as requested, the facebook notes of russia, part one
reader beware: i still haven't lost my ability to write a lot and actually say very little... :)
1) where the hell am i?: petrozavodsk is a small city on the west coast of lake onego, about 600 miles northeast of st petersburg. this means that right now the sun sets at 4 am and rises at 5am, which is simultaneously awesome (i can walk home drunk at 1am and still see where i'm going) and not so awesome (the curtain in my room is paper-thin and most of the light still gets through, which makes sleeping hard. i miss my darkness.) this also means that i'm going without a proper summer, since it's consistently about 50-60 degrees during the day and about 35-50 degrees at night. this is great, except for the part where the warmest bit of clothing i packed was a, in retrospect, rather flimsy sweater. oops. being this close to a lake means that it's pretty windy, which does not help matters, but...
2) what's great here that i can't do back home?: ...being able to buy beer in the street and drink it on the sidewalk is a luxury that i didn't realize how much i'd missed until holly and i got to st petersburg. [story on that below.] also, being able to take beer into a movie theater and not get in trouble for it. we saw indiana jones last night - in russian - and it was honestly hilarious. i'd wanted to steal one of the russian movie posters for it, but since it's never dark, i'll never have cover of night under which to do my thieving.
3) hang on, what the hell am i doing here?: in class from 1300-1630 every day, with a half-hour break in between. it's just holly and i for now, and we have two totally awesome teachers who are totally willing to help us however they can. which brings me to a tangent: people here are ridiculously nice. if you tell them you're interested in something, the next time you see them, they have that something - or information about where you can get that something - for you. the ladies who work in the library are incredibly helpful; the one who works in the rare books collection is equally geeky to me in that we were both a little too excited about an italian book from the 1400s. people here are also very patient when your russian fails you momentarily, and i get the feeling that they really do appreciate the fact that i'm at least trying. honestly, i didn't realize how much i'd forgotten until i got back here and had to use everything that had at one point been stuffed into my brain.
also, we have museum and out-of-city trips planned for us, which is pretty awesome. i'll probably update you on those as they happen, and stuff.
4) and you may say to yourself, well, how did i get here?: so i left DC last thursday, and flew to london, arriving friday morning. from there i flew to moscow and met holly in the city, and we took a train to st petersburg - my old stomping grounds, and i tell you, i nearly cried when we got out of the train station and into the city and everything was familiar again - anyways, we then had to buy train tickets to get here, so we dumped our luggage at that station and bought tickets. not looking at the time on the tickets, we ventured out to find some food, failing miserably since we just didn't have enough time. [we thought we were leaving on the 1720 train] so at 1710 we got back to the train station, grabbed our luggage and RAN LIKE HELL to get to the train. i'd gotten on board and was moving to our compartment when the conductor yelled after me "come here! let me see your ticket again!" so i did, and she immediately ascertained that we were on the wrong train - out went my bag, out went me, and the train pulled away. as it was moving off the conductor told us to look at our tickets again - and it was then that we noticed that we did, indeed, have the wrong time. exhilarated from having come 30 seconds away from doing the completely wrong thing, we did the only thing we could think of - sit on the platform and drink the two beers we'd each bought for the journey. sublime.
we did arrive in PZK in good fashion, though. so no worries there.
5) everything is a LOT easier this time- i feel free to explore a lot more because i've already lived here, well, in this country at least. it's hard not to compare petrozavodsk to st petersburg, but i'm doing it anyway, at least in my head. it was very comforting to get off the plane in moscow and feel completely at ease - coming back here is a lot like finding an old pair of shoes in your closet that you try on and miraculously they still fit, and they're still comfortable. so, that was nice. and i didn't realize how much i'd missed the food, too - everyone says that russian food is bland, but i totally disconcur. if i weren't walking everywhere - and attempting to run with holly - i'd probably gain ten pounds from all the culinary delights to be had here. bread and cream, my friends, bread and cream. oh, and beer.
6) other things: the main methods of transport here are foot, car, taxi, minibus, and trolleybus. i keep not having my camera when the training trolleybuses go by, but if it's the last thing i do i'm going to get a picture of one of them. they have special trolleys with "training" painted on the side, and they strike me as funny for some reason. also funny? the ad posted around town for a lingerie shop located on titova street. also funny? the jeep i saw the other day painted silver that had painted in the back window the words "it's a real russian tank!" also funny? the local branch of mcdonald's - because there ISN'T ONE HERE OH MY GOD SO AWESOME - is called mak dak, and its logo is two golden arches that are the eyes of a golden duck-bill. also funny? the mexican restaurant across the street from the movie theater called "saloon sanches" that plays cucaracha music and, i hope, has margaritas.
okay, my time here is almost up so that's it for now - hope you're all well and good and all that. until next time... poka!
1) where the hell am i living?: in an apartment five minutes on foot from my classes with a crazy lady named margarita - or rita for short [aside, my grandmother's name was rita, so in a sense i feel like she's keeping an eye on me through this woman] - and her 21-year-old daughter, irina, or ira. ira is a peach; she strolls around the apartment in her underwear and speaks entirely too fast to be even remotely understood. but, we both love jude law, so we've found some common ground. rita's going on vacation soon, so it'll just be ira and me in our little three-room apartment. this is fine, but i still think i feel weird about having a 21-year-old cook for me and do my laundry. i might have to hire a cabana boy when i get back, though, since it is kind of nice.
