RUSSIA!!!

When foreigners come to Russia and comment how majestic and interesting the Trans-Siberian Railway is, Russians reply: “Yes, it is – for the first 8 hours…” Indeed it is true. After 52 hours of flying, three days of orientation, and 32 hours on the Trans-Siberian Railway, I finally arrived in my host city of Blagoveshchensk on the morning of Tuesday, September 1, 2009. I was warmly greeted by my host Rotary club, and then I was taken to the home of my host counselor, where I promptly fell asleep and subsequently lived for the first two weeks of my life in Russia.

My journey to Russia was unproblematic but could be described as one of the longest experiences of my life- especially the 14 hour, trans-Pacific flight to South Korea. I left Columbus excited and eager to face the year-long journey that was ahead of me. When I arrived in Chicago, I happened to run into MC Bones, who I had previously met at the Otterbein Outbound Orientation in Westerville. She was on her way to Croatia and it was nice to have her to talk to during my several-hour layover there. Once in LA, I met up with Laura Secor from Oregon, who was also going to Russia. We flew the rest of the way to Vladivostok together.
My first experience landing was interesting, but very Russian. On the runway, there were people on bikes, and soldiers with machine guns. They had us get off the plane and all load into a bus, which took about 10 minutes to get everyone on. The bus then proceeded to make a right turn, drive 10 feet, and stop, where we all disembarked.

At the airport, we at first could not find anyone there to meet us. We stood there for maybe 20 minutes with no one there to meet us, while taxi drivers kept asking to take us into the city (in Russian)… finally we found someone there for us. They didn’t know what we looked like, but they didn’t seem to be trying very hard to find us either.

We had a three-day orientation at a day camp on the Russian coast in Vladivostok. The beaches and coastline there are beautiful. Several local Rotarians and past exchange students were there for the three days to help. We met each other, went over rules, and they talked about culture shock and cultural differences. We spent one day having a picnic on a Russian island, and the US Consulate General in Vladivostok also came to talk to us. There were 4 Americans, a Brazilian, and a French girl. None of us had previously studied Russian, except for the Brazilian, who had had a year of study in the language. I was the only one there who had chosen Russia as their top country.

The Thursday after I arrived in Blagoveshchensk, I started my studies at Blagoveshchensk State Pedagogical University. There, I am studying Russian as a foreign language with the Chinese students who have come to Russia to study. Language classes here are different than in the US, as they are only taught in the foreign language you are learning, so my Russian teacher speaks only Russian to us. The classes are going well, and they ar helping me learn the language very quickly. There are not that many people here who speak English, so am am picking up the language very fast. It is kind of funny though, because people always look at me weird when they walk into my classroom and se me sitting with all the Chinese students because they think I am Russian.

For the first two weeks, I lived with the Patlays. Larisa Patlay is my host counselor, so living with them for a couple weeks allowed me to get to know them well. Then on September 15, I moved in with the Nazuruks, my first host family. They live further outside the city, but they are very nice. They own an advertisement agency here in the city, and Alexander, my host father, is also running for the Duma, or city council. Election day is coming up on October 11, so there are a lot of political ads. Two of the major political parties here are the “Communist Party of the Russian Federation” and “United Russia”.

Here, I have been walking or taking the bus everywhere, as they have a very good bus system. On one of the weekends, the Rotary club took me on a canoe trip on the Zeya river. We spent all day canoeing, eating, and enjoying the beautiful Russian countryside. The Russian countryside and nature is like nothing we have in the US. It is so beautiful, and even just their normal countryside and forests are comparable to some of the best national parks we have in the US.

Russian food is different. They eat a lot of soup, potatoes, meat, and sour cream, but they also like a lot of fresh and natural foods. They like blini (dipped in sour cream), pelmini (dipped in sour cream), soup (with sour cream in it), and sometimes just sour cream. They also drink a lot of tea… and I mean a lot. I probably have at least 5 or 6 cups of tea a day, every day. But the tea here is really good and I have grown to love it.

When I first started at the university, I started taking French as well, but I found it too difficult to study a foreign language in a different foreign country… plus there are no English-French dictionaries here. I have Russian classes at the university 6 days a week, and I study Russian at the university about 30 hours a week, not including homework and my own self study. Needless to say, I have been learning very fast, as when I arrived I could speak almost no Russian and now I am able to hold short conversations with people and pick up phrases and sentences when others are speaking. I am fitting in here very well. All of my friends and family here are very interested in the US and in my English. I have been teaching them some English and they are teaching me Russian. So far, I have gone to the movies, played billiards, gone shopping, visited a museum, and walked around the city many times with friends. I have learned how to cook Blini (like thin pancakes). I feel kind of… American though when they ask me how long it takes to walk from one end of my city to the other, and I can only tell them how long it takes to drive…
Luckily, there is not one McDonalds or Starbucks here, but they still have brands (such as Cadillacs, Reebok, and Addidas) that we have in America. There are also many malls and shopping centers, and even a Chinese market where one can buy stuff directly from “Made in China”. It is strange as you walk along Lenin Street and across Lenin square (the two places that seem to be in every Russian city) and can see China across the river.

In the winter, the river will freeze, as temperatures reach -30 to -40 degrees Celsius (They laughed at me when they asked me how cold it was in Ohio in winter and I replied that -10 (Celsius, about 5 degrees F) is the lowest it gets. They laughed even harder when after they asked if we get a lot of snow and I said yes we do, I pointed to somewhere below my knee indicating how deep our idea of “a lot” of snow is. Right now at the end of September, it is already getting cold. In the mornings, it is in the 30s (Fahrenheit), and there is already front on the ground. The first day of autumn was just a few days ago, but it is already starting to feel like winter.

Russians do a lot of things differently. Everyone lives in apartments, most Russian women wear heels (and are very beautiful), they don’t wear shoes in the house, and they hang dry their clothes and don’t use dryers. Some things I found out the hard way—such as the hot water faucet is on the right side and not the left, whistling in the house means that you have no money, and sometimes, they shut off the hot water supply for the entire city for a week for “repairs.” (Each building does not have its own hot water heater like we have in the US, their hot water is piped throughout the city from the cooling towers of the local power plant, which means that you get hot water fast, but you don’t want to drink it…) In addition, I have also found out that bears do not indeed roam the streets in Russia…

I have only been here a month, but all I can say is that Russia is amazing! There are things and people that I miss in the US, but I do not feel homesick. Whenever I start to feel like I just want to go home, I just remind myself how cool it is that I am living in Russia, and everything is fine.