics classes for an hour of English lessons a week. Though I'm not sure I had much choice in the matter ("yes yes yes ok yes ok bye"), I figure it will give me some motivation to get to the pool every week, and also make me more than one middle aged lady friend.

Once in the pool, I first swam in the lanes reserved for the swim team, and then in the lane being rented out by some organization. Finally with only a lap or so more left in me, I settled into one of the two lanes I was allowed to be in.

Now, I feel generally refreshed and pretty good about things. I'm thankful to have access to a sauna.

A Regional Tour

2009-09-05T03:41:00.000-07:00

Today Irina took us to see beautiful places around Krasnoyarsk. I got to see the famous red cliffs (krasnyi yar) that give the city it's name.

And also to see the dam, which was not so beautiful but impressive in a different way (notice the intense red Lenin).

After this trip, I am having some feelings:

1. Krasnoyarsk is located in an exceptionally beautiful place.
2. I would be much happier if I had a car and a dacha with a vegetable garden (to complete my long awaited transformation into a Russian peasant woman).

It is very strange how quickly a big change becomes familiar. Already, my life in the United States feels so far away. I don't know what to make of my "life" in Krasnoyarsk yet, because it is so new and I hardly know anyone at all and haven't started any kind of routine. But Krasnoyarsk feels very familiar to me. I don't feel anything that seems like it should be called culture shock, I think I feel something more like culture numbness. Everything seems like it should feel stranger than it feels. I think this feeling might be related to the fact that I know I am going to be here for a very long time, and right now my life just doesn't seem real.

At any rate, I am enjoying my Ryazhenka and Kefir and dacha mushrooms, as well as the acquaintances I've made (from left, Sergei-American, Mark-Hungarian, Jan-Czech, Irina, Me, Ales-Czech, Jan-Czech).

I keep reminding myself that it has only been a week and it is impossible to expect to feel at home in such a far away place in a week.

Also, I had a funny moment today when I was standing on a short stone wall next to a staircase, outside of a ski resort that we visited, and the security guard came by and told me to get down. He was muttering something, and I'm almost positive he was saying that they have "professional stones," as in the wall.

Anyway, Russia.

A New Life Begins

2009-09-03T22:42:00.000-07:00

I had my first day of teaching today. It feels strange to be on the other side of the classroom, but I already feel I am getting used to it. My first class was Business English, and business is admittedly not a topic that I am particularly knowledgeable about. But it will be good for me to learn and I feel ready to competently teach e-mail etiquette and such things.

Along with beginning classes, apartment searching is the main event in my life. After seeing a lovely apartment earlier this week, I decided I didn't want to take it because it was the first one I'd seen. Then I went to see an apartment that seemed to be covered, floor and walls, with yellow plastic. It had no bathroom sink and what looked like a very uncomfortable fold-out couch for a bed. Though the woman showing the apartment insisted it had "wonderful technical features," I realized that the first apartment I'd seen was perfect and I desperately wanted to live there. Unfortunately, by that time it was too late.

The International Office is acquainting me and the international students (3 Czechs, a Hungarian, and another American) with the important sites of the area. Yesterday we went to the Surikov House Museum, located in one of the Siberian timber mansions that are a distinctive architectural phenomenon found in Krasnoyarsk. Many of them are still standing in the city center, some 200 years old. They appeal strongly to my most romantic notions about Russia, and I very much wish I could rent an apartment in one.

Sadly, it is impossible to live in a museum, and so the search continues. I plan to take some photos this weekend, and come up with some witty and interesting new things to post about. It's sunny today, and I got a beautiful view of the city and the Yenisei from the 9th floor of Corpus G, where the Business English classes take place.

Praise to the City on the Yenisei

2009-08-31T08:03:00.000-07:00

After a long walk around downtown Krasnoyarsk today, I'm starting to realize what an exceptionally nice city this seems to be. There are mountains all around and lots of parks downtown. A big island in the middle of the river that runs through the city can be accessed by footbridge from downtown. People rent bikes and roller blades and roll around the island. I'm pretty much on my own at the moment, not having started work at all. I don't know anyone, and so have no one to enjoy the many cafes with, but I am still happy to know they are there.

I now have internet in my dorm room, thanks to the hard work of Ross, on the fifth floor, who runs internet cables from a server to rooms all throughout the dorm. Setting it up involved a knock on my window to deliver the cable, and some extensive configuring on my computer. I probably shouldn't be indulging in American television right now, but I am too excited to resist watching the latest episode of Mad Men, now that I can.

First Days

2009-08-29T22:29:00.000-07:00

After arriving in Krasnoyarsk, I ran around with Irina and Ksenia from the international office at Siberian State Aerospace University, getting a phone card, getting groceries, seeing the University. Once Ira and the other girls left me in my rooms at the dormitory, I lay down to nap for a couple hours. I slept straight from 1 pm to 9 pm, and was shocked to find myself in Siberia when I woke up. I went outside for 10 minutes to try to take a little walk, but it was getting dark and I almost got lost trying to find the dormitory again. Back in my room I made some food and lay down again to sleep soundly enough through the night. I awoke in the morning feeling relatively refreshed, having slept nearly 20 hours altogether. I ventured out this morning and didn’t make it very far. It started raining and I was waiting for a phone call from Irina anyway, so I went home. After loitering around my rooms a little longer, I examined the Krasnoyarsk map and figured out that I hadn’t yet made it to the Big Street: Krasnoyarsk Rabochii.

On my second attempt later in the afternoon, I found Krasnoyarsk Rabochii and walked down it a ways. As far as I can tell, shoe stores and children’s clothing stores dominate the shopping possibilities. I was thrilled to find a big vegetable market down a side street. Old ladies were selling bright orange mushrooms and dark pink tomatoes, along with fresh parsley and dill and abundant pickling cucumbers. I felt reassured, after the mealy tomatoes I bought in the market yesterday, to know that there is good produce available. I found a big square and shopping mall where there were horses festooned in neon frills for little girls to trot around on. It seems bright colors are popular here. Near the dorm there is a row of four or five buildings, each painted bright blue or purple, one is fuscia. Maybe the buildings need to be bright because it is so dark and cold for most of the year.

Today was hot, but yesterday the girls told me it gets down to -40° C. I wasn’t too concerned, because I figured that -40° C was something like -13° F, not quite so bad. My converter widget informed me, however, that -40° is where Fahrenheit and Celsius converge. -40° C is equal to -40° F. That’s a cold I have never experienced. But let it come, I can handle it.

Pre-Departure

2009-08-24T13:25:00.000-07:00

My move to the other side of the world begins tomorrow morning at 6 AM. 36 hours later, with equal amounts of time spent in the air and waiting around airports, I will finally arrive in Krasnoyarsk. I'm excited, but mostly just feel anxious at the moment.

Nonetheless, I'm looking forward to meeting new people, to Cyrillic letters all around, to cool, and then very cold weather, to speaking my second language with increasing fluency, to eating a lot of beets and fermented milk products, to getting to know a new place and finding a space for myself there. I hope this blog will constitute a simple, straightforward account of my year in Siberia.

By the way, I highly recommend Ian Frazier's recent, two-part New Yorker article about Siberia. Keep an eye out for when he calls Krasnoyarsk "the most beautiful city in Siberia." The article is great, though not available online.