More in Rome (Part II)

The next day, I again missed the morning shuttle; I thought it finished at 10:30, but no - that was the last departure from the metro. Arg. Lidia and I were going to meet in the evening and join her friends to watch a Russian movie, so I again explored the city during the day. I saw the Circus Maximus, which was filled with lights for some reason - later I found out that there was a, well, wouldn't you know it, "La Notte Bianca" (White Night) festival throughout the city. I also walked through a lot of the nearby ruins before making my way up to a park near Villa Medici and Piazza del Popolo, whereabouts I later met up with Lidia and we walked around a bit, with the festival now in full force. We took the subway (free now) to her friend's flat, where there were three of her friends, one of which was from Ukraine. Who'd have guessed. While Lidia and I walked to the metro we had talked about various things, including 9/11 (that day was the 10th). Thinking back, it was hard to know exactly how we had all found out (a classmate told us while we were in math class, but I don't know how he himself found out; I think he had seen it on TV in the library), but further, it was hard at first to remember whether I had indeed seen the towers fall live, because of the endless replays on the news throughout that day and the following few days. I remember having read Newsday that morning and noting the date was 911, like the emergency number. Hm. How little I knew how the world would change a few hours later?

Right, so we went to her friend's house, where Vladimir and I cast our votes for Операция "Ы" ("Operation "Y") to which I was introduced in the culturology class. Parts of it involve last-minute preparation for exams, about which we later had to write an essay, "От сессия до сессия студенты живут весело" ("Between exams students are carefree"). I agreed with this in my essay, saying that it was universal, or at least that students in the US and Russia were the same in this respect, and now Lidia was providing evidence for it in Italy, having a few hundred pages of text still to read before her test. I really enjoyed the film and thought it was terrific - just purely funny, good-natured humor. I loved it, and look forward to watching other Shurik films (I had earlier seen one thanks to an assignment for Russian class back home, wherein I had to watch a Russian film and talk about it in class; my roommate and I had watched one where Shurik makes a time machine and ends up switching time periods with Ivan the Terrible. I had really enjoyed it but didn't realize there were other Shurik films. I also learned the actor had a sad life, unsuccessfully trying to avoid being typecast, and then becoming an alcoholic and living in poverty after the welfare system disappeared, before dying of a heart attack.) Shortly after the movie we went home, and as I walked back from the metro (this was about a half-hour trip now that I knew where I was going) I saw a fairly suspicious car fire. Hm.

A Rough Start in Rome

The next day I took a cab to Kiev's airport (which was about an hour away), as the constantly slow and overcrowded public transport didn't fill me with confidence. The airport was interestingly (read: badly) designed: it was bizarre, confusing and inconvenient - arrivals and departures were mixed, and there was nowhere to sit as customs control was before check-in, and so you had to wait for your flight to be checking in before you were able to pass, so there was of course a colossal crowd standing outside this barrier. After that it wasn't so bad, but somewhat delayed. I worred as I wasn't sure how much time I had for my layover, and I hadn't packed my luggage for contingencies, almost begging for such a fate. Fortunately that worked out. I had a brief stay in Prague airport, and then was off to Rome. Czech airlines has terrific legroom (obviously an important factor when you're 6'+), so the flights were very comfortable. The inflight magazine, coincidentally, had St. Petersburg as the 'cover story.'

Upon arriving in Rome, there was apparently a large Asian plane that had preceded ours, based on the massive queue for immigration, and Lidia had said she'd meet me so I looked around for a while before finding her and her mother. I was worried they'd left or something, but they had hit traffic. She said she'd mixed up the dates of her exams, which were not the 21st as she originally thought, but rather the 12th, so she was going to need to study for the first two days I was there. I assured her that it was fine, and that she should of course do as convenient for her. They drove me to the hotel, with some difficulty as it was far from the center and hard to find. We had to ask for directions a few times. The first time we saw someone standing on the side of the road and slowed down as to pull over - it was a prostitute. We sped back up and mused that she had different questions in mind. We asked police at some point - it was strange to be in the mindset of being able to trust them again. Eventually we made it to the hotel, and I expressed my gratitude as we agreed to meet up again in a few days.

