penultimate

Well, I'm really down to it.  Tickets have been bought, bags have been packed, the apartment has been cleaned, (some) goodbyes have been said, gifts have been given.  And most importantly, my final rent has been paid--and gas came out to only 110 rubles, when Darina had estimated 300, so that's a positive.  I've already entered my pre-travel anxiety mode, mostly just centered on making the train station--metro--train station transfer with my luggage in order to get to the airport on time in Moscow.  While I feel much more confident in my ability to deal with problems in Russia than I was ten months ago on arrival, I'd just as soon avoid any mishaps all together.  I'd like to think after the gauntlet I went through to get to Russia, the universe owes me a peaceful trip home (right).

The good news is I've squared all my debts and seen nearly all of the people I've become close to a last time before my departure.  I also managed to give away a lot of stuff I didn't want to take back with me, meaning my bags are a heck of a lot lighter going back just like I planned.  As there's no easy mechanism for giving clothes away a la the Salvation Army, I put all the things I didn't want in bags and set them by the dumpsters, knowing that the scrounging community wouldn't let me down.  They were already gone when I checked three hours later, so at least I know they'll have done someone some good.  I've got all of my stuff packed and the apartment totally cleaned, but the fact that it's a furnished place with all the fixings means I keep looking around about every 25 minutes, sure that I've forgotten something.  It's a bit weird, as usually when you move out of a place it's just empty so it "feels" like you're moving.

That might be the weirdest thing about this week.  Even though tonight is my last night in Petrozavodsk, for some reason it doesn't feel like I'm leaving, despite all the conclusive-type things I've already done.  I think part of it may have to do with the fact that I've made a few real, genuine friends here that I know I'm going to stay in touch with a almost certainly see again in the future.  That, together with the fact that I'm still young and will have plenty of chances to visit Russia again, have helped to prevent an overwhelming feeling of finality from setting in.  Also, I think that as much as I'll miss the people and places that have helped make this my home for nearly a year, I'm ready to conclude this short (but amazing) chapter of my life and tackle the next big challenge (just remember I've written that in August when I'm freaking out about starting law school).  I might post tomorrow, but it's more likely I won't.  My plan is to post a series of final thoughts about my experience after I get home, though with diving right into helping run YMCA Nationals (gymnastics) it will be closer to the end of June.  So if anyone's still reading around then, stop on by!

Rail Trippin': Pskov/Kostomuksha

It's been a busy eight days.  Last Monday, a friend and I made a spur of the moment decision to visit Pskov, a historic town 15 miles from the Estonian border and one of Russia's oldest cities (the commonly accepted date for its founding is 903).  It was the kind of quintessential Russian travel experience: buy train tickets the day before, buy bus tickets an hour before it leaves, rent a room at the first hotel you see, and buy a map in the gift shop to figure out what to see.  It was also a lot of fun.  The bus from Petersburg was one of the nicest I've been on, and took about 30-45 minutes less than advertised.  I quickly took a liking to Pskov; it reminded me of Petrozavodsk in many ways, but with the added component of having the feel of a very old city.  At one time the kremlin in the middle of the city was surrounded by as many as five walls, some of which still wind their way through the city.  It's not uncommon to walk out of a cafe or movie theater and see a wall running beside you built in the 13th century.

The only downsides: heat and mosquitoes.  The hotel room was so hot we had to open the windows all the way, meaning it was open season for bugs.  I ended up sleeping with my bottle of OFF! next to my bed, so I could periodically spray myself with it throughout the night as I was inevitably awoken by the tiny stings of insect invasion.  But we found ways to combat the heat, mostly through large amounts of ice cream, water, and seeing a movie during the hottest part of the day.  The other main attraction in Pskov besides its kremlin (which I don't have pictures of on my camera and haven't gotten copies of yet, unfortunately) is its great number of churches.  The various quarters of the city are littered with them, to the point that it's a rarity to walk ten minutes without seeing one.  

The one pictured above is the Christ's Transfiguration Cathedral, part of the famous Mirozhsky Monastery.  The church is the only original building that remains of the monastery (the rest has been rebuilt at various points in history), dating to the mid-12th century.  It's well-known for its frescoes, and is listed as one of UNESCO's World Heritage Sites.  While they are currently in the process of restoring the original frescoes, which feature scenes from the life of Jesus, I was able to capture some they'd already restored:

Having arrived back in Petrozavodsk on Friday, I had one night at home before getting back on a train headed for Kostomuksha, a much newer town (1977) in the northwest of Karelia right on the border with Finland.  I went with Karjala in order perform in the city's Russia Day celebrations.  Everyone in the town made a really big deal over the fact that doesn't look like other Russian cities because half of it was built by Finnish builders.  I didn't really see the difference, but oh well.  Because it's so close to the border, travel to Kostomuksha is restricted, a legacy of the old Soviet border control system that was originally curtailed in the '90s but later expanded by the FSB (new name for the KGB) under Putin.  Basically, when you enter the Border Security Zone, the train is boarded and everyone has to have their passports checked.

As an American, as you might expect, I attracted considerable interest from a very serious man wearing a military uniform that noticeably featured no markings.  I got to sit with him for a good ten or so minutes as he wrote down all of the information from my passport, visa, migration card, registration, and tickets.  Luckily I was in the same cabin-area as Andre, the group leader, so he was able to help with the questions about where exactly we would be in town and what exactly we would be doing.  But ultimately there was no trouble, though you wouldn't have guessed it from the expression on the man's face.

What followed was a busy day full of programming.  We danced in the poorly-organized event near the town's church, and then were invited in for tea and pastries by the town priest.  He was by fair the most gregarious and charismatic holy man I've met in Russia, regaling us with jokes and anecdotes for a good three quarters of an hour before our town coordinator/guide finally insisted that we were way behind schedule.  After that we had a cultural presentation about the town's brief history, then an hour and a half swim at the aquatic center in town, then back on the train home.  

