Notice in the Interests of Science
So, I heard one time that they often, in the brave sea-faring days of yore, took onions onboard ships for long voyages, to avoid scurvy. And I really like onions. And we had a bunch of onions in the refrigerator. So, naturally, I attempted to eat one, raw, like an apple... and, well, I do not recommend repetition of this experiment. I got down two large bites, my nose and sinuses burning, with only the aid of a cup of tea; then I went and got a piece of bread to eat between bites, and managed one or two more. Then I gave up, put cheese on the bread, and just ate that. I wonder exactly how bad it is that all I ever eat, really, is variations on the theme of bread, cheese, and sausage. I am delighted with this mean plan, personally, but I suppose it may not be the most healthy.
Unconnected Note involving Post Offices:
I spent a very long time this weekend and Monday attempting to mail various letters from downtown and failing. The tale of my failure is not especially interesting, but it was very, very frustrating. This afternoon, though, following my host sister’s vague directions (pointing in the correct direction from the balcony), I found a post office near our apartment. And there was not a line. And when I gave the woman there my letters and explained that I would like to mail them to various foreign countries and did not know how many stamps I needed she wordlessly but pleasantly enough applied stamps to them. Then she gave the letters back to me, which was sort of odd considering that we were in a post office and all, and I think she also short-changed me, and, most crucially, I think she may have been applying stamps at random, maybe based on which ones she liked, because the postal rates make very little sense. The letter to Paris, for instance, has the same stamp-value as the one to Yaroslavl, within Russia. Still, I found a mailbox, put them in, and my grumpy frustration of the morning, left over from the accumulated boredom and postal-failures of the past three days, immediately lifted. The letters may never arrive, but they are out of my hands, and it was as close to a successful business transaction as I have come to hope for. My elation was undampened even by the ridiculousness of being made to put little plastic wrappers over my shoes when I went into Alex’s Gym when they were tearing up the floor as they told me to put on the wrapper things, there was nothing worth keeping clean, and when the walls to the women’s changing room had not reappeared and I once again changed in the room with the tanning bed, or when I had forgotten my running shoes and worked out in socks, and by the establishment not having any available drinkable water. Any annoyance from these events was completely removed by the awesomeness of Alex’s accent when he asked me in English, when I was bench-pressing, “Ken I khelp you?”
Man. I am never going to get the taste of that onion out of my mouth. Or, probably, the smell off my breath. I’m going to find some cheese, the second major food group. Third if you count tea as being in first place, followed by bread, cheese, sausage.
Update:
To show the deep level of intercultural communication in which I regularly engage, and why my host family thinks I am very odd, I here post a transcript of a typical conversation with my host sister, Katya.
[We are eating dinner, which is pasta]
Katya: When we were in Italy, every day they gave us pasta and water.
I nod, and apparently don’t look shocked enough.
Katya: We thought this was very strange, because we usually drink tea.
Me: Oh, yes, in America we drink a lot of water. In fact, often each person has his own large plastic bottle, called a Nalgene, which he carries around with him everywhere, even to class, and drinks water all day.
Katya: [incredulously] Why?
Me: Oh, I don’t know, I guess we’re just used to drinking water.
[note: Russians would never drink in class. It would be very disrespectful. Or the teachers would just think they were pregnant, as apparently happened to one Middlebury student.]
Katya: I think we drink so much tea because we are so close to Asia.
Me: [declining to mention that the definition of Siberia is “the northern half of Asia” and that Baikal is in the direct center of Asia] Oh, yes. America is much more far from Asia. Perhaps that is why we do not drink so much tea.
Katya: But you drink coffee.
Me: Yes, in America we drink a lot of coffee.
Katya: Then why don’t you drink any coffee here? [She looks at the jar of instant coffee sitting on the table.]
Me: Oh, I don’t know...
Katya: Do you not like coffee?
Me: I like coffee.
Katya: Then why don’t you drink it?
Me: Well I like tea. And, actually, I never drank instant coffee. I should try it some time.
Katya: Oh. We’re used to instant coffee. It’s so much less work than making it on the stove.
Me: Ah, well, in America, rather than having chai-niks, most people have coffee-makers in their houses. Probably it is better to have a chai-nik, tea is very healthy.
Katya: You don’t have chai-niks?
Me: No. We know they exist. And many people drink tea. But we still just heat up the water on the stove.
Katya: Russians all have chai-niks.
Me: Ah, yes. Perhaps because you used to have samovars.
Katya: Yes. Why don’t you ever go anywhere? There’s a nightclub near here.
And then we are back to the real reason these people think I am crazy- I’m always here when they come home. They’re always asking me if I have any friends.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Being all Multicultural and stuff
Last night I watched video clips of my host mother’s chorus singing in Italy. Her youngest daughter, who is my age, sings in the choir, as well as having some sort of pedagogical role (I think), and the middle daughter directs the younger children and is a soloist. So the mother, the two daughters, our neighbor and I huddled around the computer to watch these clips, the mother and the soloist daughter very nervous, and we skipped through the parts where they were singing beautiful music in a beautiful Italian church as quickly as possible so that we could see the clip where they were in some big plaza singing “Oh Happy Day.” We watched this clip many, many times. Nastya has her big solo in this song, and it seems to be everyone’s favorite, from sort of flighty, but sweet Katya, to tall, intimidating Nastya with her serious face and died-platinum hair, to their cheerfully-impudent eight-year-old niece, with her round Buryat face making her seem all to more like a little rubber ball of irrepressible energy. When my host mother was telling me about the choir the first day I was here, one of the first pieces of information I received was that they sang “Oh Happy Day.”
The thing is, they are fairly bad at singing “Oh Happy Day,” or as they say, “Oh Hippy Dei,” and, just as when I saw them sing this song in concert before they left for Italy, I was rather embarrassed for them when I watched the film. Nastya sings, every time, “When Jesus watched to wash my sins away,” they are wearing some sort of ridiculous costume involving what looks like those nets oranges come in on their heads (when singing traditional Russian music they have very cool outfits), and, most painfully, they completely fail to convey the mood and the power of the song. I remember thinking the first time I saw them sing the song, when, admittedly, I was not feeling very charitable toward the country in general after spending an hour and a half wandering around looking for the building where they were performing and dealing with very unhelpful people and then being treated with great suspicion by the building’s secretary, that a Russian would not know a happy day if it hit him on the head. The singers all looked about as miserable as Russians always look in public. It was sadder, I thought to myself, than Martin Luther King Day last year when the Middlebury Congregational Church attempted to sing spirituals, and imported a black person to read a sermon. In short, I was unimpressed, and wished that they would stick to Russian music, which they sing most beautifully, and I thought, in rather snobby overgeneralization, that Russians tend to be somewhat aesthetically tone-deaf in general with respect to their attempts to copy the Western world.
But then, later, I thought about how Katya had turned to the neighbor and asked if she had ever heard the song (“no, of course not”), and how excited she had looked when she said “Takaya klassnaya, da?” (something like “such a classy one, isn’t it?” but without sounding dumb). And about how sincerely the little niece (my host-mother’s granddaughter), who sings in the chorus, had told me that it was her favorite of the songs they sing. And how Nastya swayed back and forth in her seat when we were watching the film. And I realized that, in answer to Katya’s question, yes, it really was an awesome song, and if I didn’t associate it with the 8 million times we watched the movie “Sister Act 2” in middle school chorus, and if I had never heard gospel music, I would be pretty excited to sing it too. And even if they didn’t quite achieve the sound of an actual gospel choir, and even if the still-Soviet-created atheism of their education and culture, and the almost total lack of connection of their lives from the lives of the song’s usual singers prevents them from really knowing what they’re singing about, their enthusiasm surely shows that they got some idea of it, of a culture far away and far different from their own, and they were truly, deeply impressed by it, and they truly enjoy singing the song. My objection to their interpretation – that had never really heard gospel music - was what made their singing it so cool, really; these kids were much more impressed with their encounter with the culture whose song they were singing than we ever were in elementary school when they made us sing Follow the Drinking Gourd every year, despite our supposed greater understanding of it.
The thing is, they are fairly bad at singing “Oh Happy Day,” or as they say, “Oh Hippy Dei,” and, just as when I saw them sing this song in concert before they left for Italy, I was rather embarrassed for them when I watched the film. Nastya sings, every time, “When Jesus watched to wash my sins away,” they are wearing some sort of ridiculous costume involving what looks like those nets oranges come in on their heads (when singing traditional Russian music they have very cool outfits), and, most painfully, they completely fail to convey the mood and the power of the song. I remember thinking the first time I saw them sing the song, when, admittedly, I was not feeling very charitable toward the country in general after spending an hour and a half wandering around looking for the building where they were performing and dealing with very unhelpful people and then being treated with great suspicion by the building’s secretary, that a Russian would not know a happy day if it hit him on the head. The singers all looked about as miserable as Russians always look in public. It was sadder, I thought to myself, than Martin Luther King Day last year when the Middlebury Congregational Church attempted to sing spirituals, and imported a black person to read a sermon. In short, I was unimpressed, and wished that they would stick to Russian music, which they sing most beautifully, and I thought, in rather snobby overgeneralization, that Russians tend to be somewhat aesthetically tone-deaf in general with respect to their attempts to copy the Western world.
But then, later, I thought about how Katya had turned to the neighbor and asked if she had ever heard the song (“no, of course not”), and how excited she had looked when she said “Takaya klassnaya, da?” (something like “such a classy one, isn’t it?” but without sounding dumb). And about how sincerely the little niece (my host-mother’s granddaughter), who sings in the chorus, had told me that it was her favorite of the songs they sing. And how Nastya swayed back and forth in her seat when we were watching the film. And I realized that, in answer to Katya’s question, yes, it really was an awesome song, and if I didn’t associate it with the 8 million times we watched the movie “Sister Act 2” in middle school chorus, and if I had never heard gospel music, I would be pretty excited to sing it too. And even if they didn’t quite achieve the sound of an actual gospel choir, and even if the still-Soviet-created atheism of their education and culture, and the almost total lack of connection of their lives from the lives of the song’s usual singers prevents them from really knowing what they’re singing about, their enthusiasm surely shows that they got some idea of it, of a culture far away and far different from their own, and they were truly, deeply impressed by it, and they truly enjoy singing the song. My objection to their interpretation – that had never really heard gospel music - was what made their singing it so cool, really; these kids were much more impressed with their encounter with the culture whose song they were singing than we ever were in elementary school when they made us sing Follow the Drinking Gourd every year, despite our supposed greater understanding of it.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Monday Morning Church
I wanted to go to a mainstream class today in the history department, but due to incompetence/slow buses did not make it there in time. So instead I went to the neighboring Cathedral of the Holy Trinity again. And it was pretty empty, as whoever sings that song assures me that monday morning churches are, but not entirely; there was the odd babushka, and the odd tight-lipped woman coming in to consult with the batushka, who looked exactly like I imagined the youngest Karamazov brother as looking. And I took pictures, which someday when I remember my camera chord I will post. I sort of wanted to tell the earnest-looking women that they could save time by just buying the book in the little bookstore, "What will the Batushka Advise?" with an awful picture of a dark-bearded Rasputin-like priest on the front swinging some insense about.
Художественый Музей
After riding past the big, pretty, yellow city art musuem every day on the way to and from downtown, I finally went today, with Ivan and Alana. Overall, I had never heard of any of the artists, so it was sort of interesting looking at art with no feeling that I ought to like it, since the artists were famous. So, it was pretty, or unusual, or thought-provoking, or evocative, and stuff, in the proportion paintings often are... funny to think how much work went into it all, and how someone probably thought of that bowl of fruit as representing much of his worth as a creative human being, and to someone all those portraits of of chubby blond men in medal-covered uniforms were not only distinguishable but personally significant. I liked the Siberian interiors and landscapes and the pictures of boats of Baikal; I guess it's more interesting to see other people's impressions of things you are also seeing, than of far-off places, however picturesque. But then there was a Surikov exibition, on loan from Krasnoyarsk or Novosibirsk or somewhere, and it was wonderful, though I would be interested to know how wonderful I would have thought it was if I had never heard of Surikov. Actually Surikov paintings always seemed a little overly dramatic and almost cheesy when they formed such a large part of our Russian History powerpoints, and in reproductions in books, but on canvas rather than glossy paper then are just dramatic, rather than overly so. The best thing was this big painting of the Annunciation, with Gabriel's arms at the most annunciative of angles- I guess if I could describe how it was Surikov wouldn't have had to paint it, so you'll just have to take my word for it. Also, Mary's dress was almost the color red of the sunset over Germany when I was flying here. Surikov always seems to like the people in his paintings so much, even in portraits of rather ordinary-looking middle-aged women, or the Tatar soliers standing around in the backgroud of historical scenes.
