finally, an update from russia.
Russia is so odd.
Everywhere you look you can see remenants of Soviet socitey. Stars and sickles decorate the oddest things. Streets and squares are still named after people and events from that time. There are still statues and portraits of Lenin everwhere. Everthing is run down. People live in gray blocks of flats and drive old soviet made cars.
But at the same time, it's so very modern, and capatilist. There is not a woman on the street under the age of 50 who is not wearing either stilleto heels or designer boots or both. In Moscow and St. Petersburg there are Lincoln Navigators and Hummers. In Yaroslavl (city of 600,000) there are billboards for American and Japanese made SUVS for 25 thousand dollars.
The schedule here is demanding. Much more so then in India. Instead of having just one placement in the morning and the afternoon free, we have placemnts both morning and afternoon. I go to three diffrent placemnts in Yaroslavl, one is an orphange where we do simple projects with the smallest children, 3 to 5, and play with them outside on the playground. They are the cutest thing I've ever seen. Except for the ones who spit at you. :/. I succesfully dressed and undressed one kid for the outdoors a few days ago. I was pretty proud of myself, theres about 10 diffrent peices of clothing you bundle them up in, and while your trying to wiggle their foot in one shoe, they're tossing the other shoe to the other side of the room. My favorite, the girl I fell in love with 5 minutes into our first visit there, was adopted a few days ago. It was a little sad that I wouldn't be able to see her again and make sure she was doing okay for myself, but I'm happy that she's out of the orphage. The second is a boarding school where we mostly play outside with the children, about 8 to 15, with chalk, frisbees, balls, jump ropes, and organized games. It's okay. I don't connect as much with the kids, and it's harder to see the diffrence we make there. The third is a state funded mental hospital for women. We give the women manicures, play card and simple games, and just interact with them. It's the most challenging of my placements, and part of me really hates it, but you can see the diffrence you make when you go in. How happy they are just to have interaction with people who aren't doctors. I learned a Russian card game from them, and it's intresting sometimes to talk to them through our translator. Still, everytime we walk in there in the morning I have to brace myself, and still inside, I need to focus on just the one or two or three I'm interacting with at the moment and not on all of them or the whole place.
I've decided to learn Russian. We have two Russian lessons a week included in our program, but it's moslty words that will help us get by at the placements and in the city. Numbers, question words, things like very good, come here, and lets play. But for 10 dollars an hour I can hire a very good tutor, a college professor who teaches Russian to forigners and is incredibly intense. I've learned a lot already, and I really think I'm going to continue when I get back. Russian is difficult, like latin it has declinsions for it's nouns, so endings change according to if the noun is the subject, or the object, or a number of other things, as well as gender. The pronunciation is also very difficult. Much more so then French ever was. But for some reason, I'm really into it. I really really do want to learn Russian. And I want to come back to Russia. Back to CCS Russia. I'm seriously considering doing it next January even.
Went to Moscow last weekend. Saw the Kremilin and the Red Square and St. Basils Cathederal. It was pretty cool. This weekend we're in St. Petersburg. We arrived this morning and had a 3 hour tour of the city. There's so much to see. Tomorrow we're going to see the Hermitage meusum in the Winter Palace and St. Issacs Cathederal. If we have extra time, we're going to go the Cathederal/fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul. It is where every Tsar is buried, including Nick II and his family mudered in the revolution, Peter the Great, and Cathy the Great. On Sunday we are going to the suburban palace of Peterhof. St. Petersburg is amazing, palaces around every corner, and hundereds of museums. Someday I'll have to come back for a week and explore the whole city and all the meusums top to bottom.
It is so odd to think that I'll be back in the US in a little more then a week. I've been gone for so long, I don't know how I'll feel being back. I'm looking forward to being able to walk down a street with confidence again though, knowing where I am, where I'm going, and that I speak the same language as everyone else around me.
It's going to be really odd. And I'm really looking forward to it. But I also think I'm really going to miss being gone. I'm really going to miss asia, europe, and I'm really really going to miss Russia.