A man and a woman were working at the reception desk. As I was checking in, the man asked if I spoke French. I said no, and half-jokingly offered Russian instead. Ha ha. Well, the woman spoke Russian, so we indeed completed our business in Russian. Who'd have thought. Of course, Lidia and I communicated mainly in Russian as well, and indeed we met in St. Petersburg last year as I introduced myself with my incipient Russian skills. The hotel seemed nice; I was practically in my own little bungalow. Working the lights was mystifying initially. I had to insert my keycard into a slot in the wall. And keep it there, I learned, after the lights went out a few minutes later. There was another airport nearby, so I had the roar of airplanes to lull me to sleep. Right.

Breakfast the next morning was included, so that was nice to have again. Of course, it consisted of the apparently universal ham/cheese sandwich and cornflakes, although there was a satisfying array of desserts here as well. The contrast in wastefulness between Russia/Kiev and here was also apparent, with plastic cups at breakfast, and the daily replacement of my plastic cup in the bathroom as well as the bar of soap I would end up using maybe twice.

The hotel had a free shuttle to the metro, which was fairly far away. The hours were fairly inconvenient: from 8 until 10:30 in the morning, and from 5 to 9 in the evening. So I thought, anyway. I was flummoxed when I got to the metro, as all they had were automatic machines that took coins, and all I had were 10 euro bills. I finally found a cashier and waited in line for about 15 minutes only to find out, sorry, he had no change. I looked around in vain for an internet cafe for which I'd earlier seen a sign, figuring I could get change that way. It seemed to not exist, and I grew very frustrated and angry that I apparently had no way to solve this problem, so I decided to walk, dammit. There were some ruins I explored along the way, and then ended up having to backtrack in lieu of climbing the fence next to the fairly busy road I'd been walking down. I made it to the next metro stop, or rather, a metro stop, and resigned myself to buying a water to break the 10 euro bill, and made damn sure to stockpile coins from that point on.

So I finally made it to the center, and all my frustration evaporated as I walked through the city, seeing all these amazing things from history, ruins mingled with modernity, mixed with monuments. I saw the city from the top of Vittoriano, offering a terrific view, and then went to the Colosseum, which was amazing to see for real! It began to rain while I was there. I had pizza and pasta for dinner, relieved to finally be somewhere where it was natural to eat Italian food all the time. I went to an internet cafe and, due to terrorism laws, had to show my passport. I wondered how that could possibly help unless they monitored you, and then drew the unfortunate conclusion. I wrapped up and returned by 8:30 and called the hotel for the shuttle by payphone, as I'd not succeeded in finding a SIM card yet. The phone was really quiet and the volume button didn't work.

Anyway they informed me that the shuttle stopped at 7. What? (There was an airport shuttle from 9 to 9, and I mixed up the 19:00 posted at the desk). I asked how to get back but couldn't hear and ran out of money. I paced back and forth for a while, hoping for a taxi but not succeeding, and strongly missing gypsy cabs. I asked a few stores/restaurants if I could call a taxi, but they either had no phone or refused outright. Desperate and out of ideas, I decided to walk. That I didn't know where to go did not deter me; the map I had only covered the center, so I was literally wandering the streets, at night, in a foreign country, where I didn't know the language, and tried to head in the direction I thought the hotel was in the vain hope of finding it. Life's full of small challenges. I actually reached the street, but my address was 95 and this only went up to 91; it continued on the other side of the highway which I couldn't cross, so I had to find my way around. I had to backtrack quite a bit, and then overshot when walking around the cloverleaf-esque thing, and found another hotel and asked how to reach my street, but he didn't know (nor did the guests that had just entered), thinking it was somewhere in the center (yeah, I wish). I didn't really have enough money for a cab (those 50 euros went really quick), so I backtracked and continued, and after three hours or so I actually made it; I tried not to entertain the million what-ifs that came to mind throughout. I saw the sign at the desk for the shuttle and it indeed said 19:00, and so I asked how to get back otherwise, and was told to take a cab. Nice. So that meant I had to be back everyday by 7 PM. What crap!