I had kasha for dinner today. I feel like it's another Thing One Must do in Russia that I can check off the list.
I had kasha for dinner today. I feel like it's another Thing One Must do in Russia that I can check off the list.
Saturday, September 22, 2007
Another blog post, because I don’t really have that much to do
I got home around 8:00 this today, and I kept turning on the TV, as I had nothing to do all evening, but all there ever was on the only channel we really get was a bunch of loons with trumpets marching about Red Square. I kept turning it off, holding out for less martial entertainment, but around 9:30, when I was eating the dinner that was left on the store and hopefully intended for me, I gave up and just watched it. And at some point there were bagpipers- a lot of them, in kilt and such- marching about Red Square and playing Amazing Grace, soon to fade into some jazzy tunes that the audience seemed to recognize and find very amusing. Eventually I figured out that it was the First Annual International Military Band Exposition or something- there were those funny tall black furry British hats involved, and choirs, and fire works, and goofy commentators, and lots and lots of Russian soldiers. It was out of control. There were Canadians.
I saw the movie Mongol today, in a really pretty old movie theater downtown, with chandeliers and balconies and heavy curtains for both the screen and the doors, and bustling babushka-ushers. Now I want to be a Mongol. Or maybe just have a Mongolian hat. It was a good movie for the language-handicapped portion of the audience - apparently Genghis Khan and company didn’t do a lot of talking, and when they did it was in short, declarative sentences.
Did I do anything else interesting today? I ran for 40 minutes, and worked out at Alex’s Gym as Alex nailed on the baseboard or whatever that’s called along the bottom of the wall (Alex’s Gym is sort of a work in progress. While Natasha was there later in the day the apparently took down a wall.); I went into various clothing stores and ran away when I discovered that the t-shirts were $80; it was a rainy day, so I spent a lot of time inside stores pretending to shop. I went to a bookstore and declined to buy books about how to be on the apple diet, or how to cast household spells. There was a book called “300 Salads” or something, from which I fled when the first recipe to which I opened was called “bird salad.” My favorite, though, is always the learning English books. Today I looked through the literature-for-english-learning books - they mainly seem to be compiled by sadistic Brits. This one amazing “reader” contained: Ivanhoe, Robinson Crusoe, Wuthering Heights, Huckleberry Finn, some Jack London novel, and three other similarly-impossible selections. I love Wuthering Heights, but I remember most of my AP English Literature class regarding it as having being written practically in a foreign language, not entirely without justification. Within every novel, the editor would print ¾ of a page or so of text, and then insert a short “simplified” (actually in very awkward, difficult to read language) explanation of what had happened, sometimes very funny.
More of the same tomorrow, I think - wandering around, and getting tired of the Cafe Fiesta, and trying to motivate myself to do homework. I’m not really a fan of weekends in Irkutsk, all in all. Luckily we have our group trip soon, to Baikal and points west.
Sunday morning update:
I went to church, finally, this morning, which is good considering I’m a religion major and stuff. It was this pretty church I always see when going to the History Department, with a turquoise roof. It turned out to be the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity, and very cool inside, with a sort of catacomb feel which I think is odd for an Orthodox church, though I judge based only on pictures I’ve seen of others. The dome-y ceiling and the walls were white, it was fairly small, and the icons were not all that great in number but all cool. Not a very good description- I’ll go sometime when there’s not a service going on and take pictures. As for the service itself, there was a lot of bowing and crossing involved, but not any other expectation of external congregation involvement, so it was fairly easy to follow along. After the main service there were various little optional liturgical activities going on, which I wandered around and looked at but never really figured out. It was fun.
Not too many people on the streets today, but lots of people out painting their shutters. Gives the morning a rather fresh, cheerful feel. Also, they’ve finally filled in the huge ditch running the length the sidewalk along Karla Marxa, one of the main streets - it makes walking considerably easier.
I saw the movie Mongol today, in a really pretty old movie theater downtown, with chandeliers and balconies and heavy curtains for both the screen and the doors, and bustling babushka-ushers. Now I want to be a Mongol. Or maybe just have a Mongolian hat. It was a good movie for the language-handicapped portion of the audience - apparently Genghis Khan and company didn’t do a lot of talking, and when they did it was in short, declarative sentences.
Did I do anything else interesting today? I ran for 40 minutes, and worked out at Alex’s Gym as Alex nailed on the baseboard or whatever that’s called along the bottom of the wall (Alex’s Gym is sort of a work in progress. While Natasha was there later in the day the apparently took down a wall.); I went into various clothing stores and ran away when I discovered that the t-shirts were $80; it was a rainy day, so I spent a lot of time inside stores pretending to shop. I went to a bookstore and declined to buy books about how to be on the apple diet, or how to cast household spells. There was a book called “300 Salads” or something, from which I fled when the first recipe to which I opened was called “bird salad.” My favorite, though, is always the learning English books. Today I looked through the literature-for-english-learning books - they mainly seem to be compiled by sadistic Brits. This one amazing “reader” contained: Ivanhoe, Robinson Crusoe, Wuthering Heights, Huckleberry Finn, some Jack London novel, and three other similarly-impossible selections. I love Wuthering Heights, but I remember most of my AP English Literature class regarding it as having being written practically in a foreign language, not entirely without justification. Within every novel, the editor would print ¾ of a page or so of text, and then insert a short “simplified” (actually in very awkward, difficult to read language) explanation of what had happened, sometimes very funny.
More of the same tomorrow, I think - wandering around, and getting tired of the Cafe Fiesta, and trying to motivate myself to do homework. I’m not really a fan of weekends in Irkutsk, all in all. Luckily we have our group trip soon, to Baikal and points west.
Sunday morning update:
I went to church, finally, this morning, which is good considering I’m a religion major and stuff. It was this pretty church I always see when going to the History Department, with a turquoise roof. It turned out to be the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity, and very cool inside, with a sort of catacomb feel which I think is odd for an Orthodox church, though I judge based only on pictures I’ve seen of others. The dome-y ceiling and the walls were white, it was fairly small, and the icons were not all that great in number but all cool. Not a very good description- I’ll go sometime when there’s not a service going on and take pictures. As for the service itself, there was a lot of bowing and crossing involved, but not any other expectation of external congregation involvement, so it was fairly easy to follow along. After the main service there were various little optional liturgical activities going on, which I wandered around and looked at but never really figured out. It was fun.
Not too many people on the streets today, but lots of people out painting their shutters. Gives the morning a rather fresh, cheerful feel. Also, they’ve finally filled in the huge ditch running the length the sidewalk along Karla Marxa, one of the main streets - it makes walking considerably easier.
Friday, September 21, 2007
General Update
I tried to go to the post office today; I successfully found one, and waited in a very long line, and wondered at the very wide variety of things being done in the post office- seemingly every official document in Russia must be dealt with in the post office. Finally I got to the front of the line, presented the letters I wanted to send, was asked if I wanted to send them “normally” or “some word I didn’t understand.” I figured “normally” meant ground and the other word airmail, so I said “not normally.” And then I was told to go to some other building, with an accompanying vague hand gesture. I gave up and left- I’ll try again tomorrow, which means today in terms of when this will be posted.
My host family is back from Italy, with lots of new refrigerator magnets and mugs. Their return made me realize how much I had come to think of the apartment of my own- I was sort of indignant, this morning, when they had eaten all the food the night before and there was no bread for breakfast (there was muesli, I didn’t starve), and especially this evening when I got home and the kitchen hadn’t been cleaned up from whatever the last meal that was eaten in it was. I am also apparently fairly stingy, when left to my own devices.
I went to a meeting of the hiking club again today. I very rarely have any idea what’s going on there. We spent a long time today making various knots with rope, or at least all of us but the three boys who were going through all the Russian music on my computer fixing all the mistakes I had made when I typed in the titles of songs made various knots with rope. The three boys just got yelled at periodically by the leader guy. There was also an interesting part of the meeting, after many people had left, where people had newspapers thrust at them and were commanded to read them. One time the leader guy just put a chair facing the wall and told me to go sit in it and read the articles posted there. There’s always a lot of tea drinking, but by some strict schedule that is completely unpredictable to me - at certain points people rush about setting out and clearing away mugs. Today, actually, we drank not tea but the most awful instant coffee in the world, called “MacCoffee” or something, with American flags and eagle on the packaging and “Real American Taste.” It was made in Singapore. Oh, and at some point in the meeting Harry and the Potters were planning from my computer – it was a very strange experience, hearing Save Ginny Weasly in the midst of the crazy Russians tying rope and wondering why I didn’t own any American music they’d ever heard of.
On the bus on the way to the hiking club meeting, I made interesting attempts to explain A) Nick Jansen 2) gangs 3) Emo and 4) why Americans generally refrain from covering national parks in graffiti. I think 0 of the explanations were understood. The boys I was with told me how many guns they owned and pointed out all the amusing mistakes I had made in the text messages I sent them.
Today in grammar class we learned that it is evident that Eddie doesn’t ever comb his hair, an interesting continuation of the theme of our failures of personal grooming – last week my failure to wear make-up was commented on, and Ivan’s lack of hair combing. In speech practice class we learned that we didn’t see anything we were supposed to in Arshan, and we should have gone with someone who knew what he was doing. In Baikal Studies class yesterday we learned about Stalin’s plans to invade North America on mooseback.
I ran yesterday morning, in a tiny semi-enclosed neighborhood I found one time when I was looking for the university. One circle of it is 5 minutes, but it has the great advantage of not being full of marshrutkas and buses trying to run over pedestrians. It was very, very wonderful to run. I suspect I will be tired of that circle very soon though. I’m keeping my eye out for other eligible running locations.
I feel that I must comment on the importance of the plastic bag in Russian culture. The plastic bag: it’s very important. That’s my basic comment. It can be used as a purse or briefcase, with the more sturdy and cool-looking bags from clothing stores preferred but grocery bags also acceptable for menial tasks. There’s this one store, Two Thousand, that sells clothing in red bags that seem to be highly prized. They are red with white writing and an of a perfect size for the transport of notebook-sized objects and have handles that are separate pieces of plastic rather than just holes in the bag. I really want to go to Two Thousand and buy something, just to get one of the bags. Bags, particularly grocery bags, are also important as trashcans, which do not seem to exist, indoors, in other manifestations. It’s always sort of sad when the trash must be brought out, as it means that another bag (packyet, as we say in the rooski) must be sacrificed to the trash-bearing cause. And they don’t just give out bags at the supermarket- you have to pay for them- which means you can’t just carelessly use your packyets every which way. It also means that people try really hard not to need bags in the grocery store, and walk out the door with groceries falling out of their arms. Actually this is mainly just me - other people also avoid buying bags, but they seem to manage it more gracefully. At first I thought this grocery-store practice was good for the environment, but then I realized that it just meant that people don’t have enough garbage bags and just throw their trash on the street. In a final note: one of the possible occupations for penniless street vender women is the sale of random collected plastic bags, on major shopping streets. Were I not embarrassed by the fact that these women are selling plastic bags for a living, I would go inquire about the prices of the bags – I’m interested to see which types are the most expensive.
Oh man, this is sort of ominous- I’m listening to iTunes on Shuffle (my many hours of discussing/listening to Russian music today removing my guilt for listening to English music), and every time a song comes up, the genre label switches from English to Russian – from ‘country’ to ‘кантри', for instance. It's moving slowly down the list, converting my life, even down to the Kinky Freidman and Alison Krauss songs, to Russian.