Honestly, the train rides were the best part of the whole trip.  There's nothing quite like the experience of riding third-class with a group of young and rambunctious Russians.  Vodka was drunk, mushrooms were eaten, songs were sung, and we were shushed a good 2-3 times.  It was a great time and a good way to enjoy my last weekend Karelia.  I'm in full departure mode now, with half of my things already packed and all of my plans this week centered on seeing as many people one last time before I leave on Saturday.  I think all the traveling I've done in the last three weeks has helped me start to get my mind around the fact that I'm going "home home" and after so long here.  As much as I'll miss the city and all the people I've met here, I think I'm ready to see Ole' Lady Liberty again.  And by Lady Liberty I mean the inside of JFK airport.

(mos)cow t(r)ipping

I took a trip to Moscow last week to meet up with some fellow Fulbrighters in the area.  We're all finished with classes now so we took some time to see some of the sights around Moscow.  There's a group of historic cities around Moscow known as the Golden Ring that I had wanted to see for a while, so it was a good opportunity.  Unfortunately I only got to see one of the cities, but I was only in town for three days so it would have been pretty challenging to try and fit in any more.  The town we went to, Sergiyev Posad, is famous mostly for its Trinity Monastery, the most important Russian monastery and the "spiritual centre of the Russian Orthodox Church."  After the requisite 30 minutes of asking random people for directions, we found the surprisingly nice coach that drove us the hour or so route to the town.  There's not much to the town other than the monastery, but it alone is worth the trip.

It's still a very active monastery, home to around 300 monks.  It's not uncommon to see bearded men in austere black robes walking from building to building, always with the look of utmost contemplation.  The main church within the monastery contains the Trinity, one of, if not the most famous work by the medieval Russian icon painter Andrei Rublev (himself easily the most famous of all icon painters).  The early works of iconography were extremely influential on later works, to the point that nearly all of them are variations based on one of two images (the Madonna and Child or the Trinity), so it was cool to see one of the originals.

The next day we decided to visit Gorki Leninskiye, a sprawling estate some five miles south of Moscow that was nationalized by the Soviets and converted to Lenin's personal getaway home.  It ended up taking up nearly the entire day, as the bus that took us there wasn't really the bus we wanted (even though they had the same number and went along the same route--except for the stop we needed) and dropped us in a sleepy little suburban neighborhood.  But it gave us a chance to play one of my favorite Russian games: Directions Scavenger Hunt.  This is where you ask a passerby directions, which are inevitably exceedingly vague (i.e. "Go in that direction").  You go in that direction, find another person, and repeat, making your way piecemeal toward your ultimate destination.  Somehow, we ended up finding the back entrance to the place, and found ourselves in the middle of the estate fields before we even realized we were on the grounds.  And let me tell you, despite his proletarian ideology, Lenin was not hurting for digs.

He sure put the "vanguard" in "vanguard party."

My favorite part of the estate actually had nothing to do with the estate itself, but was a recreation og Lenin's apartment and working quarters within the Kremlin.  It was clear that the place doesn't get many visitors; the extremely nice man working there locked the doors in order to give us a private tour (and all for the affordable price of about $1.30).  Most impressive was Lenin's personal library, containing pretty much every imaginable subject in most of the major languages of the time.  Our guide claimed Lenin read over 500 pages a day, and while I'm not sure about that, he was definitely a voracious reader.  

After that, we decided to temporarily forgo the main museum in favor of the buffet at the Soviet-era museum near the front of the complex.  Of course, by the time we got there, the buffet was closed, and by the time we finished our tour at that museum, the other had closed.  So unfortunately we didn't get to see Lenin's wheelchair or his Rolls-Royce.  But let's just pretend I took the following photo:

When the Russians winterize a car, they winterize a car, dammit.

Now I'm back in the PTZ, and coming down the home stretch.  I'm leaving for Moscow on the 18th, and leaving Russia on the 19th, so I'm trying to enjoy my last two weeks here as much as possible and see everyone one last time.  It still doesn't really feel like I'm leaving in 14 days, but I assume that will change as I start saying goodbyes and packing up my stuff. 

guest post series: laura in izhevsk

Today's insightful post comes from Laura in the Udmurt Republic.  I'm especially glad to have Laura's post on the blog because the Udmurt people are of the same Finno-Ugric lineage as the Karelians.  It's interesting to see the similarities and differences in the way ethnic culture is treated in two republics with some shared characteristics.  Thanks, Laura!

When I first came to the Udmurt Republic, I was eager to experience this new ethnic culture and learn more about these redheaded people (statistically, the second-most redheaded in the world, after the Irish) who have lived for more than 400 years alongside the Russians. Ever since Ivan the Terrible expanded Russia to include the Tatar Khanate, and along the way absorbed the Udmurt nation, Udmurts have lived in a Russian-dominated landscape. They were converted from nature-worshipping pagans to Russian Orthodoxy and assimilated many of the traditions of Russian village life.

Upon arriving in Izhevsk, the capital of the Udmurt Republic, I was surprised by how much it seemed like many other Russian cities; there was the same industrial decay and squat soviet architecture seen elsewhere in the country. Actually, thanks to a WWII initiative to move all “essential industry” away from the wartime front, the Udmurt Republic houses many nuclear, industrial, and weapons factories, including the maker of the AK-47. In the central square, which houses the republic’s Theater of Opera and Ballet, a decrepit TsUM (the ubiquitous soviet shopping mall), and two bustling movie complexes (one which is 3D), you can see an aged edifice of soviet power: an angular monument dedicated to the “Friendship of Peoples.” It is a vertical totem with three general motifs: it features the towering image of a hammer and sickle benevolently hanging above a male factory laborer and a female farmer who float over an anvil with a newly-minted gun. Because of its shape, locals affectionately call this monument “the clothespin” or the “Skis of Kulakova,” a famous Olympic gold medalist skier who is from the area.

There are a few hints in the capital of Udmurt national culture – the prevalence of wide-faced, almond-eyed redheads (which is generally how Udmurts look), cute clay whistles and wooden national instruments, mostly recreations from archaeological digs, and the existence of the Udmurt National Theater, where you can attend a number plays in Udmurt. A sad fact about the Udmurt National Theater, though, is that while the plays are in Udmurt, a Finno-Ugric language related to Finnish, Hungarian, Estonian, and Karelian, when the actors go out for a smoke break, they talk to each other in Russian. 

