I've settled in pretty well now; life goes as usual. But still I can't possibly describe everything--so here are some vignettes from along the way... I wish I had the time and energy to have written more, but such is life--never enough time.

Feb 11
Jessica and I walked to the apartment tonight after dinner to finish our papers. We left the Proflactorium, walked across campus--trekking, as always, through a footpath in the perpetual snow--crossed the street, walked past the prison, and turned into the apartment parking lots. We were talking when we passed a little old lady walking her dog, and she abruptly turned around and said, "vi anngliski?"--obviously very excited. We smiled and said "da, da," and she proceeded to speak with us for at least 10 minutes in that parking lot. It was interesting because she knew about as much english as we know russian; i'm not sure how much actual information was exchanged, but it was kind of great. She's a retired engineer, and I'm pretty sure she said she used to teach radio physcics at the university. (All the women here are brilliant. They don't really understand when I tell them I study literature--the closest thing they have is philology, but I'm pretty sure saying I study philology is giving me too much credit.) I understood so little of what she was saying, but I could catch words here and there and she was so excited it didn't matter much. Eventually Jessica and I figured out that she was trying to get us to come back to her apartment--she wanted to be our "podruga"--friend--so that she could practice her english and we our russian. As lovely as she seemed, not only did we figure we should probably not go over to her apartment, we also had papers to write. But as we walked away, we were smiling and could only say, "Oh, Russia." It's such an intimidating place in so many ways, but then you meet someone who is so genuinely excited and so demonstrative, and in some ways even child-like--it's refreshing.


Feb 14
Maclinitsya... Best holiday ever. It's the Russian pre-lent holiday, involving much dancing, eating mountains of bilini--their version of pancakes, which they take with jam, sweetened condensed milk, or sour cream, which is actually amazing.
Thursday: The Russian students from the International Office surprised us by coming in wearing traditional russian clothes, playing the accordian and singing, and of course, they served us bilini.
Friday: We left for a weekend trip to Vladimir and Suzdal, smaller historic Russian cities. (We went there to see churches-- and they were great-- but the best part was probably the unplanned, amazing Maclinitsya festivities.) We stop along the way to go to the bathroom... it is frigid outside, our driver pulls off the road near a funky looking restaurant, and points to a quaint little outhouse. We are in the middle of the Russian countryside, so naturally there are piles of logs everywhere, general rag and bone paraphernalia, and my favorite, a true witch's broom: a atick with smaller sticks tied to the end of it. The cute little outhouse turned out to be a literal hole in the ground surrounded by walls. Not at all surprising, but it was one my my first encounters with hardcore non-western Russia.
Saturday: We drive out to Suzdal, a half hour drive from our hotel. A bit about the Russian landscape--stark; whitest snow against darkest forests. Most of the trees are pock-marked birches, looking like someone's been taking bites out of the bark. And on this particular day, the sky is brightest blue and the sun is shining.
We visited beautiful churches and monasteries in tiny Suzdal, but the best part was the festival we found ourselves in... shashlik stands, bilinis for cheap, massive snow-penguins, a goose-fight, ridiculous russian garb, limbo and jump rope contests (prizes: bottles of vodka), drunken russian babushkas dancing... and when we got back to the hotel, the lobby was full of more maclinitsya celebrators--the hotel was giving away free bilini and vodka.
Sunday: We went to yet another festival to see the scarecrow burned. This scarecrow symbolizes winter, and is always burned the sunday before lent. More dancing, eating borsch deliciousness, drinking chai.
We leave Vladimir extremely satisfied. And with very cold toes.




It's been a while since then, but the feel still stands. Russian dorm life is, all in all, like american--ridiculous, fun, muscial, tea-filled, unpredictable and unproductive, etc etc. I started to learn the accordion!

On a side note, a truck just drove by the window. Its cargo: a huge mound of snow. Spring is on its way! (some of) the snow is turning to slush, and the ice-hackers have sufficiently hacked away at the ice so that (some of) the sidewalks are visible. I got hot the other day and almost felt like taking off my coat. Then I saw the temp: -1 celsius.

Wish I could write more, like always.
But time bears me away to sleep.