Also, as I write this, it is my father’s birthday. Happy birthday.
Over and out.
My host family is back from Italy, with lots of new refrigerator magnets and mugs. Their return made me realize how much I had come to think of the apartment of my own- I was sort of indignant, this morning, when they had eaten all the food the night before and there was no bread for breakfast (there was muesli, I didn’t starve), and especially this evening when I got home and the kitchen hadn’t been cleaned up from whatever the last meal that was eaten in it was. I am also apparently fairly stingy, when left to my own devices.
I went to a meeting of the hiking club again today. I very rarely have any idea what’s going on there. We spent a long time today making various knots with rope, or at least all of us but the three boys who were going through all the Russian music on my computer fixing all the mistakes I had made when I typed in the titles of songs made various knots with rope. The three boys just got yelled at periodically by the leader guy. There was also an interesting part of the meeting, after many people had left, where people had newspapers thrust at them and were commanded to read them. One time the leader guy just put a chair facing the wall and told me to go sit in it and read the articles posted there. There’s always a lot of tea drinking, but by some strict schedule that is completely unpredictable to me - at certain points people rush about setting out and clearing away mugs. Today, actually, we drank not tea but the most awful instant coffee in the world, called “MacCoffee” or something, with American flags and eagle on the packaging and “Real American Taste.” It was made in Singapore. Oh, and at some point in the meeting Harry and the Potters were planning from my computer – it was a very strange experience, hearing Save Ginny Weasly in the midst of the crazy Russians tying rope and wondering why I didn’t own any American music they’d ever heard of.
On the bus on the way to the hiking club meeting, I made interesting attempts to explain A) Nick Jansen 2) gangs 3) Emo and 4) why Americans generally refrain from covering national parks in graffiti. I think 0 of the explanations were understood. The boys I was with told me how many guns they owned and pointed out all the amusing mistakes I had made in the text messages I sent them.
Today in grammar class we learned that it is evident that Eddie doesn’t ever comb his hair, an interesting continuation of the theme of our failures of personal grooming – last week my failure to wear make-up was commented on, and Ivan’s lack of hair combing. In speech practice class we learned that we didn’t see anything we were supposed to in Arshan, and we should have gone with someone who knew what he was doing. In Baikal Studies class yesterday we learned about Stalin’s plans to invade North America on mooseback.
I ran yesterday morning, in a tiny semi-enclosed neighborhood I found one time when I was looking for the university. One circle of it is 5 minutes, but it has the great advantage of not being full of marshrutkas and buses trying to run over pedestrians. It was very, very wonderful to run. I suspect I will be tired of that circle very soon though. I’m keeping my eye out for other eligible running locations.
I feel that I must comment on the importance of the plastic bag in Russian culture. The plastic bag: it’s very important. That’s my basic comment. It can be used as a purse or briefcase, with the more sturdy and cool-looking bags from clothing stores preferred but grocery bags also acceptable for menial tasks. There’s this one store, Two Thousand, that sells clothing in red bags that seem to be highly prized. They are red with white writing and an of a perfect size for the transport of notebook-sized objects and have handles that are separate pieces of plastic rather than just holes in the bag. I really want to go to Two Thousand and buy something, just to get one of the bags. Bags, particularly grocery bags, are also important as trashcans, which do not seem to exist, indoors, in other manifestations. It’s always sort of sad when the trash must be brought out, as it means that another bag (packyet, as we say in the rooski) must be sacrificed to the trash-bearing cause. And they don’t just give out bags at the supermarket- you have to pay for them- which means you can’t just carelessly use your packyets every which way. It also means that people try really hard not to need bags in the grocery store, and walk out the door with groceries falling out of their arms. Actually this is mainly just me - other people also avoid buying bags, but they seem to manage it more gracefully. At first I thought this grocery-store practice was good for the environment, but then I realized that it just meant that people don’t have enough garbage bags and just throw their trash on the street. In a final note: one of the possible occupations for penniless street vender women is the sale of random collected plastic bags, on major shopping streets. Were I not embarrassed by the fact that these women are selling plastic bags for a living, I would go inquire about the prices of the bags – I’m interested to see which types are the most expensive.
Oh man, this is sort of ominous- I’m listening to iTunes on Shuffle (my many hours of discussing/listening to Russian music today removing my guilt for listening to English music), and every time a song comes up, the genre label switches from English to Russian – from ‘country’ to ‘кантри', for instance. It's moving slowly down the list, converting my life, even down to the Kinky Freidman and Alison Krauss songs, to Russian.
Also, as I write this, it is my father’s birthday. Happy birthday.
Over and out.
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Kino and Calamity
So, today I was happily listening to Russian rock music on my computer, dutifully working to improve my language skills, when I realized that I had encountered the perfect song to accompany the orientation programs of the Middlebury School in Russia. The entire spirit of the enterprise, the enthusiasm for striking fear into the hearts of listeners, the love of calamity and worst-case scenario: it was all there. There was no mention of manhole covers, but I guess even Victor Tsoi has his faults, and Middlebury is after all a very prestigious establishment of learning, slightly better equipped to research ALL available means of death to the innocent civilian. So, anyway, without further ado, the words of the song, to the best of my translating ability:
Look after yourself, by Kino
Today they say to someone "until we meet again!"
Tomorrow they will say "goodbye forever,"
The angry wound reddens.
Tomorrow someone, upon returning home,
Will find his city in ruins;
Someone will fall from a tall crane.
Refrain:
Look after yourself, be careful; look after yourself.
Tomorrow morning someone in bed
will realize that he is incurably sick;
Somone, leaving his house, will fall under a car;
Tomorrow somewhere, in one of the hospitals
the hand of a young surgeon will shake;
Someone in the forest will stumble upon a mine.
Refrain
In the night a plane flew overhead;
Tomorrow it will fall into the ocean,
and all the passengers will drown;
Tomorrow somewhere, who knows where:
War, epidemic, a snowstorm on the steppe,
Black holes of the cosmos.
Refrain
The thing is, this was one of my favorite Kino songs before I paid attention to the words. It has a very catchy but relaxing tune, and Victor Tsoi’s voice is at its most mysteriously deep and doleful. This is worse than when I realized what Zemfira was singing in “You have AIDS, and that means we will DIE.” Victor, Victor, go back to the recklessness of “Our Mother is Anarchy”! (Actually I just realized what the real words to that song were today too- I thought he was saying Мама- Нархия, which I figured meant narcotic addict, which would be pretty hard-core as well.) Don’t give in to the pull of the masses of babushkas screeching for you to put on a warmer hat! I guess actually my pleading will have little effect, as our young singer himself did not heed his own advise very well, or at least didn’t think to put motorcycle crashes on the list of
Look after yourself, by Kino
Today they say to someone "until we meet again!"
Tomorrow they will say "goodbye forever,"
The angry wound reddens.
Tomorrow someone, upon returning home,
Will find his city in ruins;
Someone will fall from a tall crane.
Refrain:
Look after yourself, be careful; look after yourself.
Tomorrow morning someone in bed
will realize that he is incurably sick;
Somone, leaving his house, will fall under a car;
Tomorrow somewhere, in one of the hospitals
the hand of a young surgeon will shake;
Someone in the forest will stumble upon a mine.
Refrain
In the night a plane flew overhead;
Tomorrow it will fall into the ocean,
and all the passengers will drown;
Tomorrow somewhere, who knows where:
War, epidemic, a snowstorm on the steppe,
Black holes of the cosmos.
Refrain
The thing is, this was one of my favorite Kino songs before I paid attention to the words. It has a very catchy but relaxing tune, and Victor Tsoi’s voice is at its most mysteriously deep and doleful. This is worse than when I realized what Zemfira was singing in “You have AIDS, and that means we will DIE.” Victor, Victor, go back to the recklessness of “Our Mother is Anarchy”! (Actually I just realized what the real words to that song were today too- I thought he was saying Мама- Нархия, which I figured meant narcotic addict, which would be pretty hard-core as well.) Don’t give in to the pull of the masses of babushkas screeching for you to put on a warmer hat! I guess actually my pleading will have little effect, as our young singer himself did not heed his own advise very well, or at least didn’t think to put motorcycle crashes on the list of
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Alex's Gym
Natasha and I worked out today for the first time at Alex's Gym, a rather amazing establishment near my apartment. We went yesterday to ask about passes and see the place- Alex himself, who actually goes by Sasha as he is of course Russian, came out to the desk and met us. He looked at us in confustion for a new seconds, then said, with an air of triumphant comprehension, "Foreigners!" "Um, Da," we said. There then followed a most excellent conversation, in very cheerful but ungrammatical English on his part and probably equally ungrammatical Russian on our part. He would point to a machine and say, "You put your arms!! You put your legs!! Make shaped!!" We did a lot of smiling and nodding. So we went back today, greeted our new friends- Sasha, or course, and Iulia the receptionist, and the one-handed workman, another Sasha- changed, and entered the tiny gym. Someone had very sincerely and carefully painted Roman chariot racers and centaurs with bows and Medusa-heads on the wall, plus some random greek columns in empty spaces. And then there were a lot of pictures of body-builders, and of naked women selling sun-tanning products. There was one treadmill, of which the lowest level of resistance is approximately equal to running up Chipman Hill. Well, maybe not quite that hard, as I managed to use it in 10-minute intervals, which I certainly could not manage on Chipman's. I got better at it as I went along, and discovered that gripping the handles in front and running in an almost horizontal position helped matters. But I will not be doing any distance runs on it. For a long time Natasha and I were the only ones in the gym, but after a while some skinny Russian boys in short shorts and funny shoes came in and did odd, very fast calisthenics. Their whole manner was so different from the Middlebury football players I'm accostomed to always seeing in the gym; I have not really gotten used to the Russian conception of masculinity, which is very important to them but hard to predict. Men cannot eat chocolate, for instance- Nestle even sells a special chocolate bar called "Chocolate for Men," with pictures of women with lines through them on every little square (when the boys in our group bought this chocolate the saleswomen still laughed at them though)- but it seems to be perfectly acceptable to carry a purse. Back to the gym, aside from the treadmill there was a stationary bike, and normal weight machines, and it felt very good to excercise after so long. Plus I can have the cheering sight of Alex every day, striding about looking like a stereotype of a Finnish bodybuilder, with the mustache and everything, striding boucingly about the place.
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Arshan
In the Cafe Fiesta, where when I ordered tea, and was given what I guess were several choices of tea variety, I just said “hot, please.” The waitress here has been long convinced of my insanity, so nothing really was lost. But I did get an especially good exasperated look from her today.
I don’t really know what to say about the weekend. It sort of defies description. It also resists my attempts to connect it with my usual expectations of reality and logical procession of events. I several times suspected that I had jumped through one of those sidewalk paintings in Mary Poppins, but into some odd surrealist experiment rather than a cheery bucolic landscape with the only the odd singing barnyard animal to indicate departure from the workaday world. Maybe it sort of followed the classic plot line of a fairy tale: it began with the most familiar elements imaginable, rooted firmly in the ordinary, and then dove further and further into oddness. Our equivalent of the woodman’s hut or the three sons living on a farm or whatever was the bus station in Irkutsk, and the entire bus ride departed only slightly from whatever our expectations of it probably were. We (Ivan, Natasha, Eddie, Joseph, Elisa and I) staked out the back of the bus, which is a cool elevated bench running along the back wall with an especially good view. And the world passing along the bus window was indeed bucolic, with villages of brightly painted wooden dachas and izbas, and vegetable patches with kerchiefed woman pooling potatoes out of them, and forests between the villages. We stopped for lunch on a mountain looking out over Baikal, with women selling obol (Baikal fish) and vegetables. As we moved into Burkatia the mountains got higher and villages had fewer and fewer painted shutters and gingerbread trim, and there were fewer vegetable patches and more livestock. And proud-looking Buryat farmers got on and off at the stops, and I thought about how the Buryats claim to be direct descendents of the aristocratic line of Ghengis Khan, and how I would not be one to argue. Thoughts were lofty and pseudo-poetic, and the bus windows kept us firmly in an observational relationship with reality.