So the next day I overslept and missed the breakfast and the shuttle bus. Nice. There was a map on the wall in the hotel, so I prepared to set out on foot, as I (sort of) knew where I was going this time. (I asked, but they didn't have any maps for me which had the hotel or its surroundings. Nice). A cab arrived as I was leaving, and after it had dropped off its passengers I asked the driver if he could take me to the metro for less than 5 euros, as that was practically all I had - the hotel, of course, conveniently lacked an ATM. He said yes, although it was metered and came to 5.50 or so, so I gave him 6 euros (I had a grand total of 9). So I took the metro and withdrew a lot more money this time as I reached the center, and got a SIM card from a place that had been closed by the time I had reached it the prevous day.


I got some brunch - a small pizza, water, and ice cream. The total: 18.50 euros. What? The small gelati was not 3 euros as I thought (which was still pricey) but rather 8. Whoa. I mean, it was delicious, but $10? Clearly the era of cheap ice cream was over (but it was delicious, so I had more throughout the day). I walked through the city, seeing, among other things, the Pantheon and Castell Sant'angelo on my way to the Vatican to see St. Peter's Basilica. Being there was also unbelievable. It was amazingly big, grand, opulent. I also visited the papal tombs, which included that of John Paul II. It was quite a magnificent church, probably dwarfing every other one I've seen (or close to it). I was irked that all the churches here, especially this one, were turned into tourist traps with little pay-kiosks for information or to turn on the lights or such things, along with large crowds of people just talking loudly and taking pictures and videos; at least in Russia there was some semblance of respect.

I then went up to the cupola, which, due to repairs, was partially closed. I could only go up to the terrace and the inner ring (inside the church) which was still amazing. I wanted to see the Sistine Chapel but it was closed by then, so I got dinner and went home. I just made the last shuttle, the route of which I carefully noted. I had scheduled my follow-up language evaulation for the Russian program for 11 PM that night, so I had several hours to kill and so I listened to music and napped. I was relieved that that had actually worked out (ensuring that reception was aware and was able to forward the call and so forth). This time was far, far easier than the pre-program evaluation, although the line was still extremely noisy as it had been the first time (in spite of assurances that the problem would be fixed this time), so that messed things up a lot. Still, it was very much easier than the first one, so the program (and/or the 10 weeks in Russia in general) had obviously helped a great deal.

Uniquely Russian

For the day we went to the Russian prison, we had hired a bus to take us there. It wasn't too far away, somewhere in the area of Cruiser Aurora, but the coverage of the bus routes isn't really that great (as evidenced by my 35 minute walk to school each morning). But the bus didn't come, and after about an hour of waiting, we started taking gypsy cabs. There were about 20 of us. This in itself was hilarious (well, not at the time; I think we were tired of standing in the sun waiting). So 5 minutes pass; we get one car for 4 people. Another 5 minutes or so, and we get another car. Now there are still about 13 of us left (I know this because I remembered that it was not evenly divisible into car-loads). Eventually a hotel shuttle pulls up (for Pribaltiyskaya, incidentally), and what do you know, he decides to take the rest of us there in the little hotel van, which greatly amused us. Only in Russia!


I forgot to mention what actually prompted our final closing parties the night before the group's flight out. The flight was to leave at about 5:50 in the morning (ouch). But of course, one needs to be at the airport a while before that, let's say around 3 or 4 in the morning (big ouch). That in itself is really tough, but then there's another problem: about half the people on the flight live on Vasilievskiy Island...and the bridges over the Neva are still up at that time...so there would actually be no good way to get to the airport! (Only in Russia). So what we ended up having to do was hire a bus to go to everyone and pick up their luggage, starting in the afternoon, and then all of us would actually meet at a cafe (on the mainland, of course) until it was time to go. Of course, in reality this bus driver too was horribly behind schedule, and so although we were to meet at 11:30, some people didn't make it until well after that. Unfortunately the purse of someone in our group was stolen, which really sucked (but they were not leaving on the flight, so that was one less problem).


Last year in Russia, as I already mentioned, started off with difficulty. One of the reasons for this was the less-than-great bathrooms in the dorms. Well, as one should know, it's foolish to say that there's nothing worse, because sure enough, we were in for a pleasant surprise on the cruise. We opened the bathroom (the foul smell of which was nothing short of incredible), to the left, the sink; the right, the toilet. Well, wait a minute, it seems they forgot the shower. Oh, no they didn't, it's hanging on the wall, attached to the sink, and the shower curtain is in the back by the toilet. That is to say, the entire bathroom was the shower. Efficient, but, well, yeah.