I'm sorry I haven't updated in so long; I've been busy here. We have an internet limit here on campus, too, so I try not to be online more than once a week.

It's freezing and windy; I love it.

I'm sitting right now on my windowsill (a nice big one, which I have turned into a window-seat) with a cup of french press coffee. (Russia doesn't really do real coffee, but I can get it from my RA). I'm listening to the sound of my laundry dripping onto the linoleum floor, and looking out into the snow. My view is very nice—just trees, an un-traveled road, and a sidewalk—on which, right now, a russian man is playing fetch with his dog.

My lifestyle here is pretty regulated, with classes, meetings, meals served at certain times, etc. I've had to give up a lot of independence, by nature of the program and also of the russian women who run the dormitory we stay in, but I'm adjusting well.

For our meals, we take our trays, walk up to a window into the kitchen, and are unceremoniously given a lot of food, whether we like it or not. We get a lot of porridge (“kasha”), bread (“klyeb”), soup (the borsh is delicious, but mostly we get some form of “shigh,” cabbage soup), pasta, and beef--not to mention the sugar-tea and chocolate we get with every meal. Needless to say, I eat a lot of carbs and protein. M-Th we have Russian language class from 9:30 – 12:30 with a half hour break for tea-time in the international office. The international office is full of Russian students who really just want to get to know American students—-they practice their English on us, and we practice our Russian on them (in theory—we're only now getting to the point now where we can begin to speak Russian to them). Some of the students also live in the dorm with us; the university puts us in the dorm they set aside for students with some kind of illness (haha), because it's the nicest dorm on campus (even so, the dorm conditions would never fly in America—but I like it) and the only one with a cafeteria. And since it's the nicest dorm, most of the students are not sick, but somehow or other get in because they want to live here.


Last Thursday I got to go hear a group of people who research and perform russian folklore, mainly music. The rural areas of Russia are still very superstitious and have a lot of traditions which come from the paganism of... forever ago. The group were SO cool. The music was expressive and most of the songs were sung in the same minor key—but not all sorrowful somehow; they reminded me of old negro spirituals.

Dorm life is good. The workload is going to be pretty heavy, but right now I'm not too stressed out. We mostly walk from room to room, reading, playing cards, having dance parties, trying to talk with the Russians. Last night we watched the Russian version of Winnie the Pooh--it was amazing! Either a lot of things get lost in translation, or the creators were on drugs. They love it though.

So far it's been too cold to do much exploring in the city, but the main Pedestrian Street is really nice. So far Nizhnii seems a lot like any other big city in the world; it's very different of course, but honestly, I'm surprised at how normal it is to be living here.

The other day we went to the Banya... the sauna. The Russians have their long-standing traditions about it... nakedness, birch branches, ice baths. It was amazing.

As always, I have so much more I could write, but russian homework calls.

People-watching in the states is great. People-watching in Russia is way more interesting and awkward. Interesting for obvious reasons (Russians are strange and different to me) and awkward because they tend to be silent, look down on the metro, and scowl a lot, so when I inadvertently make eye contact it's pretty obvious I am a foreigner (and I usually get a nice stern look from them). But I find that many of the stereotypes I thought of when I heard "Russia" are accurate, even more so than I imagined. The women are either unbelievably thin and high-heeled, or they are older and larger and wear these massive fur coats which literally look like a whole animal. Yeah, the fur is pretty ridiculous. A lot of the younger women wear it too, but the Babooshkas are the ones with the full-length-straight-from-the-bear's-back ones. Not to mention the hats.

I bought a fur hat the other day, actually. I pet it a lot. (But I have a whole new perspective on fur now... sometimes it still grosses me out, but in a climate like this, animals furs seem like a gift from God. My hat keeps me warmer than I thought possible.)

The past few days we've done so much I can't possibly do it justice. The ballet is one thing that stands out... We saw Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake at the Bolshoi Theatre, which is apparently where it was first performed, ever. (Though the main stage is closed for renovations; we saw it in the Small Hall). I loved it. Even though it's probably performed pretty often there, it was definitely one of those once-in-a-lifetime opportunities. (I had my first run-in with a very irate Russian woman at the coat-check desk who wanted me to pay 100 rubles for upper class coat-checking. She was NOT happy when I refused, and it seems to be quite true than unhappy Russians are generally more frightening than unhappy Americans.)

