I am once again unable to answer my e-mail, so don't be mad at me, people who are e-mailing me. I am about to lamely use my blog for the purpose of answering some e-mails and such.
Mother- sure, call Thursday, I turn in 1 paper on Wednesday and 2 more on Thursday, so I will probably be less stressed out by then.
Laurel and Abby- yes, of course I meant Helsinki. Also Ivan says we can take the Ferry to Estonia or something and it's only an hour. Abby- Elizabeth says she will be on the train from Kazan to Irkutsk on the 10th, until I remembered wrong and she said the 9th, and she wonders if we would like to take the same train. I think Kazan is a night away from Moscow. Also Kazan sounds awesome. Laurel, put some socks on immediately.
If you are a person advising me to start my papers early, thanks, I'm starting them as early as possible, meaning right now, and it's not early enough, that's for sure. AGHGHGHGHGHGHGHGHGH!
I am writing more normal blog posts, mainly as procrastination from paper-writting, but I don't have a flashdrive, so too bad for you, reading public.
Friday, November 30, 2007
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
I just watched Little Miss Sunshine, and it was so awesome. But I don’t think that you want to read about Little Miss Sunshine or my opinion of it in this blog that is supposed to be about Russia. The only part of the experience that was influenced by being in Russia is the fact that I watched it hiding in my room in the dark. Nastya got home from singing at the Chinese Restaurant right when it was starting, and I very much wanted to avoid questions about what I had done to the washing machine. Agh. I hope that the washing machine is less full of standing, indigo water than it was last time I looked. But I doubt it. I do a lot of ridiculous things to avoid awkward social encounters these days. I’m turning into Natasha- at least I can’t hide under my bed, as she has been know to do, as there’s no room under mine.
I think I have all sorts of interesting observations and stories relating to my recent life, but it’s 2 in the morning, which is way past my usual, oh, 10:00 bedtime. The adrenaline of the laundry experience has just about spent itself, so I am going to bed. Which is too bad for my reading public, because I don’t have time to do justice- actually that would be impossible regardless of time or energy- to my walk to the Musical Theater today, so I’ll just say I now have in my bookbag two oranges described to me as a gift from the Lord. And the phone number of a crazy babushka and the address of her crazy Prayer Center. And various moral doubts. Actually the moral doubts are not contained in my bookbag. To make a long story short, I can’t go have tea with the crazy woman, or go to the crazy church, in order to find a topic for my thesis, or out of curiosity, because it is simply too condescending and patronizing. Because I think they are crazy. And also I don’t really want to make up answers when asked when I found God, etc., nor do I feel like trying to formulate and explain why I don’t think those are very good questions. But I feel very bad, now that this woman gave me her oranges, and offered me money and help with any academic problems I may have, and convinced herself that my taking of the wrong road to the Musical Theater was the work of God. But why am I concerned that her belief that the plans of God can be interpreted be dashed? It sort of seems like a belief worth dashing. This is becoming unshort. It could be a lot unshorter though.
Went to the main university library yesterday and today. It is big and impressive and pretty and called the White House though it is yellow. But it used to be white. And you can’t call it the Yellow House because that means insane asylum. In the 1917 Revolution it was defended from someone or other by a small but fearless group of students of some kind; I don’t think it was the library then. The windows of the reading room look out very scenically on the Angara river, and it was especially pretty yesterday when big fluffy snowflakes were drifting by the bare birch trees and the cedars. Other than these factors, the building is sort of useless. It houses about 200 books, as far as I can tell; the others are in some other building a block away, and you have to go through numerous silly steps to get them. Ok you can get any other information about the belii dom from Natasha, I bet she’s writing about it. Good night.
Oh I forgot that the reason I was looking for the Musical Theater was to see Jesus Christ Superstar, and I would offer some comment, but that particular manifestation of total ridiculousness is available in the United States.
I think I have all sorts of interesting observations and stories relating to my recent life, but it’s 2 in the morning, which is way past my usual, oh, 10:00 bedtime. The adrenaline of the laundry experience has just about spent itself, so I am going to bed. Which is too bad for my reading public, because I don’t have time to do justice- actually that would be impossible regardless of time or energy- to my walk to the Musical Theater today, so I’ll just say I now have in my bookbag two oranges described to me as a gift from the Lord. And the phone number of a crazy babushka and the address of her crazy Prayer Center. And various moral doubts. Actually the moral doubts are not contained in my bookbag. To make a long story short, I can’t go have tea with the crazy woman, or go to the crazy church, in order to find a topic for my thesis, or out of curiosity, because it is simply too condescending and patronizing. Because I think they are crazy. And also I don’t really want to make up answers when asked when I found God, etc., nor do I feel like trying to formulate and explain why I don’t think those are very good questions. But I feel very bad, now that this woman gave me her oranges, and offered me money and help with any academic problems I may have, and convinced herself that my taking of the wrong road to the Musical Theater was the work of God. But why am I concerned that her belief that the plans of God can be interpreted be dashed? It sort of seems like a belief worth dashing. This is becoming unshort. It could be a lot unshorter though.
Went to the main university library yesterday and today. It is big and impressive and pretty and called the White House though it is yellow. But it used to be white. And you can’t call it the Yellow House because that means insane asylum. In the 1917 Revolution it was defended from someone or other by a small but fearless group of students of some kind; I don’t think it was the library then. The windows of the reading room look out very scenically on the Angara river, and it was especially pretty yesterday when big fluffy snowflakes were drifting by the bare birch trees and the cedars. Other than these factors, the building is sort of useless. It houses about 200 books, as far as I can tell; the others are in some other building a block away, and you have to go through numerous silly steps to get them. Ok you can get any other information about the belii dom from Natasha, I bet she’s writing about it. Good night.
Oh I forgot that the reason I was looking for the Musical Theater was to see Jesus Christ Superstar, and I would offer some comment, but that particular manifestation of total ridiculousness is available in the United States.
Monday, November 26, 2007
Theatrical Productions
11/26
I saw a play of some kind today. I don’t know what it was called. Or who wrote it. Or who the actors were. I was not a very informed viewer. I also arrived 40 minutes or so late. It was what is known in some circles as ‘OOC.’
Valentina Petrovna wanted to go to this play with me last weekend. The plan was for her to go from work, and Katya and I to go from home. But then Katya decided not to go or something and thought I was with her mother... I don’t know, but I didn’t know where it was and didn’t know what was going on, so I didn’t go. V.P. and her granddaughter saw it, and it was much enjoyed apparently, and I was informed that I must see it the next weekend. So then yesterday I was supposed to go, with V.P.’s sister. But then about half an hour before it was supposed to start the sister called and said she couldn’t go, but she gave me directions to go myself. I did not particularly feel like attending a theatrical performance but assumed, correctly, that not going was not an option, but I didn’t really try that hard to find it, so I didn’t, but rather rode a marshrutka into town and then another one back. I mean, I did make some effort to find it, but it was a stop at which I had never gotten off, and the stops aren’t really labeled, and I can’t say the very long name of the stop so I couldn’t ask where it was, and it was dark outside and the windows of the marshrutka were very dirty. But I could have made more of an effort than I did, probably- but I was having an annoyed-with-Irkutsk-for-demanding-so-much-effort evening. As I returned home, not feeling very good and embarrassed at my incompetence, I much dreaded the explanation to anyone who might be in the apartment of my failure, but luckily only Nastya was home, and she prefers not to acknowledge my existence, so no explanation was necessary. Eventually V.P. did call the house and ask, but by then I was not so bothered by the whole thing, and on the phone I could just pretend not to understand anything she said. I was told I would have to go next Tuesday. But then this afternoon she came in at 5:15 or so, granddaughter Sasha in tow, and told me to get my coat on, as I was being taken to this play. When we got out to the street what should I discover but that V.P. was driving her new, tiny, red car, which I had forgotten she had bought. All I can say about the subsequent drive in this car is that I wish she had forgotten about its purchase too. And that I’m glad that Sasha was in the car- Sasha is a very practical, competent 10-year-old, and is good at convincing her grandmother that headlights should be used in the dark and that cars should be put in park before one exits them and so on. Apparently these two had spent the past few hours driving around in the new car, Sasha pretty much teaching V.P. to drive. Why on earth did the girl’s mother allow this?
After much adventure on snowy roads, we got to the “Electrical College,” where the play was being performed, and I was dragged in, and various people who requested things such as tickets were shouted down, and it was discovered that the play started at 5 rather than at 6, as was thought. Then I was yelled at to take off my coat faster, and had it dragged away, and was myself thrust upon some poor actress who I think sings in V.P.’s choir. V.P. and the granddaughter rushed out to further automotive adventure, and I was led to the door of the theater, repeatedly hissed at for making floorboards squeak, and told to watch hiding behind this curtain thing until there was a scene change. I did so, and then had to be the only person sitting in the front row, where I felt sort of silly. In any case, I saw much of this play.
I’m not entirely sure of what happened, not having seen the first 40 minutes, but the basic idea is that this sailor is married to this domineering, sophisticated, prima-donna-esque ballerina. And then I guess he has an affair with this other woman, Masha? When I came in the were drowning in, maybe Lake Baikal, maybe some other body of water entirely, and Masha told the guy that she was pregnant, and made him promise to leave his wife and marry her if they were rescued, and made him say he loved her, and he very reluctantly obliged. Then they are saved by dolphins, so I guess it wasn’t Baikal, though when I entered this play I was under the impression that it was about Baikal... not important. In the next scene they have 7 daughters, and the sailor dude is signing about the joys of family life to his fellow sailors. And then the 1st wife shows up and sinks the ship, and everyone is drowning, and then the first wife makes the sailor dude say that Masha is totally uncultured and low-class, and he was only really happy with her, and promise to go back to her in case they are rescued, and he reluctantly agrees, and even more reluctantly says he loves her. Then they are saved by a helicopter that just happens to be flying over. In the next scene the guy is back with the ballerina but receiving messages from his other family on the bottoms of the fish that are delivered to the house... then the wives start to have a duel... it was all completely ridiculous, and eventually the sailor leaves everyone and goes to sea, with both wives embracing him at his departure. And then the wives are each going for a midnight swim in the freezing sea when they ironically meet and somehow bond and cease to hate each other, and they swim about wearing fur coats over their bathing suits and singing “oy moroz moroz,” and wife 1 teaches all wife 2’s children ballet, and they are all one big happy family. Agh.
My favorite part of the play was how all the problems were solved by bathing in freezing water. This is a very Russian idea. I still can’t figure out how V.P. yells at me for not wearing tapochki in the heated apartment, but considers it very healthful to stand in the snow in the early morning and pour cold water all over herself. I also like it that Irkutsk has an Electrical College. It had lots of pictures of hydroelectric dams on the walls, and on the class schedules. I wish I had looked at the schedules, but I was engaged in a mad rush at the coat check ladies, along with the rest of the crowd.
I feel that my ride home was fairly emblematic of the Russian experience. I found the bus/marshrutka stop; that is, I found a shelter with a bench under it with large lighted letters over it that said the name of the stop (before you wonder why I had not seen this the day before, it was on the other side of the street from only side I could see out the marshrutka window). And there were a few other people standing there. So I stood there waiting for an appropriate (I really want to say подходящий) marshrutka or bus, and indeed such vehicles were travelling this route. But did they stop, despite being almost empty, and despite my attempts to flag them down? No, no they did not, they went barrelling right on by. After sort of a long time of getting really mad at public transportation drivers and of getting tired of standing around in the snow, I realized: I was going about this in entirely the wrong way. I was putting trust in my own reading of official designations, in the external system, in my individual ability to navigate the system. The fact that some government agency had put a bus stop here did not matter. The huge lighted sign and waiting area were irrelevent. What mattered was what everyone else was doing. I looked around. Half a block away, a large group of people were standing by the curb. I went and joined them. A bus stopped, I got on it, and I went home.
Nov. 26
Still out of tea, somehow. Got the instant coffee blues. «I said it's all done with mirrors, of which they had none, to blend the instant coffee blues into the morning sun.» Guy Clark. My vow to stop listening to English music is not going well. I did, however, very studiously read in Russian, about the Decembrists (not the pretentious American rock band but the pretentious Russian revolutionaries) and actually look up the words I didn't know and write them down, but I think this is just because I bought new notebooks. New notebooks demand concientiousness and the illusion that you will keep it up.
I saw a play of some kind today. I don’t know what it was called. Or who wrote it. Or who the actors were. I was not a very informed viewer. I also arrived 40 minutes or so late. It was what is known in some circles as ‘OOC.’
Valentina Petrovna wanted to go to this play with me last weekend. The plan was for her to go from work, and Katya and I to go from home. But then Katya decided not to go or something and thought I was with her mother... I don’t know, but I didn’t know where it was and didn’t know what was going on, so I didn’t go. V.P. and her granddaughter saw it, and it was much enjoyed apparently, and I was informed that I must see it the next weekend. So then yesterday I was supposed to go, with V.P.’s sister. But then about half an hour before it was supposed to start the sister called and said she couldn’t go, but she gave me directions to go myself. I did not particularly feel like attending a theatrical performance but assumed, correctly, that not going was not an option, but I didn’t really try that hard to find it, so I didn’t, but rather rode a marshrutka into town and then another one back. I mean, I did make some effort to find it, but it was a stop at which I had never gotten off, and the stops aren’t really labeled, and I can’t say the very long name of the stop so I couldn’t ask where it was, and it was dark outside and the windows of the marshrutka were very dirty. But I could have made more of an effort than I did, probably- but I was having an annoyed-with-Irkutsk-for-demanding-so-much-effort evening. As I returned home, not feeling very good and embarrassed at my incompetence, I much dreaded the explanation to anyone who might be in the apartment of my failure, but luckily only Nastya was home, and she prefers not to acknowledge my existence, so no explanation was necessary. Eventually V.P. did call the house and ask, but by then I was not so bothered by the whole thing, and on the phone I could just pretend not to understand anything she said. I was told I would have to go next Tuesday. But then this afternoon she came in at 5:15 or so, granddaughter Sasha in tow, and told me to get my coat on, as I was being taken to this play. When we got out to the street what should I discover but that V.P. was driving her new, tiny, red car, which I had forgotten she had bought. All I can say about the subsequent drive in this car is that I wish she had forgotten about its purchase too. And that I’m glad that Sasha was in the car- Sasha is a very practical, competent 10-year-old, and is good at convincing her grandmother that headlights should be used in the dark and that cars should be put in park before one exits them and so on. Apparently these two had spent the past few hours driving around in the new car, Sasha pretty much teaching V.P. to drive. Why on earth did the girl’s mother allow this?
After much adventure on snowy roads, we got to the “Electrical College,” where the play was being performed, and I was dragged in, and various people who requested things such as tickets were shouted down, and it was discovered that the play started at 5 rather than at 6, as was thought. Then I was yelled at to take off my coat faster, and had it dragged away, and was myself thrust upon some poor actress who I think sings in V.P.’s choir. V.P. and the granddaughter rushed out to further automotive adventure, and I was led to the door of the theater, repeatedly hissed at for making floorboards squeak, and told to watch hiding behind this curtain thing until there was a scene change. I did so, and then had to be the only person sitting in the front row, where I felt sort of silly. In any case, I saw much of this play.