So anyway, I'm having a good time here in Murmansk, with my friend showing me around. It's nice to be in a hotel, with a normal functional bathroom for the first time in about 2 months. The shower at home ("home" being the apartment in St. Petersburg) has a very sketchy water heater which rattles and creaks and decides to stop working at random times; I'm always afraid the thing was going to randomly burst into flames at some point; the large burn mark on the front of it (like that of my outlet in the dorms last year) only increases my confidence. Anyway, when I arrived, my friend asked me if I'd flown here. Nope, I took the train (28 hours). She was in disbelief, and asked if I'd ridden купе (second class). Nope, плацкарт (third/lowest class). Further disbelief. It wasn't too bad, well, relatively speaking. The 30 hour bus ride to and from New Orleans was far worse; whereas I more or less lay down through most of the train ride. Of course, the beds were far too short, and so I would either have my feet hanging off the edge of the bed into the doorway, with people walking into them from time to time (I was on the top bunk), but there was little choice anyway since and there was no room to sit up in the top bunk. They don't have food on the trains, so I brought some things and made myself a sandwich from time to time. A day later, there I was. At the railway station there was no kind of pocket map so I was kind of flustered about what to do, and sort of ambled around outside for a minute, when someone asked me where I wanted to go, and taxied me to the hotel for 100 rubles (like $4). There were maps and guides and things in the hotel, so that was only a temporary problem. So the first day Katya and I walked around, with her showing me around, and of course there is the obligatory Lenin statue on Проспект Ленина ("Lenin street"), the city's main street, and a movie theater named "Родина" (motherland), and she was amused when I guessed these things. There are the obligatory Karl Marx and Komsomol'kaya streets as well. Katya's mother works at a city museum so yesterday we went there, where first Katya guided me around, and then as it was getting close to closing time, her mom gave me a whirlwind tour through some of the rest of it (though of course I understood slightly less at this speed). The city has a population just shy of 400 000, with a great view of the bay, and as it was an important city in WWII there are a lot of monuments, including a large soldier (30 meters or so) on a hill overlooking the bay, as well as various other monuments spread throughout the city. The climate here isn't very well liked, though. As it's above the Arctic Circle, in the summer it's always light (polar days), and in the winter practically always dark (polar nights), and the long summer days and the northern lights just don't make up for the polar nights.

Cruise

After our 6 weeks of lessons and lectures, we had a week-long cruise through the Russian north (well, more north than St. Petersburg). This was a great ending to our program, though it’s tough to believe that in less than a day we’ll all be going our separate ways. We had a stop every day:

Мандроги / Mandrogi: this was the first place we stopped, and was pretty disappointing as it is essentially a fake country village solely existing the benefit of tourists. Anna Maslennikova dubbed it a “tourist trap.” One of the first things we saw when disembarking was a large tent, on which was written “Mandrogi: Welcome to Show.” It was just sad. It was good that we got this out of the way first, as it paled compared to all the other stops, but we were worried the rest would be more of the same.

Петрозаводск / Petrozavodsk: a small city, which was nice to see since St. Petersburg is fairly unique with all of its excessive palaces and cultural places. Petrozavodsk had a lot of gift sculptures (from other countries), and halfway through our guided tour we wondered if that was all we were going to see. After that was free time, and I went on a very long exploration through the city, which I can barely begin to recount, but all I can say is that I’m glad I have a good sense of direction (in spite of any counterexamples you may have).

Кижи / Kizhi: an island with an old monastery (not sure if it’s exactly a monastery) with a wooden church that is unmistakably traditional Russian styled. We took a boat ride to some adjacent islands and saw some other interesting places.

Свирьстрой / Cvir’stroy: a Russian derevnya (village) which was also interesting to see in contrast to the cities. A Russian guy had cut his head open while swimming but his friends were on the other side of the lake, so we helped him back to the boat.

Валаам / Valaam: more islands and monasteries, but very different from Kizhi (the first part of the excursion was about a 7 km hike).