1a) explaining my hot-water situation and how i almost set myself on fire this morning: in russia, hot water usually gets turned on or off depending on where you are in the city (for pipe maintenance and such). not so for me - we have a gas water heater that you have to LIGHT BY HAND to warm up your shower water. this involves turning the gas on, lighting a match, and sticking it INSIDE THE HEATER to start a fire. same goes for the stove - you turn on the switch, strike a match, and hold it up to the gas plate to get the happy blue flame. what you do NOT do, as i learned this morning, is then reach across that happy blue flame to grab the teapot and put it on that burner, because then the sleeve of your sweater will catch on fire and you will wave your arm around maniacally in a frantic attempt to get it to go out.
not that that happened to me, or anything. you know.
the nice thing about the gas heating the water is that even if they turn off the hot water in the rest of the city, i still have hot water, which is useful. the not-so-nice thing about it is that i have the potential to put several hundred people out of their homes when i inevitably mess up and set the whole damn building on fire.
2) how toilets have changed in the last six years: kim will appreciate this one. in st pete, toilets had, without fail, a poop shelf - a shelf high up, not far from one's rear, that caught poop silently so it wouldn't go plopping down into the bowl with a great crash. this was great for obvious reasons. now? GONE. every time i hit a double it sounds like i'm waging atomic warfare on the poor toilet - even the tiniest nugget sounds like a huge bomb. i call this porcelain warfare, and it's become increasingly hard to poop without being really, really embarrassed.
3) did you know you could buy low-rise tights here? i didn't either until yesterday, and i thought, great, they won't sit up on my belly-button! when i put them on this morning, they definitely did not do that, nor did they actually stay on my rear end. i'd forgotten how much fun the walk-hitch-walk-hitch stride was. ...or not.
4) i am, excepting the internet, completely cut off from news back home. i had NO IDEA that barack obama had won the democratic nomination until thursday, when one of my teachers told me. this is both good - it keeps me away from the dumb - and bad - if something awful happens i won't know about it for a while. so, i hope nothing awful does happen between now and july 29.
5) what cultural things have i done?: well, on thursday i went to the karelian regional museum (petrozavodsk is the capital of the region of karelia), which was geekily awesome. yesterday i went to the dolls' museum, which i think is owned by two dollmakers who i wish would sell their work - most of what they do is related to fairy tales and spirit folklore, which is a huge part of the culture here. for instance, every house has its own spirit - called a domovoi - that watches over its inhabitants and ensures that they're happy and successful and protected from evil spirits. every body of water has its own spirit, called a vodnoi, and petrozavodsk is located on the left bank of lake onego - the second largest lake in europe, i learned today. the lake's vodnoi is this weird horse-crocodile hybrid that sounds weird but is totally adorable in doll form and like the good little capitalist i am i TOTALLY want one. but for now, a postcard will have to suffice.
speaking of lakes, this morning i went to kizhi, which is a tiny island an hour away by boat. you know, looking on a map, lake onego looks tiny, but it's definitely not - i thought kizhi was, like, twenty minutes away, but i was very wrong. anyways, kizhi is famous for its wooden architecture; it holds the oldest wooden church in russia (built in the 14th century) and the 23-domed transfiguration church, which was built without using a single nail. it was unbelievably cold there - the wind chill had to be in the low teens - and cloudy, but still beautiful. there's a smaller church next to the transfiguration church in which we entered while three monks were singing - and it was absolutely captivating and wonderful, and then they stopped singing and said "well hey, we have CDs of our songs here for a mere pittance!" - and i got kind of angry. yeah, everyone's a capitalist, but sheesh...
in any event, kizhi was amazing and absolutely worth getting up at 6:30 this morning for.
6) a note about fashion: skinny jeans are alive and well here (grrr), as are the man-purse, the mullet, and leggings under everything. the upshot of this is that you can wear pretty much whatever you want, looking completely absurd, and no one will bat an eye. the pointy-toed witch shoes aren't so much still around, though everyone is still wearing high heels and carrying around ridiculous handbags. this has made me decide that i cannot leave here without purchasing a ridiculous pair of high heels - red, with peep toes, not that i saw a pair that i desperately want in a store yesterday or anything - and a similarly ridiculous handbag. this is almost completely unlike me, but i'm not going to fight it too much.
okay, well, i have to go suppress a skirmish in the downstairs bathroom, plus my fingers are tired, so i'm calling it quits for now. until next time... !
okay! so to answer christine's question from my last note, all research that i've conducted in this city leads me to believe that the poop shelf is indeed a thing of the past. i don't know when or why they made the switch - everything they've done in the past six years has been forward progress, so i don't understand why they'd take this giant leap backwards. i feel like if they're going to get rid of the poop shelf, they should at least install bidets.
but i digress:
1) one thing i still can't get used to: there are practically no jaywalkers and cars actually stop for people in crosswalks. i've seen so many near-accidents from cars stopping short to let pedestrians go - total anathema back home! and people actually wait for the green go-man at intersections before they cross! well, okay, that could be because drivers here can get a little crazy, but still. even if no one's coming, people will wait. i find this charming for some reason.