I’m not entirely sure of what happened, not having seen the first 40 minutes, but the basic idea is that this sailor is married to this domineering, sophisticated, prima-donna-esque ballerina. And then I guess he has an affair with this other woman, Masha? When I came in the were drowning in, maybe Lake Baikal, maybe some other body of water entirely, and Masha told the guy that she was pregnant, and made him promise to leave his wife and marry her if they were rescued, and made him say he loved her, and he very reluctantly obliged. Then they are saved by dolphins, so I guess it wasn’t Baikal, though when I entered this play I was under the impression that it was about Baikal... not important. In the next scene they have 7 daughters, and the sailor dude is signing about the joys of family life to his fellow sailors. And then the 1st wife shows up and sinks the ship, and everyone is drowning, and then the first wife makes the sailor dude say that Masha is totally uncultured and low-class, and he was only really happy with her, and promise to go back to her in case they are rescued, and he reluctantly agrees, and even more reluctantly says he loves her. Then they are saved by a helicopter that just happens to be flying over. In the next scene the guy is back with the ballerina but receiving messages from his other family on the bottoms of the fish that are delivered to the house... then the wives start to have a duel... it was all completely ridiculous, and eventually the sailor leaves everyone and goes to sea, with both wives embracing him at his departure. And then the wives are each going for a midnight swim in the freezing sea when they ironically meet and somehow bond and cease to hate each other, and they swim about wearing fur coats over their bathing suits and singing “oy moroz moroz,” and wife 1 teaches all wife 2’s children ballet, and they are all one big happy family. Agh.
My favorite part of the play was how all the problems were solved by bathing in freezing water. This is a very Russian idea. I still can’t figure out how V.P. yells at me for not wearing tapochki in the heated apartment, but considers it very healthful to stand in the snow in the early morning and pour cold water all over herself. I also like it that Irkutsk has an Electrical College. It had lots of pictures of hydroelectric dams on the walls, and on the class schedules. I wish I had looked at the schedules, but I was engaged in a mad rush at the coat check ladies, along with the rest of the crowd.
I feel that my ride home was fairly emblematic of the Russian experience. I found the bus/marshrutka stop; that is, I found a shelter with a bench under it with large lighted letters over it that said the name of the stop (before you wonder why I had not seen this the day before, it was on the other side of the street from only side I could see out the marshrutka window). And there were a few other people standing there. So I stood there waiting for an appropriate (I really want to say подходящий) marshrutka or bus, and indeed such vehicles were travelling this route. But did they stop, despite being almost empty, and despite my attempts to flag them down? No, no they did not, they went barrelling right on by. After sort of a long time of getting really mad at public transportation drivers and of getting tired of standing around in the snow, I realized: I was going about this in entirely the wrong way. I was putting trust in my own reading of official designations, in the external system, in my individual ability to navigate the system. The fact that some government agency had put a bus stop here did not matter. The huge lighted sign and waiting area were irrelevent. What mattered was what everyone else was doing. I looked around. Half a block away, a large group of people were standing by the curb. I went and joined them. A bus stopped, I got on it, and I went home.
Nov. 26
Still out of tea, somehow. Got the instant coffee blues. «I said it's all done with mirrors, of which they had none, to blend the instant coffee blues into the morning sun.» Guy Clark. My vow to stop listening to English music is not going well. I did, however, very studiously read in Russian, about the Decembrists (not the pretentious American rock band but the pretentious Russian revolutionaries) and actually look up the words I didn't know and write them down, but I think this is just because I bought new notebooks. New notebooks demand concientiousness and the illusion that you will keep it up.
Friday, November 23, 2007
Written While Waiting for Sluggish Internet to Load E-mail
Hope you all have a nice Thanksgiving, blogreaders. I thought about you, probably.
I had another cultural experience to check off the list on Thanksgiving day: the Russian medical system! It was sort of a process. Actually most of the process involved my sitting around being incompetent and Elisabeth, the RC, putting up with me, when she probably wanted to be cooking Thanksgiving dinner. I think she started calling clinics at 9:00, when they opened, and finally found a place that would take me that day around 10:00, and then we tramped about looking for the place- we went into the wrong side of the building first, which was a big deal apparently. ‘Twas an ear nose and throat doctor. We got put on the list, were told the doctor was out somewhere and that we should come back around 1:00 and he might be back. I went back to Elisabeth’s apartment with her and slept as she cooked Thanksgiving things. I tried to sleep without breathing on her bed, as I thought infecting another person with strep might not get me onto her list of things to be thankful for. Then we went back to the doctor’s office, which seemed like rather a long snowy trek to me but most likely wasn’t. I couldn’t really hear anything due to clogged ears, and also was acting sort of goofy, so in all I was not the best conversational partner. So, after a long walk of the only things I understood being “so, if they think you have dyptheria they’ll put you in the hospital in quarantine for 3 days” and “have you ever had mono?” we got back to the big, pretty red and white doctor’s office, and proceeded to wait for many hours, as every single person who had gone there that day had been told to come back at 1:00, and friends of the receptionist got in first. There was some amount of disorder because they had run out of the little blue plastic things that Russians love to make you put on over your shoes, so everyone was afraid to walk in without them, but we were all forgiven, until they found new ones (I think). I’m not sure what happened, but all of a sudden we all had to go pay 3 ruples for the blue slipper things. And then they yelled at us all to take our coats and put them in the “coat room,” which was actually some coat racks behind a piece of glass, but Russians are great believers in coat rooms. Especially the people who work in the computer labs in the Mezhfak. I’m not entirely sure why coats are considered to be so dangerous to public health and safety. Elisabeth and I read Pravda, and watched the boots of the other waiting people, and played hangman on the borders of Pravda, with words like Communism and Victory and Tovarish. Elisabeth was handicapped by my not really knowing how to spell. Eventually we got into the doctor, and as was the case most of the day, I didn’t really understood anything that was said, from a combination of not being able to hear and not really knowing Russian and not really being in the mood by that point to try that hard to understand to understand Russian. Why do doctors, as a rule, try so hard to be jovial and humorous? I would think that sick people, as a rule, are one of the groups least likely to be amused by teasing. Anyway, after poking various parts of my head for a while, he pronounced that I had strep. He seemed surprised that we’d heard of it. Then he prescribed an unnecessary-seeming number of medicines and we left. We then went to a weird pharmacy guarded by an armed security person, where the pharmacist gave me the large number of medicines and then some more of her own devising, such as these little shreds of metal that I’m supposed to mix in tea until it turns pink and then put in some salt and gargle with it. Uh-huh. I’ll be sticking to the alarming-looking yellow substance the doctor is already making me gargle with.
Then I went home on the marshrutka and was not in a very good mood, and therefore bought a Novosibersk icecream bar by the entrance to the apartment building. When I got to the apartment Katya acted like I was crazy to have gone to the doctor (“In America people never just have sore throats?”) and then yelled at me for eating ice cream. And then I went to bed, and listened to an afternoon of intense home repair and rearrangement. This later turned out to be because Nastya had bought her mother a new wardrobe to replace the old falling-apart one, and the girls were getting it into place, with the help of some neighbors or something, to surprise their mother when she came home. This was very sweet, and it’s a very pretty wardrobe.
So, since then I haven’t been doing much. I watched “The Mexican.” It would have been really dumb except that it was the first movie I’d seen in a while, and I watched it in English. I look for funny names in the Russian Old Testament. I recommend this as an activity, it’s very entertaining. If only these people spoke English, like the ancient Hebrews, they would know the right names for these people. Also, kings are always referred to as tsars.
Oh, I forgot to mention that late Thursday night Adrianne brought over leftovers from Thanksgiving dinner, which was very nice of her.
The Cafe Fiesta people made me buy food and beverages to some enormous value, 150 rubles or something, to get the internet password today. Especially annoying as I do not at all wish to eat, being sick and all. As soon as I can go back to the Mezhfak I’ll be back to my boycott.
I had another cultural experience to check off the list on Thanksgiving day: the Russian medical system! It was sort of a process. Actually most of the process involved my sitting around being incompetent and Elisabeth, the RC, putting up with me, when she probably wanted to be cooking Thanksgiving dinner. I think she started calling clinics at 9:00, when they opened, and finally found a place that would take me that day around 10:00, and then we tramped about looking for the place- we went into the wrong side of the building first, which was a big deal apparently. ‘Twas an ear nose and throat doctor. We got put on the list, were told the doctor was out somewhere and that we should come back around 1:00 and he might be back. I went back to Elisabeth’s apartment with her and slept as she cooked Thanksgiving things. I tried to sleep without breathing on her bed, as I thought infecting another person with strep might not get me onto her list of things to be thankful for. Then we went back to the doctor’s office, which seemed like rather a long snowy trek to me but most likely wasn’t. I couldn’t really hear anything due to clogged ears, and also was acting sort of goofy, so in all I was not the best conversational partner. So, after a long walk of the only things I understood being “so, if they think you have dyptheria they’ll put you in the hospital in quarantine for 3 days” and “have you ever had mono?” we got back to the big, pretty red and white doctor’s office, and proceeded to wait for many hours, as every single person who had gone there that day had been told to come back at 1:00, and friends of the receptionist got in first. There was some amount of disorder because they had run out of the little blue plastic things that Russians love to make you put on over your shoes, so everyone was afraid to walk in without them, but we were all forgiven, until they found new ones (I think). I’m not sure what happened, but all of a sudden we all had to go pay 3 ruples for the blue slipper things. And then they yelled at us all to take our coats and put them in the “coat room,” which was actually some coat racks behind a piece of glass, but Russians are great believers in coat rooms. Especially the people who work in the computer labs in the Mezhfak. I’m not entirely sure why coats are considered to be so dangerous to public health and safety. Elisabeth and I read Pravda, and watched the boots of the other waiting people, and played hangman on the borders of Pravda, with words like Communism and Victory and Tovarish. Elisabeth was handicapped by my not really knowing how to spell. Eventually we got into the doctor, and as was the case most of the day, I didn’t really understood anything that was said, from a combination of not being able to hear and not really knowing Russian and not really being in the mood by that point to try that hard to understand to understand Russian. Why do doctors, as a rule, try so hard to be jovial and humorous? I would think that sick people, as a rule, are one of the groups least likely to be amused by teasing. Anyway, after poking various parts of my head for a while, he pronounced that I had strep. He seemed surprised that we’d heard of it. Then he prescribed an unnecessary-seeming number of medicines and we left. We then went to a weird pharmacy guarded by an armed security person, where the pharmacist gave me the large number of medicines and then some more of her own devising, such as these little shreds of metal that I’m supposed to mix in tea until it turns pink and then put in some salt and gargle with it. Uh-huh. I’ll be sticking to the alarming-looking yellow substance the doctor is already making me gargle with.
Then I went home on the marshrutka and was not in a very good mood, and therefore bought a Novosibersk icecream bar by the entrance to the apartment building. When I got to the apartment Katya acted like I was crazy to have gone to the doctor (“In America people never just have sore throats?”) and then yelled at me for eating ice cream. And then I went to bed, and listened to an afternoon of intense home repair and rearrangement. This later turned out to be because Nastya had bought her mother a new wardrobe to replace the old falling-apart one, and the girls were getting it into place, with the help of some neighbors or something, to surprise their mother when she came home. This was very sweet, and it’s a very pretty wardrobe.
So, since then I haven’t been doing much. I watched “The Mexican.” It would have been really dumb except that it was the first movie I’d seen in a while, and I watched it in English. I look for funny names in the Russian Old Testament. I recommend this as an activity, it’s very entertaining. If only these people spoke English, like the ancient Hebrews, they would know the right names for these people. Also, kings are always referred to as tsars.
Oh, I forgot to mention that late Thursday night Adrianne brought over leftovers from Thanksgiving dinner, which was very nice of her.
The Cafe Fiesta people made me buy food and beverages to some enormous value, 150 rubles or something, to get the internet password today. Especially annoying as I do not at all wish to eat, being sick and all. As soon as I can go back to the Mezhfak I’ll be back to my boycott.
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Arg
City of Irkutsk, I glare menacingly in your direction. I lost my flashdrive yesterday, 'lost' in this context meaning 'having it stolen by overdressed hussies in Web Ugol.' Also I still can't find green beans and I'm still sick and I didn't go to class today, though you may notice that I'm not sick enough not to go to the high-school gamers' internet cafe. Also every time I try to send an e-mail Explorer closes; I don't know whether they get sent or not. Also I have to try to make gravy tomorrow and I don't really know how. Also I'm supposed to give some horrible talk about my impressions of Russia tomorrow at some horrible conference. Also I have 3 term papers I'm supposed to be writing and I still don't understand Russian libraries. Going to look for beans again and then going home and going to bed and wishing my host family would find some activities outside the home with which to occupy themselves.