This was a great trip, and it was very interesting to see all of these places which are obviously very different than St. Petersburg, which was the only place I’d been in Russia up to this point. Tonight is a farewell party, and then the program is over; it’s tough to believe that the 7 weeks have already come and gone. Another interesting aspect of this program, as opposed to most of what I’ve done so far, is that we are from all over the country; most students from Stony Brook live within an hour or two of it, so last year after our study abroad program, most of us were still able to hang out all the time during the rest of the summer, but that will obviously not be the case this time. Another interesting thing: duck, duck, _____. In Minnesota, it’s not “goose,” but “grey duck.” Вот.

Progress

Our classes ended Friday, August 3rd, culminating in a large test on all that we’d covered over the 6 weeks of lessons, and then a nice dinner at a Georgian restaurant that evening with all the students and teachers. For me, it only sets in that I’m leaving when I see advertisements for things in the future, which would be impossible to attend even if I wanted to. It’s tough to measure the amount of progress I’ve made along the way, or to say how much I’ve learned; our classes were not the usual style of following through a textbook, learning vocabulary and constructions along the way, but rather we had a different theme each week (first impressions of Russia, problems of youth, university studies, economics, healthcare, and external politics) and each of eight different sections reflected these themes. Each day we had two ninety minute classes.

Mondays were страноведение (country studies), in which the teacher would more-or-less lecture on these topics as they pertained to Russia, and чтение (reading). Tuesdays were phonetics, in which we sang songs that went over some sort of phonetic feature. These songs were great, and we all had them stuck in our heads, but at the same time I feel like it just resulted in repeating the wrong pronunciations as opposed to really nailing how to make the sounds, some of which are notoriously difficult for English speakers and really give away one’s accent, for example ы (a vowel between I and U) and ль (soft L), which were really tough until I learned tricks, each of which took all of 5 minutes and made a huge difference. R still throws me off a lot though, since it takes some time for me to start trilling the R, so доброе утро (dobroe utro) and природа (priroda) feel clumsy to me.

Also on Tuesday was grammar, which got off to a rough start but was really useful once it was fine-tuned with our feedback. There were many things we learned which I thought I already knew, which was startling because it often meant I was doing it wrong all along (for example, “why/because” is distinct from “for what purpose/in order to” although I’d been using the same for both).

On Wednesdays we had културология (culture studies) where we talked in more general terms (as opposed to strictly Russia) about the week’s theme in a more interactive way, as well as разговор (conversation) in which we learned useful conversational constructions and prepared monologues from texts for homework. This was useful, but I wish we could have had more dialog amongst ourselves with aid from the teacher on what we were doing wrong / how it would be more naturally conveyed in Russian. We were supposed to talk to each other only in Russian at all times (though that often broke down after a few days) but often it felt like it wasn’t really helping if we understood each other because of the equivalent English, whereas in real Russian it would be conveyed entirely differently.

Thursdays we had письмо (writing), which was often helpful for exactly the reason I just wrote about for conversation, which was that it was very useful for our writings to be corrected because there were many things that might sound fine in English but were either bad or ungrammatical in Russian. The second half was another instance of разговор.

Finally, Fridays we had аудирование (listening), in which we would prepare for a video segment by building up phrases that would be used, so we could practice speaking and listening to them, followed by actually watching the segment and taking a short test. I didn’t feel like this approach really helped too much, but it’s tough to say because overall my listening greatly improved, but it’s unclear what helped the most. Following this was another grammar class.