2) in case you were curious, the babushki here are still crazy, and i love it. while i was waiting to cross the street near my house the other day, one of them came up to me, then walked away, then came back up to me and asked me for one kopeck (similar to a penny; 100 kopecks = 1 ruble) with which to buy bread. i looked at her and said, what? and she repeated herself: one kopeck for bread. i shook my head and walked away, thinking, if you literally mean one kopeck, then i hope you enjoy the tiny crumb of bread it will actually buy you. - and then she started yelling at me, and i had to laugh. i can't wait until i'm old and am allowed to yell at people whenever i want to.
3) i can't believe i forgot the glorious sounds of remont (housework or repair, i guess renovation is pretty close). i was on the toilet last week and i heard what i was certain was the sound of a power drill about to bore through the wall and into my skull - which is not at all how i want to leave this world - and after my initial jump, i realized that it was just the next-door neighbor doing his daily remont. it's not at all uncommon to hear the sounds of drilling and hammering pretty much at all hours of the day, and now i hardly hear it, but i can't believe i ever forgot what that noise sounded like. apparently the guy who lives directly above us only does his remont when he's drunk - which is apparently nearly every night - and this has caused floods in the kitchen and cracks in the ceiling. rita yells at him when it's 1am and he starts hammering, but he just waits five minutes and starts again. so damn funny.
4) holly and i went to the opera last night and it was AMAZING. it was the final event in the "white nights of karelia" festival, and it was puccini's "tosca". just awesome all around, and i'd also forgotten how long applause lasts after such performances here. i mean like five straight minutes of applauding. which is great, because it shows how people here really appreciate and respect artists, which is something i don't always feel back home. um, also, the conductor was pretty hot, so it was fun to stare at him for two and a half hours.
5) i'm up to my ears in soccer! this is an aberration for me, but the euro cup is going on in austria & switzerland right now and they're showing all of the games on TV. russia lost to spain on tuesday (boo), but we play again saturday and next wednesday, and my aim is at some point to get into one of the sports bars here and learn all of the chants and songs. because seriously, soccer is way more fun to watch when you're in a big group of people and everyone's shouting and drinking and generally having a good time. (well, if we lose 4-1 again that's not guaranteed, but you know what i mean, right?)
okay, well, that's it for now. i look forward to a fairly quiet weekend; things should get interesting next week when two groups of students arrive, so i kind of want to cherish my quiet while i have it. oh, and rest up for the trip to the bowling alley on monday so i can wow everyone with my maaaaad skills. [insert laughter here.]
hope all's well back home!
1) charming habits of the russians i'd forgotten, part two (the remont was part one): whenever a woman orders beer on tap at a bar, her beer will come equipped with a bendy straw. i've learned that it's useless to resist this pink piece of plastic, and find it really hilarious to swill my baltika semyorka through a tiny pipe.
2) charming habits of the russians i'd forgotten, part three: everyone spits on the sidewalks! it doesn't bother me, really, but i find myself having to dodge spitballs every now and again. i find myself thankful that it's not winter when men are clearing their noses onto sidewalks. that's about where i draw the line. [i never once saw a woman do that in st pete, but i do see women hock loogies here quite frequently. it's pretty funny, when you think about it - these are the same people who drink beer through straws and totter around on precarious high heels, flinging saliva at defenseless concrete. LOVE IT.]
3) i find with increasing frequency that i actually miss coffee. not what they say passes for coffee here, mind you, which is packets that say they contain nescafe but actually contain some dry sludge that when mixed with water resembles mud of the earth-kind. holly was kind enough to be our collective guinea pig in trying this sludge, so i was spared the pain, but darned if one of the first things i do when i get home is to find a decent cup of joe somewhere.
4) charming tales of my stupidity, part twelve-hundred: my cell phone, like most cell phones here, is a pay-as-you-go sort of phone, so i have to add rubles to my balance every now and then. on monday, my balance decided to run out right as i was arriving home for dinner [my phone company sends me a text when the balance gets low, and that night i got the text right as i was opening the door to the apartment], so i ate quickly and then set back out to find a store in which i could top off my balance. but every single store was having technical problems with balance-adding - something was down with the network, they said. desperate, i went back to the store where i'd bought my phone because i remembered that it had a machine that did automated balance payments. they close at 20:00, and i walked in at 19:54, out of breath but relieved. i hit the necessary buttons on the machine, put in 200 rubles, got my receipt, and left, happy that my plans for the evening would not be put amiss due to my lack of working cell phone.
happily, i stopped to check the receipt before i got too far away from the store, and noticed - at 19:58 - that i had put 200 rubles ON THE WRONG PHONE. see, the last four digits of my number are 5716, but i for some reason keep wanting to say that they're 5617. [no, i don't actually know my own phone number here. SHUT UP.] so, whoever's phone number is 417-5617 got a present from me on monday night in the form of 200 rubles. whoever you are, you're welcome.
upon realizing my mistake, i ran back in, was yelled at ("we're closing!"), returned the yell ("just give me two minutes!"), and put 200 rubles on my actual phone, checking the number about five times before hitting "enter". i left the store and waited outside for the text i usually get saying "X amount of money was deposited into your account..."
six agonizing minutes later, it came. whew. sheesh.
5) the other day i happened upon a woman cutting the grass outside my apartment building. this isn't unusual in and of itself, but she was doing it WITH A SCYTHE. like they did in the old days, like they did in anna karenina in that god-damned mowing scene that haunts me to this day. i had to laugh, and at the same time was totally impressed at how efficient it was for her to use said scythe. pretty awesome, actually.
