Hello,
I was sick last weekend with a cold, and then I got sick again with a stomach thing this weekend, so I haven't been up to that much exciting.
The week before last, we went to the circus one night. We walked in and there were just wild animals sitting in the lobby like it was normal - there was a bear, cheetah, tigers, monkeys, it was pretty crazy. The show itself consisted of a lot of Russian acrobatics, which are really cool at first, but two hours of them can get tiring. There weren't that many animals in the show itself. some poodles doing cool tricks, and then lions. The lions were really sad actually - there were 6 of them and you could tell that their spirits were completely broken. I think we were all secretly hoping that they were going to attack the lion tamer for constantly making them do the stupid things they did.
This weekend I went to an electronics place called Gorbushka, which is kind of like the Ikea of electronics, but in a mall form. They have lots of movies and tv show vendors though that sell dvds that are legal (i.e. illegal in America) to copy and sell cheap. I found Juno and bought that.
Afterwards we took a bus to the MegaMall, where they have some giant stores from everywhere, and I bought some Ritz Crackers for 8 dollars at Stockmanns, a Finish store that imports a lot of American food. (yes, the Ritz were worth it =) just once though maybe )
Sunday night we went to a musical performance at the House of Music in Moscow, which was interesting because it was a traditional Russian orchestra. It consists of mostly strings and drums ( there were only two flutes and an oboe apart from strings) and the strings aren't instruments played with bows, but rather balalaikas, domras, etc, which are strummed. I don't know my musical terminology, so I hope this makes sense. Monday was a holiday in Russia, so I had no school, and there was an excursion to the ballet in the theater inside the Kremlin. Since it was a holiday and also the premier of the "Le Corsaire" balet with the prima ballerina in Moscow, it was incredibly crowded and tight security, so not everyone was seated until an hour after the performance was supposed to start. We had to find our seats in the dark, and since we were in a big group didn't even know what exact seats we were supposed to be finding in the dark, but eventually we just sat down. Most of the guys fell asleep, but I definitely enjoyed my first Russian ballet.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Saturday, February 16, 2008
A new post, just for you Kyle =)
So I’ve had some questions asked that I will attempt to answer. I'll have another post later on about the past weeks happenings with pictures, etc.
Yes, I finally got a cheeseburger with meat! but after some tedious explanations. And, when I was in Kazan, I asked Aygul and Ildar what to say which is ‘without vegetables’ but they weren’t sure, so today when I went I was more specific. It took about 20 minutes to get so I don't know if I will do it again, but it worked!
My normal day/week: I wake up around 8ish, take a shower, eat at 9, and leave at 930 to walk to school. Its about a mile, and class starts at 10. We get a short fifteen minute break at noon, which we usually conspire to stretch out longer by agreeing that no one goes to class at the scheduled time, and then we are out between one and three depending on the day. Wednesdays are the lecture days, and I don’t go until 1:30. Our teachers are pretty laid back about things, mine is very nice and understanding if we are sick or out of town or just decide to not do our homework. Between class and dinner, I’m usually at the dorms (which now have a no-guest policy so we’ll have to see how hard it is to get the homestay students inside for use of the internet/washer/and to have social lives.) I usually eat around 7 at home and then do homework or read. Saturdays we have an excursion to a museum of some sort, and we usually have a small excursion at some point during the week as well. Sundays are “free,” which in Vykhino means boring if you don’t go into the city and do something.
My homestay apartment is very typical Russian housing. It’s in a giant soviet style apartment building, nine floors. There is a front door that you enter through, and then you get to the elevator and stairs. The elevators in Russia are very tiny, you can fit four people, definitely no more than that in them. Once you get to your floor, there will be a door on each side of the elevator which is locked. Behind each one is two doors to two different apartments. For each apartment, there then is two other doors (one on top of another – picture a screen door and a normal one (except these are both giant scary doors) and each one has about four locks on it. Sometimes Oleg and Galina forget when I am gone and lock a few random locks on me so I have to buzz them to let me in. It takes a while to get inside, but I guess this is a reflection on the type of society they live in.