Then there was the part where we were following some random babushka through the dirt streets to her house and agreeing to stay there, and the part where the streets were full of cows and dogs and, in the case of ‘our’ street, a river. And the part where we were in a marshrutka, the price of which was haggled with the town’s professional marshrutka-haggler, a blue-eyed Russian named Ivan who wandered the streets looking like a card-sharp, with three crazy Buryats who talked to us at great length about Columbus and his place in the Buddhist concept of the circular nature of time, and the morals of Hollywood, and how Jews formed the most intelligent nation but were very materialistic, and astrophysics, and how George Bush has a good sense of humor and Putin is totally unimportant to the stoic, far-sighted Buryat mind, and how the great Buryat/Mongolian people founded the Korean, Mongolian, Russian, Western European, and North/ South American civilizations, as we would know if we had studied history in our supposedly-so-great American schools. And there was the part where we were in a murky, concrete pool full of large Russians in speedos, with unbearably hot mineral water spraying out at us, and we were in a thunderstorm in this sort of grimy Buryat dude ranch with young men racing about the streets on horseback and getting in fistfights, and elderly Russians walking around in bathrobes, and bright pagodas sticking up out of the mud at odd intervals. And there was the part where we were dashing about in the rain in Arshan again, looking for somewhere to eat, and ending up in this “cafe” with a disco ball and picnic tables and drunken Buryats producing vodka bottles and drinking with us and making us say various curse words in Buryat, and claiming at various times in the conversation to be lamas and translators and various other things. And we would look out the window and the rain pouring over the dirt cow-filled streets was a snowstorm on the tops of the mountains sticking up right at the edge of town. And the next day the craziness only increased, and I don’t really know what to say about it... I’m not really conveying the oddness of it all properly. Insert into any mental picture of this all millions of discarded cigarette boxes and beer cans and vodka bottles everywhere, and lots of cows and mud, and lots of Buryat accents. We wandered around looking for these waterfalls for which the town was famous, and after a lot of dead ends involving climbing unnecessary mountains while carrying all the stuff we had brought for the weekend (including huge, huge amounts of food provided by the babushkas in Irkutsk- insert into this narrative lots of times where we pulled entire loaves of bread and packages of sausage and blocks of cheese and bags of potatoes and boiled eggs and apples and such out of sacks and ate without making a dent in it all), we found the very long, rain-drenched, vodka-bottle-littered trail, ending in the old, dangerous stairs of which Elizabeth warned us. The waterfalls, frankly, paled in comparison to those of Vermont, but the mountains were very pretty. And we added our mark to the graffiti-covered pavilion at the top, with my trusty Swiss-army knife. The rest of the day involved... I don’t know, a very creepy Soviet sanitarium (apparently these sanitariums were the government-provided vacation spots for workers- I don’t know what this one was like in Soviet times, but currently is half-abandoned and very odd – I kept expecting a white-coated doctor to pull me behind a door and perform a brain operation, and the light was a depressing blue), standing around drinking vodka in a trash-filled former ice-skating rink of a sort of art-deco aesthetic while waiting for “women’s shower time” to end at the odd sauna we found so we could use it, and hour in the said sauna involving a probably-filthy pool out of which we apparently splashed too much water, as we were informed by a shrill attendant with a thick accent. And more haggling with Ivan the marshrutka-manager to find a ride home, stuffed in the back of a very crowded marshrutka.
I don’t really know what to say about the weekend. It sort of defies description. It also resists my attempts to connect it with my usual expectations of reality and logical procession of events. I several times suspected that I had jumped through one of those sidewalk paintings in Mary Poppins, but into some odd surrealist experiment rather than a cheery bucolic landscape with the only the odd singing barnyard animal to indicate departure from the workaday world. Maybe it sort of followed the classic plot line of a fairy tale: it began with the most familiar elements imaginable, rooted firmly in the ordinary, and then dove further and further into oddness. Our equivalent of the woodman’s hut or the three sons living on a farm or whatever was the bus station in Irkutsk, and the entire bus ride departed only slightly from whatever our expectations of it probably were. We (Ivan, Natasha, Eddie, Joseph, Elisa and I) staked out the back of the bus, which is a cool elevated bench running along the back wall with an especially good view. And the world passing along the bus window was indeed bucolic, with villages of brightly painted wooden dachas and izbas, and vegetable patches with kerchiefed woman pooling potatoes out of them, and forests between the villages. We stopped for lunch on a mountain looking out over Baikal, with women selling obol (Baikal fish) and vegetables. As we moved into Burkatia the mountains got higher and villages had fewer and fewer painted shutters and gingerbread trim, and there were fewer vegetable patches and more livestock. And proud-looking Buryat farmers got on and off at the stops, and I thought about how the Buryats claim to be direct descendents of the aristocratic line of Ghengis Khan, and how I would not be one to argue. Thoughts were lofty and pseudo-poetic, and the bus windows kept us firmly in an observational relationship with reality.
Then there was the part where we were following some random babushka through the dirt streets to her house and agreeing to stay there, and the part where the streets were full of cows and dogs and, in the case of ‘our’ street, a river. And the part where we were in a marshrutka, the price of which was haggled with the town’s professional marshrutka-haggler, a blue-eyed Russian named Ivan who wandered the streets looking like a card-sharp, with three crazy Buryats who talked to us at great length about Columbus and his place in the Buddhist concept of the circular nature of time, and the morals of Hollywood, and how Jews formed the most intelligent nation but were very materialistic, and astrophysics, and how George Bush has a good sense of humor and Putin is totally unimportant to the stoic, far-sighted Buryat mind, and how the great Buryat/Mongolian people founded the Korean, Mongolian, Russian, Western European, and North/ South American civilizations, as we would know if we had studied history in our supposedly-so-great American schools. And there was the part where we were in a murky, concrete pool full of large Russians in speedos, with unbearably hot mineral water spraying out at us, and we were in a thunderstorm in this sort of grimy Buryat dude ranch with young men racing about the streets on horseback and getting in fistfights, and elderly Russians walking around in bathrobes, and bright pagodas sticking up out of the mud at odd intervals. And there was the part where we were dashing about in the rain in Arshan again, looking for somewhere to eat, and ending up in this “cafe” with a disco ball and picnic tables and drunken Buryats producing vodka bottles and drinking with us and making us say various curse words in Buryat, and claiming at various times in the conversation to be lamas and translators and various other things. And we would look out the window and the rain pouring over the dirt cow-filled streets was a snowstorm on the tops of the mountains sticking up right at the edge of town. And the next day the craziness only increased, and I don’t really know what to say about it... I’m not really conveying the oddness of it all properly. Insert into any mental picture of this all millions of discarded cigarette boxes and beer cans and vodka bottles everywhere, and lots of cows and mud, and lots of Buryat accents. We wandered around looking for these waterfalls for which the town was famous, and after a lot of dead ends involving climbing unnecessary mountains while carrying all the stuff we had brought for the weekend (including huge, huge amounts of food provided by the babushkas in Irkutsk- insert into this narrative lots of times where we pulled entire loaves of bread and packages of sausage and blocks of cheese and bags of potatoes and boiled eggs and apples and such out of sacks and ate without making a dent in it all), we found the very long, rain-drenched, vodka-bottle-littered trail, ending in the old, dangerous stairs of which Elizabeth warned us. The waterfalls, frankly, paled in comparison to those of Vermont, but the mountains were very pretty. And we added our mark to the graffiti-covered pavilion at the top, with my trusty Swiss-army knife. The rest of the day involved... I don’t know, a very creepy Soviet sanitarium (apparently these sanitariums were the government-provided vacation spots for workers- I don’t know what this one was like in Soviet times, but currently is half-abandoned and very odd – I kept expecting a white-coated doctor to pull me behind a door and perform a brain operation, and the light was a depressing blue), standing around drinking vodka in a trash-filled former ice-skating rink of a sort of art-deco aesthetic while waiting for “women’s shower time” to end at the odd sauna we found so we could use it, and hour in the said sauna involving a probably-filthy pool out of which we apparently splashed too much water, as we were informed by a shrill attendant with a thick accent. And more haggling with Ivan the marshrutka-manager to find a ride home, stuffed in the back of a very crowded marshrutka.
9/14
I had an interesting conversation with an Iranian marshrutka driver this evening; “interesting conversation” by my rather low standards, that is, which basically translate to “any conversation not purely based on the transfer of goods and cash.” The conversation, basically, was:
Him: You want to get off here at the stop “Dormitory,” don’t you?
Me: No, I’m going to the stop “University”
Him: Oh, ok.
Me: Thanks. (I hand him money, in a denomination requiring him to make a lot of change, an offense for which he does not rebuke me)
Him: You’re a foreigner, aren’t you.
Me. Yes.
Him: Me too. I’m an Iranian.
Me: Oh, really? Well, nice to meet you.
Him: Are you an Englishwoman?
Me: No, I’m from America.
[He finally finds enough change]
Me: Ok, bye.
Him (in accented but proud English): Thank you very much!
Well, if you had passed two weeks in a country without having a single conversation with a person you didn’t know, you would think this was remarkable too. In other news relating to friendly people, I bought ice cream from the nicest ice-cream-babushka in the world this afternoon, when I was desperately wandering the streets of the city looking for a way to make change for my $500 ruble bill so that I could take the many buses I was about to have to take.
The bus taking, incidentally, was my real event of the day; I successfully arranged, to my amazement, to meet some boys I met on the camping trip last weekend to all go together to the meeting of the hiking club. I’m so much braver by text message than I would ever be by telephone. So, I had a fun bus ride to this other town where the meeting was, having these boys (all math majors, you’ll be glad to hear, Mother) explain every joke about Americans they’d ever heard to me, and listening to long descriptions of Russian comedies, and answering various odd questions about America, such as “Do Americans think that all Russians wear hats?” and “had you seen public transportation before you came here?” The club meeting did not require my presence, as it was to plan a camping trip I’m not going on, but I’m making the most of any circumstance in which real Russians will talk to me. I also had a lot of good tea and cookies and dried bread. Then it was sort of an adventure getting home, as a thunderstorm rolled in just as the meeting ended- it involved a lot of standing around in the rain and jumping into marshrutkas before the rest of the jostling crowd, and leaping from marshrutka to passing trolleybus, and long attempts to explain where I lived, and, of course, the Iranian marshrutka driver. I had not yet used the trolleybus (on maybe I was on a tram? The city has both, and I understand how to use neither), so that was good.
Tonight when I got home I noticed that my host family’s library includes a Russian translation of Thomas Wolfe’s You Can’t Go Home Again. It’s not fair for Russians to be more cultured than I am even as relates to my own country’s literature. Of course, the fact that even Don Williams has apparently read Thomas Wolfe should have motivated me to read him before. It’s going on my list of things to do when I get home. Right now I’m still working on the volume of Milton I brought with me; I figured I’d never read Paradise Lost unless it were the only English literature available to me, and it does seem like one of those things one has to do. We’ll see if it actually gets done.
There is a Russian rock group called “Агата Кристи'' (Agata Kristi) - how cool is that. On the subject of music, I really like the radio on the kitchen wall here – it's white and square and plays only one station, just like the one in Malen'kaya Vera. Unlike that one, however, it never underscores the sad irony of my life by playing the Soviet National Anthem at key moments, at least not yet.
Going to Alshon tomorrow morning with my fellow Americans. Elizabeth sent us this interesting cautionary text message:
“They told me that right now at Alshan there are snakes and old, dangerous stairs.”
So, if I’m not taken out by any old stairs, I’ll be back to post Sunday night and maybe can post this Monday.
Him: You want to get off here at the stop “Dormitory,” don’t you?
Me: No, I’m going to the stop “University”
Him: Oh, ok.
Me: Thanks. (I hand him money, in a denomination requiring him to make a lot of change, an offense for which he does not rebuke me)
Him: You’re a foreigner, aren’t you.
Me. Yes.
Him: Me too. I’m an Iranian.