6) the big thing right now is football - everyone has gone completely batshit insane over the euro cup. russia beat sweden 2-0 in a must-win game to get to the quarterfinals on wednesday night, setting up a match with the netherlands saturday night. we watched the game in a local sports bar where we finally succeeded in reserving a table, and it was so. much. fun. the place went nuts each time we scored, and everyone was yelling and waving flags and screaming themselves hoarse. on the walk home - i live off the main street downtown - it was the same thing multiplied by about 50. cars jamming the road, honking and waving flags, people in the street waving flags and high-fiving one another, the poor police trying to keep some semblance of order... it was AWESOME. not being able to sleep from the noise when i got home was not so awesome, but it started to rain around 4am so everyone finally went inside. the sight of that chaotic celebration is one that will long stay with me.
and hey, even if we lose to the netherlands, we got to the quarterfinals, which is way better than i think even we expected to do.
7) have i mentioned that i like black olives now? because i do. this is slightly unnerving, but i've found them to be quite good. i'm not sure this has anything to do with russia per se, but the last time i was here i ate all sorts of untoward vegetables without flinching. oh, god, tomatoes: i've eaten three in the past week! and i hate them! but they're not that bad!
yeah, i'm weird, but that's why you love me. until next time... poka!
i don't have a whole lot to write about this time; i've certainly been busy, but i keep forgetting the things i want to talk about. i blame it on the heat that arrived this week that's been frying my brain. - and by heat, i mean 75 degrees. HA HA HA SUCK IT EAST COAST SUMMER.
okay then!
1) euro cup 2008: clearly russia did not win, but you wouldn't have been able to tell that by the way everyone was celebrating after the loss to spain (who, btw, totally deserved to win and i'm actually quite glad they did). russia has a young team who i think will be a force with which to reckon in 2012, and a coach with a knack for bringing obscure teams into the limelight. i think nearly the entire country congratulated the team upon their return - everyone here is really proud of their effort (the semifinals were the furthest they've gone in the euro cup in 40 years). so, i suppose i'll have to be back here in 4 years for the next tournament.
2) city day 2008: june 28 was arbitrarily decided as "den' goroda", or the city's birthday, so everyone was out and about and roaming around and drinking and grilling and dancing and making merriment. at midnight they set off fireworks against a completely non-dark sky on the lake, which holly and i took as our july 4th fireworks since we don't get any. they were pretty awesome, to our delight. not so delightful were the hordes of people using her courtyard as a toilet, though it was really amusing to watch women drop trou and pee into a stairwell in plain view of everyone. city day was enjoyable, and the streets were surprisingly clean very quickly the day afterward.
3) excursions: i went rafting with some of the swiss kids on monday and it was so. much. fun. the rapids weren't much, mostly class I and II (i've been on III and IV without problems), but it was really nice to be out in a gorgeous setting for a couple of hours with some friends. after getting off the water we went to a campsite and had borshch (beet soup) and plov* (rice with lamb and vegetables) in a tent around a campfire, after which we had tea and a sweet liqueur called mokrovoshaya (i think). it was probably the best day i've had here, so i was sad to see it end. the day after (tuesday) we went to the valaam monastery about five hours away (four in a car on the worst road i've ever been on - i'm not exaggerating, if i were prone to being carsick i think i would have gotten out and walked the rest of the way; then one hour in a boat). it's really beautiful; we had great weather, so my pictures should be good. i'll leave the telling of the story of the monastery to the pictures, should you want to see them.
*as concerns the plov - it was really, really good, but alex, i believe yours is better even though i've never tried it. you need to prove me right upon my return.
4) this weekend i'm returning to st petersburg, about which i am too excited for words. i'm visiting my then-host mom, tanya, on saturday, which means i'll be drunk within an hour of arrival chez elle. i'm not bothered by this, and apparently she's been sending me cards but they've all been returned to her since i moved long ago. her voice sounds exactly as it did five years ago, plus five years' worth of cigarettes. i am SO HAPPY to be returning, and especially happy to be seeing her again. class on monday could be... interesting.
4a) speaking of class on monday, we're supposed to give a "master class" about our native language, and since most people in our program already know the basics of english, i thought i'd do them the favor of teaching them words like "disconcur" and "unapprove" and even "proapprove" (to really, really be in favor of something). oh, and i'd better not forget "squeezing the beer tree", which is like pulling teeth but far more expressive. this is a good idea, right?
5) where the hell did the past five weeks go? no, seriously, i'm not ready to leave here in three weeks. i feel like i just got here and have so much more still to do. it's kind of not fair.
6) "wanted" is a totally bad-ass film. go see it, like, now. (and yes, it's better in russian, as was "kung-fu panda")
7) did i write about the mexican restaurant here? i don't think i did - you wouldn't think a town like this would have one, nor would you think it would be very good, but it is. oh my goodness, the tiny $6 margaritas are strong, albeit tiny. the tomato soup alone is worth going back for. i know, i'm shaking my head too - burritos in northern russia. huh. i wish i'd taken a picture of the delightfully offensive placemat holly had that detailed sanches's (after whom the joint is named) travels through mexico in which he was felled in tijuana by strong tequila and fast women. so awesome.
that's all i have - a happy and safe july 4th to all of you! until next time...
parts six through nine will be in the entry above. enjoy!