Once inside, there is a tiny entryway and three doors to each of the bedrooms. There is also a bathroom (bathrooms here are two separate rooms – one has the toilet, the other has the sink and shower, both of which use the same faucet that you have to switch depending on what you want to use) and then the kitchen is right next to that. The kitchens are often very small, as are the tables, and so far all of the chairs I have seen in them are short square stools that you can push underneath the table. Nothing ever matches, either, and this is actually a characteristic of Russia that is growing on me. There are crazy patterns on couches, wallpaper is nice, but usually paired with three other non-matching patterns in the same room. Just in my room there are two different shades of red Armenian rugs, pink flower wallpaper, an odd brown shiny couch, and bright orange curtains with checkered lace hanging in front. I also noticed that standard pillows here are square shaped, not rectangular like in the US, and they take up much more room on the beds.
To wash clothes here was an adventure for me. I’m pretty sure that the invention of the dryer has yet to reach Russia. Nor has the laundromat. Russians usually have washers in their apartments, or else they handwash clothes. Then they hang them up to dry, either in the kitchen, their rooms, or the bathroom (but I’ve found the bathroom is not a good place because that makes it harder to shower when you’re trying to not get things wet) My homestay has a washer, but I was confused about how it would work. After a long conversation with Galina, most of which was hand movements, I figured it out – I would pay a certain amount of rubles per wash. But, apparently I didn’t have it all figured out because then I realized that it was going to be much more because it was by weight. Basically it came out to the equivalent of 5 dollars for two pairs of jeans and a few shirts (and if you talk to my mom she can tell you that my shirts are not very heavy weight (aka not as warm as she would like =P)). Sooo, what to do? I was talking to the RA at the dorms (who was nice enough to let me set up my computer to access the internet) and he told me to just sneak into the dorms and do my laundry there (the program we’re on provided a washer for the American students on their floor). Still, it was interesting. You set a specific temperature…none of this hot/warm/cold stuff, and I still haven’t figured out if its actually in Celsius or not ( I think its actually Fahrenheit) and then you have other various settings like delicates/halfdelicates (yes, what exactly are those??)/woolens, cotton, etc, and those always seem to screw up the original temperature setting. Then I hang up my clothes to dry in Cody and Mike’s room, who apparently have not had any inquiries yet into why they have girls clothes hanging in their room.
Crime: it’s definitely here, no one every trusts anyone else. In the stores you have to store every little thing in a cubby before entering or else have it sealed in plastic so they can tell if you’ve put something in it or not. I’ve been told a restaurant nearby is run by the mafia…it appears to be true.
You see police a lot, but I try to avoid them because the only thing I’ve seen them do is stop foreigners and give them trouble about documents. Luckily my coat happens to be just like every other non-fur coat here so I can blend in somewhat better than others.
Pickpocketing happens, I guess, like everywhere else. Wearing those under-the-clothes-belts just marks you with a giant target asking to be robbed though. On the subway everyone puts there stuff on their laps and that’s pretty much all there is to it.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a police car. I saw an ambulance once, which made me thankful that our program gave us the phone number for an American style ambulance. The Russian one I saw was going much slower than everything else and definitely did not look like something I’d want to be in even if it wasn’t an emergency.