Me: Oh, really? Well, nice to meet you.
Him: Are you an Englishwoman?
Me: No, I’m from America.
[He finally finds enough change]
Me: Ok, bye.
Him (in accented but proud English): Thank you very much!
Well, if you had passed two weeks in a country without having a single conversation with a person you didn’t know, you would think this was remarkable too. In other news relating to friendly people, I bought ice cream from the nicest ice-cream-babushka in the world this afternoon, when I was desperately wandering the streets of the city looking for a way to make change for my $500 ruble bill so that I could take the many buses I was about to have to take.
The bus taking, incidentally, was my real event of the day; I successfully arranged, to my amazement, to meet some boys I met on the camping trip last weekend to all go together to the meeting of the hiking club. I’m so much braver by text message than I would ever be by telephone. So, I had a fun bus ride to this other town where the meeting was, having these boys (all math majors, you’ll be glad to hear, Mother) explain every joke about Americans they’d ever heard to me, and listening to long descriptions of Russian comedies, and answering various odd questions about America, such as “Do Americans think that all Russians wear hats?” and “had you seen public transportation before you came here?” The club meeting did not require my presence, as it was to plan a camping trip I’m not going on, but I’m making the most of any circumstance in which real Russians will talk to me. I also had a lot of good tea and cookies and dried bread. Then it was sort of an adventure getting home, as a thunderstorm rolled in just as the meeting ended- it involved a lot of standing around in the rain and jumping into marshrutkas before the rest of the jostling crowd, and leaping from marshrutka to passing trolleybus, and long attempts to explain where I lived, and, of course, the Iranian marshrutka driver. I had not yet used the trolleybus (on maybe I was on a tram? The city has both, and I understand how to use neither), so that was good.
Tonight when I got home I noticed that my host family’s library includes a Russian translation of Thomas Wolfe’s You Can’t Go Home Again. It’s not fair for Russians to be more cultured than I am even as relates to my own country’s literature. Of course, the fact that even Don Williams has apparently read Thomas Wolfe should have motivated me to read him before. It’s going on my list of things to do when I get home. Right now I’m still working on the volume of Milton I brought with me; I figured I’d never read Paradise Lost unless it were the only English literature available to me, and it does seem like one of those things one has to do. We’ll see if it actually gets done.
There is a Russian rock group called “Агата Кристи'' (Agata Kristi) - how cool is that. On the subject of music, I really like the radio on the kitchen wall here – it's white and square and plays only one station, just like the one in Malen'kaya Vera. Unlike that one, however, it never underscores the sad irony of my life by playing the Soviet National Anthem at key moments, at least not yet.
Going to Alshon tomorrow morning with my fellow Americans. Elizabeth sent us this interesting cautionary text message:
“They told me that right now at Alshan there are snakes and old, dangerous stairs.”
So, if I’m not taken out by any old stairs, I’ll be back to post Sunday night and maybe can post this Monday.
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Socks
I ran out of clean ones. So today I went to the supermarket next to my house and bought another pair.
I'm in the crazy computer-game-playing clubhouse right now. Until a moment ago there was a very cute little boy in a pin-striped suit next to me playing some... what's the word for that? First-person shooter or something... game, along with several of his friends. The crazy-eye-make-up girl who works here is watching an American movie at the desk, and ther are some nice "Dawn of War" posters on the wall. And a very nice Hodogetria icon in the corner.
I'm in the crazy computer-game-playing clubhouse right now. Until a moment ago there was a very cute little boy in a pin-striped suit next to me playing some... what's the word for that? First-person shooter or something... game, along with several of his friends. The crazy-eye-make-up girl who works here is watching an American movie at the desk, and ther are some nice "Dawn of War" posters on the wall. And a very nice Hodogetria icon in the corner.
Various Pieces of Information, or at least Blocks of Text, from the Pre-Baikal Region
I bought a volume of Anna Akhmatova poetry yesterday, and when I opened it up to the middle it was to the first page of Requiem, to the “in the place of a prologue,” that I’ve read so many times and that still paralyzes me, every time. I generally hate to admit to strong reactions to things that are often quoted or held up for admiration, so in the interest of breaking my snobbish affectation I am quoting it in full here:
[Akhmatova is writing about standing in line to visit her son in a Soviet prison, where he was being held mainly to induce her, Akhmatova, already a world-famous poet, to write pro-Soviet poetry]
«В страшные годы ежовщины я провела семнадцать месяцев в тюремных очередях в Ленинграде. Как-то раз кто-то «опознал» меня. Тогда стоящая за мной женщина с голубыми губами, которая, конечно, никогда в жизни не слыхала моего имени, очнулась меня на ухо (там все говорили шепотом):
- А это вы можете описать?
И я сказала:
- Могу.
Тогда что-то вроде улыбки скользнуло по тому, что некогда было ее лицом.»
I really like the font in the Akhmotova book. Russian typefaces are often very unattractive, especially the ones used by teachers in handouts, where it generally looks like it was written in capslock, even though it wasn't. I'm feeling a distinct lack of used-bookstores in my life: I don't know if they have just eluded my cursory search, or if there really aren't any. The bookstores I've been in are good for buying low-quality notebooks with pictures of American cars, and for buying law textbooks, but bad for other purposes. There's generally one shelf of «Literature of the Fatherland», always containing basically the same books. I don't know why my computer has decided that I always want to use these Russian-style quotation marks even when I'm typing in English.
Also, I have a new favorite in the let's-write-random-words-in-English-everywhere-and-therefore-be-cool phenomenon. On the bus yesterday I stood behind a boy in an orange button-down shirt on which was written, in a silver scrawl across the back, along with other things, «In the dark of the night, In a crumpled manner.»
Kyrgi armor in the 10th century was really cool, apparently.
Here is one of my favorite sentences from my Siberian History book, describing the early settlement of the northern reaches of Siberia:
«Мамоны и шерстистые носороги – основные объекты охоты древних людей – откоцевывали все дальше на север в поисках корма, а за ними были вынуждены идти на север и люди.»
First of all: wooly rhinosauroses?! Why was I not informed? And then the idea of people picking up all their possessions and treking ever northward in search of mamoths is both romantic and pathetic. These poor people, only a page earlier in the book, had come to Siberia in the first place because the ice age had milder effect there- and then they were lured to the artic circle? By animals that were about to check out, themselves, and abandon the suckered Siberian tribes to the ice entirely? Still, I would sure like to see a wooly-rhinosoaros hunt, especially as this was all still 5 thousand years removed from the use of metal in Siberia.
Abigail Wilson Mayer, there is a significant lack of blogging action coming out of Western Russia. The global balance is being thrown off. Please take action immediately, or a wooly rhinosoaros WILL be dispatched. I wonder what my Speech Practice professor thought of the fact that I listed «wooly rhinosoaroses» as one of my interests in the list we made for homework. I will be so impressed if it actually shows up as a topic of discussion.
Ok, I have to write an essay by tomorrow on the subject «To see is not to know.» I wonder what I'll say about that. Hopefully it will not be as rambling as my last essay for this class, in which we were given a wide variety of potential topics and I wrote about how I was having a really hard time choosing a topic and then about the general difficulty of choice in modern life. Still haven't gotten that one back.
Hey, Mother, what was that movie I watched with you, a long time ago, with the guy pretending to have a math degree or something, working on some engineering project I think, and the female romantic interest is surprised that he doesn't know about that law of steps, each half the size of the last? Is the woman dying of some disease? And what's that principle called? Also, whoever knows, what the name of that awesome movie with the guy driving his lawnmower across the country? And how about that one where the people get engaged with a plastic ring at the circus- I think the woman is a show rider? And recovers from some show-rider-related injury? And anyway, everyone claps when she says yes, of course- I really liked that ring, and I hope the guy never gets her a new one, like he said he would. I think I watched that one in Columbia, as well as the next one I'm thinking of, where in one of the beginning scenes the main character is a kid and riding in a sports car with his not-much-older babysitter and they're smoking, and they pass his parents' car, and the babysitter tells him just to wave. I think later this babysitter becomes a romantic interest and also has some horrible disease; why do women in movies always die lingering deaths? Sickness can't be that romantic. Maybe by «always» I mean «in the one's that I especially remember.» No women die lingering deaths in the lawnmower movie. But everyone is sort of sick and miserable- the old guy, his dying brother, the old guy's mentally-handicapped daughter whose children were taken by the state. So, this paragraph started because I wanted to write about that rule of the half steps in my essay...
Camo. It's in.
These blog postings would make a lot more sense if they were writen while I was actually paying for internet, instead of being written whenever I happen to have my computer on in my room, providing an outlet for procrastination and collecting stray thoughts like my winter clothes are currently collecting dust. They say it will be cold on Sunday.
New pictures are up, for those of you not checking daily, which hopefully means all of you. By new I mean I put them up about 3 days ago.
Update (from Cafe Fiesta):
Major happening on the marshrutka on the way here: two very sharply, fashionably dressed girls, rather sharply beautiful, got into the marshrutka and A) asked if the marshrutka was going to the central shopping center, which it was, but is totally not the name of a stop, and B) ASKED HOW MUCH THE RIDE COST. The driver looked at them with almost as much disbelief as I did, and never did answer. Woah. People who know how to use the marshrutkas worse than I do!! I assume they were displaced Muscovites. Thoughout the rest of the ride they proceeded to speculate on how the door opened and to look around them with great amuzement at the provinciality of their surroundings. I do not yet feel enough a part of the city to feel affronted at its account.
My other recent news is that I went into a store, (way more cool than any I would have entered in the Joined Together States, as they say here, but I was driven to desperate measures by my lack of warm-weather clothing) and remembered the word for «to try on clothing». I was so impressed with myself that I bought two things. Then I realized that I can't very well wear cropped pants with leather ankle-boots and had to go to a shoe store- my shoe-buying skills proved remarkably inferior to my clothes-buying skills. I now have a rather ugly pair of not-actually-for-sports sneakers, in the wrong size.
[Akhmatova is writing about standing in line to visit her son in a Soviet prison, where he was being held mainly to induce her, Akhmatova, already a world-famous poet, to write pro-Soviet poetry]
«В страшные годы ежовщины я провела семнадцать месяцев в тюремных очередях в Ленинграде. Как-то раз кто-то «опознал» меня. Тогда стоящая за мной женщина с голубыми губами, которая, конечно, никогда в жизни не слыхала моего имени, очнулась меня на ухо (там все говорили шепотом):
- А это вы можете описать?
И я сказала:
- Могу.
Тогда что-то вроде улыбки скользнуло по тому, что некогда было ее лицом.»
I really like the font in the Akhmotova book. Russian typefaces are often very unattractive, especially the ones used by teachers in handouts, where it generally looks like it was written in capslock, even though it wasn't. I'm feeling a distinct lack of used-bookstores in my life: I don't know if they have just eluded my cursory search, or if there really aren't any. The bookstores I've been in are good for buying low-quality notebooks with pictures of American cars, and for buying law textbooks, but bad for other purposes. There's generally one shelf of «Literature of the Fatherland», always containing basically the same books. I don't know why my computer has decided that I always want to use these Russian-style quotation marks even when I'm typing in English.
Also, I have a new favorite in the let's-write-random-words-in-English-everywhere-and-therefore-be-cool phenomenon. On the bus yesterday I stood behind a boy in an orange button-down shirt on which was written, in a silver scrawl across the back, along with other things, «In the dark of the night, In a crumpled manner.»
Kyrgi armor in the 10th century was really cool, apparently.
Here is one of my favorite sentences from my Siberian History book, describing the early settlement of the northern reaches of Siberia:
«Мамоны и шерстистые носороги – основные объекты охоты древних людей – откоцевывали все дальше на север в поисках корма, а за ними были вынуждены идти на север и люди.»
First of all: wooly rhinosauroses?! Why was I not informed? And then the idea of people picking up all their possessions and treking ever northward in search of mamoths is both romantic and pathetic. These poor people, only a page earlier in the book, had come to Siberia in the first place because the ice age had milder effect there- and then they were lured to the artic circle? By animals that were about to check out, themselves, and abandon the suckered Siberian tribes to the ice entirely? Still, I would sure like to see a wooly-rhinosoaros hunt, especially as this was all still 5 thousand years removed from the use of metal in Siberia.