Because of the relatively few grammar classes, it felt like progress was slow (in that, the other classes were not necessarily teaching anything new per se but rather either practice or correction). It especially felt like I was making little progress each time I tried in vain to understand one of the lectures in Russian that followed the classes, or of course the incident with the police, but then a funny thing happened. At first it was that I could understand some of the lectures, which I thought was because the speaker was speaking unusually slowly or clearly (as was occasionally the case when we were spoken to in Russian by the staff). But then I noticed that I better understood others, too, such as people’s conversations on the street, or announcements, and so forth. The first week we had films, introduced by Timur (who had done so last year at the New York Institute), but the second, third, and fourth weeks were the New York Institute, and so these films resumed the fifth week of the program. It was amazing to experience the difference between that first week, in which I could barely understand what he said, and the fifth week, when I could follow almost all of what he said (although the films would have been really hard without subtitles). It was as though the entire country had flipped on the “enunciation switch” and that everyone else had changed how they spoke (which of course is silly), and as frustrating as it was until that point, so rewarding was it to finally feel progress. It wasn’t gradual, but more like a leap to the next level, and so until that point it was hopelessly frustrating to converse or transact anything because I could usually convey what I wanted, but would rarely understand what was said back to me. I definitely considered it easier to speak than to understand, because I could use what I knew, whereas what was coming back to me could be anything, and I had no control over it. Now I feel the reverse most of the time, as I feel less confident in the correctness of what I am saying but am finally able to understand much of what is said back to me. Of course, I’m not saying that now I can always understand what’s going on, or what people are saying to me, but it’s much better than it was and I can now at least get the gist most of the time, unless it’s a subject where I have a very bad vocabulary and most of the key words are lost on me. It’s also amazing as I realize all the words and phrases I’ve learned, which is not that surprising, but even so, I didn’t study any vocabulary per se, but I’ve still gained a lot by things that come up often; once I look them up, they just end up reinforcing themselves by use rather than self-repetition. It’s a shame that all this started coming about for me just towards the end of the program, but as I have three more weeks in Russia, there will certainly be plenty more opportunity for practice and hopefully progress.

By the way, Part 2

Some other things we did through the program that I forgot:

- Tour of some of the metro stops; we were able to take pictures, which is usually not allowed for some reason (which the guide couldn’t explain; in Moscow you can)

- Blues concert on a boat trip through the Neva

Other random things:

I also saw the white Lexus with expired New York license plates again, which I’d seen last year. In addition there were some Massachusetts plates hanging around together. Weird.

One time I was walking in the rain, and two dogs started following me for a while, with one of them hanging out under my umbrella, until I got to the bus stop.

Speaking of umbrellas, I hear the song (now it’s raining more than ever, …) or one of its apparently innumerable derivatives far too often.

The poplar pollen has started flying through the streets again now that the rain has stopped and the weather has gotten warmer.

The times, they are a changing:

Most of our group in on facebook, and we befriended each other before the trip. When we met in person, many of us already recognized each other.

Among the souvenirs I’ve seen are magnets which represent a cameraphone taking a picture of some sort of monument (some kind of monument which would normally be the magnet)

I sometimes see jet skis cruising in the canals

There are a lot of damn car alarms near where I live, and the same one is almost always going off.

всё

Между прочим (By the way)

Other happenings (now that I've given up on writing every day):

- One of the students fell ill with GI problems and had to fly home about 3 weeks ago; they think it might collitis, in combination with / brought on by / exacerbated by a bacterial infection (I havent heard anything more definite since she went home)

Some other interesting excursions:
- a Russian prison
- a "center of experimental fine arts", ie. pretty much a bunch of artists live here
- Rolling Stones concert - this was awesome, they had a giant stage in the middle of the palace square (which they built in a week), flanked by the Hermitage and Alexander column; unreal. (Side note: the director of the Hermitage really hates these things as it rattles all the paintings; during a previous concert of some sort one even fell!). Pictures and videos will help convey how cool it was
- had a boat trip on the river to see the bridges open in the middle of the night
- Tsarskoye Celo, another place that I'd gone last year but was still nice to see again and remember

And soon (8/5) we'll be leaving on a weeklong cruise to Petrozadovsk a bit further north (as well as a bunch of islands en route there and back).

Ballet (7/3) and Opera (7/16)

Up until this trip, I hadn't ever been to any kind of ballet or opera, but I've had the opportunity to do so as part of this trip.

On 7/3 I saw a ballet at the Alexandrinsky Theater, a "modern" ballet based on Chekhov's The Seagull, which I haven't read, and so my understanding was fairly limited, though I got the gist. There was one part where everyone was break dancing to a hip-hop beat--that was fairly entertaining to watch, as it seemed fairly incongruous. For the most part I enjoyed it, but certainly I can live without it.

On 7/16 I saw La Traviata at the Mariinsky. The theater was certainly amazing, and I enjoyed the show, but to the same extent that I did the ballet. It was nice, but I can live without it. It was an amusing situation, that the performers are of course singing in one language I don't understand (Italian) while it is translated into another language I marginally understand (Russian). But I got the gist: Love and Death. Of course, that's simply the basis of pretty much any such drama.

