Culture Clash

Haha, so basically its really interesting seeing how much I don’t fit in here.

First example: no one can say my name right, its always Keslee. Though, I must say that the worst name problem was on the tickets coming back from Kazan, which Aygul had to buy and give our names in Cyrillic. My middle name is Layne, and the n/m got lost in translation, so my ticket read “Kelsey Lame Olson.”


Second: food. When I don’t eat everything that Galina gives me, she takes offense, so I have to either say that I don’t feel well so I don’t have to eat it all or try to explain that yes, I like it, but I don’t want three bowls of rice, no matter how much I like rice. Same with tea – if someone offers you tea here you HAVE to take it, or else they get really offended.

Third: getting into the dorms. Technically there aren’t guests allowed in the dorms, but for our program, there are. The guards at the entrance to the dorms make the homestay kids jump through all kinds of hoops to get in (I’m there enough that I think I’ve come to an agreement with the strictest one where she lets me in but I have to leave my passport at the front desk so she doesn’t get in trouble for anything) The RA told me it was leftover Soviet mentality, and some suggested we bribe them with cigarettes. Anyways, its adventuresome.

Fourth: my individuals every Tuesday. Basically ‘individuals’ are supposed to be there to work on whatever you need help with. I decided I just wanted to work on my speaking ability, so when Zoya, my individual teacher, found out I was also studying political science, she decided we would talk about politics in Russian. Zoya is incredibly nice and I like her a lot, but I’m not sure why I agreed to her suggestion of talking politics. It’s an older – vey opinionated - Russian woman who grew up during the Soviet times talking to a young idealogical American girl who has no plans to do anything with Russia after this trip, and we talk politics for two hours. I don’t even know how to convey how bad and ridiculous of an idea this has been. I really should record some of the conversations (not that anyone but me would understand them) but one day we ended up talking about Kosovo (yeah, realllly not a good topic). I obviously don’t speak well enough to convey my opinions correctly, so it gets even more interesting. Basically I ended up taking no position whatsoever and said that Russian and American should like each other again and the world would be better. Haha. She also doesn’t understand why I don’t want to work in Russia after this, and why I decided to study Tatar on top of everything. Russians also seem to have a very strange concept of refugees, because they always get really confused when I tell them that I used to/want to work with refugees in Africa. The first question is always why Africa and not Russia? They also seem to think that refugees are bad people who decide to ruin their country and go live in America in giant mansions, so the next question is why do I want to help them? Luckily I think we both realize we come from different cultures and there are some misunderstandings, but I still always end up completely floored after class on Tuesdays because things get just so crazy.

And finally, nobody ever smiles here, they are always mean unless they have a reason to be nice. They also look at you strangely if you smile at them, because unless you have an actual reason to smile they don’t understand why you are. They get especially difficult right before their lunches, and will suddenly stop talking to you in the middle of a conversation and close their window in your face if they happen to lose track of time and go into their lunch.