The Udmurt culture is dying, and it’s clear to see to those who are looking. There are a couple of vocal revival groups for Udmurt dance, song, national dress, and instruments, but generally speaking, people in Izhevsk think little of living in an internal republic within Russia, and consider Izhevsk more as a smaller city in Russia (at 600,000+ people, more than our nation’s capital Washington, DC, Izhevsk is the 19^th largest city in Russia) that lacks the prestige or job opportunities of Moscow or St. Petersburg.

There are some activists, however, who strive to increase cultural awareness and sensitivity, and to promote Udmurt national culture, language, and heritage. As one can imagine, they’re facing an uphill battle. For one, although many Udmurts who live in the small villages which make up much of the Udmurt Republic speak Udmurt to the exclusion of Russian in their families, Russian is the lingua franca. Furthermore, many Udmurts who leave their villages for better work opportunities and travel to Izhevsk (which houses approximately 60% of the republic’s population) frequently try to lose their Udmurt accent and abandon the language, since the accent associated with Udmurt speakers is considers rough and country bumpkinish. Every year less and less people self-identify as Udmurts on the census, because saying as much about one’s heritage means claiming a certain amount of social stigma as well. 

Another issue is that it’s difficult to determine how much of the Udmurt culture is left to preserve. A sad fact is Tsarist Russia, as well as the Soviet Union encouraged assimilation into a greater Russian culture. The Udmurts had a national epic, similar to the Kalevala, Finland’s national epic – set mostly in Karelia – which spurred ethnic pride and resolve to declare independence from Swedish and Russian influences. Unfortunately, the original compilation of ballads and tales was translated into Russian during the Soviet Union; somehow, in the meantime, the original was destroyed, and now the Udmurts are attempting to piece back their national epic and symbol of ethnic independence by translating it back from Russian into Udmurt. 

The activists I spoke to do have hope, though. In the time of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Hungarian was spoken only by peasants, while Hungarian nobles fled to live in Vienna and speak German. Estonians also faced a similar dilemma not that long ago, when barely any people at all spoke Estonian. Now, with a strong national movement, many Estonian-born Russians feel as though they are in a hostile country. I doubt anything so drastic will happen in the Udmurt Republic, but for the sake of cultural and linguistic preservation, I hope more Udmurts become proud of their cultural heritage and traditions.

beginning of the end

I somewhat abruptly taught my last classes on Friday.  I was under the impression that we had one more week of classes, but found out on Tuesday that this week is a short week, so by Friday (when I teach my own classes) the semester would already be over.  It felt a bit anticlimactic, but I suppose that's to be expected.  The only students I really made a connection with were my second-years, which meant they were the only ones it was hard to say goodbye to.  Afterward one of the students from that group posted on my Kontakte (Russian version of Facebook) profile "Super Dastin, you are cool!" with a picture he'd made of my face crudely pasted over Superman's body.  So that was endearing.  And weird.

Brief digression: I don't know if I've covered this on the blog before, but the Russian language doesn't have a short "u" sound as in "pub" or "mug."  Instead it's transliterated as "a," meaning my name is not Dustin but Dastin (sounds like "Daaastin").  It's quite humorous and everyone (including me) still gets a kick out of it.  But anyway, a consequence of this is that all of my students and nearly all of my colleagues think that my name is spelled with an "a" in English.  Hence, Super Dastin.

I'm quickly coming to the end of things here.  I've got an official return date of June 19--booked the ticket today--so now it's just about enjoying my time here as much as possible before I leave.  I'd like to do a bit of traveling in that time, but Karelia's northern location is working against me in that regard.  Many of the cities I'd like to visit--Kazan, Volgograd, Rostov, etc.--entail more than 24 hours on a train.  Given that I've made some actual friends here that I may never see again after I leave, I'm not really looking to go on a three-week tour of central/southern Russia.  Maybe I'll take a trip to Veliky Novgorod or Arkhangelsk.  We'll see.

Be sure to check back tomorrow for another guest post!

guest post series: pat in ufa

Big thank you to Pat for this excellent guest post.  Apologies are also in order; he got this to me a month ago and I've just now gotten around to posting it.  He's definitely had one of the most unique experiences of any of us Fulbrighters this year, so it's definitely worth the wait.  Without further ado, a candid look at a criminally overlooked area of post-Soviet Russia.

At first glance Ufa looks like any other Russian city. The average street is lined with bleak buildings and the occasional antique house brightly painted with ornate trimming, crammed with briskly walking citizens (80% of whom wear black and 50% of whom carry cigarettes), and named something very Communist or after a great writer. The difference in Ufa is that the street signs are in two languages: Russian and Bashkirian, two of the three languages (in addition to Tartar) that are commonly spoken throughout the Republic of Bashkortostan. One of the first things you learn no matter where you live in this sprawling country is that it’s not all a solid block of people wearing funny hats dancing the mazerka, but a patchwork of different cultures and ethnic groups. Ufans display their Bashkirian nationality with pride, by cheering on their hockey team, encouraging all foreigners to learn about their national hero Salavat Yulaev (their equivalent of George Washington), and by cooking the traditional dishes such as manti (giant dumplings) and balesh (meat and potato pie seasoned with bay leaves). 

This peculiar Bashkirian culture isn’t the only thing that makes me experience here unusual, even when compared to my fellow ETAs. Unlike my fellow ex-pats, I spend most of my time in the hospital. When I wrote my grant proposal to come here, I was finally completing my physics pre-med requirement and putting together my med school application package. I figured the best way to spend my interim year after graduation would be to teach English in Russia and get acquainted with its medical system during my free time. 

 

Holding a leg stump during an amputation procedure and feeling warm blood wash over my thin latex gloves wasn’t what I had in mind when I proposed to shadow Russian doctors, but that’s exactly what I found myself doing a few months later. Dmitri, a general surgeon was at first a student in one of my classes, all of which I teach between 3 pm and 6 pm when doctors and med students finish up their daily rounds. He soon stopped coming to class when he realized the time I spent following him during operations was like a private English lesson, and I soon learned there are things you can do in Russian hospitals that you could never do in the States (for one thing, scrubbing in on a surgical procedure is illegal for anyone who hasn’t completed their second year of medical school).