1) where the hell am i?: petrozavodsk is a small city on the west coast of lake onego, about 600 miles northeast of st petersburg. this means that right now the sun sets at 4 am and rises at 5am, which is simultaneously awesome (i can walk home drunk at 1am and still see where i'm going) and not so awesome (the curtain in my room is paper-thin and most of the light still gets through, which makes sleeping hard. i miss my darkness.) this also means that i'm going without a proper summer, since it's consistently about 50-60 degrees during the day and about 35-50 degrees at night. this is great, except for the part where the warmest bit of clothing i packed was a, in retrospect, rather flimsy sweater. oops. being this close to a lake means that it's pretty windy, which does not help matters, but...
2) what's great here that i can't do back home?: ...being able to buy beer in the street and drink it on the sidewalk is a luxury that i didn't realize how much i'd missed until holly and i got to st petersburg. [story on that below.] also, being able to take beer into a movie theater and not get in trouble for it. we saw indiana jones last night - in russian - and it was honestly hilarious. i'd wanted to steal one of the russian movie posters for it, but since it's never dark, i'll never have cover of night under which to do my thieving.
3) hang on, what the hell am i doing here?: in class from 1300-1630 every day, with a half-hour break in between. it's just holly and i for now, and we have two totally awesome teachers who are totally willing to help us however they can. which brings me to a tangent: people here are ridiculously nice. if you tell them you're interested in something, the next time you see them, they have that something - or information about where you can get that something - for you. the ladies who work in the library are incredibly helpful; the one who works in the rare books collection is equally geeky to me in that we were both a little too excited about an italian book from the 1400s. people here are also very patient when your russian fails you momentarily, and i get the feeling that they really do appreciate the fact that i'm at least trying. honestly, i didn't realize how much i'd forgotten until i got back here and had to use everything that had at one point been stuffed into my brain.
also, we have museum and out-of-city trips planned for us, which is pretty awesome. i'll probably update you on those as they happen, and stuff.
4) and you may say to yourself, well, how did i get here?: so i left DC last thursday, and flew to london, arriving friday morning. from there i flew to moscow and met holly in the city, and we took a train to st petersburg - my old stomping grounds, and i tell you, i nearly cried when we got out of the train station and into the city and everything was familiar again - anyways, we then had to buy train tickets to get here, so we dumped our luggage at that station and bought tickets. not looking at the time on the tickets, we ventured out to find some food, failing miserably since we just didn't have enough time. [we thought we were leaving on the 1720 train] so at 1710 we got back to the train station, grabbed our luggage and RAN LIKE HELL to get to the train. i'd gotten on board and was moving to our compartment when the conductor yelled after me "come here! let me see your ticket again!" so i did, and she immediately ascertained that we were on the wrong train - out went my bag, out went me, and the train pulled away. as it was moving off the conductor told us to look at our tickets again - and it was then that we noticed that we did, indeed, have the wrong time. exhilarated from having come 30 seconds away from doing the completely wrong thing, we did the only thing we could think of - sit on the platform and drink the two beers we'd each bought for the journey. sublime.
we did arrive in PZK in good fashion, though. so no worries there.
5) everything is a LOT easier this time- i feel free to explore a lot more because i've already lived here, well, in this country at least. it's hard not to compare petrozavodsk to st petersburg, but i'm doing it anyway, at least in my head. it was very comforting to get off the plane in moscow and feel completely at ease - coming back here is a lot like finding an old pair of shoes in your closet that you try on and miraculously they still fit, and they're still comfortable. so, that was nice. and i didn't realize how much i'd missed the food, too - everyone says that russian food is bland, but i totally disconcur. if i weren't walking everywhere - and attempting to run with holly - i'd probably gain ten pounds from all the culinary delights to be had here. bread and cream, my friends, bread and cream. oh, and beer.
6) other things: the main methods of transport here are foot, car, taxi, minibus, and trolleybus. i keep not having my camera when the training trolleybuses go by, but if it's the last thing i do i'm going to get a picture of one of them. they have special trolleys with "training" painted on the side, and they strike me as funny for some reason. also funny? the ad posted around town for a lingerie shop located on titova street. also funny? the jeep i saw the other day painted silver that had painted in the back window the words "it's a real russian tank!" also funny? the local branch of mcdonald's - because there ISN'T ONE HERE OH MY GOD SO AWESOME - is called mak dak, and its logo is two golden arches that are the eyes of a golden duck-bill. also funny? the mexican restaurant across the street from the movie theater called "saloon sanches" that plays cucaracha music and, i hope, has margaritas.
okay, my time here is almost up so that's it for now - hope you're all well and good and all that. until next time... poka!
1) where the hell am i living?: in an apartment five minutes on foot from my classes with a crazy lady named margarita - or rita for short [aside, my grandmother's name was rita, so in a sense i feel like she's keeping an eye on me through this woman] - and her 21-year-old daughter, irina, or ira. ira is a peach; she strolls around the apartment in her underwear and speaks entirely too fast to be even remotely understood. but, we both love jude law, so we've found some common ground. rita's going on vacation soon, so it'll just be ira and me in our little three-room apartment. this is fine, but i still think i feel weird about having a 21-year-old cook for me and do my laundry. i might have to hire a cabana boy when i get back, though, since it is kind of nice.