Aghghghghg I am so tired. After spending pretty much the entire morning in the computer lab of the Mezhfak, in the afternoon I went downtown; V.P. had given me the number of some school she had called and told that I wanted to visit them, and they said I should come “after 2,” so until I figured it was close enough to 2 to call and ask again, I decided to walk around. I walked down Marat street (is that a cool name or what), which is my new favorite street in Irkutsk- it has lots of pretty wooden houses that are not falling down as so many are, and some pretty public buildings, as is generally very cheery looking in the snow. At about 1:30 I saw a sign for a foreign language school; I first walked into some sort of industrial packaging center, but a woman there very nicely showed me where I should have gone, and I eventually got to the language center and asked it they needed anyone to teach English. The woman at the desk looked hesitant; then some other woman in the office immediately gave me her card and took my number and said that her language school needed teachers. This apparently made the woman at the desk decide that they needed me too, and she called the “main campus,” and I was sent off there for a job interview. I thought this was rather exciting, as it was only the second job interview I’ve ever had, and the first was at Mary Johnson’s Children’s Center where they just hire anyone from Middlebury College who walks in the door, and the job interview is just being shown around a preschool. Anyway, my first task was to find this main campus, which involved my following a completely different church dome than I though I was and therefore being very surprised when I ended up not at Square Kirova but at the Church of the Holy Trinity by the History Department. But I did eventually find the building, which was cool and business-y and fancy, and I took the first reputable-looking elevator of my stay in Irkutsk up the 5th floor, to the offices of the ABC Language Center. There I tried to convince this guy named Alexander that my total lack of actual teaching experience was made up for by the fact that I worked in a preschool, where I routinely had to command the attention of people who would rather not have their attention commanded, and three-year-olds are clearly comparable to people who take evening language classes after a long day of work. So I’m being called as soon as Alan, the American working there now, leaves for St. Petersburg, which I think is in a few months. I also think that this is the same Alan that all the Middlebury students, and apparently half the city of Irkutsk, has met at one time or another on the street. Anyway, that was good. But then it was 2:30, and I had to call this mysterious school; I was under the impression that it was connected to an orphanage, but apparently this was a translation error on my part. In any case, I called this number, which if you are a foreigner living in Irkutsk you will understand is terrifying. For one thing I actually had no idea whose number I was calling, all I had was the name of the director of the school, and for another all Russian skills which I may have ever acquired totally dissolve upon picking up a telephone. So I had various stuttering conversations with various secretaries until I eventually convinced them to let me talk to the director, who was very nice, and then I set out for the school. I had already found this school once (which I though was very impressive really considering that my directions were “the second floor of a pink building on the corner of Marat, with no sign”), but apparently I was disoriented from my previous circuitous trek around the city, because I though it was at totally the wrong end of Marat. So my total number of treks of the whole of Marat street was at 4 by the time I finally got to the school, rather later than I said I would. I still didn’t really know where I was exactly, but after various other adventures in direction asking I found the director’s office. I sat down. “All right, I’m listening,” she said. And then I fortunately made no mention of orphans, and she quickly translated my vague comments into “I am ready to be exploited as slave labor,” and when some kids walked into the office to find costumes, among them was Sasha, V.P.’s granddaughter, and I understood where I was. This is a very fashionable school where they study English and German from the first grade, and have fancy invited lecturers, and whatnot, not in any way connected to orphanages. I was sent off to drink tea until the second-graders had their English class, at 4:00. I talked to a nice German teacher. I drank Earl Grey tea, which made me very happy. At 4:00 I went and sat at the back of a bunch of the most chaotic 2nd grade classroom I have ever seen, which isn’t saying much because the only one I really remember seeing was my own. I though I must have just forgotten what 2nd grade was like, but then I though about it more, and I remember 2nd grade fairly well. We never ran around the room kicking each other. I remember the atmosphere being one of, basically, sitting and listening to our teacher, who was very charismatic and entertaining, but did demand that we wrote things down that she wrote on the board, and have orderly discussions of the books we read, and so on. So, this particular class entirely involved the singing of songs (have you ever heard “Bingo” sung with an exaggerated English accent? It’s very entertaining.) and the yelling at Yaroslav and Vlad to sit down, please. I seem to have agreed to go back and meet with this teacher on Friday about helping in her classes. Then I went and talked to an 11th grade class. Their teacher asked me questions like “Do you study the present perfect tense in your schools?” and was rather triumphant when I said that Americans don’t actually study English grammar all that much. I was also asked what I though of the conduct of Paris Hilton and what I hated about Irkutsk. Then, for some reason, the 11th graders danced a minuet for me. The teacher had told me before the class that the students weren’t very enthusiastic about the English-speaking world, and preferred the culture of Germany. Little brats. Then I thought I was done, and I reported back to the director’s office. She told me to go to the 5th grade classroom now. So I got there, and this old teacher was standing in the midst of a group of students whose behavior had clearly not changed much from the 2nd grade, and she looked rather relieved to see me, and said, “are you going to teach this class now?” I said I would like to help, or watch, or whatever she wanted me to do, and she said, “Oh no, my class just ended,” and left. So apparently I was supposed to teach the class. I would not say it was one of the more successful English classes in history. When I ran out of ideas I would just make them dance the hokie pokie. Sasha, V.P.’s granddaughter was in the class, and she was very excited to know the teacher. She also turned out to be one of those students who are shocked by departure from classroom routine; every once in a while she would frown and show me the homework they had done (they had apparently transliterated the poem “whether the weather” into the phonetic alphabet. Who would ever want to do such a thing? Especially as they clearly had no idea what any of the words meant.), and once she called me over and said I should write the day of the week and the date on the board. As they seemed to be studying weather, I tried to make them stand up and give weather reports. But they were handicapped by not knowing a word of English, despite now having studied it 3 times a week for 5 years. So then we acted out weather events, which was more successful. Thunder was especially fun. The last 20 minutes of class we spend writing in our notebooks “Today is [weather word]. Yesterday was [weather word]. I was surprised how wonderfully long this took. It was apparently a very complicated assignment. Anyway, eventually the class ended, and I waited forever for a bus, and the bus was as usual heated to oven temperatures, and when I got home I wanted to sit down and never move again. But instead Katya decided that it was the one day of the year in which she would do her English homework, as Thursday she was actually going to go to class. So we spent a very long time working at the awful 1980s “the poor are their own fault” article, and it went worse and worse as it went, and by the time we finished 2 pages my head hurt so much I wanted to stab out my eyeballs, and I went to bed. This morning my throat hurts and I am not enthusiastic about the prospect of being sick. But we had blini this morning, so life has its compensations.
I am on a roll here
Nov. 18
Vegetable update (see entry below): The first thing I did this morning is trip over the cabbage in the hallway. It’s still there. It wasn’t a dream. I tasted the vat of salted cabbage/carrot mix, and it is very, very salty. I used a carrot in the soup I made for lunch. Other than that, all is quiet on the vegetable front. I’m awaiting another round of vegetable-battle tonight with mixed excitement and dread.
Went to the detski dom (children’s home) again this morning. Now I want to adopt all the kids. Except that I’m still under the ideological influence of this film we saw in summer school with the underlying message that Russia should stop letting foreigners take its children, and if a foreign family adopts a Russian child then that child’s drug-addicted mother will stop having any reason to try to reform and just kill herself. Don’t remember what it was called. I talked to the teacher in the 5-6 year-old room today. She had a sort of disturbing “blood will out” approach to the future of her young charges. Still, she very proudly showed me the various ancient cloth-bound child-development books she consulted when charting how far behind all the kids were in their development, and also the notebook in which she made the week’s plans. As far as I could tell the day’s plan would be “Math. Drawing. Animals.” but it was plain she was very earnest and sincere about it all. She also related the personal histories of some of the kids; one pretty, smart little girl had a mother in jail for narcotics trafficking, and a grandmother too old to take care of her; one wild little boy had a mother who came to see him but who was often in psychiatric wards, and so on. I thought of what Maggie once said, that she tries not to know anything about the home lives of her students so that she doesn’t make excuses for them. They apparently get adopted fairly often, almost always by foreigners, who come into the room and play with the kids and then choose one. The idea of choosing a child is sort of astonishing; especially by the time they’re 5, and such clearly defined individual human beings. We played musical chairs, and duck-duck-goose, and that was about the end of their tolerance for organized activity, so we did a lot of throwing balls around the room and spinning hoola-hoops. When one would get too crazy it was amazing how effective it was to pick him up and look out the window with him; this almost always is amazingly effective at calming down children, as I found with many a crying Thunderdragon. It is also one of my favorite activities, looking out a window with a kid. The whole world looks different, and it’s so calm and companionable. So I heard about Irkutsk from several different kids today; we talked about the pretty little painted wood houses on the streets nearby, and who lived there; we talked about tramvais and trolleybuses and marshrutkas; we talked about the big, pretty old hospital on the hill far away; we talked about another children’s home, pink and boxy, a few blocks away, and so on. There were slight differences between looking out a window with these kids and with the Thunderdragons, of course: the Thunderdragons are also excited by police cars, but because they want to grow up to be policemen; these kids would go crazy when they saw a police car because they think of them as roving villains who shoot people. The Thunderdragons usually talked about their parents when they looked out the window, and how they related to that outside world, and what their parents were doing right now; Nadya, a sweet little girl with a blond buzz-cut, repeatedly cried out the window for her brother in another children’s home (Bratyik! Can you hear me! Brother! Answer!).
evening update:
We shredded all the remaining carrots. And once again had a dinner consisting entirely of carrots. Next time any of you have to make a meal for a vegetarian with gluten, nut, and dairy allergies, you might consider the option “shredded carrots with honey.” Otherwise I recommend making use of other food items. The non-substantialness of the meal, however, did allow for having tea (the meal rather than the mere drink) about 3 times today. Oh further interesting pieces of carrot news: 1) I somehow managed to cut my finger on a carrot. There was no knife in my hand at the time, so it really was just the vegetable. I have a new respect for the root. 2) When I get tired of Valentina Petrovna’s conversation consisting largely of unwanted personal advice, my new tactic is to start an English lesson; today it turned out that she is a big fan of the English “r,” as in the middle sound of “carrot.” So... after the peeling stage of the process, in which it was possible to actually talk to each other, ended, the shredding stage was entirely accompanied by a very charming pronunciation of the word “carrot” repeated several thousand times.
In non-carrot news, the director of Ironia Sudbi, the film some of you may know as “that one where the wrong guy gets on the plane on New Years,” turned 80 today or sometime this week or something, and there was a huge televised “jubilee,” with every famous old actor in Russia reciting poems and singing parodies of songs from his movies and generally being amusingly theatrical. I was quite impressed at Valentina Petrovna and Katya’s ability to name every person in the audience. I was even more impressed at the event; I have come to the unfortunate conclusion that, impossible though it may be to actually live in this country, they have a superior culture. The whole thing was just so classy. Actually their film industry may have come to the end of class; I think this even was a sort of grand, explosive finale of the Soviet film culture, where censorship and state control prevented the need to appeal to the lowest common denominator. But I also just made up this theory and know nothing about it really. My only other comment is that I really like when people actually shout “Bravo!” at public events, and my affection for Valentina Petrovna is greatly increased by the revelation last night at the poetry reading that she is a bravo-yeller.
Nov. 18
Vegetable update (see entry below): The first thing I did this morning is trip over the cabbage in the hallway. It’s still there. It wasn’t a dream. I tasted the vat of salted cabbage/carrot mix, and it is very, very salty. I used a carrot in the soup I made for lunch. Other than that, all is quiet on the vegetable front. I’m awaiting another round of vegetable-battle tonight with mixed excitement and dread.
Went to the detski dom (children’s home) again this morning. Now I want to adopt all the kids. Except that I’m still under the ideological influence of this film we saw in summer school with the underlying message that Russia should stop letting foreigners take its children, and if a foreign family adopts a Russian child then that child’s drug-addicted mother will stop having any reason to try to reform and just kill herself. Don’t remember what it was called. I talked to the teacher in the 5-6 year-old room today. She had a sort of disturbing “blood will out” approach to the future of her young charges. Still, she very proudly showed me the various ancient cloth-bound child-development books she consulted when charting how far behind all the kids were in their development, and also the notebook in which she made the week’s plans. As far as I could tell the day’s plan would be “Math. Drawing. Animals.” but it was plain she was very earnest and sincere about it all. She also related the personal histories of some of the kids; one pretty, smart little girl had a mother in jail for narcotics trafficking, and a grandmother too old to take care of her; one wild little boy had a mother who came to see him but who was often in psychiatric wards, and so on. I thought of what Maggie once said, that she tries not to know anything about the home lives of her students so that she doesn’t make excuses for them. They apparently get adopted fairly often, almost always by foreigners, who come into the room and play with the kids and then choose one. The idea of choosing a child is sort of astonishing; especially by the time they’re 5, and such clearly defined individual human beings. We played musical chairs, and duck-duck-goose, and that was about the end of their tolerance for organized activity, so we did a lot of throwing balls around the room and spinning hoola-hoops. When one would get too crazy it was amazing how effective it was to pick him up and look out the window with him; this almost always is amazingly effective at calming down children, as I found with many a crying Thunderdragon. It is also one of my favorite activities, looking out a window with a kid. The whole world looks different, and it’s so calm and companionable. So I heard about Irkutsk from several different kids today; we talked about the pretty little painted wood houses on the streets nearby, and who lived there; we talked about tramvais and trolleybuses and marshrutkas; we talked about the big, pretty old hospital on the hill far away; we talked about another children’s home, pink and boxy, a few blocks away, and so on. There were slight differences between looking out a window with these kids and with the Thunderdragons, of course: the Thunderdragons are also excited by police cars, but because they want to grow up to be policemen; these kids would go crazy when they saw a police car because they think of them as roving villains who shoot people. The Thunderdragons usually talked about their parents when they looked out the window, and how they related to that outside world, and what their parents were doing right now; Nadya, a sweet little girl with a blond buzz-cut, repeatedly cried out the window for her brother in another children’s home (Bratyik! Can you hear me! Brother! Answer!).
evening update:
We shredded all the remaining carrots. And once again had a dinner consisting entirely of carrots. Next time any of you have to make a meal for a vegetarian with gluten, nut, and dairy allergies, you might consider the option “shredded carrots with honey.” Otherwise I recommend making use of other food items. The non-substantialness of the meal, however, did allow for having tea (the meal rather than the mere drink) about 3 times today. Oh further interesting pieces of carrot news: 1) I somehow managed to cut my finger on a carrot. There was no knife in my hand at the time, so it really was just the vegetable. I have a new respect for the root. 2) When I get tired of Valentina Petrovna’s conversation consisting largely of unwanted personal advice, my new tactic is to start an English lesson; today it turned out that she is a big fan of the English “r,” as in the middle sound of “carrot.” So... after the peeling stage of the process, in which it was possible to actually talk to each other, ended, the shredding stage was entirely accompanied by a very charming pronunciation of the word “carrot” repeated several thousand times.
In non-carrot news, the director of Ironia Sudbi, the film some of you may know as “that one where the wrong guy gets on the plane on New Years,” turned 80 today or sometime this week or something, and there was a huge televised “jubilee,” with every famous old actor in Russia reciting poems and singing parodies of songs from his movies and generally being amusingly theatrical. I was quite impressed at Valentina Petrovna and Katya’s ability to name every person in the audience. I was even more impressed at the event; I have come to the unfortunate conclusion that, impossible though it may be to actually live in this country, they have a superior culture. The whole thing was just so classy. Actually their film industry may have come to the end of class; I think this even was a sort of grand, explosive finale of the Soviet film culture, where censorship and state control prevented the need to appeal to the lowest common denominator. But I also just made up this theory and know nothing about it really. My only other comment is that I really like when people actually shout “Bravo!” at public events, and my affection for Valentina Petrovna is greatly increased by the revelation last night at the poetry reading that she is a bravo-yeller.
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Goin’ my Way on the Carrot Highway
Nov. 17
Oh man, today was such an amazing day. I don’t even know where to start. After spending pretty much the past 2.5 months trying to make all of my activities last as long as possible, with nothing to do really, I spent today sprinting about in all directions, and the feeling of hurry was so unexpected and enjoyable. And then, aside from that, the insanity factor of the day just continued to rise as the day went on.
First for some foreshadowing: A few days ago, Valentina Petrovna came home with a little container with a cabbage and carrot salad, rather like coleslaw but with big chunks of cabbage. She remarked on how much she liked this salad, and said she was going to ask her friend for the recipe. Yesterday she told me that Tatiana was going to bring over some cabbage. Later she said she wanted to go to Listvianka this weekend, but she had to prepare the cabbage. I thought this was a strange reason to delay a trip to Baikal, boiling a cabbage. On to the day.
I woke up at 9:30, and I was supposed to be at the Central Market at 10:00 to go to the orphanage to... well, I actually had no idea what I would be doing, but it takes 20 minutes to get downtown, so I didn’t have much time to think about it. As I said, I have not been in a hurry for a while, so it was actually sort of thrilling to rush out the door without eating breakfast. I was especially pleased to run out past Valentina Petrovna’s sort of surprised eyes seeing as how she had designated yesterday as “day to lecture Susanna at great length about how she is squandering her youth and should be doing things other than reading and writing, interspersed with a recounting every inspirational fable on any subject she can remember having read.” Actually this lecture was sort of amazing and I would recount more of it but it has been driven out of my head by the events of the day. It involved the romantic potential of hydroelectric dams. Anyway, after an interesting ride on the trolleybus, which I hardly ever take, I got to the orphanage, along with Natasha and Ivan and this super-cheery Russian girl from the Irkutsk Rotary Club, which is I think is our link to this orphanage, and Mary, a girl from Mississippi. And then we played with various small children for an hour or two, and that also had a satisfactorily frantic pace. Russian orphanages seem like the sort of thing I should be describing at greater length in a blog about Russia, but I don’t really have that much interesting to relate; we were in two different rooms, one with 5 kids I think and the other 8 maybe. And I guess they were about 3 or 4 years old, and they were the same as all other kids, except maybe less shy and more attention-hungry. We’re going back tomorrow. Anyway, we with difficulty extracted ourselves from them when they had to go eat lunch, and then we ourselves went and ate lunch, at a place called MacFood’s, where I had an approximation of a cheeseburger. Then I went home, expecting a slower afternoon, perhaps including a search for the main university library, or going to the reading room of the library by our apartment. But such was not to be.
