The Question has Become: Where is the Chinese Sportsman?

Abby keeps telling me that I have to write about this show we saw the other day with Margarita called “Big Races.” It really was quite amazing. It was an international competition of some kind, with teams from Russia, the US, China, and Kazakhstan. The Russian team, at least, took the whole thing very seriously- the team members were mainly Olympic athletes, and they frequently told the camera how they knew that the nation was counting on their success, and they were doing it all for Russia. In the first round of competition... well, we don’t remember. Oh, they dressed up like frogs and had to hop about on giant lilypads, but they usually fell in the water. These competitions are difficult to describe, actually; I think you had to see them to understand the full ridiculousness. There was this one excellent segment in which they dressed up as ostriches, with huge necks protruding from their heads, and rode bicicles over hills. Between segments there were earnest interviews with the trainers about the likelihood of the competitors breaking all their bones. Or interesting attempts by representatives of the Russian team to have international encounters with the American team (“Vell... I think Rossia!). But the best part were the segments with a “wild bull.” The wild bull was only about a year old and had protective bulbs on his horns, but he still managed to maul the competitors fairly painfully. In the second wild bull segment, in which the competitors dressed up as mice and ran about through foam cheese wedges, tragedy struck. For reasons known only to the young bull himself, the raging beast took an especial dislike to the Chinese competitor, and just chased him around everywhere. The poor man would attempt to take refuge in the cheese wedges, but to no avail: the foam constructions were no match for the crafty animal, whose just charged the whole structure and either knocked it over or chased the guy out the other side of the hole. It was so out of control. At one point the guy was huddled in a corner of the cheese, trying to hide from the bull, and the earnest Russian announcer stopped commenting on the successes of the Kazak mouse to comment: “But at this point the question has become: WHERE is the Chinese sportsman?” We probably should not have found this so funny, as I think the poor guy was later hospitalized. Even more amusing than the actual show may have been the reaction of Margarita to it all. She was very serious about it all. Once when I was almost falling over laughing and asked “Who thought up these things?” she yelled “The French! This is all in France!” She was especially upset at the end, when it was clear that Russia would win and one cocky Russian announced that this victory “shows that Russians are the most capable people!” “It shows no such thing! It’s all luck! Someone slips on the ‘human ocean’ section, someone doesn’t! Last week China won!”

Hope everyone had a merry Christmas. Abby and I spent Christmas Eve at a hockey game, which was very fun, though I admit that my attention span for hockey is sort of limited to two periods, generally the first and last. But I was amused by the crowd, and by the antics of the OOC cheerleaders, and by Abby’s obsession with it all. And by the skating teddy bear mascot. After the game we took one of the famous Yaroslavl marshrutkas and then walked home along the Volga, with lots of pretty lit church spires/ onion domes and new years trees and lights, and was a very nice Christmas Eve activity. We made a very nice Christmas Table in Abby’s room, with the little metal tree Margarita put in here, and every Christmas-themed item we could find. Margarita made us a cake.

Yaroslavl is very pretty indeed. And we did several things worthy of note but I have to go walk around it some more, or sit in a bus and look at it, or something, or otherwise try to think of a way to burn enough calories to be prepared for dinner. We eat a lot here.


Cont.

Well the Yaroslavl internet cafe didn’t feel like admitting the existence of my flash drive, so this was not posted. So now I can think of more interesting things to say...

I get really annoyed when I have to pay the ‘foreigner’ price at museums and things. But I can’t reasonably claim to be Russian, seeing as I don’t really speak Russian. So I’ve decided that I have to come up with a non-Russian ethnic identity for myself that is still a member of the Russian Federation. Unfortunately most of said ethnic groups bear no resemblance to me. Like I can’t really pretend to be a Buryat. All the more European groups left Russia when the USSR broke up. Curses upon you, Estonian separatists. It’s not really that big a deal, I guess, since places will usually accept my Russian student ID. But the clock museum in Yaroslavl didn’t. The icon museum, however, did, and it was an excellent museum, with very busy, imaginative icons with 100 or so narrative events on one panel. It was, however, typical of Russian museums in that about 5 guard-babushkas followed us about the tiny museum as we looked at the icons. They didn’t offer any information or anything, they just positioned themselves in chairs and watched us. We were the only people there, so when we left there was this alarming mass exodus of babushkas, who all suddenly started laughing and talking as they went out the door.

Margarita, Abby’s babushka, has a very awesome cat. His name is Vasya, and he is big and striped and attacks people. It seems that he and Abby had a well-established relationship of mutually ignoring each other, but then I arrived and ruined it all. It’s a good thing Margarita finds this cat to be the most interesting creature on earth, aside from her revolutionary, communist grandson, because anyone else would be alarmed instead of entertained that I spend a lot of time growling at the cat and wrestling with him. And Vasya can apparently open the door to our room, which he never did before I arrived. So now he runs about the room in the middle of the night and jumps on my bed and tries to get me to wrestle with him. And Abby refused to go to sleep before he is caught and removed, so have spent a ridiculous time chasing him out from under the bed. Man, this cat is so awesome. And his front claws are out, so he is very fun to wrestle with.

Abby and I are currently trying to figure out when to leave for the train station. There is one normal time, and one time for if Margarita tries to feed us dinner and we claim we are already late for the train. I cannot believe how much food we eat. Oh man, I’m so excited we’ll be on the train soon, I love trains. Though actually I have yet to be in platscart rather then kupe. That mean... in an open compartment with 6 beds rather than a closed compartment with 4 beds. If you think the 4 bed option is necessarily better, read Natasha’s blog from a few days ago. Then try to figure out what it means that Natasha thinks that she is the same person as her cat.