So it's been forever (aka a week) since my last entry. I keep meaning to write more often, but last week's schedule kind of went out the window, since we had a visit from the head director. This also entailed much scolding in the days immediately prior, since we weren't supposed to speak English around said director. Said director *also* scolded us for being the city that doesn't speak Russian. Those of us interested in speaking Russian at school (wow, that sounds pompous) are trying to find ways to make it work, but some days you just can't. I dunno - things have been better of late, so perhaps the changes will stick.
I still have yet to determine whether or not Russians perform Sousa, but they certainly do play jazz. I went to a jazz concert at the philharmonic on Thursday night - "A Portrait of Duke Ellington", and it was quite good. The instrumentalists were excellent, especially the trumpet soloist. There were three female singers - I thought the first two did a beautiful job, especially with regard to what must be the considerable difficulty of singing English language jazz without accent and with proper diction and all that - I really enjoyed their songs. The third singer, who was by far the favorite of the evening, had a voice like, in my oh so humble opinion, an angry cat. She certainly proved that singing scat is an American art... The philharmonic's sound engineers apparently fell asleep at the mixing board, though - the balance veered between standard jazz-loud and downright painful :-(
Saturday's excursion was "interesting", if you want to call it that. It consisted of hiking up two hills to gaze at what was essentially central Texas in March, and two tiny museums that were somehow related to the production of fish products in Astrakhan. The most interesting part was definitely the fact that both museums had an entire room devoted to the USSR and collectivization/Lenin/propoganda/the color red. It makes sense, but the joke was that either Lenin loved fish or fish loved Lenin... I'm now very interested in the role of women in the WWII in Russia, as the shrines to the honored veterans of the Great Patriotic War frequently include photos of highly decorated women - I've never heard much on the topic, and thus have no idea if they were factory workers, some sort of equivalent of WAVS/WACS, or something else entirely.
Sunday was a lovely free day - two of the other Americans, Shelley and Laura, and I went to the movies at a local mall. As usual, we grabbed the wrong marshytka - it's our hobby - but it went to a familiar stop and we were together, so no problems. We saw "Sex in the Big City", as the "Sex and the City" movie is called in Russia. It ended up being really bizarre - the movie is so very American, so walking back out into a Russian mall after watching it (in Russian, of course) was a little confusing - I had to ponder which continent I was on for a moment.
That's all I can come up with for now, but all of y'all should take care - I can't wait to be home and see all of you!
PS - Mom, could you e-mail me "Stars and Stripes Forever" from the I Love A Parade CD in time for the Fourth? It seems appropriate...
Monday, June 30, 2008
Monday, June 23, 2008
Not What I'm Supposed to Be Doing...
So, I'm supposed to be listening to either a) my phonetics disc or b) tomorrow's lecture (I'm not sure what's going on there...). Instead, I'm reading blogs and posting, so I can go home early instead of waiting for normal internet time. This isn't even what's on the schedule for this block, but they like to rearrange things for fun...
Quite a bit has happened since my last post: flood, theft, chastening, a trip, illness, and traffic violations (plural). And thus, Davai!
Flood: The flood waters arrived Thursday afternoon as we were riding home from an excursion to the book making factory/printing press (absolutely fascinating. Terribly inefficient, but absolutely fascinating.) Initially, pretty much everyone was glad to see the rain, because it would bring the temperature down. Problems started arising when it started raining hard and didn't stop. All the good Texans in the group figured that it'd pour for a bit and then stop, so we attempted to wait it out by sitting in the foreign exchange office and drinking tea. No such luck - we waited a good bit, and then realized that the rain definitely wasn't letting up. Thus, we went ahead and went to the stop to wait on marshytkas. I caught one pretty quickly, and proceeded to ride in a tiny van with 20 other people while our driver drove part of the way on the sidewalk in order, to a) avoid the flood waters and b) move around the mounds of non-moving traffic. I thought the woman sitting across from me was going to have either a heart attack or salvation experience every time we tilted dangerously while lurching on and off of curbs... My normal commute tripled in length (it took about an hour and a half), but I'm just grateful that our marshytka never joined the legions of stalled vehicles with flooded engines that were all over the roadways. Water was knee-deep in several places - a few students in our program were in cars that lost complete contact with the ground and floated for a while. Fun times.