1a) explaining my hot-water situation and how i almost set myself on fire this morning: in russia, hot water usually gets turned on or off depending on where you are in the city (for pipe maintenance and such). not so for me - we have a gas water heater that you have to LIGHT BY HAND to warm up your shower water. this involves turning the gas on, lighting a match, and sticking it INSIDE THE HEATER to start a fire. same goes for the stove - you turn on the switch, strike a match, and hold it up to the gas plate to get the happy blue flame. what you do NOT do, as i learned this morning, is then reach across that happy blue flame to grab the teapot and put it on that burner, because then the sleeve of your sweater will catch on fire and you will wave your arm around maniacally in a frantic attempt to get it to go out.
not that that happened to me, or anything. you know.
the nice thing about the gas heating the water is that even if they turn off the hot water in the rest of the city, i still have hot water, which is useful. the not-so-nice thing about it is that i have the potential to put several hundred people out of their homes when i inevitably mess up and set the whole damn building on fire.
2) how toilets have changed in the last six years: kim will appreciate this one. in st pete, toilets had, without fail, a poop shelf - a shelf high up, not far from one's rear, that caught poop silently so it wouldn't go plopping down into the bowl with a great crash. this was great for obvious reasons. now? GONE. every time i hit a double it sounds like i'm waging atomic warfare on the poor toilet - even the tiniest nugget sounds like a huge bomb. i call this porcelain warfare, and it's become increasingly hard to poop without being really, really embarrassed.
3) did you know you could buy low-rise tights here? i didn't either until yesterday, and i thought, great, they won't sit up on my belly-button! when i put them on this morning, they definitely did not do that, nor did they actually stay on my rear end. i'd forgotten how much fun the walk-hitch-walk-hitch stride was. ...or not.
4) i am, excepting the internet, completely cut off from news back home. i had NO IDEA that barack obama had won the democratic nomination until thursday, when one of my teachers told me. this is both good - it keeps me away from the dumb - and bad - if something awful happens i won't know about it for a while. so, i hope nothing awful does happen between now and july 29.
5) what cultural things have i done?: well, on thursday i went to the karelian regional museum (petrozavodsk is the capital of the region of karelia), which was geekily awesome. yesterday i went to the dolls' museum, which i think is owned by two dollmakers who i wish would sell their work - most of what they do is related to fairy tales and spirit folklore, which is a huge part of the culture here. for instance, every house has its own spirit - called a domovoi - that watches over its inhabitants and ensures that they're happy and successful and protected from evil spirits. every body of water has its own spirit, called a vodnoi, and petrozavodsk is located on the left bank of lake onego - the second largest lake in europe, i learned today. the lake's vodnoi is this weird horse-crocodile hybrid that sounds weird but is totally adorable in doll form and like the good little capitalist i am i TOTALLY want one. but for now, a postcard will have to suffice.
speaking of lakes, this morning i went to kizhi, which is a tiny island an hour away by boat. you know, looking on a map, lake onego looks tiny, but it's definitely not - i thought kizhi was, like, twenty minutes away, but i was very wrong. anyways, kizhi is famous for its wooden architecture; it holds the oldest wooden church in russia (built in the 14th century) and the 23-domed transfiguration church, which was built without using a single nail. it was unbelievably cold there - the wind chill had to be in the low teens - and cloudy, but still beautiful. there's a smaller church next to the transfiguration church in which we entered while three monks were singing - and it was absolutely captivating and wonderful, and then they stopped singing and said "well hey, we have CDs of our songs here for a mere pittance!" - and i got kind of angry. yeah, everyone's a capitalist, but sheesh...
in any event, kizhi was amazing and absolutely worth getting up at 6:30 this morning for.
6) a note about fashion: skinny jeans are alive and well here (grrr), as are the man-purse, the mullet, and leggings under everything. the upshot of this is that you can wear pretty much whatever you want, looking completely absurd, and no one will bat an eye. the pointy-toed witch shoes aren't so much still around, though everyone is still wearing high heels and carrying around ridiculous handbags. this has made me decide that i cannot leave here without purchasing a ridiculous pair of high heels - red, with peep toes, not that i saw a pair that i desperately want in a store yesterday or anything - and a similarly ridiculous handbag. this is almost completely unlike me, but i'm not going to fight it too much.
okay, well, i have to go suppress a skirmish in the downstairs bathroom, plus my fingers are tired, so i'm calling it quits for now. until next time... !
okay! so to answer christine's question from my last note, all research that i've conducted in this city leads me to believe that the poop shelf is indeed a thing of the past. i don't know when or why they made the switch - everything they've done in the past six years has been forward progress, so i don't understand why they'd take this giant leap backwards. i feel like if they're going to get rid of the poop shelf, they should at least install bidets.
but i digress:
1) one thing i still can't get used to: there are practically no jaywalkers and cars actually stop for people in crosswalks. i've seen so many near-accidents from cars stopping short to let pedestrians go - total anathema back home! and people actually wait for the green go-man at intersections before they cross! well, okay, that could be because drivers here can get a little crazy, but still. even if no one's coming, people will wait. i find this charming for some reason.