I didn’t make it through my first operation as an assistant – in fact, I ended up on the floor after I passed out, hitting my neck on the back of a metal table on the way down. When I came to, the patient, who was AWAKE while a few more inches of his already once-amputated leg were being trimmed down to make room for a prosthetic, told me himself that I scared the hell out of him when I fainted. Since then, although I’ve gained a less-than-desirable reputation around the hospital, I’ve scrubbed in on half a dozen surgeries and have learned how to control that dizzy feeling that seems to be a physiological reaction to the sight of blood. 

It doesn’t take 10 months in Russia to realize that medical standards and the general condition of hospitals are lower here than in the U.S., but observing it all directly has been an unforgettable and invaluable experience. Hospital Number 6 (as it is still called even though its name has officially been changed to the University Clinic) is pretty typical. Most of its buildings could easily serve as warehouses or storage facilities, and some even as dungeons if only cleared of their medical equipment. Stray cats and dogs meander through the hallways and are given scraps of food by patients and doctors who move to the staircases to smoke. In more technical fields like surgery, the last few years have seen an increase in the high-tech machines used to administer anesthetics or assist patients’ breathing, but for the most part, Russian medicine lags far behind that of America and Western Europe. The real tragedy is that these problems can be avoided. Instead of scratching their heads and asking why, doctors shake their heads and swallow the harsh comments they might say about their corrupt government if there weren’t in a professional (or what should be a professional) environment. My bright young students, who are still finishing school while Russian lawmakers are changing around the medical educational system to be more like Western Europe’s, are a reason for hope. Even so, like many problems in this country, the fate of Russian medicine lies in the hands of a powerful minority who seem to care little for the average Ivan or Svetlana. Until drastic changes are made in how the Russian economy is managed, hospitals like the clinic I’ve come to regard as a home away from home away from home are likely to remain underfunded and unable to adequately respond to the community’s medical needs.

If you'd like to read more about Pat's experiences, a link to his blog, "Rushin' Blood," is in the blogroll in the right column.  You can also click here.

victory day

The family visit went off without any hitches.  Well, one hitch.  They flew into Helsinki and planned on taking the afternoon train to Petersburg, but it was booked so instead of arriving at 6:00pm it was 12:00am, but otherwise everything went smoothly the entire time.  It was nice to have an excuse to be a tourist for a while.  Even though I'm in one of the great historical nations (and a short train from one of the best tourist cities in Europe), living here I sometimes forget to see all the great attractions Russia has to offer because I don't consider myself a tourist mentally.  It was my first time in the Hermitage, which is one of the most breathtaking structures I've ever been in.  More often than not I found myself looking at the sheer detail and opulence of the rooms themselves rather than the world famous works of art housed within them.

Our weekend in the PTZ (again, as the kids are calling it) was comparably less tourist-y and entailed much, much less walking.  By that point, however, I think it was a relief.  The weather wasn't the best; we flirted with the 50-degree mark but mostly stayed under.  All in all, though, I think it was enjoyable for everyone.  Even though the family couldn't stay for my concert, I did take them to one of our rehearsals and they had a really good time.

Today was Victory Day in Russia.  The rest of the Allied powers celebrate V-E Day on May 8, but by the time the papers were signed in Germany it was already the 9th in Russia, which is just fine with me because it means an extra Monday off.  I was invited by some of my students to take part in a parade through town to the main square.  After that the military marched to the second main square and did some precision marching that I couldn't see because there were too many people.  It wasn't exactly as grandiose as columns of Soviet-era tanks streaming through Red Square, but we did okay for a small town and the weather was fantastic.  By far my favorite moment was just before the parade started, when a few kids around 7-8 years old approached a dignified old man resplendent with his war medals standing off to the side with his wife, gave him some flowers and shook his hand.  Even 66 years later, the "Great Patriotic War" is still fresh in the Russian psyche.

rendevous in p-burg

[Insert obligatory "I can't believe how long it's been since I last posted" statement here.]  I've had an extremely busy six weeks.  My work schedule has ramped up even past the point where I wanted it to be.  I'm teaching/co-teaching anywhere from 12-15 classes a week now, all with different students.  It's a great way to stay busy and all of the students are generally excited to learn, but it does mean I spend the first five minutes of every class going over their names again.  I'm usually pretty good with names, but when you have 90+ students and exactly seven names (Masha, Dasha, Sasha [girl], Sasha [guy], Pasha, Natasha, and Steve) it gets pretty challenging.

I've continued my involvement in the folk group.  We practice twice a week, and I've actually gotten to the point where I rarely mess up in truly noticeable fashion anymore.  The only problem I have is that all the names of the dances/songs are Finnish, so they mean nothing to me.  I typically don't know what dance we're doing until I hear the song start to play (I only remember them by the melodies).  Anyways, I'm more or less an official member now, and will be performing onstage in the city's main theater on the 27th of April.  That's right people: this Cinderella story, this unknown, comes out of nowhere to lead the pack, here at the Petrozavodsk Musical Theater.  (Karelia or Bust!: come for the Russia stories, stay for the Caddyshack references.)

Headed to St. Petersburg tomorrow night to meet my family on Sunday.  My parents and sister are coming in, so it should be a lot of fun.  We're spending a few days in the 'Burg before coming back to the PTZ for a few more.  And yes, I know I sound like an idiot when I jocularly call things by ridiculous nicknames.  In blog-related news, my buddy Pat was kind enough to write a guest post for me, so I'll put that up tomorrow.  He's had a very unique Fulbright experience because of where he was stationed, but I'll let him explain things himself.  Just thought I'd throw a little teaser at you.

So in summation and in conclusion: bananas.

karelian for a day

You and I both know why you clicked on this post, so let's just get it out of the way first, shall we?

I know--you thought that was a real Karelian guy for a second, didn't you?