Abigail Wilson Mayer, there is a significant lack of blogging action coming out of Western Russia. The global balance is being thrown off. Please take action immediately, or a wooly rhinosoaros WILL be dispatched. I wonder what my Speech Practice professor thought of the fact that I listed «wooly rhinosoaroses» as one of my interests in the list we made for homework. I will be so impressed if it actually shows up as a topic of discussion.
Ok, I have to write an essay by tomorrow on the subject «To see is not to know.» I wonder what I'll say about that. Hopefully it will not be as rambling as my last essay for this class, in which we were given a wide variety of potential topics and I wrote about how I was having a really hard time choosing a topic and then about the general difficulty of choice in modern life. Still haven't gotten that one back.
Hey, Mother, what was that movie I watched with you, a long time ago, with the guy pretending to have a math degree or something, working on some engineering project I think, and the female romantic interest is surprised that he doesn't know about that law of steps, each half the size of the last? Is the woman dying of some disease? And what's that principle called? Also, whoever knows, what the name of that awesome movie with the guy driving his lawnmower across the country? And how about that one where the people get engaged with a plastic ring at the circus- I think the woman is a show rider? And recovers from some show-rider-related injury? And anyway, everyone claps when she says yes, of course- I really liked that ring, and I hope the guy never gets her a new one, like he said he would. I think I watched that one in Columbia, as well as the next one I'm thinking of, where in one of the beginning scenes the main character is a kid and riding in a sports car with his not-much-older babysitter and they're smoking, and they pass his parents' car, and the babysitter tells him just to wave. I think later this babysitter becomes a romantic interest and also has some horrible disease; why do women in movies always die lingering deaths? Sickness can't be that romantic. Maybe by «always» I mean «in the one's that I especially remember.» No women die lingering deaths in the lawnmower movie. But everyone is sort of sick and miserable- the old guy, his dying brother, the old guy's mentally-handicapped daughter whose children were taken by the state. So, this paragraph started because I wanted to write about that rule of the half steps in my essay...
Camo. It's in.
These blog postings would make a lot more sense if they were writen while I was actually paying for internet, instead of being written whenever I happen to have my computer on in my room, providing an outlet for procrastination and collecting stray thoughts like my winter clothes are currently collecting dust. They say it will be cold on Sunday.
New pictures are up, for those of you not checking daily, which hopefully means all of you. By new I mean I put them up about 3 days ago.
Update (from Cafe Fiesta):
Major happening on the marshrutka on the way here: two very sharply, fashionably dressed girls, rather sharply beautiful, got into the marshrutka and A) asked if the marshrutka was going to the central shopping center, which it was, but is totally not the name of a stop, and B) ASKED HOW MUCH THE RIDE COST. The driver looked at them with almost as much disbelief as I did, and never did answer. Woah. People who know how to use the marshrutkas worse than I do!! I assume they were displaced Muscovites. Thoughout the rest of the ride they proceeded to speculate on how the door opened and to look around them with great amuzement at the provinciality of their surroundings. I do not yet feel enough a part of the city to feel affronted at its account.
My other recent news is that I went into a store, (way more cool than any I would have entered in the Joined Together States, as they say here, but I was driven to desperate measures by my lack of warm-weather clothing) and remembered the word for «to try on clothing». I was so impressed with myself that I bought two things. Then I realized that I can't very well wear cropped pants with leather ankle-boots and had to go to a shoe store- my shoe-buying skills proved remarkably inferior to my clothes-buying skills. I now have a rather ugly pair of not-actually-for-sports sneakers, in the wrong size.
Sunday, September 9, 2007
Interesting facts, Sept. 7
1) Apartments here do not have bathroom sinks. There is a room with a toilet in it, and, generally next to it, there is a room with bathtub in it. The bathtub serves for all handwashing-toothbrushing-facewashing needs. I haven’t really missed the sink.
2) Despite the (what seems to me as) public rudeness that I’m always whining about, in my observation, correlated with the observations of people who have been in Russia much longer than I have, Russians seem to sit very close to each other on public transportation. Even if there are 2 empty rows in the marshrutka, an entering passenger will often sit right next to the only other person in the van. Lack of sense of privacy/individuality? Need for the collective? Mere habit, when crowded transportation is the norm? Anyway, I guess it shows that they don’t actually dislike people they don’t know.
3) I didn’t realize how much this country loves documents. They are demanded at every turn, and all necessary “krugli [round] stamps.” I currently have about 8 million documents that must be carried on my person at all times.
4) Ice cream, from one of the gazillion little ice cream stands around the city, is very easy to buy. So I eat it a lot.
5) I bought some super-cool tapochki (slippers) the other day. They’re my new favorite things, aside from people who give me directions on the street. I’m wearing them right now. Not the people, the slippers.
6) I keep getting e-mails from Middlebury, now that the school year’s started- about how to reduce my environmental impact, about bookstore hours, about new sculpture plans, about fall family weekend, etc. Reminders of a parallel universe, I guess. But I would prefer that the deletion of these reminders not take up my precious internet time. I’m sort of embarrassed about how much I miss constant internet access.
7) If I could figure out how to post pictures I would.
8) Bob Dylan, via i-pod, goes interestingly with the Russian countryside.
Sept. 10
9) Camping trip was great fun, in one sense, and very frustrating, in another, because I usually had no idea what was going on. I need to do more Russian studying. And probably less blogging in English, which I know will disappoint my dedicated readership.
1) Apartments here do not have bathroom sinks. There is a room with a toilet in it, and, generally next to it, there is a room with bathtub in it. The bathtub serves for all handwashing-toothbrushing-facewashing needs. I haven’t really missed the sink.
2) Despite the (what seems to me as) public rudeness that I’m always whining about, in my observation, correlated with the observations of people who have been in Russia much longer than I have, Russians seem to sit very close to each other on public transportation. Even if there are 2 empty rows in the marshrutka, an entering passenger will often sit right next to the only other person in the van. Lack of sense of privacy/individuality? Need for the collective? Mere habit, when crowded transportation is the norm? Anyway, I guess it shows that they don’t actually dislike people they don’t know.
3) I didn’t realize how much this country loves documents. They are demanded at every turn, and all necessary “krugli [round] stamps.” I currently have about 8 million documents that must be carried on my person at all times.
4) Ice cream, from one of the gazillion little ice cream stands around the city, is very easy to buy. So I eat it a lot.
5) I bought some super-cool tapochki (slippers) the other day. They’re my new favorite things, aside from people who give me directions on the street. I’m wearing them right now. Not the people, the slippers.
6) I keep getting e-mails from Middlebury, now that the school year’s started- about how to reduce my environmental impact, about bookstore hours, about new sculpture plans, about fall family weekend, etc. Reminders of a parallel universe, I guess. But I would prefer that the deletion of these reminders not take up my precious internet time. I’m sort of embarrassed about how much I miss constant internet access.
7) If I could figure out how to post pictures I would.
8) Bob Dylan, via i-pod, goes interestingly with the Russian countryside.
Sept. 10
9) Camping trip was great fun, in one sense, and very frustrating, in another, because I usually had no idea what was going on. I need to do more Russian studying. And probably less blogging in English, which I know will disappoint my dedicated readership.
Baikal, Friday
Have extracted my laptop from the pile of sweaters in which it was hidden, put aside guilt at frequent communication with the English-speaking world, and ignored the stack of books I’m supposed to be reading to attempt to describe our group trip to Baikal yesterday. By the time I post this, I may or may not have gone on a camping trip, also near Baikal, and I wanted to record yesterday before it was driven from my mind by the stress of getting lost on the marshrutkas again or getting yelled at trying to buy soap (actually my previous attempt to buy soap did not involve getting yelled at, but was nonetheless unsuccessful: I asked a salesperson at this rather large pharmacy, full of every imaginable kind of shampoo and diaper wipes and facewashing product, if they had any “very normal soap.” They did not- they only had little soaps in the shape of a strawberry, that would “make your hands smell all day, I tell you honestly.”).
Yesterday was our first cool day here, maybe in the 50s. We left Irkutsk in our rented van around 10:00, and within 20 minutes we were driving through birch forests. I’ve never seen a real birch forest- in New England there’s a lot of birch, but it’s mixed in with oak and maple and whatnot, so it just serves as a white accent on the general forest view. But where we were driving, though there was some pine along the side of the road, it was generally pure birch, and effect of all those smooth white trunks (the leaves start pretty high up the trunk) spaced evenly across acres of hills, with the already-half-golden canopy above, was of a secret, stately ruined palace, with the patches of sun streaming through the crumbling roof only heightening the mystery and solemnity.
Our first stop was this outdoor architectural/ anthropological/ something-or-other museum, where they had assembled various old buildings, I think rescued from flooding when they build the hydroelectric dam, but I’m not really sure. The old wooden architecture was certainly cool, and onion domes (actually I’m not sure whether these counted as onion domes- I seem to remember from Russian history class last fall there being some term for these more elongated versions) look especially cool when they look like they’ve been made out of lincoln logs. We also saw a traditional Buryat hut, and various other things. But the experience sort of became increasingly miserable for all concerned as our plump, self-satisfied guide rebuked us more and more for our failure to ask good questions, and we became more and more frustrated at our inability to understand the tour, and we frantically tried to think of questions to ask that had probably not already been answered in the speech we had just finished not understanding; we would often just all be standing looking at each other, the guide waiting for us to give her a topic to talk about and we standing in non-question-posing silence that slowly passed from anxious to defiant. There were, however, beautiful views of the Angara river (the river that flows from Baikal and through the city of Irkutsk, and Baikal’s only non-tributary river (not a real term, but I can’t think of the real one- starts with an ‘e.’)
So, with great relief we left the museum, and we soon had our first view of Baikal. Right at the mouth of the Angara (stress on the last syllable), we saw the legendary Shaman Rock- supposedly, if the water level of Baikal ever drops low enough that the whole rock is exposed, it will mean the end of the world. Interestingly, it probably won’t be too long before this happens, as the water level of the lake is indeed decreasing, I think due to the hydroelectric dam, but I’ve never quite understood the whole explanation. Another myth attached to the rock is that it was thrown by an angry Baikal after his daughter Angara as she ran away from home to meet up with her betrothed, some other river whose name I don’t remember. Nearby the rock is the village of Listvyanka, which in the past 10 years has become a big tourist destination, as the village most accessible from Irkutsk. We went to a little open-air market to eat- I bought an omul, the lakes most famous endemic fish (almost all of the gazillion species of fish in Baikal are endemic), and a sort of wheel of bread. The omul was handed to me whole, without a plate or anything- it was sort of fun walking around with it while other people bought food. It’s a pretty fish- the scales are a brilliant golden color- and also rightly famed for its taste. A little challenging to eat with a plastic fork and no plate though- I may have eaten more bone and skin than meat.
Next we went to the Baikal Museum, were we saw all sorts of dead fish in jars and various stuffed mammals- wolverines and wolves and sable and weird Russian squirrels, among others. Of greatest interest was a little aquarium where there was a tank of 2 nerpa- the seals that live only in Lake Baikal. In their fall manifestations, these nerpa are approximately the cutest animals ever: they’re bigger than oceanic seals, and brown and glossy, and perfectly round, like a barrel. In the winter they turn white and thin- I hope I can see one then.