Theft: Not me, but poor Ross had his wallet stolen from our super-full marshytka on stipend day, no less. Boo Russian thieves.
Chastening: While we were being scolded for our decidedly lacidasical attitude towards the Russian-only pledge, I brilliantly piped up with the comment that it's hard to get others to do it, as no one wants to be the "Russian Police". Apparently, we are supposed to be the Russian Police (rysskie militsia) in the name of "community policing". I'm trying harder, but I'm pretty sure community policing requires some level of commitment from the whole community. *le sigh*
Trip: Volgograd/Stalingrad again - my favorite (honestly. Hard as it is to believe, I do occaisionally ditch the sarcasm). I had a bigger memory card in my camera and I bought a picture pass in the museum, so lots of pictures to come. We had a lecture over the Great Patriotic War (essentially, the war of Russia against Germany - occured simultaneously with WWII, but is generally regarded as a semi-separate entity. I think.) prior to the trip and I took two pages of notes in Russian - this is apparently impressive. Train was normal and all that jazz.
Illness: The only downside of the Volgograd trip - the restaurant that we've now eaten at three times apparently didn't do so well Saturday night, and early Sunday morning found me befriending the trash can at the end of the train car. (TMI, I know, but if you've ever been sick by yourself in a foreign country, you know it stinks...)
Traffic Violations: In the last week, my marshytka has been pulled over by the militsia (police) twice. This morning, it was my fault. I was riding standing, which may or may not be technically illegal - it's certainly common practice, but who knows? Anyway, I was standing when we got pulled over. I thought it was a stop, so I was looking for who was getting off (generally, the standers have to pile out so that people can exit), when everyone started telling me to get to the back of the marshytka. I complied and squatted with the other guy who'd been standing. What I didn't understand was that I was supposed to be *hiding* from the militsia - I thought everything'd be okay as long as I was sitting-level. So of course the militsioner saw me and detained our driver for almost an hour, while I sat on the bus and everyone glared at me. When everything got sorted out, the driver was clearly pretty ticked, so I got off a few stops early, rather than risk being alone with him. I felt/still feel absolutely terrible - I'm sure he had to pay a fine, and he lost work while we were waiting, but I almost always ride part way standing up - half the time, it's the only way to get a marshytka in the morning from my stop. I'd figured it was okay, since two people got off at my stop (hence, two places in theory), and there was already another guy squatting in the floor. I'm kind of scared to ride the marshytka again (not like I have a choice), and I'm going to try and avoid that particular one for a while, but I don't know... At least half my class rode standing today, the three of us who rode back from the theater all stood partway... I hate subjective laws!
I think that's all of our excitement. Well, at least, it's excitement for me - it might be really boring to read. So if you don't get throught it all, don't worry - I still love you!
Quite a bit has happened since my last post: flood, theft, chastening, a trip, illness, and traffic violations (plural). And thus, Davai!
Flood: The flood waters arrived Thursday afternoon as we were riding home from an excursion to the book making factory/printing press (absolutely fascinating. Terribly inefficient, but absolutely fascinating.) Initially, pretty much everyone was glad to see the rain, because it would bring the temperature down. Problems started arising when it started raining hard and didn't stop. All the good Texans in the group figured that it'd pour for a bit and then stop, so we attempted to wait it out by sitting in the foreign exchange office and drinking tea. No such luck - we waited a good bit, and then realized that the rain definitely wasn't letting up. Thus, we went ahead and went to the stop to wait on marshytkas. I caught one pretty quickly, and proceeded to ride in a tiny van with 20 other people while our driver drove part of the way on the sidewalk in order, to a) avoid the flood waters and b) move around the mounds of non-moving traffic. I thought the woman sitting across from me was going to have either a heart attack or salvation experience every time we tilted dangerously while lurching on and off of curbs... My normal commute tripled in length (it took about an hour and a half), but I'm just grateful that our marshytka never joined the legions of stalled vehicles with flooded engines that were all over the roadways. Water was knee-deep in several places - a few students in our program were in cars that lost complete contact with the ground and floated for a while. Fun times.
Theft: Not me, but poor Ross had his wallet stolen from our super-full marshytka on stipend day, no less. Boo Russian thieves.