Everywhere you look you can see remenants of Soviet socitey. Stars and sickles decorate the oddest things. Streets and squares are still named after people and events from that time. There are still statues and portraits of Lenin everwhere. Everthing is run down. People live in gray blocks of flats and drive old soviet made cars.
But at the same time, it's so very modern, and capatilist. There is not a woman on the street under the age of 50 who is not wearing either stilleto heels or designer boots or both. In Moscow and St. Petersburg there are Lincoln Navigators and Hummers. In Yaroslavl (city of 600,000) there are billboards for American and Japanese made SUVS for 25 thousand dollars.
The schedule here is demanding. Much more so then in India. Instead of having just one placement in the morning and the afternoon free, we have placemnts both morning and afternoon. I go to three diffrent placemnts in Yaroslavl, one is an orphange where we do simple projects with the smallest children, 3 to 5, and play with them outside on the playground. They are the cutest thing I've ever seen. Except for the ones who spit at you. :/. I succesfully dressed and undressed one kid for the outdoors a few days ago. I was pretty proud of myself, theres about 10 diffrent peices of clothing you bundle them up in, and while your trying to wiggle their foot in one shoe, they're tossing the other shoe to the other side of the room. My favorite, the girl I fell in love with 5 minutes into our first visit there, was adopted a few days ago. It was a little sad that I wouldn't be able to see her again and make sure she was doing okay for myself, but I'm happy that she's out of the orphage. The second is a boarding school where we mostly play outside with the children, about 8 to 15, with chalk, frisbees, balls, jump ropes, and organized games. It's okay. I don't connect as much with the kids, and it's harder to see the diffrence we make there. The third is a state funded mental hospital for women. We give the women manicures, play card and simple games, and just interact with them. It's the most challenging of my placements, and part of me really hates it, but you can see the diffrence you make when you go in. How happy they are just to have interaction with people who aren't doctors. I learned a Russian card game from them, and it's intresting sometimes to talk to them through our translator. Still, everytime we walk in there in the morning I have to brace myself, and still inside, I need to focus on just the one or two or three I'm interacting with at the moment and not on all of them or the whole place.
I've decided to learn Russian. We have two Russian lessons a week included in our program, but it's moslty words that will help us get by at the placements and in the city. Numbers, question words, things like very good, come here, and lets play. But for 10 dollars an hour I can hire a very good tutor, a college professor who teaches Russian to forigners and is incredibly intense. I've learned a lot already, and I really think I'm going to continue when I get back. Russian is difficult, like latin it has declinsions for it's nouns, so endings change according to if the noun is the subject, or the object, or a number of other things, as well as gender. The pronunciation is also very difficult. Much more so then French ever was. But for some reason, I'm really into it. I really really do want to learn Russian. And I want to come back to Russia. Back to CCS Russia. I'm seriously considering doing it next January even.
Went to Moscow last weekend. Saw the Kremilin and the Red Square and St. Basils Cathederal. It was pretty cool. This weekend we're in St. Petersburg. We arrived this morning and had a 3 hour tour of the city. There's so much to see. Tomorrow we're going to see the Hermitage meusum in the Winter Palace and St. Issacs Cathederal. If we have extra time, we're going to go the Cathederal/fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul. It is where every Tsar is buried, including Nick II and his family mudered in the revolution, Peter the Great, and Cathy the Great. On Sunday we are going to the suburban palace of Peterhof. St. Petersburg is amazing, palaces around every corner, and hundereds of museums. Someday I'll have to come back for a week and explore the whole city and all the meusums top to bottom.
It is so odd to think that I'll be back in the US in a little more then a week. I've been gone for so long, I don't know how I'll feel being back. I'm looking forward to being able to walk down a street with confidence again though, knowing where I am, where I'm going, and that I speak the same language as everyone else around me.
It's going to be really odd. And I'm really looking forward to it. But I also think I'm really going to miss being gone. I'm really going to miss asia, europe, and I'm really really going to miss Russia.