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!

quietness

I know what you're thinking, and the answer is yes: I picked today's topic based solely on the fact that it ends with the suffix -ness.  But can you blame me?  I had three in a row going, and those were all honest picks.  Let's just hope this post doesn't turn out to be the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull to my proverbial Indiana Jones trilogy.  Methinks it will, but who knows.

 Will he ruin this post, too?

One thing you might notice if you travel to Russia is that Russians are very quiet.  Well, if you can hear the silence over the sound of your own voice, you loud-talking American boor!  Sorry, that got personal.  Anyway, when I mean quiet, I don't mean that Russians don't talk.  They do, just quietly; the country is populated by a veritable army of Seinfeldian low-talkers.  This is in stark contrast to Americans.  If you haven't been abroad, you might not realize that Americans are generally very loud people.  Not that we just go around shouting all the time, but the definition of an average "inside voice" is demonstrably louder in the U.S. than it is in, say, Russia.

So why the difference?  Heck if I know.  Part of it may be due to differing ideas on personal space.  Russians will generally sit or stand much closer to each other than Americans when talking; it's not rare to see two people on the street having a conversation about a foot from each other.  If you're that close to someone, naturally you don't need to speak as loudly.  It's also interesting to see how loudness has become somewhat associated with English.  Many of my Russian students and friends speak louder in English than they do in Russian.  I've noticed this with other international students as well.  Conversely, I speak more quietly in Russian than I do in English.  So if you travel to Russia, turn it down a few clicks.  Whatever you do, just don't put it up to eleven.

Okay, so this post wasn't great.  I blame Shia LaBeouf.

cleanliness

Now before we begin, let me just get this out of the way: this post is not about personal hygiene.  There will be no jokes about Europeans and showers, so if that's what you're here for, well, get used to disappointment.  I just want to talk about one very small but quirky and interesting aspect of cleanliness in Russia: the ground.  I know that probably sounds a bit confusing, but bear with me (or bare with me, if you must; I want my readers to be comfortable).  Russians, much more so than Americans, in my experience, treat the ground (or floor, if you're inside) as something almost inherently dirty.

It's not something easily noticeable; in fact, it wasn't until a few weeks into my stay here (my second time in Russia, no less) that I started to pick up on it.  If you're sitting in a cafe and your hat falls on the floor unbeknownst to you, I guarantee someone, be it a waiter or fellow diner, will alert you to this fact within about 9 seconds.  I'm not exaggerating, try it sometime.  This extends to the home as well.  It is anathema to Russians to wear shoes past the entryway of an apartment.  Furthermore, most will have what are called tapichki, which are essentially thin house slippers, that they will wear at all times.  If you visit someone's apartment and they don't have enough tapichki for everyone, the host will undoubtedly apologize profusely.

Perhaps the most telling evidence of the prevalence of this belief comes from the gopniki, which are basically what Officer Krupke might call "street toughs."  They wear track suits, spit sunflower seeds, shake people down for loose change, and just generally get up to no good.  During the summer, you'll often see these guys hanging around outside their apartment buildings, drinking and carrying on.  In the U.S., they'd probably sit on the stoop; here, they squat just above the ground.

Is this an earth-shattering observation?  No.  But it's something you'd never notice unless you lived here, so I thought I'd share.  Plus, I just got 350 words out of the ground in less than fifteen minutes, and fulfilled my post quota for the day.  So there.




Still reading?  I'm not going to make a European hygiene joke.




Seriously.

Okay, fine, you mongrels: I'll give you just one, from Twain, who started this whole business: "In Marseilles they make half the fancy toilet soap we consume in America, but the Marseillaise only have a vague theoretical idea of its use, which they have obtained from books of travel..."

Hope that doesn't cause an international incident.  We love ya, France!

sunniness

I met a new exchange student from Latvia today who was already aware of my blog through his friend's researching of Petrozavodsk before he came. So despite my still comically-low readership (and no I'm not just saying that--I've got proof from Google Analytics), I have reached the first rung of blogging fame.  Which is to say, someone knew about my blog before he met me.  Or at least that's how I'm choosing to define it; it's my blog, after all.

Anyway, let's resume our tour of all things Rrrrrrrrrrrossiya.  (If you didn't get that last part, the letter "r" is rolled in Russian.  Sometimes I like to exaggerate it; apparently this habit extends to text-based media as well.)  Today I'm going to talk about something slightly more targeted to my personal situation vis-a-vis my fellow Fulbright teachers, which is sunlight.  Well, I should say lack thereof, as naturally the sun shines everywhere in Russia just as it does most places--except for Murmansk during December I should say, before I get more angry emails from all you sticklers out there.  I'm the only Fulbright ETA in the north of Russia (okay, technically there's another on the same latitude as me, but it sounds more dramatic if I'm the only one, so just go with me), which means mucho dark hours for me during December and January.