Chastening: While we were being scolded for our decidedly lacidasical attitude towards the Russian-only pledge, I brilliantly piped up with the comment that it's hard to get others to do it, as no one wants to be the "Russian Police". Apparently, we are supposed to be the Russian Police (rysskie militsia) in the name of "community policing". I'm trying harder, but I'm pretty sure community policing requires some level of commitment from the whole community. *le sigh*
Trip: Volgograd/Stalingrad again - my favorite (honestly. Hard as it is to believe, I do occaisionally ditch the sarcasm). I had a bigger memory card in my camera and I bought a picture pass in the museum, so lots of pictures to come. We had a lecture over the Great Patriotic War (essentially, the war of Russia against Germany - occured simultaneously with WWII, but is generally regarded as a semi-separate entity. I think.) prior to the trip and I took two pages of notes in Russian - this is apparently impressive. Train was normal and all that jazz.
Illness: The only downside of the Volgograd trip - the restaurant that we've now eaten at three times apparently didn't do so well Saturday night, and early Sunday morning found me befriending the trash can at the end of the train car. (TMI, I know, but if you've ever been sick by yourself in a foreign country, you know it stinks...)
Traffic Violations: In the last week, my marshytka has been pulled over by the militsia (police) twice. This morning, it was my fault. I was riding standing, which may or may not be technically illegal - it's certainly common practice, but who knows? Anyway, I was standing when we got pulled over. I thought it was a stop, so I was looking for who was getting off (generally, the standers have to pile out so that people can exit), when everyone started telling me to get to the back of the marshytka. I complied and squatted with the other guy who'd been standing. What I didn't understand was that I was supposed to be *hiding* from the militsia - I thought everything'd be okay as long as I was sitting-level. So of course the militsioner saw me and detained our driver for almost an hour, while I sat on the bus and everyone glared at me. When everything got sorted out, the driver was clearly pretty ticked, so I got off a few stops early, rather than risk being alone with him. I felt/still feel absolutely terrible - I'm sure he had to pay a fine, and he lost work while we were waiting, but I almost always ride part way standing up - half the time, it's the only way to get a marshytka in the morning from my stop. I'd figured it was okay, since two people got off at my stop (hence, two places in theory), and there was already another guy squatting in the floor. I'm kind of scared to ride the marshytka again (not like I have a choice), and I'm going to try and avoid that particular one for a while, but I don't know... At least half my class rode standing today, the three of us who rode back from the theater all stood partway... I hate subjective laws!
I think that's all of our excitement. Well, at least, it's excitement for me - it might be really boring to read. So if you don't get throught it all, don't worry - I still love you!
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
A Continuation (of sorts)
So, our internet is le sketchy here, and thus, I can't promise updates as frequently as I would like :-(
In terms of universities, Astrakhan completely trumps Voronezh. In terms of cities, Voronezh (despite being a large hunk of concrete) trumps Astrakhan major league. In Astrakhan, one cannot walk from point A to point B - one must always ride the marshytka. There are a smattering of buses, but for the most part, marshytkas rule the roads.
A marshytka, for those of you who have missed out on this lovely form of transport, is essentially a 16-passenger van, usually yellow, with a different arrangement of seats - a taxi-van, if you will. They run along set routes, but you have to signal from the side of the road in order to catch one, and you have to tell it where to stop when you want to get off. Amusing signs spotted in marshytkas include "This vehicle does not stop for "here" and "there"". Riding on a marshytka is, as a general rule, a near-death experience. (That said, marshytka drivers tend to be better than the vast majority of Russian drivers.)
Shelley (another girl in the program) and I live a few stops apart, so we always ride back from school and events together (our families think this is great). We also have an extraordinary ability to get on the right marshytka going in the wrong direction. The first time this happened, the driver drove down a random side street, stopped, and announced "The end" and kicked us off. We had to walk back to the university stop and try again.
Last night, we got out of a play kind of late. Not that big of a problem, right? Well, we were under the impression that marshytkas stop running completely at about fifteen minutes after we got out (they just seriously decrease in number), so we were panicing about getting home. We knew that we needed Marshytka No. 18 to get home, but we weren't sure which way, so we just hopped the first one that happened by. Turns out, not the right one. We, of course, did not discover this until we got to the far side of the city. Oops. The driver was really nice/had mercy and took us to a big stop, then walked us to the correct marshytka, put us on it, told the driver our stop, and that we spoke really poor Russian. We finally made it home about an hour after we started trying. Such is life. Considering how protective the host families here are, it's a wonder they let us go anywhere at all by ourselves...