Food: I am given Kasha and Booterbrod every morning. Booterbrod is the Russian sandwich. Its open-faced, and then you put anything else on it – usually kolbasa (which is kind of like bologna but not). Kasha is mush – sometimes its cream of wheat style, other times there are oats thrown in with it so it’s a bit more oatmeal style. One morning I don’t know what style it was, but I definitely didn’t like it. Other homestay people tell me they get the same thing. The dorm people are given a bit more of variety – yogurts, etc. (they get candy bars at breakfast too!) In Kazan, it was cereal stuff and cookies/sweets with tea and coffee. Dinner is usually very Russian as well. ‘Salads’ here consist of a lot of one thing – a lot of beets, a lot of cabbage, a lot of carrots, topped with mayonaise. Dinner is often soups, like borsht, or something with potatoes. Pelmeni is popular, its like a weird low grade meat inside of a pasta thingy. Tea is given with everything. I have it at breakfast, dinner, and about three times a day in class. Water is always boiled. I’ve been told the water here isn’t safe because its actually treated TOO much with chlorine. I think that theres actually too much chlorine and the fact that it still isn’t clean even then. Either way, no one drinks it.
Yes, I finally got a cheeseburger with meat! but after some tedious explanations. And, when I was in Kazan, I asked Aygul and Ildar what to say which is ‘without vegetables’ but they weren’t sure, so today when I went I was more specific. It took about 20 minutes to get so I don't know if I will do it again, but it worked!
My normal day/week: I wake up around 8ish, take a shower, eat at 9, and leave at 930 to walk to school. Its about a mile, and class starts at 10. We get a short fifteen minute break at noon, which we usually conspire to stretch out longer by agreeing that no one goes to class at the scheduled time, and then we are out between one and three depending on the day. Wednesdays are the lecture days, and I don’t go until 1:30. Our teachers are pretty laid back about things, mine is very nice and understanding if we are sick or out of town or just decide to not do our homework. Between class and dinner, I’m usually at the dorms (which now have a no-guest policy so we’ll have to see how hard it is to get the homestay students inside for use of the internet/washer/and to have social lives.) I usually eat around 7 at home and then do homework or read. Saturdays we have an excursion to a museum of some sort, and we usually have a small excursion at some point during the week as well. Sundays are “free,” which in Vykhino means boring if you don’t go into the city and do something.
My homestay apartment is very typical Russian housing. It’s in a giant soviet style apartment building, nine floors. There is a front door that you enter through, and then you get to the elevator and stairs. The elevators in Russia are very tiny, you can fit four people, definitely no more than that in them. Once you get to your floor, there will be a door on each side of the elevator which is locked. Behind each one is two doors to two different apartments. For each apartment, there then is two other doors (one on top of another – picture a screen door and a normal one (except these are both giant scary doors) and each one has about four locks on it. Sometimes Oleg and Galina forget when I am gone and lock a few random locks on me so I have to buzz them to let me in. It takes a while to get inside, but I guess this is a reflection on the type of society they live in.
Once inside, there is a tiny entryway and three doors to each of the bedrooms. There is also a bathroom (bathrooms here are two separate rooms – one has the toilet, the other has the sink and shower, both of which use the same faucet that you have to switch depending on what you want to use) and then the kitchen is right next to that. The kitchens are often very small, as are the tables, and so far all of the chairs I have seen in them are short square stools that you can push underneath the table. Nothing ever matches, either, and this is actually a characteristic of Russia that is growing on me. There are crazy patterns on couches, wallpaper is nice, but usually paired with three other non-matching patterns in the same room. Just in my room there are two different shades of red Armenian rugs, pink flower wallpaper, an odd brown shiny couch, and bright orange curtains with checkered lace hanging in front. I also noticed that standard pillows here are square shaped, not rectangular like in the US, and they take up much more room on the beds.