When I got home, I found Valentina Petrovna in the hallway sorting through... well, basically a hallway flooded with every single thing in the apartment, pulled out from its previous place and piled up around her to waist height. I just sort of gave an alarmed look and then went and took a shower. I read a few pages of homework. I got hungry, and went into the kitchen to eat whatever we call meals eaten at 3:00. Valentina Petrovna came in to drink coffee with me, and told me that Tatiana (her oldest daughter) was coming over to deliver to deliver some cabbage from her garden. I nodded. This sounded normal. Then, however, she decided that Tanya would think she was crazy if she came and found the apartment in its current state of reorganization, so I happily joined in a frantic campaign of throwing everything from the hallway into a closet and forcing it shut. Then Tatiana called that she was there, and we rushed downstairs in our slippers. Her whole family was in the car, as were more cabbages and carrots than I have ever seen in my life. It was like a clown car, more huge sacks of cabbage and carrots just coming out, and we all, for some reason, rushed about as fast as possible pulling these sacks out of the car and pulling them into the building (2 people per sack), and then into the elevator and upstairs and into the apartment; I’m not doing a very good job of describing the level of chaos here, with 6 people taking over the apartment building with their frantic vegetable moving, and Valentina Petrovna at every opportunity grabbing a grandchild and kissing her and everyone talking very loudly at once. As soon as all the vegetables were in the apartment, Tatiana and family rushed out as quickly as they had came, leaving us with... I’ll try to post a picture. Our house has been totally taken over by cabbages and carrots. So then Valentina Petrovna said “We only have a half hour before the poetry concert to clean carrots!” and we started a frantic carrot-peeling campaign. We huddled over this bucket of carrots on the kitchen floor, peeling away without really making a dent in the carrot supply, until it was decided that “Agh, we have not time, get ready to go to the Philharmonia!” so we did that, at top speed, and left the kitchen covered in carrot.
And then we were at the Pilharmonia. Ivan was also there. It was fun being there with V.P., as she is a member of the Irkutsk artsy/musical elite, apparently, so she knows everyone and we didn’t have to pay and then coat check people were very nice to us and so on. I had never been to the Pilharmonia building; it’s really the prettiest concert hall I’ve ever been in. It has just the right level of grandeur, it’s not all that big (I think it seats about 300); I don’t really know how to describe it, but it’s just a very pretty little room, light blue and white with dark a deep, dark blue curtain on the stage. It’s a particular kind of beauty that we don’t have in America, and I don’t really know why, but has to do with not trying too hard and state sponsorship of music. The concert itself was a poetry reading by a friend of Valentina Petrovna’s, with piano music by another friend of hers. Actually I think they were both friends of her late husband’s. The poet was in his sixties, probably, broad-shouldered and trim and healthy-looking and generally glowing with good-naturedness, and in the first half of the concert he read short poems about composers before, well, the pianist played a piece by that composer. Much more of the concert, exp. the first half, was the pianist, and this was really one of the most remarkable musical experiences of my experience. The pianist could not have been more unlike the poet; he looked like an old, lean, hungry wolf. Actually he physically resembled Ralph Stanley, but he played with a ferocity I have never seen; without sheet music, he glared into the piano and banged away on in, each note accompanied by a dramatic rise and crashing fall of his stiff old claws of hands. He leaned into the piano and away from in, moving his mouth to a silent but intense “bum-bum-bum” accompaniment. After a set of Beethoven and a set of Chopin and a set of some other person who I’ve never heard of but Vanya has, he played Gershwin, and it was sort of unsettling hearing Gershwin melodies sound like a predator skulking through the underbrush and then leaping out in a loud, fierce, flesh-rending attack. In the second half of the concert the poet talked more, and read more poems, and I almost understood what was said and stopped thinking of the poetry segments as an unwanted distraction from the amazingness of watching the wild old pianist. Gammie, you had a poem dedicated to you, as one was for “my grandmother and all of your grandmothers.” I think it involved these grandmothers’ being the saviors of Russia, which may not be a role in which you typically see yourself. I don’t know how good any of the poetry was really, as I didn’t understand enough of it, but it was all very pleasant, and he was able to make the Russian audience smile and act comfortable in public, so I was very impressed by him. Gregory, you now have a signed book by this guy, and you had better appreciate it, because acquiring it involved a certain amount of getting laughed at for my incomprehensibility in Russian by the poet, his wife, and a large number of other well-dressed and intimidating Russians. As for the music of the second half, the pianist was joined by a bass player, so the interestingness was diluted, but they did play “I could have danced all night” from My Fair Lady, which sort of made my night, especially hearing it not only played but savagely attacked with 52 white and 36 black keys. They also, for those of you who have seen this movie, played “potemlonie sontsye,” the song that ends “nyet..tu lyubvi.”
On the bus ride home, I remarked that I was hungry, and joked “good thing we have lots of carrots!” Apparently this was not actually a joke. When we got home, without changing clothes or anything, we got out this huge, ancient food processor and started shredding all the carrots we had peeled and dumping them into a big metal bucket. Then we piled our plates with shredded carrot and poured honey on it and ate it for dinner. It was good, I guess, but mainly just strange. While we were eating, V.P. said “Oh! We should have gone to the store today! We need salt to do the cabbages.” “Well,” I joked, “Everything Will Be Ok Hypermarket is open 24 hours!” This was apparently not a joke either. V.P. ate quickly and started in on the frantic carrot shredding again, and as soon as I was done washing dishes and started to leave the room for my camera, to photograph the growing mountain of shredded carrot, she said “Sonya! Salt!” And I went out to buy salt at 10 at night. There were a lot of people in the store at that time, actually, but they were all buying vodka. Anyway, I as I approached the apartment with my bag full of pounds of salt, I knew that big events were taking place within. The smell of cabbage was clear from the moment I left the elevator. And sure enough, the carrots had been shredded (only the ones we pealed, maybe 1/10 of the huge sack we still have in the hall), and we had moved on to cabbage. For the next two hours I cleaned and chopped cabbage and fed it into the food processor, while V.P. spread it out on a big counter and salted it and mixed it with carrot. As was the case most of the day, I have no idea what the hurry was, but we acted like we were going for the international cabbage-salting record. My hands are going to be sore for a while. We only stopped when the big vat we were dumping the final product in was too overflowing. Tomorrow, I’ve been promised, we will make a different kind of salted cabbage, and we will do something with carrots. And we will make various other dishes I’ve never heard of. In the words of Valentina Petrovna, “we will engage in housekeeping with cabbage!”
Ok, this may not seem like as exciting a day as the first paragraph promised. But it was wild and crazy at the time, let me tell you; nothing like a cabbage-salting in Siberia to get the adrenaline flowing.
Oh man, today was such an amazing day. I don’t even know where to start. After spending pretty much the past 2.5 months trying to make all of my activities last as long as possible, with nothing to do really, I spent today sprinting about in all directions, and the feeling of hurry was so unexpected and enjoyable. And then, aside from that, the insanity factor of the day just continued to rise as the day went on.
First for some foreshadowing: A few days ago, Valentina Petrovna came home with a little container with a cabbage and carrot salad, rather like coleslaw but with big chunks of cabbage. She remarked on how much she liked this salad, and said she was going to ask her friend for the recipe. Yesterday she told me that Tatiana was going to bring over some cabbage. Later she said she wanted to go to Listvianka this weekend, but she had to prepare the cabbage. I thought this was a strange reason to delay a trip to Baikal, boiling a cabbage. On to the day.
I woke up at 9:30, and I was supposed to be at the Central Market at 10:00 to go to the orphanage to... well, I actually had no idea what I would be doing, but it takes 20 minutes to get downtown, so I didn’t have much time to think about it. As I said, I have not been in a hurry for a while, so it was actually sort of thrilling to rush out the door without eating breakfast. I was especially pleased to run out past Valentina Petrovna’s sort of surprised eyes seeing as how she had designated yesterday as “day to lecture Susanna at great length about how she is squandering her youth and should be doing things other than reading and writing, interspersed with a recounting every inspirational fable on any subject she can remember having read.” Actually this lecture was sort of amazing and I would recount more of it but it has been driven out of my head by the events of the day. It involved the romantic potential of hydroelectric dams. Anyway, after an interesting ride on the trolleybus, which I hardly ever take, I got to the orphanage, along with Natasha and Ivan and this super-cheery Russian girl from the Irkutsk Rotary Club, which is I think is our link to this orphanage, and Mary, a girl from Mississippi. And then we played with various small children for an hour or two, and that also had a satisfactorily frantic pace. Russian orphanages seem like the sort of thing I should be describing at greater length in a blog about Russia, but I don’t really have that much interesting to relate; we were in two different rooms, one with 5 kids I think and the other 8 maybe. And I guess they were about 3 or 4 years old, and they were the same as all other kids, except maybe less shy and more attention-hungry. We’re going back tomorrow. Anyway, we with difficulty extracted ourselves from them when they had to go eat lunch, and then we ourselves went and ate lunch, at a place called MacFood’s, where I had an approximation of a cheeseburger. Then I went home, expecting a slower afternoon, perhaps including a search for the main university library, or going to the reading room of the library by our apartment. But such was not to be.
When I got home, I found Valentina Petrovna in the hallway sorting through... well, basically a hallway flooded with every single thing in the apartment, pulled out from its previous place and piled up around her to waist height. I just sort of gave an alarmed look and then went and took a shower. I read a few pages of homework. I got hungry, and went into the kitchen to eat whatever we call meals eaten at 3:00. Valentina Petrovna came in to drink coffee with me, and told me that Tatiana (her oldest daughter) was coming over to deliver to deliver some cabbage from her garden. I nodded. This sounded normal. Then, however, she decided that Tanya would think she was crazy if she came and found the apartment in its current state of reorganization, so I happily joined in a frantic campaign of throwing everything from the hallway into a closet and forcing it shut. Then Tatiana called that she was there, and we rushed downstairs in our slippers. Her whole family was in the car, as were more cabbages and carrots than I have ever seen in my life. It was like a clown car, more huge sacks of cabbage and carrots just coming out, and we all, for some reason, rushed about as fast as possible pulling these sacks out of the car and pulling them into the building (2 people per sack), and then into the elevator and upstairs and into the apartment; I’m not doing a very good job of describing the level of chaos here, with 6 people taking over the apartment building with their frantic vegetable moving, and Valentina Petrovna at every opportunity grabbing a grandchild and kissing her and everyone talking very loudly at once. As soon as all the vegetables were in the apartment, Tatiana and family rushed out as quickly as they had came, leaving us with... I’ll try to post a picture. Our house has been totally taken over by cabbages and carrots. So then Valentina Petrovna said “We only have a half hour before the poetry concert to clean carrots!” and we started a frantic carrot-peeling campaign. We huddled over this bucket of carrots on the kitchen floor, peeling away without really making a dent in the carrot supply, until it was decided that “Agh, we have not time, get ready to go to the Philharmonia!” so we did that, at top speed, and left the kitchen covered in carrot.
And then we were at the Pilharmonia. Ivan was also there. It was fun being there with V.P., as she is a member of the Irkutsk artsy/musical elite, apparently, so she knows everyone and we didn’t have to pay and then coat check people were very nice to us and so on. I had never been to the Pilharmonia building; it’s really the prettiest concert hall I’ve ever been in. It has just the right level of grandeur, it’s not all that big (I think it seats about 300); I don’t really know how to describe it, but it’s just a very pretty little room, light blue and white with dark a deep, dark blue curtain on the stage. It’s a particular kind of beauty that we don’t have in America, and I don’t really know why, but has to do with not trying too hard and state sponsorship of music. The concert itself was a poetry reading by a friend of Valentina Petrovna’s, with piano music by another friend of hers. Actually I think they were both friends of her late husband’s. The poet was in his sixties, probably, broad-shouldered and trim and healthy-looking and generally glowing with good-naturedness, and in the first half of the concert he read short poems about composers before, well, the pianist played a piece by that composer. Much more of the concert, exp. the first half, was the pianist, and this was really one of the most remarkable musical experiences of my experience. The pianist could not have been more unlike the poet; he looked like an old, lean, hungry wolf. Actually he physically resembled Ralph Stanley, but he played with a ferocity I have never seen; without sheet music, he glared into the piano and banged away on in, each note accompanied by a dramatic rise and crashing fall of his stiff old claws of hands. He leaned into the piano and away from in, moving his mouth to a silent but intense “bum-bum-bum” accompaniment. After a set of Beethoven and a set of Chopin and a set of some other person who I’ve never heard of but Vanya has, he played Gershwin, and it was sort of unsettling hearing Gershwin melodies sound like a predator skulking through the underbrush and then leaping out in a loud, fierce, flesh-rending attack. In the second half of the concert the poet talked more, and read more poems, and I almost understood what was said and stopped thinking of the poetry segments as an unwanted distraction from the amazingness of watching the wild old pianist. Gammie, you had a poem dedicated to you, as one was for “my grandmother and all of your grandmothers.” I think it involved these grandmothers’ being the saviors of Russia, which may not be a role in which you typically see yourself. I don’t know how good any of the poetry was really, as I didn’t understand enough of it, but it was all very pleasant, and he was able to make the Russian audience smile and act comfortable in public, so I was very impressed by him. Gregory, you now have a signed book by this guy, and you had better appreciate it, because acquiring it involved a certain amount of getting laughed at for my incomprehensibility in Russian by the poet, his wife, and a large number of other well-dressed and intimidating Russians. As for the music of the second half, the pianist was joined by a bass player, so the interestingness was diluted, but they did play “I could have danced all night” from My Fair Lady, which sort of made my night, especially hearing it not only played but savagely attacked with 52 white and 36 black keys. They also, for those of you who have seen this movie, played “potemlonie sontsye,” the song that ends “nyet..tu lyubvi.”
On the bus ride home, I remarked that I was hungry, and joked “good thing we have lots of carrots!” Apparently this was not actually a joke. When we got home, without changing clothes or anything, we got out this huge, ancient food processor and started shredding all the carrots we had peeled and dumping them into a big metal bucket. Then we piled our plates with shredded carrot and poured honey on it and ate it for dinner. It was good, I guess, but mainly just strange. While we were eating, V.P. said “Oh! We should have gone to the store today! We need salt to do the cabbages.” “Well,” I joked, “Everything Will Be Ok Hypermarket is open 24 hours!” This was apparently not a joke either. V.P. ate quickly and started in on the frantic carrot shredding again, and as soon as I was done washing dishes and started to leave the room for my camera, to photograph the growing mountain of shredded carrot, she said “Sonya! Salt!” And I went out to buy salt at 10 at night. There were a lot of people in the store at that time, actually, but they were all buying vodka. Anyway, I as I approached the apartment with my bag full of pounds of salt, I knew that big events were taking place within. The smell of cabbage was clear from the moment I left the elevator. And sure enough, the carrots had been shredded (only the ones we pealed, maybe 1/10 of the huge sack we still have in the hall), and we had moved on to cabbage. For the next two hours I cleaned and chopped cabbage and fed it into the food processor, while V.P. spread it out on a big counter and salted it and mixed it with carrot. As was the case most of the day, I have no idea what the hurry was, but we acted like we were going for the international cabbage-salting record. My hands are going to be sore for a while. We only stopped when the big vat we were dumping the final product in was too overflowing. Tomorrow, I’ve been promised, we will make a different kind of salted cabbage, and we will do something with carrots. And we will make various other dishes I’ve never heard of. In the words of Valentina Petrovna, “we will engage in housekeeping with cabbage!”