The above story contains another thing I've noticed of late - Russians seem to really enjoy informing me of how poorly they think I speak their language. We saw "Kung Fu Panda" in Russian last week (as it turns out, everybody grunts in the same language), and another girl and I got to talking with a couple of Russian girls while we waited. Halfway through the conversation, one of the Russians turned to me and announced that the other young lady spoke Russian so much better because my accent was bad. I went home kind of sad, but my family reassured me that everyone in Russia has some form of accent, and everyone else feels the need to comment on it. Then, I definitely communicated with the driver last night, and I thought he understood us okay, but maybe not. Maybe I'm crazy for continuing to chase this language, but I guess crazy is just what I'll stay.
We're headed to Volgograd this Saturday - my favorite! I'm so excited, especially since the Battle of Stalingrad is one of the few things I actually know something about. I think I missed the class where they teach you everything there is to know about Russian literature and art, but you know, if anyone ever wants to read the ranks on the requisite WWII monument in front of the school, I'm there.
Hopefully this sufficient reading material for all of y'all who are hanging out, bored on summer vacation. If you need any more reading, I've got a reading list I could use some help with...
In terms of universities, Astrakhan completely trumps Voronezh. In terms of cities, Voronezh (despite being a large hunk of concrete) trumps Astrakhan major league. In Astrakhan, one cannot walk from point A to point B - one must always ride the marshytka. There are a smattering of buses, but for the most part, marshytkas rule the roads.
A marshytka, for those of you who have missed out on this lovely form of transport, is essentially a 16-passenger van, usually yellow, with a different arrangement of seats - a taxi-van, if you will. They run along set routes, but you have to signal from the side of the road in order to catch one, and you have to tell it where to stop when you want to get off. Amusing signs spotted in marshytkas include "This vehicle does not stop for "here" and "there"". Riding on a marshytka is, as a general rule, a near-death experience. (That said, marshytka drivers tend to be better than the vast majority of Russian drivers.)
Shelley (another girl in the program) and I live a few stops apart, so we always ride back from school and events together (our families think this is great). We also have an extraordinary ability to get on the right marshytka going in the wrong direction. The first time this happened, the driver drove down a random side street, stopped, and announced "The end" and kicked us off. We had to walk back to the university stop and try again.
Last night, we got out of a play kind of late. Not that big of a problem, right? Well, we were under the impression that marshytkas stop running completely at about fifteen minutes after we got out (they just seriously decrease in number), so we were panicing about getting home. We knew that we needed Marshytka No. 18 to get home, but we weren't sure which way, so we just hopped the first one that happened by. Turns out, not the right one. We, of course, did not discover this until we got to the far side of the city. Oops. The driver was really nice/had mercy and took us to a big stop, then walked us to the correct marshytka, put us on it, told the driver our stop, and that we spoke really poor Russian. We finally made it home about an hour after we started trying. Such is life. Considering how protective the host families here are, it's a wonder they let us go anywhere at all by ourselves...
The above story contains another thing I've noticed of late - Russians seem to really enjoy informing me of how poorly they think I speak their language. We saw "Kung Fu Panda" in Russian last week (as it turns out, everybody grunts in the same language), and another girl and I got to talking with a couple of Russian girls while we waited. Halfway through the conversation, one of the Russians turned to me and announced that the other young lady spoke Russian so much better because my accent was bad. I went home kind of sad, but my family reassured me that everyone in Russia has some form of accent, and everyone else feels the need to comment on it. Then, I definitely communicated with the driver last night, and I thought he understood us okay, but maybe not. Maybe I'm crazy for continuing to chase this language, but I guess crazy is just what I'll stay.
We're headed to Volgograd this Saturday - my favorite! I'm so excited, especially since the Battle of Stalingrad is one of the few things I actually know something about. I think I missed the class where they teach you everything there is to know about Russian literature and art, but you know, if anyone ever wants to read the ranks on the requisite WWII monument in front of the school, I'm there.
Hopefully this sufficient reading material for all of y'all who are hanging out, bored on summer vacation. If you need any more reading, I've got a reading list I could use some help with...