So here's the accompanying story: Sunday morning we met at Lenin Square and set off in our equivalent of the Partridge family bus for the tiny village of Konchezero.  How tiny?  Tiny enough that it took me about twenty minutes of searching through yandex (the Russian equivalent of Google) to find the name after I forgot it.  Along for the ride was the women's Russian folk choir that performs often in tandem with our Karelian group.  We were celebrating Maslenitsa, a religious folk holiday observed during the last week before Great Lent.  As I mentioned previously, it's essentially a Russian Mardi Gras, as they celebrate with all the food (dairy and meat) and activities (games, dancing, secular music) that will be prohibited during Lent.

The site of the festivities, and the largest building in the village.

Everything was outside, and we were very lucky to have a decently warm temperature (relatively speaking mind you, it was still below freezing).  The choir first sang a few songs.  Because we were outside, they used canned music, and sang along with the voices on the tape.  What was a little strange was that between the songs they had dialogues, and the women lip-synced the words.  After, it was our turn to lead the various spectators in a variety of dances and games.  As I was an active participant, I don't have any shots of the dancing (it was mostly just a lot of do-si-do'ing), but I do have some good ones of the various games.  First we had the tug-o-war:

The traditional Festivus Feats of Strength:

 

Then my favorite game, which featured an impromptu boxing ring supported by onlookers.  Andre (troupe leader and guy with the furry hat in the picture above) then selected two boys to be put in the ring, blindfolded, handed a pillow, spun three times, and told to sock the other boy.  The best were these last two, who were twin brothers:

Oh, and did I mention the bounce house?

Toward the end, they brought out an effigy of Lady Maslenitsa, also called Kostroma, and the choir danced and sang around it.  After they finished, Andre sprinkled it with vodka and set it on fire, symbolizing the end of Maslenitsa and the beginning of Great Lent.  But don't worry: I don't think it was very good vodka.

All in all it was a very fun day.  We got to eat some free blins afterwards, and I drank tea from an authentic Russian samovar, which was cool.

And the next day I went to cat show.  Only in Russia!

the inevitable has happened

I've joined a Karelian folk dancing troupe.  Now I bet you weren't expecting that when you read "the inevitable," but that just proves you don't know me.  Because everyone who knows me knows it's been my dream to be in a folk dancing troupe ever since I was an 18 year-old welder working in that steel mill in Pittsburgh.  Although now that I think about it, that may have been the premise of the movie Flashdance.  Either way, the important thing is I joined a folk group.

This is not a joke.

So how does one join such a group?  By saying "yes" to everything.  It started when folk-minded friends Olga (my original link to the folk community, you may remember), Lena, Dima, and Yuri invited me to join them at a Finno-Karelian folk concert last night.  At the concert, Dima insisted I come to their group rehearsal the following night for some dancing and an all-around good time.  So I did.  Turns out, I'm not totally terrible at the Karelian waltz.  In fact, I'm a bit of what you might call an idiot savant (though some would argue I'm just an idiot).  Either way, this resulted in Dima and a good portion of the ladies in the group insisting I join them for their performance on Sunday.  The troupe leader, Andre, seemed less than thrilled at the prospect, protesting that they only have twelve available seats on the bus (it's in a village).  After they made him count out about five times that only eleven people were set to go, he relented.

So on Sunday, I'll be climbing onto a bus in a garish red shirt and sash to go to a tiny village in the Karelian countryside to put on a performance celebrating Maslenitsa, an ancient religious/folk holiday that's a sort of Slavic Mardi Gras (with blins instead of beads).  Hard to imagine a more authentic Russo-Karelian experience than that.  Let no one say I've disregarded the Fulbright Program's imperative to immerse oneself in one's community!  Pictures of my embarrassing myself to come.  I mean come on, who needs more than one run-through of a dance repertoire before performing it, anyway?

hyyyyyyyyyyyyperborea!

The Ancient Greeks spoke of a land that lay far beyond the north wind.  This place, dubbed Hyperborea, was perfect, a veritable utopia of sunlight and happiness.  In a word, paradise.  But sadly, like Atlantis, its location was lost in time:

Never the Muse is absent

from their ways: lyres clash and flutes cry

and everywhere maiden choruses whirling.

Neither disease nor bitter old age is mixed

in their sacred blood; far from labor and battle they live...

neither by ship nor on foot would you find
the marvellous road to the assembly of the Hyperboreans.

-Pindar, Tenth Pythian Ode

But weep not, dear readers!  Through years of toil and study, I have found this mystical place!  Actually, it turns out it was just about a twenty-minute walk from my apartment.  That's right, this past weekend Petrozavodsk played host to its annual International Hyperborea Festival.  What's that?  You haven't heard?  Let me paint you a picture.  And by paint you a picture, I mean show you some pictures that I took.  The main draw is the snow and ice sculpting.  Sculptors come from all over to create frosty works of art from Petrozavodsk's most abundant renewable resource.  Unfortunately, the ice sculptors don't photograph too well, but I took pictures anyway.

This was my favorite because of its title: "Birds don't fly like people."

 It's almost as if this one was corporate sponsored...

Well, I mean sure, you have to expect a few snow fish.

But Hyperborea doesn't stop at sculptures, oh no.  In fact, it might even have a few things you wouldn't expect at a winter festival in sub-zero temperatures, like...

Horses?

Live music?

Para-sailing?

Or a giant tee-pee?

Now, you may have expected some of those things, heck maybe even most (if you're a winter festival aficionado, that is).  But no one expects a giant tee-pee.  I certainly didn't.  All in all, it made for a sort of surreal and festive atmosphere.  The only unfortunate thing was that it really was extremely cold, so I only stayed for about fifty minutes.  But hey, fifty minutes in paradise is better than no minutes in paradise.

guest post series: alex in kamchatka

Every email I get from my readers usually contains something like the following: "I really love your blog!  Reading about life in Russia is so interesting!  I just wish someone else could write it instead, as I  find you quite boorish."   What can I say, my readers are excellent judges of character brutually honest at times.  But let it not be said that I don't listen to will of the people!  Today it is my honor to introduce Alex, who's written the first in a series of guest posts from other Fulbright ETAs around Russia.  To answer your inevitable questions beforehand: yes; no; yes, he's clearly a better writer than me; and no, unfortunately he doesn't write a blog of his own, so you're stuck with me.  Take it away, Alex!