Ok, this may not seem like as exciting a day as the first paragraph promised. But it was wild and crazy at the time, let me tell you; nothing like a cabbage-salting in Siberia to get the adrenaline flowing.
Nov. 16 or something
My resolution only to listen to Russian music from now on was overcome by my ongoing fascination with Katya’s cd collection. So now I am listening to Coolio, featuring 40 Thevz. Man, America is so amazing. I wish I had the lyrics to this song. “Now little Timmy got his diploma and little Jimmy got life, an’ Tamika ‘round the corner just took her first hit off the pipe; the other homies shot the other homie and took off with his money, an’ when the other homies heard about it, they thought that is was funny. But who’s the dummy?” The last cd I imported was this amazing one of bell peals of famous Russian monasteries and churches. It’s just an hour of a bunch of bells ringing... there’s no tune or anything. It is so cool.
“1,2,3, Now the young get olda’
Don’t try to knock the crow off my shoulda’
‘Cause the result may be a pecking to your death
With nothing but a carcass left of your former self.”
DJ the Crow
Among the random-electronic-sounds tracks are several such gems. When I get back to America, ask to listen to some of these songs. There are many more, including a truly amazing German one I’m listening to right now.
Nov. 18 update:
Found a cd with 7 hours of Alla Pugachova (aged diva). Now very busy. There is an especially excellent song about how she is going to be friends with Anna Karenina in the next life. Oh snap, now she’s singing in English, about how “Ve haf no time for var.”
“1,2,3, Now the young get olda’
Don’t try to knock the crow off my shoulda’
‘Cause the result may be a pecking to your death
With nothing but a carcass left of your former self.”
DJ the Crow
Among the random-electronic-sounds tracks are several such gems. When I get back to America, ask to listen to some of these songs. There are many more, including a truly amazing German one I’m listening to right now.
Nov. 18 update:
Found a cd with 7 hours of Alla Pugachova (aged diva). Now very busy. There is an especially excellent song about how she is going to be friends with Anna Karenina in the next life. Oh snap, now she’s singing in English, about how “Ve haf no time for var.”
Friday, November 16, 2007
So
If you are a person who thinks that he or she should be getting an e-mail from me, sorry, you won't be, because Webmail does not wish to allow me to perform this action. Mama, got a very funny card from you today, loved the "pick-up" joke, amazing article about stabbing with knives and also about knife-selling. Also, pretend that I e-mailed you a birthday message to send Papa. Aged P., hope your entertaining went well and that you have turned on the heat. Aiko, got a very nice postcard from you, with Russian official stamps all over a Vermont spire; I enjoyed the Russian approval of New England church architecture very much. Laurel, I e-mailed you this morning. Abby you are a loon.
To remember that ridiculousness has a healthy existence outside of Russia...
...I am currently listening to Joan Baez sing Guantanamera.
In Siberian history we are discussing the make-up of the population of pre-revolutionary Siberia. As time goes on, the population consisted more and more of exiles and prisoners. We were reminded that the first exile to Siberia was ... I’ll give you all time to think of an appropriately punishment-deserving state enemy in the 16th century...
the village bell of the town where tsarevich Dmitrii fell on a knife and died (or, if you believe the opera “Boris Gudenov, was hilled by Gudenov’s henchmen, or, if you believe lots of crazy people in Russia and Poland at the time, escaped to Poland the better to grow up to be a physically-unrecognizable person who wanted to hand over Russia to Poland). Our teacher didn’t seem to think it was as odd as we did that a bell was exiled.
In Baikal Studies today, after I gave the best report in recorded history on the extinction of large mammals, we discussed industrial projects of the Soviet Union in Siberia. The basic story is that they were very often more silly than exiling bells. They built things just to publish pictures of them and brag about them, so they were usually much larger than was at all useful, and they were often useless irregardless of size, and they liked to start projects without having enough money to finish them. In the north of the Irkutsk region, apparently, they started building this big road, but only had enough money for the bridges. So there are lots of very, very nice bridges out there with no accompanying road.
Ivan, Eddie, Joseph and I went to a museum today in the house of one of the Decembrists. It was pretty much the least informative museum I have ever visited. I still have no idea what the Decembrists did when they were in Irkutsk, other than make their relatives in Europe send them lots of things that are now displayed in this museum. Who has a grand piano shipped to Siberia? Or who, when moving there to a life of exile, embarking on a journey that I’m pretty sure still at that time took a year or something, brings a collection of china dolls? I guess those two examples both refer to the wives of the Decembrists rather than to the Decembrists themselves... I have even less idea what the Decembrists did with their time. I think we saw a desk where one wrote letters. And we saw the portrait of one’s mother, and were told that she wrote him lots of letters, and also lots of letters to the tzar, which eventually got his sentence commuted. That’s about all the information I gathered, except a re-confirmed dislike for Russian museum emplyees who follow you suspiciously around the museum and act annoyed when you don’t look at things fast enough and yell at you when you listen in on tours but don’t go turn on the lights and things in the next room so you can get away from the tour. At least Middlebury reimburses us for museum tickets.
We’re out of tea in the apartment, so we drank raspberry jam in hot water. It is actually very good. Don’t listen to Eddie.
I’ve gotten tired of speaking in broken, idiotic sentences that are often not only ungrammatical but incomprehensible. I’ve begun a high-intensity campaign to memorize song lyrics so I can sing along and for the moment be eloquent. In Russian, of course; I have no idea where all these Joan Baez in Spanish songs came from. It is certainly the first time I have heard them, and I hope it will be the last.
In Siberian history we are discussing the make-up of the population of pre-revolutionary Siberia. As time goes on, the population consisted more and more of exiles and prisoners. We were reminded that the first exile to Siberia was ... I’ll give you all time to think of an appropriately punishment-deserving state enemy in the 16th century...
the village bell of the town where tsarevich Dmitrii fell on a knife and died (or, if you believe the opera “Boris Gudenov, was hilled by Gudenov’s henchmen, or, if you believe lots of crazy people in Russia and Poland at the time, escaped to Poland the better to grow up to be a physically-unrecognizable person who wanted to hand over Russia to Poland). Our teacher didn’t seem to think it was as odd as we did that a bell was exiled.
In Baikal Studies today, after I gave the best report in recorded history on the extinction of large mammals, we discussed industrial projects of the Soviet Union in Siberia. The basic story is that they were very often more silly than exiling bells. They built things just to publish pictures of them and brag about them, so they were usually much larger than was at all useful, and they were often useless irregardless of size, and they liked to start projects without having enough money to finish them. In the north of the Irkutsk region, apparently, they started building this big road, but only had enough money for the bridges. So there are lots of very, very nice bridges out there with no accompanying road.
Ivan, Eddie, Joseph and I went to a museum today in the house of one of the Decembrists. It was pretty much the least informative museum I have ever visited. I still have no idea what the Decembrists did when they were in Irkutsk, other than make their relatives in Europe send them lots of things that are now displayed in this museum. Who has a grand piano shipped to Siberia? Or who, when moving there to a life of exile, embarking on a journey that I’m pretty sure still at that time took a year or something, brings a collection of china dolls? I guess those two examples both refer to the wives of the Decembrists rather than to the Decembrists themselves... I have even less idea what the Decembrists did with their time. I think we saw a desk where one wrote letters. And we saw the portrait of one’s mother, and were told that she wrote him lots of letters, and also lots of letters to the tzar, which eventually got his sentence commuted. That’s about all the information I gathered, except a re-confirmed dislike for Russian museum emplyees who follow you suspiciously around the museum and act annoyed when you don’t look at things fast enough and yell at you when you listen in on tours but don’t go turn on the lights and things in the next room so you can get away from the tour. At least Middlebury reimburses us for museum tickets.
We’re out of tea in the apartment, so we drank raspberry jam in hot water. It is actually very good. Don’t listen to Eddie.
I’ve gotten tired of speaking in broken, idiotic sentences that are often not only ungrammatical but incomprehensible. I’ve begun a high-intensity campaign to memorize song lyrics so I can sing along and for the moment be eloquent. In Russian, of course; I have no idea where all these Joan Baez in Spanish songs came from. It is certainly the first time I have heard them, and I hope it will be the last.
And some more relation of the events of the day
The Russian song I am listening to, by the group DDT, is pointing out to me that “life is not sugar, and death is not to us as tea.” Well, I agree, I’m sure. What the heck does that mean? Still, this is my current favorite song, it’s very pretty. And I know very well that that last sentence is not grammatical, Microsoft Word grammar check, thank you very much, it was for stylistic effect. I do badly enough at Russian all day without being corrected in my native tongue.
Today in Baikal Studies Eddie gave a presentation that several times involved his use of air-quotes, to demonstrate that he was, well, quoting. After the report was over someone asked why air-quotes do not translate into Russian; Russians are generally very puzzled by the gesture. Pavel Alexandrovich explained that, basically, it is not only the use of air quotes that is unfamiliar to Russians but also the entire idea of crediting another person’s work. Citing sources is individualistic and promoting the idea of intellectual property, while plagiarism is part of the spirit of the collective. And it is good for the country if students cheat, too; sometimes, for instance, a boy who has to have his classmate write all his papers for him ends up being a good scholar, and what if he had failed his classes because the good students had selfishly refused to help him?
Well, this sanctioning of blatant plagiarism is certainly aiding me in the writing of my report on Megafauna extinctions of the late Ice Age, that’s all I have to say.
I tried to go running today, in the middle of the day when it was less cold. First this old woman who was walking home with her groceries just stopped and stared at me. Then after about 5 minutes this large group of Tajik construction workers yelled at me that I would freeze to death. By this time I had pretty much come to this conclusion independently, and was on my way home. Then, turning back onto the main road, I fell on the ice, to the great amusement of another group of construction workers. So now I just have scrapped knees and am living in the same state of constant calorie imbalance as ever. Or more so, since I brought home the jar of peanut butter that Joseph’s parents sent him and he didn’t want. I now have several peanut-butter-and-homemade-raspberry-jam sandwiches with every meal. Or peanut butter and honey- we now have the world’s largest jar of honey in the kitchen, in the row of Huge Jars with the pickled things, and there’s always a dish of it sitting on the table. As far as I can tell I’m the only one who eats it.
Today in Baikal Studies Eddie gave a presentation that several times involved his use of air-quotes, to demonstrate that he was, well, quoting. After the report was over someone asked why air-quotes do not translate into Russian; Russians are generally very puzzled by the gesture. Pavel Alexandrovich explained that, basically, it is not only the use of air quotes that is unfamiliar to Russians but also the entire idea of crediting another person’s work. Citing sources is individualistic and promoting the idea of intellectual property, while plagiarism is part of the spirit of the collective. And it is good for the country if students cheat, too; sometimes, for instance, a boy who has to have his classmate write all his papers for him ends up being a good scholar, and what if he had failed his classes because the good students had selfishly refused to help him?
Well, this sanctioning of blatant plagiarism is certainly aiding me in the writing of my report on Megafauna extinctions of the late Ice Age, that’s all I have to say.
I tried to go running today, in the middle of the day when it was less cold. First this old woman who was walking home with her groceries just stopped and stared at me. Then after about 5 minutes this large group of Tajik construction workers yelled at me that I would freeze to death. By this time I had pretty much come to this conclusion independently, and was on my way home. Then, turning back onto the main road, I fell on the ice, to the great amusement of another group of construction workers. So now I just have scrapped knees and am living in the same state of constant calorie imbalance as ever. Or more so, since I brought home the jar of peanut butter that Joseph’s parents sent him and he didn’t want. I now have several peanut-butter-and-homemade-raspberry-jam sandwiches with every meal. Or peanut butter and honey- we now have the world’s largest jar of honey in the kitchen, in the row of Huge Jars with the pickled things, and there’s always a dish of it sitting on the table. As far as I can tell I’m the only one who eats it.
I hate computers
But only because they hate me. I have two blog post sitting around being unsent. And rather a lot of other things I want to do. But it doesn't seem to be working out.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Disapproval
I asked Katya, my host sister, what she’s been doing in English class. She said that for the entire semester, more than 2 months now, they’ve been reading the same article. She showed me the article. I read it. It was very long, and in a completely ridiculous, opaque style, and this horrible thing from the 1980s about how America has a problem with poor people because these poor people are insufficiently versed in traditional American values. Namely, they keep having illegitimate children and they refuse to work at McDonalds. And the fault for the moral failure of these poor people lies with whining intellectuals, hippies, feminists, and the black power movement. It was really sort of an amazing article, actually. Aside from the fact that I am fairly certain that a very small percentage of the graduating class of Frederick High School, let alone these poor Russians could read this article, who searches conservative political journals for texts for language classes? And incidentally, why would teaching school children about “the Pilgrims and Squanto” solve the problem of the widening economic gap? Wait a minute, I just remembered that Squanto escaped from an English slave ship... school children are supposed to learn about subversively bowing to the land-stealing exploits of their former capturers? And who is named Squanto, seriously.
Today in grammar class we read a sentence including a verb meaning “to laugh ironically once.” Our teacher did not appreciate our inability to come up with an English equivalent. She just sat there and repeated her request, waiting for us to come up with something. So we just talked among ourselves about various funny words for ‘laugh,’ such as ‘chortle.’ Natasha kept advocating the word “smirk” as a solution to our translation problem, and we tried to convince her that smirk is only for smiles and not for laughs, and this went on for a while... then at some point it turned out that Natasha never understood we were only talking about laughs and not smiles... the whole conversation was basically a good opportunity to demonstrate various smiles and laughs, which was good practice for the end of the class period, in which we all had to read these little monologues demonstrating correct use of the imperative, but with “good, Russian intonation, with gestures,” which turned out to mean “in theatrical style with hands flying everywhere.” I no longer blame Russians quite so much for smiling so little. It turns out that, when one is out of practice, it is difficult to use the necessary muscles- my own facial muscles were quite sore after just a few minutes of this unaccustomed smiling business.
I don’t think anything else interesting happened today. I showed Valentina Petrovna the singing Hallmark card Mama sent me, and she explained to me that it was completely unimpressive, that they also have singing cards in Russia. Including ones that sing “Hibby Birzvet tooyoo” or some equally interesting interpretation of that traditional American song. She’s hard to impress, Valentina Petrovna, I’ll give her that.
I’m posting the link to Joseph’s blog, and you should all click on it and scroll down until you find the post with a picture of the moon over the water, and read the post above that picture, because it is very funny, and well represents the way I often feel about Russian-American relations as well. And explains why I find myself doing things like defending the war in Iraq. ‘Cause we’ll do what we want, you commies, and we don’t need any advice from you.
Here, for instance, is a somewhat-accurate transcript of an exchange in grammar class today, representing the combativeness of all involved in discussion of the relative merits of America and everywhere else:
Irina Milyetavna: Susanna, when was the Statue of Liberty erected?
Me: Um, I don’t know, in some period in which the French were particularly happy with us.
I.M.: Hah! An American, and doesn’t know when the Statue of Liberty was built! When approximately?
I give some wildly inaccurate date and am further mocked. Eventually other students come up with the right date.
I.M. And what does the Statue of Liberty commemorate? Monuments and statues are always for some reason.
Students: It is for freedom.
Further discussion reveals that France gave America the statue upon the signing of some international agreement. Irina Milyetavna is satisfied that we did not erect the statue just for the silly idea of freedom, but as a pawn in the game of international politics.