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
A Series of Events, Some of Them Unfortunate
So, I'm not dead. Yay! There have been a couple of moments along the way where I thought I was about to become dead, but so far all's well. To date:
DC - I am officially in love. Sign me up to live there, eh? They kept us in meetings all day, so we didn't get to see much of the city, but we did manage some sight seeing after we got out - the monuments are pretty cool after dark.
Flights - fly SwissAir - don't fly Lufthansa. We were on a jam-packed 747 that hasn't been retrofitted with those fun little monitors in the seat backs - not a fun way to spend 8 hours. The controls in my row's seats didn't work until we started our descent into Frankfurt, so we couldn't even operate the lights. :-( And they didn't give us chocolate - like I said, fly SwissAir.
Petersburg - pretty cool, as always. I didn't sight see as much this time - we just walked around, which was plenty fun. The hotel hosted some big event for a company or something our last day there, so we ate dinner on the second floor and watched a bunch of drunk Russians dance - it was interesting, possibly educational.
Flights again - Oh, Aeroflot. My group got together at 3.30 the morning of our departure, only to discover that the bus didn't have sufficient space for our luggage - I spent the whole trip to the airport worrying that my suitcase was going to fall out of the overstuffed compartment. As it turned out, that would be the least of our worries...First flight, fine. Second flight, a little sketchier (2x2 with luggage compartments like a bus). The connection between flights was quick - they had to hold the bus to the airplane for our group (not that they wanted too...) Upon arriving in Volgograd, we discovered that our luggage hadn't made the connection with us. We had 23 people, 0 suitcases and a 6-hour bus ride to look forward to. Hurrah! (The suitcases came the next evening...)
Astrakhan - We were supposed to get in at 6 PM. We actually arrived at 10 PM, by which time we were all bone-tired, frustrated, and felt pretty gross. Thus, they sat us down to a traditional Russian dinner and let our prospective families watch us eat. Needless to say, not much was consumed... The folks at the university were very kind, and had assembled bags with toothbrushes and a change of clothes. My host family made me wear mine - an XL university shirt and an XL pair of drawstring capris. Super fashionable, no?
And now my time is up, so I'll leave y'all hanging. Soon: the rest of the story :-)
DC - I am officially in love. Sign me up to live there, eh? They kept us in meetings all day, so we didn't get to see much of the city, but we did manage some sight seeing after we got out - the monuments are pretty cool after dark.
Flights - fly SwissAir - don't fly Lufthansa. We were on a jam-packed 747 that hasn't been retrofitted with those fun little monitors in the seat backs - not a fun way to spend 8 hours. The controls in my row's seats didn't work until we started our descent into Frankfurt, so we couldn't even operate the lights. :-( And they didn't give us chocolate - like I said, fly SwissAir.
Petersburg - pretty cool, as always. I didn't sight see as much this time - we just walked around, which was plenty fun. The hotel hosted some big event for a company or something our last day there, so we ate dinner on the second floor and watched a bunch of drunk Russians dance - it was interesting, possibly educational.
Flights again - Oh, Aeroflot. My group got together at 3.30 the morning of our departure, only to discover that the bus didn't have sufficient space for our luggage - I spent the whole trip to the airport worrying that my suitcase was going to fall out of the overstuffed compartment. As it turned out, that would be the least of our worries...First flight, fine. Second flight, a little sketchier (2x2 with luggage compartments like a bus). The connection between flights was quick - they had to hold the bus to the airplane for our group (not that they wanted too...) Upon arriving in Volgograd, we discovered that our luggage hadn't made the connection with us. We had 23 people, 0 suitcases and a 6-hour bus ride to look forward to. Hurrah! (The suitcases came the next evening...)
Astrakhan - We were supposed to get in at 6 PM. We actually arrived at 10 PM, by which time we were all bone-tired, frustrated, and felt pretty gross. Thus, they sat us down to a traditional Russian dinner and let our prospective families watch us eat. Needless to say, not much was consumed... The folks at the university were very kind, and had assembled bags with toothbrushes and a change of clothes. My host family made me wear mine - an XL university shirt and an XL pair of drawstring capris. Super fashionable, no?
And now my time is up, so I'll leave y'all hanging. Soon: the rest of the story :-)
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