To wash clothes here was an adventure for me. I’m pretty sure that the invention of the dryer has yet to reach Russia. Nor has the laundromat. Russians usually have washers in their apartments, or else they handwash clothes. Then they hang them up to dry, either in the kitchen, their rooms, or the bathroom (but I’ve found the bathroom is not a good place because that makes it harder to shower when you’re trying to not get things wet) My homestay has a washer, but I was confused about how it would work. After a long conversation with Galina, most of which was hand movements, I figured it out – I would pay a certain amount of rubles per wash. But, apparently I didn’t have it all figured out because then I realized that it was going to be much more because it was by weight. Basically it came out to the equivalent of 5 dollars for two pairs of jeans and a few shirts (and if you talk to my mom she can tell you that my shirts are not very heavy weight (aka not as warm as she would like =P)). Sooo, what to do? I was talking to the RA at the dorms (who was nice enough to let me set up my computer to access the internet) and he told me to just sneak into the dorms and do my laundry there (the program we’re on provided a washer for the American students on their floor). Still, it was interesting. You set a specific temperature…none of this hot/warm/cold stuff, and I still haven’t figured out if its actually in Celsius or not ( I think its actually Fahrenheit) and then you have other various settings like delicates/halfdelicates (yes, what exactly are those??)/woolens, cotton, etc, and those always seem to screw up the original temperature setting. Then I hang up my clothes to dry in Cody and Mike’s room, who apparently have not had any inquiries yet into why they have girls clothes hanging in their room.
Crime: it’s definitely here, no one every trusts anyone else. In the stores you have to store every little thing in a cubby before entering or else have it sealed in plastic so they can tell if you’ve put something in it or not. I’ve been told a restaurant nearby is run by the mafia…it appears to be true.
You see police a lot, but I try to avoid them because the only thing I’ve seen them do is stop foreigners and give them trouble about documents. Luckily my coat happens to be just like every other non-fur coat here so I can blend in somewhat better than others.
Pickpocketing happens, I guess, like everywhere else. Wearing those under-the-clothes-belts just marks you with a giant target asking to be robbed though. On the subway everyone puts there stuff on their laps and that’s pretty much all there is to it.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a police car. I saw an ambulance once, which made me thankful that our program gave us the phone number for an American style ambulance. The Russian one I saw was going much slower than everything else and definitely did not look like something I’d want to be in even if it wasn’t an emergency.
Food: I am given Kasha and Booterbrod every morning. Booterbrod is the Russian sandwich. Its open-faced, and then you put anything else on it – usually kolbasa (which is kind of like bologna but not). Kasha is mush – sometimes its cream of wheat style, other times there are oats thrown in with it so it’s a bit more oatmeal style. One morning I don’t know what style it was, but I definitely didn’t like it. Other homestay people tell me they get the same thing. The dorm people are given a bit more of variety – yogurts, etc. (they get candy bars at breakfast too!) In Kazan, it was cereal stuff and cookies/sweets with tea and coffee. Dinner is usually very Russian as well. ‘Salads’ here consist of a lot of one thing – a lot of beets, a lot of cabbage, a lot of carrots, topped with mayonaise. Dinner is often soups, like borsht, or something with potatoes. Pelmeni is popular, its like a weird low grade meat inside of a pasta thingy. Tea is given with everything. I have it at breakfast, dinner, and about three times a day in class. Water is always boiled. I’ve been told the water here isn’t safe because its actually treated TOO much with chlorine. I think that theres actually too much chlorine and the fact that it still isn’t clean even then. Either way, no one drinks it.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Kazan
Mike and I took a train Friday night to Kazan. We left Moscow at 730pm, and arrived in Kazan, twelve hours later (!). It was definitely an interesting experience. We took 3rd class, where its a giant car with 54 beds...it wasnt too bad. They have roll out mattress pad thingys, and then they give you new clean sheets to put over everything. It is hard to get to sleep, but it wasnt as bad as one might imagine a plascart train in Russia to be, which bodes well for the month we have to spend on the train later on...
We spent Saturday morning having tea and coffee with Aygul and Ildar. Then we went to the Kazan Kremlin, which has the Qul Sharif mosque, and a good lookout over the city and the Kazanka river. Oh, and it was -13 degrees Celsius and windy. You can see all of the snow that is there too in the pictures that I posted on picasa. That night, we went to see a play in Tatar, which was originally Spanish, so not quite authentic Tatar theater, but close. And, at some point, I was dubbed Rudolph because my nose was a consistent bright red throughout the weekend because of the cold. Then went to a cafe and met another friend, Dilyara, before heading home, almost a full 24 hours after we got there.