But it was our next activity that made the day. We pulled into this chicken-strewn yard, with a little babushka puttering around in it, and while we in the van looked at each other in confusion Elizabeth explained that this woman owned the banya we would be using. And, indeed, we went down this little path from her yard to the lake shore, and into this cool wooden shack, and there was a Russian banya (bathhouse), approximately the coolest thing in the world. There was a little vestibule, then a middle room with a table and samovar, and then the banya itself, like a sauna I guess- are saunas humid? I’ve never been to one. Anyway, the banya is heated with a big oven thing, on top of which are hot stones, over which you pour hot water. Then you experience a heat and an attack of steam the likes of which I would not have thought survivable, but after about 60 seconds of being sure that’s you’ll suffocate it becomes strangely fun. After a while in this room, you run out as fast as you can, through the other rooms of the shack, down the little stairs to Lake Baikal (keep in mind that we were shivering in sweaters most of the day and that Baikal is so huge it never heats up that much from winter) and run in. I’m not sure why this is so much fun, but it really is. The process is repeated for a couple of hours, with breaks when you want it for looking out at the lack and drinking tea. Actually I think you’re supposed to be drinking vodka, but we weren’t. After a while we got some branches – I’m sure there’s a word of this too- and did the think wheer you beat each other with them. I know no part of this process sounds fun- the incredible heat, the freezing water, the being beaten with tree branches- but it was. Swimming in Lake Baikal was so amazing- I can’t begin to describe how beautiful it is. ‘Lake’ doesn’t seem like the right word for it- everyone around here refers to it as the sea. It’s surrounded by wooded mountains, the treetops striped with yellow along the diagonal ridges, like sunlight had been applied with a pastry brush. [This post is becoming alarmingly full of cheesy metaphor, but I don’t know how else to describe these things.] But more than the mountains, unlike any I’ve seen, the “power and the glory” of the place was in the lake itself, in the expanse of it, the color, the movement of the water. It really is perfectly clear, and I drank straight from the lake, which might not have been the best idea so near the village, but I was convinced by the display we had seen in the museum of tiny little animals with world-record breaking water-filtering abilities. But it was so amazing- it was nothing at all like lake water. Not like spring water either, but of a taste all of its own, like everything else about Baikal. We learned in our Baikal studies class (actually this is one of the only things I’ve ever understood in this class) that Baikal water contains 40 different elements and is irreproducible in a laboratory. Later, at dinner, we were served big bottles of Baikal water, and I realized that it was actually sweet- I couldn’t figure out why this was so striking to me until I was back in Irkutsk that evening and remembered that sweet water was how Reepacheep, in the Voyage of the Dawn Treader, identified the edge of the world. I wish I could remember that rhyme his nurse taught him- Reepacheep, Reepacheep, sail to where the water’s sweet, something about a heart’s desire.
In another interesting note, Ivan and I tried blini with caviar at dinner. Blini were good, caviar not.
I feel sort of bad that yesterday was the only day I really had fun in Siberia. Much of the fun involved the lack of stress of being with a group of Americans (even though we spoke Russian the whole time, we were completely unselfconscious doing so, and we knew each other, and we could laugh at things like Don’t You Wish Your Girlfriend Was Hot like Me playing on the van radio, and especially at our attempts of translation of it), on a trip entirely planned for me by someone else, in a fairly touristy town. It seems like I should be off being independent and immersing myself in Russian culture and doing things with Russians. On the other hand, I was sort of relieved to realize that my basic dislike of life in Irkutsk is more due to disliking cities than disliking Russia. And the variety of fun I had yesterday was not one I would have had in America. I can, conceivably, spend three days a week not in Irkutsk, as we don’t have class Mondays.
Yesterday was our first cool day here, maybe in the 50s. We left Irkutsk in our rented van around 10:00, and within 20 minutes we were driving through birch forests. I’ve never seen a real birch forest- in New England there’s a lot of birch, but it’s mixed in with oak and maple and whatnot, so it just serves as a white accent on the general forest view. But where we were driving, though there was some pine along the side of the road, it was generally pure birch, and effect of all those smooth white trunks (the leaves start pretty high up the trunk) spaced evenly across acres of hills, with the already-half-golden canopy above, was of a secret, stately ruined palace, with the patches of sun streaming through the crumbling roof only heightening the mystery and solemnity.
Our first stop was this outdoor architectural/ anthropological/ something-or-other museum, where they had assembled various old buildings, I think rescued from flooding when they build the hydroelectric dam, but I’m not really sure. The old wooden architecture was certainly cool, and onion domes (actually I’m not sure whether these counted as onion domes- I seem to remember from Russian history class last fall there being some term for these more elongated versions) look especially cool when they look like they’ve been made out of lincoln logs. We also saw a traditional Buryat hut, and various other things. But the experience sort of became increasingly miserable for all concerned as our plump, self-satisfied guide rebuked us more and more for our failure to ask good questions, and we became more and more frustrated at our inability to understand the tour, and we frantically tried to think of questions to ask that had probably not already been answered in the speech we had just finished not understanding; we would often just all be standing looking at each other, the guide waiting for us to give her a topic to talk about and we standing in non-question-posing silence that slowly passed from anxious to defiant. There were, however, beautiful views of the Angara river (the river that flows from Baikal and through the city of Irkutsk, and Baikal’s only non-tributary river (not a real term, but I can’t think of the real one- starts with an ‘e.’)
So, with great relief we left the museum, and we soon had our first view of Baikal. Right at the mouth of the Angara (stress on the last syllable), we saw the legendary Shaman Rock- supposedly, if the water level of Baikal ever drops low enough that the whole rock is exposed, it will mean the end of the world. Interestingly, it probably won’t be too long before this happens, as the water level of the lake is indeed decreasing, I think due to the hydroelectric dam, but I’ve never quite understood the whole explanation. Another myth attached to the rock is that it was thrown by an angry Baikal after his daughter Angara as she ran away from home to meet up with her betrothed, some other river whose name I don’t remember. Nearby the rock is the village of Listvyanka, which in the past 10 years has become a big tourist destination, as the village most accessible from Irkutsk. We went to a little open-air market to eat- I bought an omul, the lakes most famous endemic fish (almost all of the gazillion species of fish in Baikal are endemic), and a sort of wheel of bread. The omul was handed to me whole, without a plate or anything- it was sort of fun walking around with it while other people bought food. It’s a pretty fish- the scales are a brilliant golden color- and also rightly famed for its taste. A little challenging to eat with a plastic fork and no plate though- I may have eaten more bone and skin than meat.
Next we went to the Baikal Museum, were we saw all sorts of dead fish in jars and various stuffed mammals- wolverines and wolves and sable and weird Russian squirrels, among others. Of greatest interest was a little aquarium where there was a tank of 2 nerpa- the seals that live only in Lake Baikal. In their fall manifestations, these nerpa are approximately the cutest animals ever: they’re bigger than oceanic seals, and brown and glossy, and perfectly round, like a barrel. In the winter they turn white and thin- I hope I can see one then.
But it was our next activity that made the day. We pulled into this chicken-strewn yard, with a little babushka puttering around in it, and while we in the van looked at each other in confusion Elizabeth explained that this woman owned the banya we would be using. And, indeed, we went down this little path from her yard to the lake shore, and into this cool wooden shack, and there was a Russian banya (bathhouse), approximately the coolest thing in the world. There was a little vestibule, then a middle room with a table and samovar, and then the banya itself, like a sauna I guess- are saunas humid? I’ve never been to one. Anyway, the banya is heated with a big oven thing, on top of which are hot stones, over which you pour hot water. Then you experience a heat and an attack of steam the likes of which I would not have thought survivable, but after about 60 seconds of being sure that’s you’ll suffocate it becomes strangely fun. After a while in this room, you run out as fast as you can, through the other rooms of the shack, down the little stairs to Lake Baikal (keep in mind that we were shivering in sweaters most of the day and that Baikal is so huge it never heats up that much from winter) and run in. I’m not sure why this is so much fun, but it really is. The process is repeated for a couple of hours, with breaks when you want it for looking out at the lack and drinking tea. Actually I think you’re supposed to be drinking vodka, but we weren’t. After a while we got some branches – I’m sure there’s a word of this too- and did the think wheer you beat each other with them. I know no part of this process sounds fun- the incredible heat, the freezing water, the being beaten with tree branches- but it was. Swimming in Lake Baikal was so amazing- I can’t begin to describe how beautiful it is. ‘Lake’ doesn’t seem like the right word for it- everyone around here refers to it as the sea. It’s surrounded by wooded mountains, the treetops striped with yellow along the diagonal ridges, like sunlight had been applied with a pastry brush. [This post is becoming alarmingly full of cheesy metaphor, but I don’t know how else to describe these things.] But more than the mountains, unlike any I’ve seen, the “power and the glory” of the place was in the lake itself, in the expanse of it, the color, the movement of the water. It really is perfectly clear, and I drank straight from the lake, which might not have been the best idea so near the village, but I was convinced by the display we had seen in the museum of tiny little animals with world-record breaking water-filtering abilities. But it was so amazing- it was nothing at all like lake water. Not like spring water either, but of a taste all of its own, like everything else about Baikal. We learned in our Baikal studies class (actually this is one of the only things I’ve ever understood in this class) that Baikal water contains 40 different elements and is irreproducible in a laboratory. Later, at dinner, we were served big bottles of Baikal water, and I realized that it was actually sweet- I couldn’t figure out why this was so striking to me until I was back in Irkutsk that evening and remembered that sweet water was how Reepacheep, in the Voyage of the Dawn Treader, identified the edge of the world. I wish I could remember that rhyme his nurse taught him- Reepacheep, Reepacheep, sail to where the water’s sweet, something about a heart’s desire.
In another interesting note, Ivan and I tried blini with caviar at dinner. Blini were good, caviar not.
I feel sort of bad that yesterday was the only day I really had fun in Siberia. Much of the fun involved the lack of stress of being with a group of Americans (even though we spoke Russian the whole time, we were completely unselfconscious doing so, and we knew each other, and we could laugh at things like Don’t You Wish Your Girlfriend Was Hot like Me playing on the van radio, and especially at our attempts of translation of it), on a trip entirely planned for me by someone else, in a fairly touristy town. It seems like I should be off being independent and immersing myself in Russian culture and doing things with Russians. On the other hand, I was sort of relieved to realize that my basic dislike of life in Irkutsk is more due to disliking cities than disliking Russia. And the variety of fun I had yesterday was not one I would have had in America. I can, conceivably, spend three days a week not in Irkutsk, as we don’t have class Mondays.
Thursday, September 6, 2007
skills
So, I spent a long time today, while waiting for a meeting, sitting on a bench outside the International Department building watching Russian students walk past. I was trying really hard to figure out the Russian fashion sense, with the possible view of imitating it. I gave up almost immediately. I can't generally manage American fashion sense, but I can usually at least identify the fashionable when I see it. The Russians are clearly going on a set of rules wholly unknowable to the untrained mind. I'm not going to bother trying- I'll just be a dorky American. Besides, as soon as ice appears on the sidewalk my chances of walking to school in high heels without falling will go from about 15% to about 0.
I spent a ridiculous amount of time yesterday looking for the Palace of Children's and Youths' Creativity (it doesn't sound that dumb in Russian) to see a concert of the choir my host mother directs. I only succeeded when I found some toothless old women distributing religious tracts- they very competently and nicely directed me, which is a lot more than I can say for the rest of the city's residents, most of whom I talked to at some point during my search. After I finally got there the receptionist was very suspitious of me (I had a drop or two of the grape popsicle I bought on the way on my shirt- immediate sign of an undesireable person) and I had a hard time convincing her to let me in- finally I saw the concert, and the first half was simply beautiful- Russian folksongs and whatnot. Then the kids left and came back in some misguided version of jazz outfits or something, and sang various western music to disasterous effect. My personal favorite was O Happy Day, possibly the most miserable, depressed-sounging redition in history, and sung more like "o hippy dey."
I spent a ridiculous amount of time yesterday looking for the Palace of Children's and Youths' Creativity (it doesn't sound that dumb in Russian) to see a concert of the choir my host mother directs. I only succeeded when I found some toothless old women distributing religious tracts- they very competently and nicely directed me, which is a lot more than I can say for the rest of the city's residents, most of whom I talked to at some point during my search. After I finally got there the receptionist was very suspitious of me (I had a drop or two of the grape popsicle I bought on the way on my shirt- immediate sign of an undesireable person) and I had a hard time convincing her to let me in- finally I saw the concert, and the first half was simply beautiful- Russian folksongs and whatnot. Then the kids left and came back in some misguided version of jazz outfits or something, and sang various western music to disasterous effect. My personal favorite was O Happy Day, possibly the most miserable, depressed-sounging redition in history, and sung more like "o hippy dey."
