9/14

I had an interesting conversation with an Iranian marshrutka driver this evening; “interesting conversation” by my rather low standards, that is, which basically translate to “any conversation not purely based on the transfer of goods and cash.” The conversation, basically, was:
Him: You want to get off here at the stop “Dormitory,” don’t you?
Me: No, I’m going to the stop “University”
Him: Oh, ok.
Me: Thanks. (I hand him money, in a denomination requiring him to make a lot of change, an offense for which he does not rebuke me)
Him: You’re a foreigner, aren’t you.
Me. Yes.
Him: Me too. I’m an Iranian.
Me: Oh, really? Well, nice to meet you.
Him: Are you an Englishwoman?
Me: No, I’m from America.
[He finally finds enough change]
Me: Ok, bye.
Him (in accented but proud English): Thank you very much!

Well, if you had passed two weeks in a country without having a single conversation with a person you didn’t know, you would think this was remarkable too. In other news relating to friendly people, I bought ice cream from the nicest ice-cream-babushka in the world this afternoon, when I was desperately wandering the streets of the city looking for a way to make change for my $500 ruble bill so that I could take the many buses I was about to have to take.

The bus taking, incidentally, was my real event of the day; I successfully arranged, to my amazement, to meet some boys I met on the camping trip last weekend to all go together to the meeting of the hiking club. I’m so much braver by text message than I would ever be by telephone. So, I had a fun bus ride to this other town where the meeting was, having these boys (all math majors, you’ll be glad to hear, Mother) explain every joke about Americans they’d ever heard to me, and listening to long descriptions of Russian comedies, and answering various odd questions about America, such as “Do Americans think that all Russians wear hats?” and “had you seen public transportation before you came here?” The club meeting did not require my presence, as it was to plan a camping trip I’m not going on, but I’m making the most of any circumstance in which real Russians will talk to me. I also had a lot of good tea and cookies and dried bread. Then it was sort of an adventure getting home, as a thunderstorm rolled in just as the meeting ended- it involved a lot of standing around in the rain and jumping into marshrutkas before the rest of the jostling crowd, and leaping from marshrutka to passing trolleybus, and long attempts to explain where I lived, and, of course, the Iranian marshrutka driver. I had not yet used the trolleybus (on maybe I was on a tram? The city has both, and I understand how to use neither), so that was good.

Tonight when I got home I noticed that my host family’s library includes a Russian translation of Thomas Wolfe’s You Can’t Go Home Again. It’s not fair for Russians to be more cultured than I am even as relates to my own country’s literature. Of course, the fact that even Don Williams has apparently read Thomas Wolfe should have motivated me to read him before. It’s going on my list of things to do when I get home. Right now I’m still working on the volume of Milton I brought with me; I figured I’d never read Paradise Lost unless it were the only English literature available to me, and it does seem like one of those things one has to do. We’ll see if it actually gets done.

There is a Russian rock group called “Агата Кристи'' (Agata Kristi) - how cool is that. On the subject of music, I really like the radio on the kitchen wall here – it's white and square and plays only one station, just like the one in Malen'kaya Vera. Unlike that one, however, it never underscores the sad irony of my life by playing the Soviet National Anthem at key moments, at least not yet.

Going to Alshon tomorrow morning with my fellow Americans. Elizabeth sent us this interesting cautionary text message:
“They told me that right now at Alshan there are snakes and old, dangerous stairs.”
So, if I’m not taken out by any old stairs, I’ll be back to post Sunday night and maybe can post this Monday.