It's hard to say which I liked more; both the ballet and the opera have a different appeal. The ballet is much simpler and concentrated on gracefulness, whereas the opera is a fairly rich, majestic production. I guess it's somewhat similar to the difference between a silent film and one with sound, in that you need to squeeze every bit of symbolism and artistry out of the former, since you don't have the "crutch" of dialog.

Вот.

О политике и президентах (Of Politics and Presidents)

It has been interesing to discuss the differences and similarities in opinions of politics with Russians here. One part of our class specifically deals with "country studies" and the professor has been talking to us about the situation here before, during and after the Soviet Union. She considers Putin to be a hero, and Gorbachev and Yeltsin to be little more than stupid criminals.


Her negative opinion of Gorbachev was mostly due to the fact that he was still a loyal communist, doing the party's wishes, and that his misguided attempts at perestroika and glasnost' are what caused the breakup of the Soviet Union and the subsequent chaos. Although I obviously can only rely on what little I do know of these times, from what I gathered he was trying to walk a fine line between the hard-line communists, and the reality of the Soviet Union's intractibility. Although in the West he is well regarded, why should the general public care about idealistic things like "winning/losing the cold war" given the extremely tumultous period that followed? I asked her whether she was saying she preferred the Soviet era, but she responded that those and these times are both equally bad.


The effects of privatization during Yeltsin's time, and the extremely poor economy therein, are fairly obvious strikes against Yeltsin. For me, reading of his experiences visiting the West, and his subsequent horror at realizing how bad conditions were for the people in the Soviet Union / Russia, and his thoughts about being President (to paraphrase: "I feel exhausted, as though I've run a race of 10,000 miles, and although I may have made mistakes, it is very easy to criticize and offer advice when you are not the one who has to bear the responsibility."), I feel as though he was doing his best in wildly uncharted territory, and that of course at this point hindsight is 20/20, but then I have the luxury of not having to actually live through it. The professor felt he was an incompetent drunken criminal for the fiasco of privatization that took place.


It is easy to see from her point of view and sympathise with these positions somewhat, when one considers simply the economic situations of the times, and the consequences of Gorbachev's and Yeltsin's actions. She has spoken of her circumstances, of her inability to retire, as her pension would cover maybe half her rent, and certainly although Putin is not loved in the West, why should anyone in Russia care about that? Things are undeniably getting better for Russia under his presidency, so why should anyone care about his opinion outside when they have their own country and circumstances to worry about for now. Moreover, she said that it's very easy for other countries to give advice, but Russia is a unique country with its enormous size and very unbalanced population density, and that it is through Russia's own past experiences that it has learned (the hard way) how to effectively run the country, and that other countries' experiences and advice are appreciated, but not always applicable.

It is interesting to note that it is due in part to the chilly relationship between the US and Russia that we are even here on this program. It's also been interesting to note a lot of similarities between the countries' respective situations, especially with immigration, where there is a similar debate about illegal immigrants who take low-paying jobs and allegedly don't pay their due.


The opinions on Bush have been interesting as well. At a bar one time there were these two wackos who, to summarize, were saying "F Bush, Russia will be ruling the world" and other such silliness. But another time, when I was crossing the street (jaywalking), a police officer was chastising me and asked where I was from, and when I said I was from the US, he said "Ah, George Bush" and basically just told me to get going.


But whatever the political situation, what relevance does it have for us, as the general public? This was a nice discussion I had with two other people at the bar another day. We were commenting on the chilly relations between the US and Russia, but said that it makes no difference to us. We all just want to live in peace, do our work, live our lives, and that regular people just want to be friends with each other regardless of whatever nonsense is going on between governments, which has no bearing on us. What relevance does this scuffle over the missile defense program have to a few regular people chatting in a bar?

First week - Friday, 6/29

It was decided that on Fridays, in lieu of a lecture, we'd have an "airing of grievances" in English. The best part of this was as follows:

Andrew: "That first lecture, the economics one, that Nikita Maslennikov--"
Anna Maslennikova: "Yes, he is my husband"
Andrew: "--was absolutely great, I enjoyed it a lot!"

This was of course the lecture that I mentioned from Monday which no one really understood very well. After the laughter died down we more seriously discussed the difficulties including grammar, which evidently was a difficulty for all the groups.