Russia’s contiguous landmass spans an entire eight time zones, from Petrozavodsk to Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, one could say their version of “from sea to shining sea.” While some of the Russian ETAs were lucky enough to find themselves within a day’s train ride of Moscow or St. Petersburg, I found myself in the second largest city in the world without roads or trains leading out of the city period. A nine-hour plane ride separates the gubernatorial seat of the Kamchatka peninsula (or “half-island” as the Russian word for peninsula suggests) from the president’s and prime minister’s comfortable seats in Red Square. Isolated? I’d say.  Exciting?  Depends on what gets you going.

A former nuclear submarine base turned former nuclear submarine base, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky (henceforth P-K to save my hands from cramping) is set not so delicately on the edge of the world in the middle of the “Ring of Fire.” Four volcanoes, Koryaksy, Avachinsky, Kozyelsky, and Velyuchinsky, provide the backdrop for everyday life here, smoking ominously from time to time and occasionally spilling ash over the city like a clumsy drunk standing too close to the ashtray. The peninsula is chocked full of other more distant volcanoes and mountains, far more precarious than their more urban brothers. And did I mention that Kamchatka is one of the most seismologically active regions in the world? We also get hurricanes and typhoons off of the Pacific that, in the winter months, turn into blizzards that dump snow up to the second story of buildings. Not for nothing is Kamchatka’s tagline something like a Robert Jordan rejected title: “The Land of Fire and Ice.”

The city itself looks as if it was built some time in the 1940s, probably during World War II when obviously there was a shortage of men to thoroughly paint any of the concrete buildings that indeterminable color of light blue that lingers around some fifth-story windows. In deep contrast to the breathtaking views around and outside the city, P-K falls dead last in the category, “Cleanest Cities in Russia.” There is an abundance of shopping malls, each containing most of the same things (cell phone stores, clothing stores, cell phone stores, etc.), night clubs, and one of four Gold’s Gyms in Russia. There are, however, no industries responsible for pouring poisonous waste into the rivers and lakes, nor smokestacks reminiscent of Mordor as seen in other cities in Russia.

P-K has its problems. The other day, my roommate and I, another Fulbrighter from America, discovered a small snowy park in a populated region of the city. We walked along a slippery path, coming to a small wooden staircase over a ditch, some four or five feet deep. We walked behind an old man, dressed in his stereotypically Russian fur hat and walking unsteadily along the icy walkway. When he came to the staircase, he stumbled, teetered to the side, and fell off to the right down into the snow. My roommate and I hurried to where he lay supine with his eyes closed, either dead or drunk. The latter proved to be more correct as we lifted him up, dusted him off, and I placed the dead animal securely on his head. A lady called out, “Hey, give him his beer!” I looked down and saw a plastic bottle of faintly yellow liquid lying beside the outline of his fallen self. I placed it in his bag, dusted the rest of the snow off his 55 year-old shoulders and he mumbled what must have been a thank you and went on his way. This was all around 3 p.m. and is not the first example of rampant alcoholism I have seen.

But P-K also remains truly Russian in more ways than alcohol abuse and a surprisingly large population of bears (Kamchatka is also home to the largest population of brown bears in the world, a.k.a. the really mean ones). Russian hospitality cannot be compared to any other culture’s hospitality, and I’m from the south. I fell sick the same day we encountered the unfortunate old soul above, and I literally could not get out of bed, much less fight the blizzard raging outside in order to get medicine or food. One of my friends here, Ksenia, called to see how I was, and I when I told her I was in bed with a temperature of 101, she immediately stole some mushroom soup from her work, went to the pharmacy to buy medicine and tea, and brought my roommate sushi, just in case he was hungry as well. She never asked for a penny, because money means nothing to Russians. They give from the bottom of their souls. To make someone happy, they will gladly feed you the last bit of food from their refrigerator and share their last drops of vodka just to make sure you’re “O.K.” Their main concern is making sure I leave Kamchatka with “a good impression,” and, for all its negatives, something positive emanates from the hearts of the people here.

For all its paradoxes, for all its mysteries, and mostly for its people, I love living in Russia. Even though Kamchatka feels far away from home (and even far way from the rest of Russia), people live here, work here, and know how to enjoy what they have, and this makes me comfortable here, in a sometimes uncomfortable way. My challenges here have been tremendous, my experiences unforgettable, and the lessons I’ve learned have left an indelible mark on my life. Living abroad in Russia is not to be seen through rosy glasses, nor should it be painted in bleak black and white colors. It has texture, a texture only to be felt through extensive stay and talking to many people about family members lost in World War II, about Russian holidays and traditions, about poetry and literature, or just about themselves. Just make sure you have tea ready at hand.

Huge thanks to Alex!  Stay tuned for more perspectives from around Russia.

and that stands for pool!

Did you know Russia has its own form of billiards?  Somehow, despite studying the culture and living here for aggregate 8 months, I only became aware of this fact about a week ago.  Fast forward to today, when I joined Boris & Company from the Political Science department to shoot some pool.  Now I fancy myself a bit of a pool player.  My parents own a table, and I've gotten decently good over the years.  At my playing peak, I even practiced playing right-handed--I shoot lefty--in case I ever needed to hustle some stooge in a pool hall like Fast Eddie.  (That reference was for the old-timers in the audience.)

Anyway, Russian pool is hard.  Like, really hard.  Why?  Let me tell you.  First of all, the table is massive.  The typical American pool table is nine feet.  The typical Russian pool table, which we played on, is twelve feet.  Second, the balls are bigger.  Why does this matter?  Well, it wouldn't, except for the fact that the pocket openings are smaller.  How small?  The diagonal pockets (i.e. the ones usually used most often) are only 4-5mm wider than the diameter of the balls.  Translation: no one ever gets a ball in a pocket.  Ever.  

 Seriously.