2) in case you were curious, the babushki here are still crazy, and i love it. while i was waiting to cross the street near my house the other day, one of them came up to me, then walked away, then came back up to me and asked me for one kopeck (similar to a penny; 100 kopecks = 1 ruble) with which to buy bread. i looked at her and said, what? and she repeated herself: one kopeck for bread. i shook my head and walked away, thinking, if you literally mean one kopeck, then i hope you enjoy the tiny crumb of bread it will actually buy you. - and then she started yelling at me, and i had to laugh. i can't wait until i'm old and am allowed to yell at people whenever i want to.
3) i can't believe i forgot the glorious sounds of remont (housework or repair, i guess renovation is pretty close). i was on the toilet last week and i heard what i was certain was the sound of a power drill about to bore through the wall and into my skull - which is not at all how i want to leave this world - and after my initial jump, i realized that it was just the next-door neighbor doing his daily remont. it's not at all uncommon to hear the sounds of drilling and hammering pretty much at all hours of the day, and now i hardly hear it, but i can't believe i ever forgot what that noise sounded like. apparently the guy who lives directly above us only does his remont when he's drunk - which is apparently nearly every night - and this has caused floods in the kitchen and cracks in the ceiling. rita yells at him when it's 1am and he starts hammering, but he just waits five minutes and starts again. so damn funny.
4) holly and i went to the opera last night and it was AMAZING. it was the final event in the "white nights of karelia" festival, and it was puccini's "tosca". just awesome all around, and i'd also forgotten how long applause lasts after such performances here. i mean like five straight minutes of applauding. which is great, because it shows how people here really appreciate and respect artists, which is something i don't always feel back home. um, also, the conductor was pretty hot, so it was fun to stare at him for two and a half hours.
5) i'm up to my ears in soccer! this is an aberration for me, but the euro cup is going on in austria & switzerland right now and they're showing all of the games on TV. russia lost to spain on tuesday (boo), but we play again saturday and next wednesday, and my aim is at some point to get into one of the sports bars here and learn all of the chants and songs. because seriously, soccer is way more fun to watch when you're in a big group of people and everyone's shouting and drinking and generally having a good time. (well, if we lose 4-1 again that's not guaranteed, but you know what i mean, right?)
okay, well, that's it for now. i look forward to a fairly quiet weekend; things should get interesting next week when two groups of students arrive, so i kind of want to cherish my quiet while i have it. oh, and rest up for the trip to the bowling alley on monday so i can wow everyone with my maaaaad skills. [insert laughter here.]
hope all's well back home!
1) charming habits of the russians i'd forgotten, part two (the remont was part one): whenever a woman orders beer on tap at a bar, her beer will come equipped with a bendy straw. i've learned that it's useless to resist this pink piece of plastic, and find it really hilarious to swill my baltika semyorka through a tiny pipe.
2) charming habits of the russians i'd forgotten, part three: everyone spits on the sidewalks! it doesn't bother me, really, but i find myself having to dodge spitballs every now and again. i find myself thankful that it's not winter when men are clearing their noses onto sidewalks. that's about where i draw the line. [i never once saw a woman do that in st pete, but i do see women hock loogies here quite frequently. it's pretty funny, when you think about it - these are the same people who drink beer through straws and totter around on precarious high heels, flinging saliva at defenseless concrete. LOVE IT.]
3) i find with increasing frequency that i actually miss coffee. not what they say passes for coffee here, mind you, which is packets that say they contain nescafe but actually contain some dry sludge that when mixed with water resembles mud of the earth-kind. holly was kind enough to be our collective guinea pig in trying this sludge, so i was spared the pain, but darned if one of the first things i do when i get home is to find a decent cup of joe somewhere.
4) charming tales of my stupidity, part twelve-hundred: my cell phone, like most cell phones here, is a pay-as-you-go sort of phone, so i have to add rubles to my balance every now and then. on monday, my balance decided to run out right as i was arriving home for dinner [my phone company sends me a text when the balance gets low, and that night i got the text right as i was opening the door to the apartment], so i ate quickly and then set back out to find a store in which i could top off my balance. but every single store was having technical problems with balance-adding - something was down with the network, they said. desperate, i went back to the store where i'd bought my phone because i remembered that it had a machine that did automated balance payments. they close at 20:00, and i walked in at 19:54, out of breath but relieved. i hit the necessary buttons on the machine, put in 200 rubles, got my receipt, and left, happy that my plans for the evening would not be put amiss due to my lack of working cell phone.
happily, i stopped to check the receipt before i got too far away from the store, and noticed - at 19:58 - that i had put 200 rubles ON THE WRONG PHONE. see, the last four digits of my number are 5716, but i for some reason keep wanting to say that they're 5617. [no, i don't actually know my own phone number here. SHUT UP.] so, whoever's phone number is 417-5617 got a present from me on monday night in the form of 200 rubles. whoever you are, you're welcome.
upon realizing my mistake, i ran back in, was yelled at ("we're closing!"), returned the yell ("just give me two minutes!"), and put 200 rubles on my actual phone, checking the number about five times before hitting "enter". i left the store and waited outside for the text i usually get saying "X amount of money was deposited into your account..."
six agonizing minutes later, it came. whew. sheesh.
5) the other day i happened upon a woman cutting the grass outside my apartment building. this isn't unusual in and of itself, but she was doing it WITH A SCYTHE. like they did in the old days, like they did in anna karenina in that god-damned mowing scene that haunts me to this day. i had to laugh, and at the same time was totally impressed at how efficient it was for her to use said scythe. pretty awesome, actually.