Sunday, Aygul and Ildar showed me Kazan State University (where Lenin, Aygul, and Ildar went to school, not that they are related, but they are all equally important :D ). We indulged on some Tatar cuisine that night and then decided to go see a late movie: I am Legend, ( Ya Lengenda). This was interesting, because it was a zombie movie that was made a bit scarier since it was all in Russian. There is also a part where Will Smith sings along to Bob Marley. Except in Russia, it is a dubbed over, high pitched voice singing a Bob Marley song in Russian but appearing to be Will Smith's voice.
Monday was just relaxing and catching up...Aygul, Dilyara, and I bought some ice cream walking back from the store, and I was told that it would make me warmer, haha. We left for Moscow on the train Monday night and got back Tuesday morning, just in time for classes. yay.
We spent Saturday morning having tea and coffee with Aygul and Ildar. Then we went to the Kazan Kremlin, which has the Qul Sharif mosque, and a good lookout over the city and the Kazanka river. Oh, and it was -13 degrees Celsius and windy. You can see all of the snow that is there too in the pictures that I posted on picasa. That night, we went to see a play in Tatar, which was originally Spanish, so not quite authentic Tatar theater, but close. And, at some point, I was dubbed Rudolph because my nose was a consistent bright red throughout the weekend because of the cold. Then went to a cafe and met another friend, Dilyara, before heading home, almost a full 24 hours after we got there.
Sunday, Aygul and Ildar showed me Kazan State University (where Lenin, Aygul, and Ildar went to school, not that they are related, but they are all equally important :D ). We indulged on some Tatar cuisine that night and then decided to go see a late movie: I am Legend, ( Ya Lengenda). This was interesting, because it was a zombie movie that was made a bit scarier since it was all in Russian. There is also a part where Will Smith sings along to Bob Marley. Except in Russia, it is a dubbed over, high pitched voice singing a Bob Marley song in Russian but appearing to be Will Smith's voice.
Monday was just relaxing and catching up...Aygul, Dilyara, and I bought some ice cream walking back from the store, and I was told that it would make me warmer, haha. We left for Moscow on the train Monday night and got back Tuesday morning, just in time for classes. yay.
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
This Week
This week has been mostly classes...we started doing our 'individuals' this week where we each have a scheduled time to sit and talk with one of the teachers for two hours one on one, which will help out a bunch with that whole learning a language thing...Today is the lecture day, and one of them is on the presidential elections,
One afternoon I went with some other people to walk down Old Arbat street, which was neat, especially at sunset (yeah, I never thought I'd miss sunny AZ).
I put up some pictures of Arbat, skating, and campus.
Saturday, February 2, 2008
Armoury and Gorky Park
We went on an excursion to the Armoury at the Kremlin today...all of the old clothes and crowns, etc. Most of my pictures are from standing outside waiting to go in...
After that, some of us went to a big underground mall, ate some food, and then went to Gorky Park. In the summer, the park is a giant amusement park along the river, but in the winter they flood over all of the pathways to make it covered in ice for ice skating. At first, we couldn't figure out where to rent the skates, so it was interesting walking around on the paths of ice in just shoes. Surprisingly though, it was pretty easy (it was covered in snow so not so slippery) to walk, and much harder to skate. It was full of ruts and the skates were not very good quality, so it made for interesting mishaps.
After that, some of us went to a big underground mall, ate some food, and then went to Gorky Park. In the summer, the park is a giant amusement park along the river, but in the winter they flood over all of the pathways to make it covered in ice for ice skating. At first, we couldn't figure out where to rent the skates, so it was interesting walking around on the paths of ice in just shoes. Surprisingly though, it was pretty easy (it was covered in snow so not so slippery) to walk, and much harder to skate. It was full of ruts and the skates were not very good quality, so it made for interesting mishaps.
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