I.M.: So, did you know that in China there is a statue bigger that your Statue of Liberty? [look of triumph]
Me: The Statue of Liberty is not important because it is big. It is important because it symbolizes freedom.
Natasha: I would rather have more freedom than a bigger statue.
Someone else: Is the Chinese statue the same thing except bigger?
I.M.: Well, no, of course not, it’s a statue of Buddha. It’s bigger than your statue.
Eddie: Well, I guess they won. We’ll all have to become Buddhists.
Me: Is it bigger than Cristo Rey in Brazil?
I.M.: No, the statue in Brazil is bigger. The one in Brazil is the tallest, and the Buddhist one is in second place. The Chinese built a statue that is bigger than yours.
Irina Milyetavna likes China because they are still pinko commies like her. She is always talking about how silly it was to try to become capitalists, and how everyone should just stick with what they used to think, as a general rule for the world. I feel that studying abroad is supposed to make me more accepting of other countries views of the world, and lead me to accept that every country has its own advantages, and whatnot. Actually it is making me rabidly nationalistic. I expect this problem to be solved when I get home and have to deal with the DMV (or does Maryland have an MVA? I forget) because I lost my drivers license on the number 7 bus.
Today in grammar class we read a sentence including a verb meaning “to laugh ironically once.” Our teacher did not appreciate our inability to come up with an English equivalent. She just sat there and repeated her request, waiting for us to come up with something. So we just talked among ourselves about various funny words for ‘laugh,’ such as ‘chortle.’ Natasha kept advocating the word “smirk” as a solution to our translation problem, and we tried to convince her that smirk is only for smiles and not for laughs, and this went on for a while... then at some point it turned out that Natasha never understood we were only talking about laughs and not smiles... the whole conversation was basically a good opportunity to demonstrate various smiles and laughs, which was good practice for the end of the class period, in which we all had to read these little monologues demonstrating correct use of the imperative, but with “good, Russian intonation, with gestures,” which turned out to mean “in theatrical style with hands flying everywhere.” I no longer blame Russians quite so much for smiling so little. It turns out that, when one is out of practice, it is difficult to use the necessary muscles- my own facial muscles were quite sore after just a few minutes of this unaccustomed smiling business.
I don’t think anything else interesting happened today. I showed Valentina Petrovna the singing Hallmark card Mama sent me, and she explained to me that it was completely unimpressive, that they also have singing cards in Russia. Including ones that sing “Hibby Birzvet tooyoo” or some equally interesting interpretation of that traditional American song. She’s hard to impress, Valentina Petrovna, I’ll give her that.
I’m posting the link to Joseph’s blog, and you should all click on it and scroll down until you find the post with a picture of the moon over the water, and read the post above that picture, because it is very funny, and well represents the way I often feel about Russian-American relations as well. And explains why I find myself doing things like defending the war in Iraq. ‘Cause we’ll do what we want, you commies, and we don’t need any advice from you.
Here, for instance, is a somewhat-accurate transcript of an exchange in grammar class today, representing the combativeness of all involved in discussion of the relative merits of America and everywhere else:
Irina Milyetavna: Susanna, when was the Statue of Liberty erected?
Me: Um, I don’t know, in some period in which the French were particularly happy with us.
I.M.: Hah! An American, and doesn’t know when the Statue of Liberty was built! When approximately?
I give some wildly inaccurate date and am further mocked. Eventually other students come up with the right date.
I.M. And what does the Statue of Liberty commemorate? Monuments and statues are always for some reason.
Students: It is for freedom.
Further discussion reveals that France gave America the statue upon the signing of some international agreement. Irina Milyetavna is satisfied that we did not erect the statue just for the silly idea of freedom, but as a pawn in the game of international politics.
I.M.: So, did you know that in China there is a statue bigger that your Statue of Liberty? [look of triumph]
Me: The Statue of Liberty is not important because it is big. It is important because it symbolizes freedom.
Natasha: I would rather have more freedom than a bigger statue.
Someone else: Is the Chinese statue the same thing except bigger?
I.M.: Well, no, of course not, it’s a statue of Buddha. It’s bigger than your statue.
Eddie: Well, I guess they won. We’ll all have to become Buddhists.
Me: Is it bigger than Cristo Rey in Brazil?
I.M.: No, the statue in Brazil is bigger. The one in Brazil is the tallest, and the Buddhist one is in second place. The Chinese built a statue that is bigger than yours.
Irina Milyetavna likes China because they are still pinko commies like her. She is always talking about how silly it was to try to become capitalists, and how everyone should just stick with what they used to think, as a general rule for the world. I feel that studying abroad is supposed to make me more accepting of other countries views of the world, and lead me to accept that every country has its own advantages, and whatnot. Actually it is making me rabidly nationalistic. I expect this problem to be solved when I get home and have to deal with the DMV (or does Maryland have an MVA? I forget) because I lost my drivers license on the number 7 bus.
Monday, November 12, 2007
I ate moose the other day
with potatoes. Artur, the husband of Tatiana, Valentina Petrovna’s oldest daughter, shot it, and Tatiana did whatever one does to animals to turn them into food, and Valentina Petrovna cooked it with potatoes. Man, I am so cool.
Today Natasha and I were on the marshrutka to Cafe Fiesta, when a guy flagged down the van as it pulled out of the stop. The driver proceeded to, well, hit this person with the moving vehicle, which was sort of a surprise to all involved. Then the guy got into the marshrutka and the driver yelled at him for not being more careful, and that was the end of it.
Then we got to Cafe Fiesta, and waited in a very long line for pizza, and then in a very long line to ask for the internet password, only to be told that to get the internet password one must now order from the pastry line, the pizza line does not count. They make these sorts of rules up every once in a while, because they are Russians and like dumb rules and because they are too lazy to turn on the machine to print out the passwords. So we left and went to an internet cafe where I spend obscene amounts of money. I almost always use the labs at the university now, but I didn’t want to leave downtown until I knew whether the hiking club was meeting, in which case I would take a bus from the statue of Lenin. It wasn’t meeting.
In the evening we all went to dinner with Ivan’s father, who got in the day before. It was an odd oasis of English-speaking in our Irkutsk lives. And it was also very nice of Ivan’s father to take us out to dinner. We could, I think, have chosen our restaurant better; it was on the second floor of the building of Cafe Fiesta, and I think some of the unpleasantness and overpricing of Cafe Fiesta seeped upstairs. For instance, what kind of restaurant charges and entrance fee? Especially without telling you about it until you get the bill? On the ... well, I can’t decide whether this an upside or not... we saw many half-drunk business-class middle-aged Russians get up and dance with the supremely horrible pop music playing at ear-splitting volumes. And you have not seen bad dancing until you have seen this particular demongraphic.
Sept. 10, Saturday
Went to the bus station this morning to get a ticket to Listvianka, got one, then had almost an hour to wait; decided to go into the odd, bright pink church I always see when I go to the bus station. It was much prettier inside, and they were having a service, and there was a very pretty choir, four older women in sensible black shoes and shawls and the standard headscarf (I was wearing a winter scarf on my head, but I hardly got any strange looks). I am impressed by Orthodox choirs in general, because they sing for so dang long, almost the whole service straight. But this one was just particularly angelic-sounding. After the main service, when people dispersed to light various candles and kiss various icons, one of the priests went over to the left of the sanctuary for the usual prayers for the dead (I am almost certain that is what is going on, but I could be wrong) in front of the candles people lit for the purpose. The little choir went and stood behind him and sang most of the prayers. Sometimes the priest would have a part to chant though, and his voice was seriously damaged; it was gravelly and gruff except when a word would get stuck in the back of his throat until he finally pushed it out in a painful shriek. The circle of women behind him with their perfect harmonies of soaring music in encouraging response to his pained efforts, though, made it anything but unpleasant; one might think that the contrast would make his chants more ugly, but they seemed in harmony with him as well as with each other; they beautified rather than anything, and his voice beautified theirs as well.
Listvianka was very nice. Ivan and his father were there, and we ate omul and cedar nuts, and walked around a lot, looking at the huge ridiculous new mansions and the old cottages, and at half-frozen streams, and at boys riding bicycles on the ice, and at weekending Russians.
Now I should be preparing report for Baikal Studies about the causes of extinction of large mammals at the end of the ice age. Apparently my fascination with woolly rhinoceros was noted. What was not noted, however, is that my fascination extends only to the concept of the existence of these creatures; this long article I’m supposed to be reading is utterly impossible. I don’t know what any of the words mean in English; they all refer to eras and events of geological history. I am also supposed to be writing an essay for speech practice about something lame like what it means to be an individual. I’m going to make dinner to avoid doing those things.
In the always-sensical words of everyone’s hero Ozark Henry:
Indian Summer
Opiate company
As bare as truth can be
without apologies
I feel the summer
The humming I inhere in
Indian Summer
has no apology
Well, I made dinner, and ate it (rice and butter and cheese and tomato; I have finally found a dish other than pasta and ketchup that I can make), and read another paragraph about large mammals of some climate zone some distance from the arctic. My best estimation of what it says:
It has been suggested that the extinction of mammals was in great degree a matter of the hand of man and connected to the Mesolithic revolution. The unique role of man as the most specialized super-consumer, forming itself on the basis of the active half-day predator, corresponds well with the conception of the out-stripping of the victim of the specialized predators. The disappearance of megafauna in the Golarctic landscape, having studied it’s [I think the antecedent is megafauna] enormous function in all types of grassy biomes on all continents, obviously, there should have resulted also global landscape perestroika. It was enabling by the result of the extinction of big figaphors’ (?! my new theory is “animals who eat figs”] eating resources and the ceasing of the allowing-them-to-influence-small-growing-mammals...
At this point I gave up. This sentence goes on for a long time and I don’t know where the subject and object are exactly. I’m going to find another course of dinner. Maybe another Mesolithic Revolution, whatever that is, will occur between now and the time I have to give this report and I will be saved. Other than that possibility, I don’t know what I’ll do. There are 30 more pages. I haven’t even finished 2, and I still don’t understand the premise. On to writing about being a unique snowflake, as Eddie recently described this assignment, or, as he much less logically said another time, a unique sunflower.
Sunday Nov. 11
Snow in the night, still at it. I decided to walk around in the snow and while I was at it see what time there were services in the ugly Catholic Church. So, after a pretty walk I got there at 10:00, and a notice on the door informed me that the Sunday morning service was at 11:00. So I walked around the apartment blocks and little ice cream stands and unused playgrounds all the other omni-present elements of Irkutsk outskirts for half an hour, and then it was just too cold and I went into the church. It was almost as odd inside as outside; as did the exterior, it displayed a notable fondness for severe angles with an absolute value as far as possible from 90. The backs of the chairs where the priests sat were trapezoidal, the whole front of the church jutted out at the congregation alarmingly, the pews tilted backward oddly, even the doorways, which were by necessity rectangular, were framed by jaunty slanted lines. There were 4 huge statues in the church, each maybe 20 feet high; off to the far left there was a dark metal, sort of impressionistic construction of the baptism of Jesus, with figures suspended confusingly in tongues of water and perhaps fire; on the near left was a light wooden pillar item with very bright gold figures of an elongated Joseph holding the infant Jesus, with a huge lily of the same gold halfway down the pillar; in the center of the complex multi-angled jutting alter area was a crucifix about which I remember little but I think it was wooden with a metal Christ in all the usual gore of the scene; and on the right was the oddest of them all, made of the same materials as the Joseph and Jesus: a big tree with the trunk a wavy construction of the light-colored wood and the leaves the oddly-bright gold, extending very far out into the church, with a cloaked, hooded, long-faced Mary standing lightly on one of the branches. But despite the bizarreness of the architecture and interior decorating, the general atmosphere was shockingly identical to that of an American suburban Catholic church, or at least the 7 or 8 that I’ve been in; I swear they imported the turtle-neck-sweatered, pious-faced little girls, who for some reason always find 100 reasons to be bustling in and out of the sanctuary and whispering to each other and reprimanding their brothers, but very seriously cross themselves every time they cross the alter, from northern Virginia. And they were just as talented at finding the least catchy or attractive music possible for their hymns, and about the same proportion of people actually sang them. In general, it was the same atmosphere of self-satisfied nice-family-ness that in my native climes find rather repellent, but here I was just amused and pleased at its familiarness. Plus, despite my cynicism and unfair scorn of what I’m sure is honest and good, the basic experience of being in a congregation was nice. Orthodox churches in Russia, like Catholic churches in Mexico, don’t feel like congregations at all; people can go to a different church every week and no one would think it odd or notice at all, as far as I can tell. And it had many of the elements common to the Western Christianity and not Eastern that are nice, such as pews and the passing of the peace and conduction of the service in the vulgate and everyone saying the Lord’s Prayer. It also had the attraction of having priests with really funny accents; I wish I knew where they were from. One attraction it was definitely lacking was heat; man, it was freezing in there. After the service I went to there was going to be a mass in Polish, as today is the “National Holiday of the Polish Diaspora.” How can you have a national holiday of a diaspora?
Today Natasha and I were on the marshrutka to Cafe Fiesta, when a guy flagged down the van as it pulled out of the stop. The driver proceeded to, well, hit this person with the moving vehicle, which was sort of a surprise to all involved. Then the guy got into the marshrutka and the driver yelled at him for not being more careful, and that was the end of it.
Then we got to Cafe Fiesta, and waited in a very long line for pizza, and then in a very long line to ask for the internet password, only to be told that to get the internet password one must now order from the pastry line, the pizza line does not count. They make these sorts of rules up every once in a while, because they are Russians and like dumb rules and because they are too lazy to turn on the machine to print out the passwords. So we left and went to an internet cafe where I spend obscene amounts of money. I almost always use the labs at the university now, but I didn’t want to leave downtown until I knew whether the hiking club was meeting, in which case I would take a bus from the statue of Lenin. It wasn’t meeting.
In the evening we all went to dinner with Ivan’s father, who got in the day before. It was an odd oasis of English-speaking in our Irkutsk lives. And it was also very nice of Ivan’s father to take us out to dinner. We could, I think, have chosen our restaurant better; it was on the second floor of the building of Cafe Fiesta, and I think some of the unpleasantness and overpricing of Cafe Fiesta seeped upstairs. For instance, what kind of restaurant charges and entrance fee? Especially without telling you about it until you get the bill? On the ... well, I can’t decide whether this an upside or not... we saw many half-drunk business-class middle-aged Russians get up and dance with the supremely horrible pop music playing at ear-splitting volumes. And you have not seen bad dancing until you have seen this particular demongraphic.
Sept. 10, Saturday
Went to the bus station this morning to get a ticket to Listvianka, got one, then had almost an hour to wait; decided to go into the odd, bright pink church I always see when I go to the bus station. It was much prettier inside, and they were having a service, and there was a very pretty choir, four older women in sensible black shoes and shawls and the standard headscarf (I was wearing a winter scarf on my head, but I hardly got any strange looks). I am impressed by Orthodox choirs in general, because they sing for so dang long, almost the whole service straight. But this one was just particularly angelic-sounding. After the main service, when people dispersed to light various candles and kiss various icons, one of the priests went over to the left of the sanctuary for the usual prayers for the dead (I am almost certain that is what is going on, but I could be wrong) in front of the candles people lit for the purpose. The little choir went and stood behind him and sang most of the prayers. Sometimes the priest would have a part to chant though, and his voice was seriously damaged; it was gravelly and gruff except when a word would get stuck in the back of his throat until he finally pushed it out in a painful shriek. The circle of women behind him with their perfect harmonies of soaring music in encouraging response to his pained efforts, though, made it anything but unpleasant; one might think that the contrast would make his chants more ugly, but they seemed in harmony with him as well as with each other; they beautified rather than anything, and his voice beautified theirs as well.