Wednesday, September 5, 2007
Read only if you have a lot of time
[Note: I was going to post this yesterday but ended up going on the electric train thing to some other town for a meeting of the hiking club. It involved tea-drinking and incomprehensible conversation. But everyone seemed very nice, and I think I agreed to go on a camping trip near Baikal on Saturday. And the trip there and back- past cool colorful villages and forests and such.]
Hello all! If I post this, it means I found the one wireless internet place in Irkutsk and successfully bought tea there and managed to use the internet and cut and paste this onto my blog. If this seems simple to you, you do not live in Russia, where you get used to thinking about all activities, especially those involving interactions with other people, as, alternately, daring adventures, stabs in the dark, games of chance, entering a minefield of almost sure frustrations, a new chance to get glared at by everyone in the room, etc. You should have seen it when 4 Middlebury program students, including myself, attempted to buy toiletries today. However, as I was informed by multiple charts and graphs in our orientation process, I am still in the “honeymoon” phase, so it all seems interesting and funny.
I’m writing this from my bed/coach item in my room on the 7th floor of building 70 on Universitetskii street, or block, or something. I’m looking at my zodiac-themed sheets and at the various knick-knacks all over my desk left there by the room’s previous resident, Katya, a girl my age who now has to sleep in her mother’s room. She (I presume) has also left two multi-colored, crazy-fonted crayoned messages on the papers tacked to the wall- not, I think, for my benefit- one says “Set for yourself high goals” with a picture of a tower, and the other “When the idols go out, the gods come in.” I wonder what that means. She seems very nice, actually, though my interaction with her has been mainly limited to her making me meals when her mother isn’t here and running out the door late for some class or meeting or choir rehearsal- she, like her mother (Valentina Petrovna) and older sister, works directing the city’s children and youth chorus, and she is also a university student, studying “culture” or something. An older daughter also lives here, but I’ve seen her less than Katya- I did, however, go with Valentina Petrovna to watch her sing in the Chinese restaurant next to the apartment building, as she does every night from 8-1. It was something. They all have dyed platinum-blond hair- well, Katya died hers red today, actually.
So, I’m just going to quote directly, with very little editing, my half-asleep journal entry as we few into Irkutsk (including odd capitalization):
“The Sun also Rises
Huge Yellow Moon leaving Domodedovo
big moon, even fuller, over the Moscow River the night before
Pastel Sunrise over Siberia
I saw the Moon, and the Moon saw me, but never through the boughs of an old oak tree, and it sure didn’t shine over the ones I love.
Where am I? Terrestrial, if not cosmic displacement. 13 hours is about as far out of orbit as you can get.
Bus ride through Moscow disconcertingly like Qrto- not the центр [downtown] of either, but in each the area around the center, except when an onion dome or an arched window gave it away, it all could have been Calle Primavera. Well more like those streets near Dulce's house- I don't remember the name of the development anymore, but there around Sam's. Something in the angle of the curbs an the visual tone of the road signs and the big medians full of scraggly trees and a couple blades of grass and just dirt- in the concrete banks of the Moscow River and the metal gating, in the billboards and other big advertisements.
The sunrise over Germany was deep and brilliant, a shade of red-orange, mostly red, reflecting off water, that seemed the world's truest color,- not quite sure what I mean- what is it the color of? Of truest energy, of the energy of creation. But not busy, moving creation, creation fierce and unbearable in its static force. I said something like that about the body positions and glances of Rublev's Trinity once to Maria, when I was fishing for an intellegent-sounding response. But it's true here.
Time is moving too quickly, literally- the sunrise is over and the sky is bright blue and I miss that salmon pastel tone, we flew over it and rushed it.
...
Going through security was interesting, with my coat and jacket pockets crammed full of 15 lbs worth of stuff and put through the x-ray, and my computer and and shoes and copious pant-pockets contents going through seperately and me still in two wool sweaters. The i-Pod was all that raised comment though.
This is a very ancient plane and very uncomfortable, and the flight attendents and brusque and have already spilled things on several people, almost without apology. I'm sitting next to Ivan.
Joseph and I were the only two not to have to pay for overweight baggage. It was quite the process, with tickets being taken all over the airport and fighting for places in line.
I like Elizabeth, the RC, more and more. My initial reaction was just alarm that this quiet, very young person was all the help we had in living in Siberia, but she's really very nice and competent.
Landing in an hour & 15 min.
A man on row 3 is drinking from a large glass flask.
Natasha bought M&Ms yesterday from a little store in shopping center thing, and great was her pride at her successful transaction. I would have been pleased too.
...
Fog from Baikal, had to fly to Ulan Ude and wait. Cool to fly over Baikal (except of course that it was sort of foggy) and really cool to see Burkatia. The Buryats weren't very happy about the whole thing- they just yelled at us for not getting on buses fast enough and for taking pictueres. Frankly, I don't think anyone would bother doing any harm to the airport. It's more... well, something- in the middle of nowhere, donde Jesus perdió su lucero [not the right word, but it means where Jesús lost his cigarette lighter], old-looking, generally backward than San Pedro Sula [airport], where you fly into the plantain fields. There WAS a mosaic inside, of a cosmonaut who looked a lot like a lobster. Elizabeth bought us chocolate, Natasha bought an interesting-looking ice cream cone the she proclaimed to be very good, ... , some Russian played some very loud DVD player and we all listened to a male, comedic version of «My Heart will go on» for a very long time. When we left the grumpy Boryats checked our tickets and asked Natasha if the Spongebob-in-a-coat assembly was a ребёнок [child]. Excellent. We should be in Irkutsk in 25 minutes, they said..... I like the brusque flight attendent now, after those Buryats. She's nice, in a brusque way.
Just took off, over an amazing area of little wooden houses. There was a window in the upstairs waiting room/balcony (like in Burlington) of the airport that looked, as Ivan pointed out, like Bi Hall but without the comfy chairs, just wooden benches. I love flying over mountains.
The туман [fog] is really very pretty where it fills the mountain valleys. Flying over Baikal again.»
So, I didn't realize when I started that that was so long and boring, sorry. Now there's no space to actually comment on Irkutsk. So I'll do that later- much later, I promise, if you by some chance are still reading.
Hello all! If I post this, it means I found the one wireless internet place in Irkutsk and successfully bought tea there and managed to use the internet and cut and paste this onto my blog. If this seems simple to you, you do not live in Russia, where you get used to thinking about all activities, especially those involving interactions with other people, as, alternately, daring adventures, stabs in the dark, games of chance, entering a minefield of almost sure frustrations, a new chance to get glared at by everyone in the room, etc. You should have seen it when 4 Middlebury program students, including myself, attempted to buy toiletries today. However, as I was informed by multiple charts and graphs in our orientation process, I am still in the “honeymoon” phase, so it all seems interesting and funny.
I’m writing this from my bed/coach item in my room on the 7th floor of building 70 on Universitetskii street, or block, or something. I’m looking at my zodiac-themed sheets and at the various knick-knacks all over my desk left there by the room’s previous resident, Katya, a girl my age who now has to sleep in her mother’s room. She (I presume) has also left two multi-colored, crazy-fonted crayoned messages on the papers tacked to the wall- not, I think, for my benefit- one says “Set for yourself high goals” with a picture of a tower, and the other “When the idols go out, the gods come in.” I wonder what that means. She seems very nice, actually, though my interaction with her has been mainly limited to her making me meals when her mother isn’t here and running out the door late for some class or meeting or choir rehearsal- she, like her mother (Valentina Petrovna) and older sister, works directing the city’s children and youth chorus, and she is also a university student, studying “culture” or something. An older daughter also lives here, but I’ve seen her less than Katya- I did, however, go with Valentina Petrovna to watch her sing in the Chinese restaurant next to the apartment building, as she does every night from 8-1. It was something. They all have dyed platinum-blond hair- well, Katya died hers red today, actually.
So, I’m just going to quote directly, with very little editing, my half-asleep journal entry as we few into Irkutsk (including odd capitalization):
“The Sun also Rises
Huge Yellow Moon leaving Domodedovo
big moon, even fuller, over the Moscow River the night before
Pastel Sunrise over Siberia
I saw the Moon, and the Moon saw me, but never through the boughs of an old oak tree, and it sure didn’t shine over the ones I love.
Where am I? Terrestrial, if not cosmic displacement. 13 hours is about as far out of orbit as you can get.
Bus ride through Moscow disconcertingly like Qrto- not the центр [downtown] of either, but in each the area around the center, except when an onion dome or an arched window gave it away, it all could have been Calle Primavera. Well more like those streets near Dulce's house- I don't remember the name of the development anymore, but there around Sam's. Something in the angle of the curbs an the visual tone of the road signs and the big medians full of scraggly trees and a couple blades of grass and just dirt- in the concrete banks of the Moscow River and the metal gating, in the billboards and other big advertisements.
The sunrise over Germany was deep and brilliant, a shade of red-orange, mostly red, reflecting off water, that seemed the world's truest color,- not quite sure what I mean- what is it the color of? Of truest energy, of the energy of creation. But not busy, moving creation, creation fierce and unbearable in its static force. I said something like that about the body positions and glances of Rublev's Trinity once to Maria, when I was fishing for an intellegent-sounding response. But it's true here.
Time is moving too quickly, literally- the sunrise is over and the sky is bright blue and I miss that salmon pastel tone, we flew over it and rushed it.
...
Going through security was interesting, with my coat and jacket pockets crammed full of 15 lbs worth of stuff and put through the x-ray, and my computer and and shoes and copious pant-pockets contents going through seperately and me still in two wool sweaters. The i-Pod was all that raised comment though.
This is a very ancient plane and very uncomfortable, and the flight attendents and brusque and have already spilled things on several people, almost without apology. I'm sitting next to Ivan.
Joseph and I were the only two not to have to pay for overweight baggage. It was quite the process, with tickets being taken all over the airport and fighting for places in line.
I like Elizabeth, the RC, more and more. My initial reaction was just alarm that this quiet, very young person was all the help we had in living in Siberia, but she's really very nice and competent.
Landing in an hour & 15 min.
A man on row 3 is drinking from a large glass flask.
Natasha bought M&Ms yesterday from a little store in shopping center thing, and great was her pride at her successful transaction. I would have been pleased too.
...
Fog from Baikal, had to fly to Ulan Ude and wait. Cool to fly over Baikal (except of course that it was sort of foggy) and really cool to see Burkatia. The Buryats weren't very happy about the whole thing- they just yelled at us for not getting on buses fast enough and for taking pictueres. Frankly, I don't think anyone would bother doing any harm to the airport. It's more... well, something- in the middle of nowhere, donde Jesus perdió su lucero [not the right word, but it means where Jesús lost his cigarette lighter], old-looking, generally backward than San Pedro Sula [airport], where you fly into the plantain fields. There WAS a mosaic inside, of a cosmonaut who looked a lot like a lobster. Elizabeth bought us chocolate, Natasha bought an interesting-looking ice cream cone the she proclaimed to be very good, ... , some Russian played some very loud DVD player and we all listened to a male, comedic version of «My Heart will go on» for a very long time. When we left the grumpy Boryats checked our tickets and asked Natasha if the Spongebob-in-a-coat assembly was a ребёнок [child]. Excellent. We should be in Irkutsk in 25 minutes, they said..... I like the brusque flight attendent now, after those Buryats. She's nice, in a brusque way.
Just took off, over an amazing area of little wooden houses. There was a window in the upstairs waiting room/balcony (like in Burlington) of the airport that looked, as Ivan pointed out, like Bi Hall but without the comfy chairs, just wooden benches. I love flying over mountains.
The туман [fog] is really very pretty where it fills the mountain valleys. Flying over Baikal again.»
So, I didn't realize when I started that that was so long and boring, sorry. Now there's no space to actually comment on Irkutsk. So I'll do that later- much later, I promise, if you by some chance are still reading.
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