I've noticed that despite my years-long studies of the country, I routinely forget just how far north the entire country of Russia is.  Maybe it's from years of comparisons between the U.S. and Russia that I subconsciously picture the two across from each other; maybe I just have a poor sense of spatial geography (ding ding!).  To give you an idea, Sochi, the site of the 2014 Winter Olympics, was the summer resort city for the party elite during the Soviet Union.  It is one of the southernmost cities in Russia.  It is on the same latitude as Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

First, picture yourself going to a summer resort in Milwaukee.  Got that in your head?  Good.  Now get behind your imaginary dogsled and hoof it approximately 1200 miles north.  Welcome to my frosty world.  According to the "I'm feeling lucky" website I found through Google, Petrozavodsk averages 4.7 hours of sunlight a day over the course of a year.  In other words, I had a lot of short days in December.

I've never been one for seasonal depression, but it really was quite a dramatic departure from "short" winter days in Ohio.  On the shortest day of the year, for instance, the sun rose at 10:05am and set and 3:18pm.  But wait!  There's more!  We're so far north, that even when the sun does rise, it does so like a crotchety old man reaching for his walker in the middle of the night.  If that simile isn't doing anything for you, what I mean is at its highest point the sun barely inches over the rooftop of the highest building in town (which is about five stories).

High noon in Karelia (recreation).

The flip side is that I'm going to experience the opposite effect in June during the famed White Nights, when the sun goes down for only a few hours and it never actually gets dark.  It should be a lot of fun, though those mangy kids are liable to keep me up half the night with their loud music and their Dan Fogelberg.  Humbug!  Anyways, it actually hasn't been that bad coping with the lack of sunlight, though it's definitely not something I'd want to do every year.  I figured that the fine citizens had come up with ways of dealing with it year after year, so I went ahead and asked one of my friends.  It went something like this (translated for your convenience):

Me: "How do you put up with it being dark all the time?"

Friend: "We don't.  It sucks every year."

So there you go.

directness

Having hopefully concluded the tragedy portion of our broadcast, let's return to our regularly scheduled program.  I've decided in the time before classes start again that I'm going to try to update this blog every day.  

Wait, what?!

Yes, that's right, every day.  Yes, it's probably definitely not going to happen.  Yes, I'm not really sure what I'm going to talk about.  But hey, we'll give it a shot, right?  Maybe this kind of challenge is what I need.  I've decided that since there's not much going on in my life to report right now, I'm instead going to talk about the atmosphere and attitude of life in Russia.  Today's word of the day is: directness.

Russians have a bit of a reputation for being very direct people.  While this is a stereotype, and thus must be considered carefully and with much skepticism, I do think there is some truth to it.  I don't want to get into heavy-handed speculation about the trajectories of cultural mores; I want to talk about grammar.

SIDEBAR: For those of you following along at home, that last part indicates that we've entered the "crackpot theories" portion of this post.

When I started teaching English, I quickly noticed a greater self-awareness in the words and phrases I use to voice certain thoughts.  One thing I realized right away was how difficult it is for Russian students studying English to get a grasp on the way we couch any sort of request in subjunctives and conditionals and what-have-you's.  For instance, it is perfectly common to hear someone say something like "I was wondering if you wouldn't mind opening the window," if a classroom is too warm.  In Russian, they have no such peculiarities.  Well, there are ways to do it, but no one uses them in regular speech; if you want someone to open a window, you just say "Open the window, please."  Add in the facts that Russian contains no definite or indefinite articles (i.e. "a" and "the") and typically use "please" less than is required in English, and you can get sentences like, "Open window."  So you can see where you can start to build this reputation for directness.

That said, I think it is pretty clear that Russians tend to be more direct than Americans in many situations.  Trust me when I say this is not a criticism; "I was wondering if you wouldn't mind opening the window" is ridiculous.  Try another example.  First consider this:

And now this:

Which reads, quite literally, "SMOKING KILLS."  Which is more effective?  My role is not to decide.  (Hint: it's not the first one.)  So in conclusion and in summation, if you meet a Russian in your travels and he or she seems a bit forward, try not to take umbrage.  After all, we can not choose our grammar; grammar chooses us.

more bad news

The last thing I wanted to do was follow my previous post with another downer, but once again reality gets in the way.  Today at around 4.30 Moscow Time, Moscow's (and Russia's) largest and busiest airport, Domodedovo, was the target of what by all indications was a terrorist attack.  Early reports indicate that a device containing at least 7kg of TNT was used to create a massive explosion in the international arrivals area of the airport.  At least 35 have already been confirmed dead.