Listvianka was very nice. Ivan and his father were there, and we ate omul and cedar nuts, and walked around a lot, looking at the huge ridiculous new mansions and the old cottages, and at half-frozen streams, and at boys riding bicycles on the ice, and at weekending Russians.
Now I should be preparing report for Baikal Studies about the causes of extinction of large mammals at the end of the ice age. Apparently my fascination with woolly rhinoceros was noted. What was not noted, however, is that my fascination extends only to the concept of the existence of these creatures; this long article I’m supposed to be reading is utterly impossible. I don’t know what any of the words mean in English; they all refer to eras and events of geological history. I am also supposed to be writing an essay for speech practice about something lame like what it means to be an individual. I’m going to make dinner to avoid doing those things.
In the always-sensical words of everyone’s hero Ozark Henry:
Indian Summer
Opiate company
As bare as truth can be
without apologies
I feel the summer
The humming I inhere in
Indian Summer
has no apology
Well, I made dinner, and ate it (rice and butter and cheese and tomato; I have finally found a dish other than pasta and ketchup that I can make), and read another paragraph about large mammals of some climate zone some distance from the arctic. My best estimation of what it says:
It has been suggested that the extinction of mammals was in great degree a matter of the hand of man and connected to the Mesolithic revolution. The unique role of man as the most specialized super-consumer, forming itself on the basis of the active half-day predator, corresponds well with the conception of the out-stripping of the victim of the specialized predators. The disappearance of megafauna in the Golarctic landscape, having studied it’s [I think the antecedent is megafauna] enormous function in all types of grassy biomes on all continents, obviously, there should have resulted also global landscape perestroika. It was enabling by the result of the extinction of big figaphors’ (?! my new theory is “animals who eat figs”] eating resources and the ceasing of the allowing-them-to-influence-small-growing-mammals...
At this point I gave up. This sentence goes on for a long time and I don’t know where the subject and object are exactly. I’m going to find another course of dinner. Maybe another Mesolithic Revolution, whatever that is, will occur between now and the time I have to give this report and I will be saved. Other than that possibility, I don’t know what I’ll do. There are 30 more pages. I haven’t even finished 2, and I still don’t understand the premise. On to writing about being a unique snowflake, as Eddie recently described this assignment, or, as he much less logically said another time, a unique sunflower.
Sunday Nov. 11
Snow in the night, still at it. I decided to walk around in the snow and while I was at it see what time there were services in the ugly Catholic Church. So, after a pretty walk I got there at 10:00, and a notice on the door informed me that the Sunday morning service was at 11:00. So I walked around the apartment blocks and little ice cream stands and unused playgrounds all the other omni-present elements of Irkutsk outskirts for half an hour, and then it was just too cold and I went into the church. It was almost as odd inside as outside; as did the exterior, it displayed a notable fondness for severe angles with an absolute value as far as possible from 90. The backs of the chairs where the priests sat were trapezoidal, the whole front of the church jutted out at the congregation alarmingly, the pews tilted backward oddly, even the doorways, which were by necessity rectangular, were framed by jaunty slanted lines. There were 4 huge statues in the church, each maybe 20 feet high; off to the far left there was a dark metal, sort of impressionistic construction of the baptism of Jesus, with figures suspended confusingly in tongues of water and perhaps fire; on the near left was a light wooden pillar item with very bright gold figures of an elongated Joseph holding the infant Jesus, with a huge lily of the same gold halfway down the pillar; in the center of the complex multi-angled jutting alter area was a crucifix about which I remember little but I think it was wooden with a metal Christ in all the usual gore of the scene; and on the right was the oddest of them all, made of the same materials as the Joseph and Jesus: a big tree with the trunk a wavy construction of the light-colored wood and the leaves the oddly-bright gold, extending very far out into the church, with a cloaked, hooded, long-faced Mary standing lightly on one of the branches. But despite the bizarreness of the architecture and interior decorating, the general atmosphere was shockingly identical to that of an American suburban Catholic church, or at least the 7 or 8 that I’ve been in; I swear they imported the turtle-neck-sweatered, pious-faced little girls, who for some reason always find 100 reasons to be bustling in and out of the sanctuary and whispering to each other and reprimanding their brothers, but very seriously cross themselves every time they cross the alter, from northern Virginia. And they were just as talented at finding the least catchy or attractive music possible for their hymns, and about the same proportion of people actually sang them. In general, it was the same atmosphere of self-satisfied nice-family-ness that in my native climes find rather repellent, but here I was just amused and pleased at its familiarness. Plus, despite my cynicism and unfair scorn of what I’m sure is honest and good, the basic experience of being in a congregation was nice. Orthodox churches in Russia, like Catholic churches in Mexico, don’t feel like congregations at all; people can go to a different church every week and no one would think it odd or notice at all, as far as I can tell. And it had many of the elements common to the Western Christianity and not Eastern that are nice, such as pews and the passing of the peace and conduction of the service in the vulgate and everyone saying the Lord’s Prayer. It also had the attraction of having priests with really funny accents; I wish I knew where they were from. One attraction it was definitely lacking was heat; man, it was freezing in there. After the service I went to there was going to be a mass in Polish, as today is the “National Holiday of the Polish Diaspora.” How can you have a national holiday of a diaspora?
Thursday, November 8, 2007
Back in the Grindstone
[Um, I mean back to the grindstone, I realize several hours after typing this. I am sort of sad that I no longer know how to speak English.]
I am engaging in my new favorite procrastination activity, looking for pictures on my
computer to set as the "album covers" of all the songs in i-Tunes. This would be much
less challenging if I had the internet. I had, until this moment, been limited to my i-Photo
library, but I just discovered that I have clip-art; this is a very, very strange clip-art
library. And this is a boring blog post, but I'm too lazy to stop, so the force of inertia is
going to continue to propel it along its uninteresting path. So. There are the normal
unattractive drawings that look like someone drew them with Paint, but then there are
also random photographs. Like, in the "food" category, there are crude graphics of fruit
bowls and lemonade stands, and then there is a photograph of a man reading a newspaper
in a coffee shop. The title is "breakfast." I have just set as the image for the Ozark
Henry song "This is all I Have" a photograph of a row of rubber ducks fading into the
distance. These bizarre photos have come at a good time for Ozark; I had just run out of
Dali paintings. There is also now a picture of Aiko blowing out some very fateful
birthday candles to accompany the song "Jocelyn, it's Crazy we Ain't Sixteen Anymore."
And a ________ _________ from summer school to accompany ЗIntersexual.И
Natasha and I went to Baskin Robbins today, and Ivan and Eddie joined us after eating at
the Sailer Cafe. It was rather a disappointment, especially in relation to how long we
have been planning this excursion. They may have Western capitalistic businesses, but
they do not understand the aspect of capitalism in which businesses wish for their
customers to have a postive experience and therefore spend more money and return. I am
becoming a big fan of capitalism. Maybe the little man is forced out of business, but at
least he gets prompt service from salespeople and a wide variety of attractive of
consumer goods on the way down. I don't even want to discuss the disappointment of
this experience any further. I have more clip art to search through. Oo, I just found an
awesome one called ЗMen with Laptop.И Also, I just realized that the rubber ducks refer
to the expression Зget your ducks in a rowИ or something.
Agh. Valentina Petrovna just came in and took a picture of me Зstudying.И So I can
send it home. This is a response to my horrible failure to make everyone take lots of
pictures of me with my camera while I was in Mongolia. I was much rebuked for this.
ЗWho cares about these other people?! Will your mother want to see a picture of this
girl? No! She is totally unimportant!И Sorry, Natasha. I believe in your fundamental
importance. To be fair, I think this was a response to the picture of you looking like you
are dying after the horseback ride; lacking in the stately and majestic pictures that she has
explained to me are needed. I picure of Joseph making chololate-covered apples was
similarly censured. Now she is looking for the computer cord (well, making Katya look
for it) so I can put it on my computer immediately. Maybe I should look more studious
when she comes back.
Read enough about the history of the Chinese-Russian border in the 18th century not to
feel bad about returning to clip art. I wish I could think of a use for this amazing photo of
ЗbusinesspeopleИ. Or the one of Зdental tools.И I guess if I had the soundtrack of...
dang, what's the name of that musical with the man-eating plant and the sadistic dentist?
Ooo, just found a boxy drawing of a smocked figure plugging in an electric plug as big as
him or herself. It was too awesome not to use, so it is now adorning a Russian rock song
I don't understand, so for all I know it's about human-sized electrical outlets and the
geometrical humanoids who use them.
ЗMake me an angel that comes from Mongomery; make me a poster of an old rodeo. Just
give me one thing that I can hold onto; to believe in this livin' is just a hard way to go.И
Nov. 8
I made a sandwich today with two rather than one pieces of bread. It was a big deal.
We learned in History of Siberia today that the most effective way that Russians found to
subdue unruly Siberian tribes was to confiscate their children and send them to Moscow.
In Moscow, or St. Petersburg, the children were treated as nobles, given good educations,
and allowed to Зmake careersИ. The only thing they couldn't do was return to their
homeland. And then the tribes of their parents happily paid their taxes, so as the ensure
the safety of their children. And wars stopped, and peace was restored to the land. Our
teacher could not understand why we insisted on using verbs like ЗstealИ when we asked
questions about this policy. It's not stealing children, it's the policy of amanatstvo. And
it was only when the native tribes refused to recongnise Russian rule. And they weren't
being heald for ransom, they were being held for taxes and to end wars. Actually I'm not
sure why I'm so much more indignant over these practices of European Russians than I
am over the much more bloody wartime policies of these tribes themselves, often; many
of them were doing a pretty good job of killing each other off before the Russians ever
showed up, it sounds like. But non-Europeans are not allowed to be judged; their
seeming cruelties are cultural differences. I guess the charity of history and anthropology
is small compensation for totally loosing actual autonomy, or being decimated by desease
and firearms, and whatnot, though.
So. Apparently my plan to be able to transport this post to the university computer lab by flashdrive worked except that converting it to text only for the purpose makes it sort of difficult to read. Sorry.
I am engaging in my new favorite procrastination activity, looking for pictures on my
computer to set as the "album covers" of all the songs in i-Tunes. This would be much
less challenging if I had the internet. I had, until this moment, been limited to my i-Photo
library, but I just discovered that I have clip-art; this is a very, very strange clip-art
library. And this is a boring blog post, but I'm too lazy to stop, so the force of inertia is
going to continue to propel it along its uninteresting path. So. There are the normal
unattractive drawings that look like someone drew them with Paint, but then there are
also random photographs. Like, in the "food" category, there are crude graphics of fruit
bowls and lemonade stands, and then there is a photograph of a man reading a newspaper
in a coffee shop. The title is "breakfast." I have just set as the image for the Ozark
Henry song "This is all I Have" a photograph of a row of rubber ducks fading into the
distance. These bizarre photos have come at a good time for Ozark; I had just run out of
Dali paintings. There is also now a picture of Aiko blowing out some very fateful
birthday candles to accompany the song "Jocelyn, it's Crazy we Ain't Sixteen Anymore."
And a ________ _________ from summer school to accompany ЗIntersexual.И
Natasha and I went to Baskin Robbins today, and Ivan and Eddie joined us after eating at
the Sailer Cafe. It was rather a disappointment, especially in relation to how long we
have been planning this excursion. They may have Western capitalistic businesses, but
they do not understand the aspect of capitalism in which businesses wish for their
customers to have a postive experience and therefore spend more money and return. I am
becoming a big fan of capitalism. Maybe the little man is forced out of business, but at
least he gets prompt service from salespeople and a wide variety of attractive of
consumer goods on the way down. I don't even want to discuss the disappointment of
this experience any further. I have more clip art to search through. Oo, I just found an
awesome one called ЗMen with Laptop.И Also, I just realized that the rubber ducks refer
to the expression Зget your ducks in a rowИ or something.
Agh. Valentina Petrovna just came in and took a picture of me Зstudying.И So I can
send it home. This is a response to my horrible failure to make everyone take lots of
pictures of me with my camera while I was in Mongolia. I was much rebuked for this.
ЗWho cares about these other people?! Will your mother want to see a picture of this
girl? No! She is totally unimportant!И Sorry, Natasha. I believe in your fundamental
importance. To be fair, I think this was a response to the picture of you looking like you
are dying after the horseback ride; lacking in the stately and majestic pictures that she has
explained to me are needed. I picure of Joseph making chololate-covered apples was
similarly censured. Now she is looking for the computer cord (well, making Katya look
for it) so I can put it on my computer immediately. Maybe I should look more studious
when she comes back.
Read enough about the history of the Chinese-Russian border in the 18th century not to
feel bad about returning to clip art. I wish I could think of a use for this amazing photo of
ЗbusinesspeopleИ. Or the one of Зdental tools.И I guess if I had the soundtrack of...
dang, what's the name of that musical with the man-eating plant and the sadistic dentist?
Ooo, just found a boxy drawing of a smocked figure plugging in an electric plug as big as
him or herself. It was too awesome not to use, so it is now adorning a Russian rock song
I don't understand, so for all I know it's about human-sized electrical outlets and the
geometrical humanoids who use them.
ЗMake me an angel that comes from Mongomery; make me a poster of an old rodeo. Just
give me one thing that I can hold onto; to believe in this livin' is just a hard way to go.И
Nov. 8
I made a sandwich today with two rather than one pieces of bread. It was a big deal.
We learned in History of Siberia today that the most effective way that Russians found to
subdue unruly Siberian tribes was to confiscate their children and send them to Moscow.
In Moscow, or St. Petersburg, the children were treated as nobles, given good educations,
and allowed to Зmake careersИ. The only thing they couldn't do was return to their
homeland. And then the tribes of their parents happily paid their taxes, so as the ensure
the safety of their children. And wars stopped, and peace was restored to the land. Our
teacher could not understand why we insisted on using verbs like ЗstealИ when we asked
questions about this policy. It's not stealing children, it's the policy of amanatstvo. And
it was only when the native tribes refused to recongnise Russian rule. And they weren't
being heald for ransom, they were being held for taxes and to end wars. Actually I'm not
sure why I'm so much more indignant over these practices of European Russians than I
am over the much more bloody wartime policies of these tribes themselves, often; many
of them were doing a pretty good job of killing each other off before the Russians ever
showed up, it sounds like. But non-Europeans are not allowed to be judged; their
seeming cruelties are cultural differences. I guess the charity of history and anthropology
is small compensation for totally loosing actual autonomy, or being decimated by desease
and firearms, and whatnot, though.
So. Apparently my plan to be able to transport this post to the university computer lab by flashdrive worked except that converting it to text only for the purpose makes it sort of difficult to read. Sorry.
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Fillin’ N
I don’t know if Mongolian children can spell chicken; there are no chickens in Mongolia, I don’t think. I assume that, as our History of Siberia textbook says of some Siberian livestock-breeding group, “domesticated birds are unknown to them, as are bees.” As for non-domesticated birds, we saw some very huge vultures, some sort of brown speckled hawk, lots of little dart-y birds that were never still long enough for me to really see them, and lots of a bird that is apparently magpie, though I have never known what a magpie is in English, so I don’t know whether this is so. If a magpie is a biggish black-and-white bird with a puffy-looking chest and really long tail, that’s what they are. I like them a lot.