6) the big thing right now is football - everyone has gone completely batshit insane over the euro cup. russia beat sweden 2-0 in a must-win game to get to the quarterfinals on wednesday night, setting up a match with the netherlands saturday night. we watched the game in a local sports bar where we finally succeeded in reserving a table, and it was so. much. fun. the place went nuts each time we scored, and everyone was yelling and waving flags and screaming themselves hoarse. on the walk home - i live off the main street downtown - it was the same thing multiplied by about 50. cars jamming the road, honking and waving flags, people in the street waving flags and high-fiving one another, the poor police trying to keep some semblance of order... it was AWESOME. not being able to sleep from the noise when i got home was not so awesome, but it started to rain around 4am so everyone finally went inside. the sight of that chaotic celebration is one that will long stay with me.
and hey, even if we lose to the netherlands, we got to the quarterfinals, which is way better than i think even we expected to do.
7) have i mentioned that i like black olives now? because i do. this is slightly unnerving, but i've found them to be quite good. i'm not sure this has anything to do with russia per se, but the last time i was here i ate all sorts of untoward vegetables without flinching. oh, god, tomatoes: i've eaten three in the past week! and i hate them! but they're not that bad!
yeah, i'm weird, but that's why you love me. until next time... poka!
i don't have a whole lot to write about this time; i've certainly been busy, but i keep forgetting the things i want to talk about. i blame it on the heat that arrived this week that's been frying my brain. - and by heat, i mean 75 degrees. HA HA HA SUCK IT EAST COAST SUMMER.
okay then!
1) euro cup 2008: clearly russia did not win, but you wouldn't have been able to tell that by the way everyone was celebrating after the loss to spain (who, btw, totally deserved to win and i'm actually quite glad they did). russia has a young team who i think will be a force with which to reckon in 2012, and a coach with a knack for bringing obscure teams into the limelight. i think nearly the entire country congratulated the team upon their return - everyone here is really proud of their effort (the semifinals were the furthest they've gone in the euro cup in 40 years). so, i suppose i'll have to be back here in 4 years for the next tournament.
2) city day 2008: june 28 was arbitrarily decided as "den' goroda", or the city's birthday, so everyone was out and about and roaming around and drinking and grilling and dancing and making merriment. at midnight they set off fireworks against a completely non-dark sky on the lake, which holly and i took as our july 4th fireworks since we don't get any. they were pretty awesome, to our delight. not so delightful were the hordes of people using her courtyard as a toilet, though it was really amusing to watch women drop trou and pee into a stairwell in plain view of everyone. city day was enjoyable, and the streets were surprisingly clean very quickly the day afterward.
3) excursions: i went rafting with some of the swiss kids on monday and it was so. much. fun. the rapids weren't much, mostly class I and II (i've been on III and IV without problems), but it was really nice to be out in a gorgeous setting for a couple of hours with some friends. after getting off the water we went to a campsite and had borshch (beet soup) and plov* (rice with lamb and vegetables) in a tent around a campfire, after which we had tea and a sweet liqueur called mokrovoshaya (i think). it was probably the best day i've had here, so i was sad to see it end. the day after (tuesday) we went to the valaam monastery about five hours away (four in a car on the worst road i've ever been on - i'm not exaggerating, if i were prone to being carsick i think i would have gotten out and walked the rest of the way; then one hour in a boat). it's really beautiful; we had great weather, so my pictures should be good. i'll leave the telling of the story of the monastery to the pictures, should you want to see them.
*as concerns the plov - it was really, really good, but alex, i believe yours is better even though i've never tried it. you need to prove me right upon my return.
4) this weekend i'm returning to st petersburg, about which i am too excited for words. i'm visiting my then-host mom, tanya, on saturday, which means i'll be drunk within an hour of arrival chez elle. i'm not bothered by this, and apparently she's been sending me cards but they've all been returned to her since i moved long ago. her voice sounds exactly as it did five years ago, plus five years' worth of cigarettes. i am SO HAPPY to be returning, and especially happy to be seeing her again. class on monday could be... interesting.
4a) speaking of class on monday, we're supposed to give a "master class" about our native language, and since most people in our program already know the basics of english, i thought i'd do them the favor of teaching them words like "disconcur" and "unapprove" and even "proapprove" (to really, really be in favor of something). oh, and i'd better not forget "squeezing the beer tree", which is like pulling teeth but far more expressive. this is a good idea, right?
5) where the hell did the past five weeks go? no, seriously, i'm not ready to leave here in three weeks. i feel like i just got here and have so much more still to do. it's kind of not fair.
6) "wanted" is a totally bad-ass film. go see it, like, now. (and yes, it's better in russian, as was "kung-fu panda")
7) did i write about the mexican restaurant here? i don't think i did - you wouldn't think a town like this would have one, nor would you think it would be very good, but it is. oh my goodness, the tiny $6 margaritas are strong, albeit tiny. the tomato soup alone is worth going back for. i know, i'm shaking my head too - burritos in northern russia. huh. i wish i'd taken a picture of the delightfully offensive placemat holly had that detailed sanches's (after whom the joint is named) travels through mexico in which he was felled in tijuana by strong tequila and fast women. so awesome.
that's all i have - a happy and safe july 4th to all of you! until next time...
parts six through nine will be in the entry above. enjoy!