But lest you think this led to some "fish out of water" embarrassment for yours truly, as far as I could tell, no one in the pool hall was particularly good at this game.  In fact, after about nine minutes of this, the six of us switched the American-style tables and played 8-ball for the next two hours or so.  Things got better.

How much better?  Well, a gentlemen pool shark never shoots and tells, but let's just say I put the "American" in "American billiards."

back to school

First, yes: I was thinking of the seminal Rodney Dangerfield classic when I wrote that title.  Second, also yes: I realize the irony of the previous statement giving him some respect.  But I feel like we've only just started this post and it's already off the rails.  Let's regroup and meet in the next paragraph.  Plan?  Plan. 

As I mentioned last week, I had my first classes of the semester on Friday.  I felt all three classes went really well, and I feel rejuvenated and much more enthusiastic about my lesson planning this time around.  I definitely underestimated how much of a difference it makes being able to start with my students from day one and be able to lay out my course goals and expectations for my students.  I also think adding a grammar component will be much more beneficial for their progress.  My goal in general is to stress the vocabulary, expressions, and grammar quirks that can really help conversational speech sound more natural.  

To keep things interesting, we'll be keeping a half-hour cultural component and screening Apollo 13 in 20 minute increments over the next few weeks.  I found an excellent website with ESL guides for popular movies; the 36-page(!) treatment of Apollo 13 features dozens of lines from the movie with underlined and defined expressions and idioms.  I'm planning on using that along with my own created worksheets with plot questions to keep 'em from slacking.  Language teachers: sucking the fun out of watching movies in class for over 100 years.*

*That may not be accurate.

have skis will travel

Had my first cross-country skiing experience on Sunday.  Originally, we were supposed to go downhill skiing, but it was deemed to be too cold, so we opted to go off-road.  While waiting at the bus stop, Tanya asked about skiing terminology in English.  In Russian, downhill skiing is referred to as "mountain skiing" while cross-country skiing is referred to as "regular skiing" (or at least that's how she talked about it).  I explained that, contrary to Russian, if one were to simply suggest going skiing, the presumption would be that he or she meant downhill skiing.  She seemed miffed at the idea that she would have to stipulate cross-country skiing in order to get her point across, but I was just happy I finally found something that takes longer to explain in English than in Russian.  I love me some Russian, but da'gummit they got some long words!

The world is my frozen oyster.

Turns out that cross-country skiing is actually two different sports.  One of them is really fun; one of them really sucks.  It all depends which side of the hill you're on.  It took a little getting used to in terms of orienting myself.  After having spent all my hours on the mountain clomping around on fat downhill skis, the bamboo thinness of the XC skis I procured for $6USD (love it!) were a bit...tricky.  I know what you're thinking and the answer is no, I didn't fall.  The skis were also extremely slick on the snow, making for the occasional Saturday Night Pneumonia Fever moment.  I swear I didn't fall.

The good news is conditions were perfect: Tanya's sister, who came with us, hadn't been on skis in a decade or two, and Tanya's son was at a friend's birthday party, meaning I wasn't shown up by an 11 year-old.  I quickly discovered the main difficulty of cross-country skiing, aside from the agonizing exertion of skiing up a hill of course, is heat maintenance.  In order to protect oneself against sub-zero temperatures, one must bundle up sufficiently.  Rapidly and continuously flapping one's arms and legs around like a frostbitten chicken, however, has a tendency to up the core temperature.  I forwent the "happy medium" approach, opting instead for alternating periods of extreme cold and heat-induced sweating.  I wouldn't recommend it.  And no, I didn't fall.

Technically I'm only half way up, but trust me, that's an accomplishment.

All in all I had a lot of fun.  It was nice to get some exercise in, and the scenery was quite picturesque.  Apparently my friend Olga goes every Saturday, so I'm sure I'll be hitting the gradual inclines slopes again soon.  Tanya and I have already made tentative plans to go downhill skiing on Wednesday, so I'm looking forward to that.  I'm interested to see what it's like, as I'm told the downhill place isn't even outside of town, and I'm pretty sure I would have noticed a mountain hanging around.  I'll let you know how it goes.

Okay, so I fell.

housekeeping

About the blog: you may have already noticed, but I recently added a page with some general information about Karelia.  If you're a regular reader you've probably already gotten most of what's there, but if not or if you're interested, either access it under the banner or click here.  In other news, while I should probably wait for this to solidify further, I'm planning on featuring guest posts by some of my fellow ETAs on this blog throughout the month of February.  While some of us have been keeping blogs to document our activities (see sidebar), others haven't but still have plenty of interesting things to share.  I figure it will also be a good opportunity for my six or seven regular readers to get a glimpse of life in other places in Russia, which can be very different from my own experience.  I've already got one commitment from a good friend of mine in one of Russia's most exotic locales, but that's all I'm giving away for now.  See how I build the tension?

About my life: teaching starts up again tomorrow.  I was able to meet with Tanya today and hash out a loose strategy for the semester.  My goal is to make my lesson plans both more varied to keep the students interested and more grammar- and practice-heavy to maximize their progress.  She'll continue working through their grammar book with them, while I'll concentrate on problem areas, phrasal verbs, and idiomatic usages.  Stuff like the difference between "put up," "put up with," "put off," and "put out."  Isn't English fun?  Also, I'm going cross-country skiing on Sunday.  There will be pictures.

kindness II

For part two of my treatise on Russian kindness, I want to share a few anecdotes from my time here.  The first came pretty early on in my teaching, but after I'd started receiving a bunch of invitations to come talk to different classes.  I had been to about ten classes one week, and while my spirits were high (I was just thrilled to be invited by that point), my energy level was declining by Thursday.  While I didn't think twice about it, I forgot that Russians are usually extremely skilled at reading others' emotional states.  When I showed up to teach my phonetics class, Tanya was there early and told me I could take the period off.  When I asked her why, she said that Olga, whom I had taught with the previous day, called her the night before and told her she was worried I was too tired and needed a day off.