For those of you that might not have been informed of my return from Moscow, rest assured that I am safe in Petrozavodsk.  As far as I've heard, no Fulbrighters or friends were affected by the attack; let's cross our fingers it stays that way.  This is a tragic and chilling event, given that I was in Moscow just two days ago and I know many of my friends were passing through Domodedovo on their way back to their various locations.  Unfortunately, despite their lack of publicity in the West, these kinds of terror attacks have become all too common in Russia.  Depending on whom you ask, this airport bombing is Russia's seventh terror attack since 2004, totaling hundreds of deaths during that time. 

I can only hope that we as an international community can come together in the aftermath of such a tragedy.  That this strike came at Russia's main international airport stresses that this is not just a domestic problem but part of the global issue of terrorism.  I want this blog to remain about culture and life, not politics, so I won't make any suggestions or bold plans of action.  I think it uncontroversial enough to simply say that I'm pulling for all those affected by the blast, and I hope we can work together starting now to minimize these tragedies in the future.

farewell to a friend

Like most aspects of my life, I've tried to approach this blog with humor.  There are times, however, when levity must give way to gravity.  I lost a respected mentor and dear friend last week, and while this scarcely-trafficked collection of words floating in the ether hardly qualifies as a prominent forum, it will at least serve as a humble means to say a few words about him in the most public way I can.

I first met Dr. Aage Clausen in the spring of 2008.  I, a sophomore, was eager for some research experience to add to my resume.  He, an emeritus ten years into retirement, was far from the typical faculty mentor.  At first I wasn't sure what to make of the gruff Nebraskan with the funny Danish name and well-trimmed mutton chops.  When he informed me we'd be doing the heavy lifting of the statistics-based project by hand, I wondered what I'd gotten myself into.  But after only a few hours together, it was clear "The Elder" (as he signed his emails) and "The Younger" (as I signed mine) were of like mind and spirit.

Aage treated me as an equal from the get-go, and served as a constant sounding board not only for my work on the project, but in academics and other matters as well.  He was always willing to talk, to share a meal at the Faculty Club, or to pull out his topographical map of Nebraska to prove me wrong when I insisted it was, indeed, quite flat.  I often received emails from him recounting the latest antics of "Ole" and "Sven."  Another faculty member and mutual friend of Aage's once mentioned to me that he was much more reserved earlier in his life, a quiet man not prone to long conversation and jokes; that his change in personality came on only after his wife's passing a few years before.  I like to think that Aage and I found each other at the perfect time in each of our lives, one's waxing, the other's waning.

While our project never ultimately came to fruition, my time with Aage was priceless.  He did so much for me.  He wrote letters for my law school and Fulbright applications.  He shared with me his immense knowledge gather over a half-century of teaching.  But most of all, he was my friend.  I can only hope that I meant half as much to him as he did to me, that a long-shot project with a young undergraduate helped to sustain him and give him purpose at a time when his health and personal life were failing him.  

I was afforded the opportunity to have a last dinner with Aage before leaving for the ten-month experience that he helped me obtain.  Free of the burdens of our academic pursuits, we talked about current events and future pursuits.  When I left for Russia, I did so with the unfortunate knowledge that it would likely be a final parting.  It doesn't make the reality any easier, but I will forever consider myself lucky to have been able to have that time and that moment with him, when he was still quintessentially "Aage."  I regret not being able to see him before his passing, and that I could not be present at his memorial service.  I can only hope that these simple words will stand in living memory as a tribute to a truly memorable man.

Sleep well, proud son of Nebraska.  You will be dearly missed.