After the meeting we had a tour around Peter and Paul Fortress, and inside the Peter and Paul Cathedral, which was nice, as it was something I didn't get to see very much (except insofar as it's a large landmark, visible from most of the city), and after the tour we went to a concert there by a male choir which I enjoyed. It was actually in a room inside the fortress wall (it was moved, to hilarious effect, at the last minute). It was packed, and as I left, they handed out these small laminated placards (the size on the order of a few postage stamps) which read "АНТРАКТ" / "ANTRAKT" in Latin and Cyrillic. I thought this was the name of the choir, until next week when we were at the theater, when I asked someone how to say "intermission," and, you guessed it, it's "antrakt" is Russian, at which point I realized that it was probably a reentrance ticket. Why they felt the need to write the Russian word in the Latin alphabet, rather than giving the English word, is beyond me.

First week - Tuesday, 6/26

Today we started our Russian-language classes; they run from 9:30 to about 1:15 in two 1:30 sections (пары). My first class was grammar; this went well, as everything was in Russian in spite of the fact that about half the group doesn't know any grammatical terms in Russian. We spent about 10 minutes figuring out that we were talking about adjectives (the teacher doesn't speak English, but rather only Russian and German, so we had to talk around everything that was unclear). I didn't learn much grammar (I'm quite familiar with adjectives by this point) but at least it was good practice in listening and speaking. We were given a handout on participles to read for the next class, so that at least held some promise. Of course, the handout (evidently from a textbook) was only mildly useful, as the excerpt explained everything about participles (types, endings) except when to use which type, which was kind of the important part.

The second class was phonetics, which was fairly interesting. We were given a booklet of songs (Не фонетика - песня! / "Not phonics - songs!"), each of which goes over some sort of phonetic device; this one was called "Shi-Zhi-Zhi". We listened and sang it to the tune of the teacher playing the guitar. The chorus goes "A zhuzhi zhuzhat: zhu zhu zhu zhu zhu" (The beetles are buzzing: zhu zhu zhu...etc) and so on. For me though, the hardest thing is rolling the "r" in various places.

After lunch, John Bailyn gave a lecture on Russian which was fairly interesting, and went over some interesting interactions between various letters vis-a-vis softness/hardness (e.g. in English: due vs. do have soft/hard 'd' sounds), and spelling rules.

After this lecture we watched a film (introduced by Timur, who introduced many films last year), called "Man with a moviecamera" which was a silent film which was sort of about everyday life. When that finished we split off and went to various restaurants; I went with the Sbarro group, not surprisingly.

Writing the English takes enough time, so I'll just skip the Russian journal entries

First week - Monday 6/25

On Monday we took a placement exam, obviously to determine into which groups we would be divided. Last year's test was a short one, maybe an hour or so (if that), but this one was a fairly grueling 3 hours, with 130 questions, including 3 listening sections (given via short video clips). Participles (причастие) were the last things we looked at (but only briefly) in class at home, but they were the main thing I remember not knowing here; it felt like half the questions involved them. The room was also hot, so all-in-all it was quite exhausting.

After that we had lunch, which was tough because they just brough a soup, salad and main dish (no choice) and I am very picky. This it "бизнесс-ланч" ("business lunch") is offered to us every day after morning classes (пары) but I've stopped bothering and go to another cafeteria in the building.

After lunch, we had a lecture given by Nikita Maslennikov, who had given a lecture last year in English (the "cannonball" lecture, if you were there). This year he gave a lecture on economics. It was in Russian: fast, terse, Russian, with lots of economic terms. This was hopeless for me to understand (and few others had much better luck). I was already sort of worn out from the test, and this didn't help. After that we were to have an excursion around the city but that didn't play out due to rain.

We're "obliged" (recommended) to keep a Russian journal, so here is that rendition of the day's events:
Сегодня мы написали эксамен, который был очень трудный. Вообше я знал мало о причастиях. Я очень устал, но после обеда (который мне не очень понравился, потому что, я, к сожелению - разборчив), у нас была лекция на русском языке по экономике. Этого было очень трудно понимать. Я очень устал. У нас было бы эксурсия, но она не состоялась, потому что, шёл дождь.