The second story comes from my English Club.  One week, the theme was show and tell, kindergarten style.  My selection being limited, I presented really the only personal effect I had brought with me: my bobbing head moose, John Phillip Moosa.  I explained my long association with moose (I'm sure you all know the tale of how I came to acquire J.P. already) and how the moose is my favorite animal.  Some five or six weeks later, at our Christmas party, one of my most faithful attendees gave me a gift.  She had come almost every week, and contributed regularly, but because of the size of the club I don't know that I'd ever spoken with her in a one-on-one context.  Despite this, she had made me a hand-painted magnet.  It was a moose.

Finally, I gave a lecture on the U.S. electoral system to an extremely large group of students in the Political and Sociological Faculty, probably more than 60, maybe 80.  Afterward, a trio approached me and asked if we could get together some time to talk more informally.  We made plans and went to a cafe.  We talked for hours, sometimes with me speaking bad Russian, sometimes with them speaking exceptional English.  As we exited the cafe, I motioned the direction of my apartment, explaining I was headed that way.  They said they were too, so we continued to chat as we walked the half mile or so until I had to turn off into my cluster of neighborhood streets.  We parted ways, and as I was climbing the stairs up to the hill that holds my building, I looked back and noticed they were headed straight back the way we'd come.  They had all three walked me home.

kindness I

Russians are some of the nicest people you will ever meet.  They take hospitality seriously ("You like the chair?  Please, take the chair!  It's yours!") and will do anything to help you day or night once you make their acquaintance.  One of my favorite things about living in Russia and learning Russian is their patience with language learners.  I have friends who have studied other languages and studied abroad in other countries who have had mixed reactions on this front.  Certain countries are notorious for demanding an extremely high level of language proficiency from foreigners else they get the stink eye--though we shan't mention them here; that would be très gauche.

I promise you will experience no such problems in Russia.  Russians are well aware of how crazy hard their language is, so they're mostly just thrilled you're taking the time to learn it.  As long as you attempt to string together some words, no matter how grammatically or phonetically incorrect the end result might be, your conversation partner will compliment you on how well you speak nine times out of ten.  In my experience, this is especially true of older women, who invariably speak some of the cleanest Russian around and are always more than happy to converse with you and gently nudge you in the right direction should you make a tiny mistake here or there.  It all makes for an incredibly rewarding experience and serves as a real incentive and motivator to get out there and do some talking.  What I'm trying to say is, if you're out there reading this and haven't started learning Russian by now, get off the fence, will ya!  It's fun, trust me.  I'm a doctor.*

*I am not a doctor.

lazy sunday

Not much creativity as far as posting goes today.  Not much motivation either, but I want to try to keep to my post a day 'til classes start pledge, so I'll just give a brief status report.  I got my new class schedule; looks like I'll be teaching a six-hour block of classes on Friday afternoons.  While I'm not totally thrilled with the idea of having only one solid day of classes each week for which I'm responsible, it will give me greater freedom to get more involved in other classes.  As I posted at the time, last semester was agonizingly slow in terms of my integration into the Foreign Languages Department (read: no one inviting me to their classes), but by December I had picked up a number of classes I attended weekly as an in-class assistant to the teacher.  In order to make sure I'm filling the rest of my weekdays sufficiently, I'm going to be very aggressive about volunteering to do that for a lot of classes this semester, whether the teachers like it or not, da'gummit!

I've also been talking with the women at the American Corner in our public library about setting up some more regular community events.  I've been able to do some community things already, but not with the scope or regularity that I want.  The main roadblock has been finding a venue; while normally the library would be more than happy to host such things, it's in the midst of a 12 year renovation.  The American Corner is currently in the main atrium (which is normally an empty open space, I'm told), surrounded by stacks of books that they have nowhere else to store.  We're currently working together to find a solution.

Lastly, it's finally happened!  After only five short months, the powers that be have decided that I'm interesting enough to do a story on in the school paper.  While many of my fellow Fulbrighter ETAs were treated like rock stars upon arrival, here in "So-What-We-Get-Plenty-Of-Foreigners-What-Makes-You-Think-You're-So-Special-Land" they make you work for it.  Turns out my going to Moscow to give a presentation about Karelian culture was enough to prove my worth.  I did a two-hour interview the other day, so I'll keep you posted on how it turns out.  They've also expressed interest in getting me on television.  Good thing I don't have one, so I won't have to watch me embarrass myself in Russian.

creaminess

What do Americans eat on everything?  You thought of ketchup, right?  This has become a pretty widespread stereotype, and one that I actually take a bit of umbrage with.  Maybe I'm just being dense, but the only things I can think of the Americans regularly eat with ketchup are french fries, cheeseburgers, and hot dogs.  I mean you could throw meatloaf on that list, but then I think you're just trying too hard.  Moving on, let's consider another question: what do Russians eat on everything?  You probably don't have an answer.  Well, it's sour cream.

Not kidding.

Now let's get a few things straight.  First, I'm clearly exaggerating; Russians don't eat sour cream on everything.  But they do eat a lot of it.  Second, this is in no shape or form a criticism.  I quite like sour cream and think it's an essential component of many Russian dishes.  I actually think sour cream gets a bad rap stateside, and I think it's because the sour cream people have a terrible PR department.  I mean come on, sour cream?  Cream is a dodgy enough proposition to begin with, but you chose to modify it with an adjective typically used to describe something that's gone bad?

The Russian PR team, by contrast, was wise enough to avoid this trap.  The Russian word for sour cream is cметана (smetana).  Go ahead, try it out.  Say it a few times.  Sounds nice, right?  I know.  Already, you can feel your old prejudices against sour cream fading away, right?  You're welcome.  Anyways, that's about all I have to say about sour cream, so I'll leave you with a list of things I've eaten with sour cream.

Things I've eaten with sour cream:

• Pelmeni (little Russian dumplings)
• Borsch
• Vegetable soup
• Hot cabbage (in the morning no less--the sour cream saved me)
• Bliniy (kind of like crepes)
• Potatoes
• Vegetable salad
• Potato salad
• Curds
• Apples
• Spam spam spam spam eggs sausage bacon and spam spam spam sour cream spam spam and spam

Two points to everyone who got that reference.  The rest of you, educate yourselves!