Columbus Dispatch article on Aage's work as a volunteer tutor at a Columbus-area middle school 

CLAUSEN Aage R. Clausen, age 78, Friday, January 14, 2011 in Columbus. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, and was a professor at OSU from 1971 until he retired in 1997. The son of Danish immigrants, he grew up on a farm in Nebraska and was the first member of his family to attend college. He was grateful for the opportunities he had in life; in return, he helped provide opportunities in the lives of young people. Beginning in 2005, he helped fund a scholarship program at Grand View University, and the scholarships will continue with funding from his legacy. After he retired, he tutored math at the Buckeye Middle School. Predeceased by his beloved wife Geraldine Clausen. Survived by son, Jon Clausen; brother, Ted Clausen; nephews, Lowen Clausen and Fred Clausen; and others. A memorial gathering of friends and family will be held at the OSU Faculty Club at 1 p.m. Friday, January 21. Funeral service will be held at a later date in a country church near St. Paul, NE. In lieu of flowers, contributions can be sent in his memory to the Lifelong Learning Scholarship at Grand View University, or to a charity of the donor's choice.

the third rome

Not much to report (well, anything to report, really).  Classes don't start up again until February, so I've been mostly enjoying my time off and spending a lot of time with friends.  I thought I would write just a short blurb here to explain that I'm leaving for Moscow tonight for the Fulbright's mid-year enrichment seminar.  The actual seminar itself is Thursday and Friday, but we've got another three days of ETA training Monday through Wednesday.  Though I didn't want to lug the extra weight with me, I've decided to take my laptop with me.  I'll be there for almost six days, and I have to give a presentation on Thursday, so it'll be worth the added burden to have it with me.  I don't remember the internet situation at the hotel since I didn't take my laptop with me last time, but I imagine I'll get a chance to update this sometime this week.

Whether I actually utilize that opportunity is another question, of course.

suomi a-go-go

Been a while, but in my defense, the winter holidays in Russia are serious business.  Because the Russian Orthodox Church still runs on the Julian calendar, Christmas here isn't celebrated until January 7th.  What that means is that New Year's is the big blowout celebration while Christmas is the aftershock, the opposite of the way it is in the States.  Some assorted friends and I gathered in my apartment to celebrate.  I made a kind of Tex-Mex dish based on what ingredients I could find around town that corresponded vaguely to the Rio Grande region.  The reaction was positive and no one got food poisoning, so I'm chalking it up as a 'W.'  Soon after, I was off to the reindeer-infested winter wonderland of Finland.

Tervetuloa Helsinkiin, baby.

What is already a very long bus ride (yes, I went by bus) was made even longer by our having to wait five hours at the Russian-Finnish border.  Why, you ask?  Because there were an estimated 160,000 Russian tourists in Finland during the holidays (which in Russia run from roughly Dec. 31 to Jan. 11).  And apparently they all decided to go at once.  Luckily, I had no difficulties getting through the border, though the guy on the Russian side had no idea what to do with my detachable booklet multi-entry visa, and the guy on the Finnish side was clearly suspicious of a young man passing from provincial Russia to provincial Finland on a bus with an American passport.  Thanks to the Schengen Agreement, I got to play 20 questions with the Finnish guard before I got my stamp.  It was actually quite fun; he was deadly serious, but visibly brightened whenever I got an answer right:

Frown.  "Where are you going?"

"Helsinki."

Brief smile.  Another frown.  "What is the purpose of your visit?"

"Tourism."

Brief smile.  Another frown.  "How long are you staying?"

"Three days."

Smile.  "Welcome to Finland."

"Hey Onni, I think we're stuck."

Helsinki is a charming little town.  Despite the fact that it's the capital, it's still only got a population of 500,000, and the downtown area is quite small.  By the second day, I already had a pretty good impression in my head of where the various streets and landmarks were in relation to each other.  I got to see my Finnish friends again, which was fun.  Helsinki, like many European cities, has seen a significant influx in immigrants over the past decade, meaning I got to sample some cuisine I hadn't since leaving the States, including Mexican and Chinese.  We also visited the Aussie Bar, which, naturally, is owned by Kiwis, as well as Molly Malone's, an Irish pub across the street from a bar called Texas.

Otherwise, we did the typical tourist stuff.  Saw a few churches, went to a museum.  I had a fair bit of sticker shock having grown accustomed to Russian prices.  Food and drink especially is very expensive, but at least the quality was good.  I only stayed two days, which I actually think was perfect.  At least during the winter, I got the impression that Helsinki is of the "great place to live, slightly boring place to visit" variety.  I say that with the utmost respect; after all, I'm from Ohio.  The bus ride back, despite taking only thirty minutes at the border, somehow took even longer than the first.  For reasons that shall forever remain unknown, our driver decided to take the Karelian Isthmus down through St. Petersburg, then east and north into Karelia.  I mean, why bypass the largest lake in Europe when you can drive all the way around it?

Anyways, if you have the chance, visit Finland.  Any country that loves the moose as much as they do is okay in my book.