Quickly, some of the other things I've done: gone to the Tret'iakov Art gallery (most famous gallery of Russian art... pretty amazing), observed at a Russian Orthodox church on Sunday morning, eaten ice cream from a stand out in the snow, toured the Kremlin, been to the museum of contemporary Russian history, gotten my picture taken with Lenin and Stalin (..impersonators), been to Pushkin square, walked the tourist-street Arbadt (where we ALMOST got on the BBC), found ourselves (myself and another girl) in an industrial back-alley of Moscow with a bunch of stray dogs, went to an outdoor bazaar (where I was really tempted to pay way too much for some nesting dolls painted like Steelers players) etc etc.

I barely got to describe any of the museums and cathedrals and the kremlin, which is what I began this entry to do, but I'm ridiculously tired. Hopefully tomorrow I'll have time to write a bit more about them.

Arrived

Arrived! The flights were long, but the layovers weren't too bad. (Interesting note: I met a man from the states who was flying to Siberia for "a romantic search"--he thinks he will find a wife.. in Siberia.) After a day of touring Red Square and the metro stations, I'm sitting in my hotel room on a very scratchy wool blanket, watching the sun go down on the city of Moscow (at 4:30 pm), and the snow is starting to fall.

It's been a whirlwind tour, so I'll give a whirlwind description.

Actually, I'm terrible at whirlwind descriptions. This may be rather long.

We got into Moscow airport last night (or morning, stateside), drove the hour to the hotel (in a very amazing vehicle, involving blue rope lights and russian rap), ate some cheese and bread, and slept. We ate breakfast this morning at the hotel. I had "kasha," which is a sweet porridge, and a cup of espresso (...a whole cup. I pressed the wrong button when i went to get coffee, and then kept forgetting to stop drinking it). At ten the group (there are 13 of us and another one on the way; so far, so good) went out to Red Square ("Krasnaye ploshchad"). It was very surreal, because you kind of don't think that it will actually look like the pictures--but it does. The first thing we did was go see Lenin, which was definitely surreal. (I suppose that is a particularly apt description for an embalmed human body placed underneath glow-y lights and set out for people to look at.) He looked very fake. But as preserved as he has been over these 80 years, it really is his body.

There is a lot of security around the tomb, and they don't let people stand and linger. We got to walk around three sides of the body, but couldn't stop to really look. Apparently, if you look closely enough, you can see his ears and fingertips disintegrating. And soon, this immortal man will make his way into the grave... It seems that Putin wants him to be buried, but is waiting for the oldest generation to die out because they still idolize him and would be offended at his burial.

Red Square itself was really cool. On one side there is the wall of the Kremlin and the tower of the Savior (the old entrance to the Kremlin back in Soviet days), at the far end St. Basil's Cathedral (which truly looks like something out of Candy Land. Today it was snow-topped), and on the other side is the beautiful and very posh "Goom," a shopping mall (at which very few Russians can afford to shop).

Of course I feel very tourist-y here, traveling in our big group, my bright red coat (which, as much as I love it, does tend to stand out), our cameras, and most of all, our inability to speak Russian. It is my goal to learn as much Russian as quickly as possible. I finally managed to say "thank you"--very badly--to the cleaning lady today, but unfortunately, hearing the language all around me has not made it much easier to pronounce.

Nowhere was the fact that we were tourists more apparent than on the Metro. But--that is not the important thing about the metro, because besides being incredibly efficient, the subway stations in downtown Moscow are incredibly beautiful. Stalin designed them as symbols of Soviet prosperity, and they look like palaces, with chandeliers, carved arches and pillars, and a lot of art. One station's ceiling is peppered with mosaics of Russian history: conquering of the Tatars, the days of the Tsars, and most prominently, the Bolshevik Revolution and Soviet rule. Lenin and Stalin are everywhere, with the traditional symbols of labor and food.

There is so much more I want to say, but it's time for dinner.