I don’t remember what I said in my last two blogs. I planned on writing some sort of linear, narrative account of our trip to make up for their scatteredness, but then Natasha already did that, so just read Natasha’s blog. I wish I had it to look at right now, so I could see if there was anything deserving further comment, but I am sitting in a train at the Russian border rather than in a place with internet access, so it is not available. Let’s see what I can come up with in the way of interesting (well, only for me maybe) details.
We went to a museum in Ulan Baataar (apparently, judging by the sign on the train station, I have been begrudging the capital of Mongolia one if its rightful ‘a’s) where there was some sort of bronze-age petroglyph that looked most strikingly like one of the pages in a Richard Scarry book- that page with all the different kinds of cars, the banana car and the apple car and whatnot. Except the bronze-age people weren’t as advanced as Richard Scarry and they just had carts. But it was the same basic organizational pattern of page. Or large stone, as the case may be. It was a cool musuem, all in all. Made me sort of wonder, though, how out of all the civilizations to have occupied the Mongolian territory, only the Genghis-Khan crowd managed to take over most of the world. There were these amazing artifacts of several highly advanced civilizations before Genghis, high-quality tools, beautifully-decorated building materials, systems of writing, etc. And then we got to the Genghis Khan era part of the museum, and it was evident civilization had taken a few steps back; everything was suddenly rudely made and basic. Maybe ruthless military campaigns takes a certain unconcern for art and culture. I don’t know though.
Food in Mongolia had taste. This corresponded with a recent plunge in my appreciation of Russian food, so I was constantly delighted. Russian food is not bad, necessarily, it is just sort of without imagination. There are only two tastes: sweet and fat. These are both good tastes. But there are others, that these people refuse to consider. Tomato sauce, for instance, is beyond them. And salad dressings other than mayonnaise. And meat that is not fried or otherwise infused with fat. [Speaking of meat, they eat a lot of horse. It is surprisingly good. I can’t figure out why it’s illegal in the United States; maybe this is a result of my prolonged exposure to a less squeamish culture, because I don’t remember ever asking this question in my American life.] In Mongolia there is taste that does not rely on fat or sugar. The meat has taste, the milk is unpasteurized and therefore has a lot of taste, the bread is less heavy even, they drink tea other than Lipton’s Yellow Label, etc. The country even smells bold, a mix of the strong milk and some bitter cooking grease and the horse-dung fires burning in the metal ovens. Most of the country lives in gers, even in the city; this is sort of amazing to me, a whole country of people who live in tents, not just some colorful fringe population.
Hey, it looks like we’re finally moving. We have been sitting on the Mongolian-Russian border since 4:00 this morning. It is now 2:30 pm. About half the time on the Mongolian side of the border, half on the Russian side. They like uniforms here. The variety is impressive. I should note in all these hours on the border my bags were not inspected once. So I’m not entirely sure what we’ve been doing. There are these women who roam the corridors trying to get other passengers to help them smuggle goods over the border; we refuse, but most other compartments seem to agree. I have no idea why; the women don’t seem to be paying for this, just asking as a favor. Maybe there is some part of this system I don’t understand. For instance: how do they know people will give back the very nice coats they are transporting, after they cross the border with them? They certainly would have no legal redress.
We had a nice Hallowe’en celebration on the 3rd, as we were in a ger on the day most people celebrate that holiday. I am very proud of the tangerines I carved like pumpkins. Just the skin, of course. We also made lollipop-tissue ghosts. And bought lots of bad, cheap Asian chocolate, eaten by our fellow hostel guests. We’re not actually going anywhere in this train right now after all, by the way; we just go back and forth every once in a while, maybe joining up to new cars. But back to the hostel, there was an amazing number of people there spending many months just travelling around Asia. I don’t get it; does that much of the western world not have a job but have money to spend on constant travel? I’m not sure I would like that; staying in hostels is cheap and interesting, and I like trains, but they are activities that depend on their temporary nature to be enjoyable, as far as I am concerned.
I like Ulan Baataar a lot. It is quite unpretentious, and is totally lacking in the closed, guarded feel of Irkutsk. It seems to bear not grudge against foreigners. People try as hard as they can to find common languages. Stores wish to sell you things, people want to talk to you, Mexican and Korean and Italian and American restaurants cheerfully coexist with Mongolian ones. It is incredibly touristy but without being fake; it doesn’t seem to be trying to create an image of any kind, just to sell things that people want to buy. Lots of people wear traditional robes, but not to make cultural statements, or lure people into restaurants, or in a self-consciously historical way at all, just because those are the clothes that they wear. The main square is huge and open and has a huge monument to Genghis Khan. There is cheap internet everywhere. The city is just bustling and colorful and comfortable; I’m sure I would get tired of its unapologetic capitalism in a few days, but its contrast with Irkutsk put off such irritation for the entirety of my stay there.
The musician we saw our last night of our trip through the steppe was so cool. Throat-singing is awesome; I had heard it before on cd’s, but it’s a whole different experience when you see the human throat that these weird sounds are coming from. The instruments, though, I though were even cooler, and just the melodies of the songs. And the little, wrinkled singer exuded ancient, proud nobility, from his careful, courteous English and Russian to his devoted attention to his songs (mainly about horses, as I remember), to the beauty of the big flat harp he built himself, to his pointed hat. I’m so amazed that he works as an air-traffic controller.
I guess I should do my homework. We will get back to Irkutsk about an hour before our classes start, and I have a lot to do.
Note: We were on the border for almost 12 hours. It was ridiculous. At least the ridiculous officials had awesome hats.
Further note, regarding my swift transformation into a very bad student: I just wrote an essay for History of Siberia, the last sentence translating to: “Mammals are doubtlessly the true wealth of Siberia.” Agh.
Sad note: I left my tapochki at Golden Gobi. This made the train ride back considerably less pleasant.
I don’t remember what I said in my last two blogs. I planned on writing some sort of linear, narrative account of our trip to make up for their scatteredness, but then Natasha already did that, so just read Natasha’s blog. I wish I had it to look at right now, so I could see if there was anything deserving further comment, but I am sitting in a train at the Russian border rather than in a place with internet access, so it is not available. Let’s see what I can come up with in the way of interesting (well, only for me maybe) details.
We went to a museum in Ulan Baataar (apparently, judging by the sign on the train station, I have been begrudging the capital of Mongolia one if its rightful ‘a’s) where there was some sort of bronze-age petroglyph that looked most strikingly like one of the pages in a Richard Scarry book- that page with all the different kinds of cars, the banana car and the apple car and whatnot. Except the bronze-age people weren’t as advanced as Richard Scarry and they just had carts. But it was the same basic organizational pattern of page. Or large stone, as the case may be. It was a cool musuem, all in all. Made me sort of wonder, though, how out of all the civilizations to have occupied the Mongolian territory, only the Genghis-Khan crowd managed to take over most of the world. There were these amazing artifacts of several highly advanced civilizations before Genghis, high-quality tools, beautifully-decorated building materials, systems of writing, etc. And then we got to the Genghis Khan era part of the museum, and it was evident civilization had taken a few steps back; everything was suddenly rudely made and basic. Maybe ruthless military campaigns takes a certain unconcern for art and culture. I don’t know though.
Food in Mongolia had taste. This corresponded with a recent plunge in my appreciation of Russian food, so I was constantly delighted. Russian food is not bad, necessarily, it is just sort of without imagination. There are only two tastes: sweet and fat. These are both good tastes. But there are others, that these people refuse to consider. Tomato sauce, for instance, is beyond them. And salad dressings other than mayonnaise. And meat that is not fried or otherwise infused with fat. [Speaking of meat, they eat a lot of horse. It is surprisingly good. I can’t figure out why it’s illegal in the United States; maybe this is a result of my prolonged exposure to a less squeamish culture, because I don’t remember ever asking this question in my American life.] In Mongolia there is taste that does not rely on fat or sugar. The meat has taste, the milk is unpasteurized and therefore has a lot of taste, the bread is less heavy even, they drink tea other than Lipton’s Yellow Label, etc. The country even smells bold, a mix of the strong milk and some bitter cooking grease and the horse-dung fires burning in the metal ovens. Most of the country lives in gers, even in the city; this is sort of amazing to me, a whole country of people who live in tents, not just some colorful fringe population.
Hey, it looks like we’re finally moving. We have been sitting on the Mongolian-Russian border since 4:00 this morning. It is now 2:30 pm. About half the time on the Mongolian side of the border, half on the Russian side. They like uniforms here. The variety is impressive. I should note in all these hours on the border my bags were not inspected once. So I’m not entirely sure what we’ve been doing. There are these women who roam the corridors trying to get other passengers to help them smuggle goods over the border; we refuse, but most other compartments seem to agree. I have no idea why; the women don’t seem to be paying for this, just asking as a favor. Maybe there is some part of this system I don’t understand. For instance: how do they know people will give back the very nice coats they are transporting, after they cross the border with them? They certainly would have no legal redress.
We had a nice Hallowe’en celebration on the 3rd, as we were in a ger on the day most people celebrate that holiday. I am very proud of the tangerines I carved like pumpkins. Just the skin, of course. We also made lollipop-tissue ghosts. And bought lots of bad, cheap Asian chocolate, eaten by our fellow hostel guests. We’re not actually going anywhere in this train right now after all, by the way; we just go back and forth every once in a while, maybe joining up to new cars. But back to the hostel, there was an amazing number of people there spending many months just travelling around Asia. I don’t get it; does that much of the western world not have a job but have money to spend on constant travel? I’m not sure I would like that; staying in hostels is cheap and interesting, and I like trains, but they are activities that depend on their temporary nature to be enjoyable, as far as I am concerned.
I like Ulan Baataar a lot. It is quite unpretentious, and is totally lacking in the closed, guarded feel of Irkutsk. It seems to bear not grudge against foreigners. People try as hard as they can to find common languages. Stores wish to sell you things, people want to talk to you, Mexican and Korean and Italian and American restaurants cheerfully coexist with Mongolian ones. It is incredibly touristy but without being fake; it doesn’t seem to be trying to create an image of any kind, just to sell things that people want to buy. Lots of people wear traditional robes, but not to make cultural statements, or lure people into restaurants, or in a self-consciously historical way at all, just because those are the clothes that they wear. The main square is huge and open and has a huge monument to Genghis Khan. There is cheap internet everywhere. The city is just bustling and colorful and comfortable; I’m sure I would get tired of its unapologetic capitalism in a few days, but its contrast with Irkutsk put off such irritation for the entirety of my stay there.
The musician we saw our last night of our trip through the steppe was so cool. Throat-singing is awesome; I had heard it before on cd’s, but it’s a whole different experience when you see the human throat that these weird sounds are coming from. The instruments, though, I though were even cooler, and just the melodies of the songs. And the little, wrinkled singer exuded ancient, proud nobility, from his careful, courteous English and Russian to his devoted attention to his songs (mainly about horses, as I remember), to the beauty of the big flat harp he built himself, to his pointed hat. I’m so amazed that he works as an air-traffic controller.
I guess I should do my homework. We will get back to Irkutsk about an hour before our classes start, and I have a lot to do.
Note: We were on the border for almost 12 hours. It was ridiculous. At least the ridiculous officials had awesome hats.
Further note, regarding my swift transformation into a very bad student: I just wrote an essay for History of Siberia, the last sentence translating to: “Mammals are doubtlessly the true wealth of Siberia.” Agh.
Sad note: I left my tapochki at Golden Gobi. This made the train ride back considerably less pleasant.
Friday, November 2, 2007
Mongolia, cont.
Got back to Ulan Bataar this afternoon after an 8 hour car (well, amazing Russian military vehicle) ride. Too tired to actually describe our tour, and also I am very bad at blogging in internet cafes, so I'll have to get back to where I can use my laptop. The train we wanted to take back to Irkutsk was full, so we have to spend an extra day in Ulan Bataar. Actually we are all delighted at this. Mongolia is much better than Russia. Man, I love Mongolia. Why am I not a Mongolian major? This place is so awesome. Also Mongolians are much more friendly than Russians. And there is peanut butter and real tomato sauce in the grocery store. And people wear awesome robes and hats. And gers (Mongolian yurts) are also pretty awesome, except that all three nights I slept in one the fire went out and no one could figure out how to restart in in the dark, so it was fairly freezing.
More to come, as I said. Sorry for the disorganization. But really, this country is not making me anxious to return to Irkutsk. I wonder how much I would love it if I weren't here immediately after two months in Russia; I had thought I was all adjusted to Russian life, but I had just forgot how much more pleasant life was capable of being. I'm sure Russia has it's advantages over Mongolia, but sudden release from the negative qualities of Russia is making me blind to them.
They drink tea with salt. In bowls. Well it's more milk than tea. It is good. As is the green tea, made from leaves rather than bags, in our hostel. We eat vegetables and food with flavor. Man. Maybe something will go wrong with the train tracks to Russian and we'll be stuck here for a month.
Oh, and I must admit that we didn't actually go to the Gobi. It's too bar away and apparently just freezing cold and boring in the winter. We were slightly north of that, in the steppe. I've never seen such a land- it's very unearthly looking, with very flat expanses with nothing but huge herds of goats and yaks and camels and sheep and horses, and then huge jutting rocks and mountains in odd places. The sky is unusualy blue, like the color a child would color it. The animals are all unusually fuzzy and/or hairy; fuzzy in the case of horses, hairy in the case of cows and camels. Rode camels, and horses. Chased a wild nomad child across the steppe. Seriously, this boy was exactly like a Mongol Darwin (for those of you who watched "The Wild Thornberries." Man, that kid was wild. He now has a keychain from the Alamo on the front of his blue metal cart that he pushes around the snowy steppe yelling for hours on end. He is much taken with this keychain. Mother, hope you don't mind my regifting.
More to come, as I said. Sorry for the disorganization. But really, this country is not making me anxious to return to Irkutsk. I wonder how much I would love it if I weren't here immediately after two months in Russia; I had thought I was all adjusted to Russian life, but I had just forgot how much more pleasant life was capable of being. I'm sure Russia has it's advantages over Mongolia, but sudden release from the negative qualities of Russia is making me blind to them.
They drink tea with salt. In bowls. Well it's more milk than tea. It is good. As is the green tea, made from leaves rather than bags, in our hostel. We eat vegetables and food with flavor. Man. Maybe something will go wrong with the train tracks to Russian and we'll be stuck here for a month.
Oh, and I must admit that we didn't actually go to the Gobi. It's too bar away and apparently just freezing cold and boring in the winter. We were slightly north of that, in the steppe. I've never seen such a land- it's very unearthly looking, with very flat expanses with nothing but huge herds of goats and yaks and camels and sheep and horses, and then huge jutting rocks and mountains in odd places. The sky is unusualy blue, like the color a child would color it. The animals are all unusually fuzzy and/or hairy; fuzzy in the case of horses, hairy in the case of cows and camels. Rode camels, and horses. Chased a wild nomad child across the steppe. Seriously, this boy was exactly like a Mongol Darwin (for those of you who watched "The Wild Thornberries." Man, that kid was wild. He now has a keychain from the Alamo on the front of his blue metal cart that he pushes around the snowy steppe yelling for hours on end. He is much taken with this keychain. Mother, hope you don't mind my regifting.
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