November and other Interesting Stories

Well, right now, it seems like the only thing in Russia that isn’t frozen is the time. I have already lived here in Russia for almost three months, which means that already I am over a quarter of the way done with my exchange year. I still have eight months left in Russia, and a lot left to do and see, but even in these three short months I have lived here, I have already accomplished so much. The month of November went by particularly fast for me because half of the month was spent without school under quarantine. Although this slightly slowed my progress with the language, it allowed me almost three weeks of free time in which to work on other aspects of my Russian life.

A couple of weeks ago, I started attending the meetings of one of the many youth service groups in Blagoveshchensk, called TEMA. This group carries out various service projects around the city, including working with children, cleaning the city, and various other goodwill projects. It is a very friendly, energetic group of young people. I don’t understand everything at their meetings, but they help me with the language and tell me what I need to know. It’s not all work however. For example, this past Sunday, we all went ice skating together. This was the first time I have gone ice skating since I was very young, so I had pretty much forgotten how to skate. At first I was pretty unbalanced, but by the end of the night, and several falls later, I had gotten the hang of it again. I really like ice skating, and it’s good exercise too, so its good that I still have all winter in which to go ice skating.

One of the other things I have been working on is establishing a Rotaract and an Interact club here in Blagoveshchensk. For those of you who don’t know, Rotaract and Interact are both service organizations which are extensions of Rotary for college students and high school students, respectfully. One of the Rotaract members from Khaborovsk emailed me with the idea of starting a Rotaract club here in Blagoveshchensk and asked if I would like to help. I, of course, said yes. I made a speech to my Rotary club (in Russian of course) about starting a Rotaract club here. There are still some mixed feelings about it from some of the Rotarians, but the president of the club supports it, and everything is already in motion to get the clubs started. A group of Rotaracters from Khabarovsk is arriving in Blagoveshchensk on Friday, and we will be giving presentations at one of the local universities and schools. We will try to gauge the interest in the program and look for potential members. There will also be a training session on Sunday for people who are interested in becoming officers and leaders in the club. I have been reading up on the two programs and outlining ideas for them. This will be an interesting project, and maybe by helping establish these clubs, I can use some of my previous experience with Rotary and in Interact club back home to help these clubs be sustainable and leave behind a sort of legacy. I am excited to help with this project.

Last Friday, I also went to the concert of Alexandr Vikolob, our music teacher at the university. He is a singer-songwriter, and we listened to him perform some of his own original music, and some covers of other songs. It was a great concert and I really enjoyed it. However, there is an even more interesting story about my adventure in getting there. The concert was held at ОКЦ, which is in the center of the city, and a little under a half an hour bus ride from my current host family’s apartment. The concert started at 7 PM, and I was supposed to meet some people there at 6:30, so I left my apartment at 6:00 to get there on time. Before I continue, however, let me quickly explain how the buses in Russia work. Of course there are the normal large city buses, but there are also маршрутные такси (or taxis that follow a route). They are basically big vans that can hold up to 13 passengers. They follow a specific route, but anywhere along the route, you can tell the driver to stop. They are faster than normal busses, and they come usually every 5 or 6 minutes. I was on the bus, and we were not quite halfway there, when suddenly the bus driver stopped at one of the bus stops and made everyone get off, and then drove away. I’m sure he explained why he did this, but I didn’t understand him. But no worries, I thought, the next bus will be here in about five minutes and I’ll just get on that one. Sure, I might be a little late, but Russians are usually not really concerned with being exactly on time, so they probably won’t notice. However, the next bus that went by was full. While I was waiting for the third bus to come, of course, a train had to go by and block the road from where the buses come for five or ten minutes. I had never seen a train go by there before, and of course, the first time had to be when I was already running late. Finally the train went by and the third bus came—also full, of course. I was beginning to panic, so I just got on the next bus that came. It was a different number with a different route that I had never been on before, but it would take me within a few blocks of my destination. I was sitting by the door, and at the stop before I needed to get off, someone didn’t close the door when they got off, so I closed it. But I guess I closed it a little too hard, as the door then got jammed, and the driver started yelling at me in Russian (which you don’t want to have happen). He took a crowbar, got out of the bus, and pried the door back open and shut it again, gently. Usually on the buses, you can’t get the doors to close all the way, so you have to close it hard, but I guess I picked the wrong bus to do that on. Once it was fixed, I apologized to the driver, and asked him to stop at the next stop. However, I think he was still mad at me, because he didn’t stop at the next one, and only stopped at the one after that because someone else has to get off. By now it was already past 6:45, so I proceeded to run the remaining three blocks to ОКЦ. I arrived at five till seven, out of breath, trying to explain to the others, who had been waiting for me since they arrived at precisely 6:30 (of course), why I was late. I think all they understood from me was something about a bus driver, a train, full, a different one, a door, and running. Oh well. I made it to the concert, and they forgave me. But I think the thing that I will remember more from that night is not the concert, but the bus ride there, which seems to remind me of some saying about “life’s not about the destination, but about the journey.” Right.

Well, now for the weather report on the 10. Already, it has reached -25 degrees Celsius (about -13 Fahrenheit for all you Americans). For those of you who don’t know, that’s cold. It’s cold enough that you don’t want to breathe through your mouth, but if you breathe through your nose, everything in your already-running nose instantly freezes. It’s an interesting sensation, but you get used to it after a while. I can’t wait to see what will happen when it reaches -40… But unlike in Ohio, where in the winter it snows and then melts, creating a big slushy mess, here in Russia, when the snow sticks, its here to stay, probably until the end of winter. It is constantly below freezing, and unlike in Ohio, they use sand on the roads instead of salting them. This means that everything isn’t destroyed by salt by the end of the winter, but the roads look really dirty. After our first major snow a few weeks ago, all of the streets in the city were literally sheets of ice for at least a week. The condition of the roads would be enough to shut everything down in Ohio, but here, nothing changed. Russian drivers may seem to be a little reckless at times, but they are also very skilled drivers (for the most part), and even driving on sheets of ice, managed not to create pile-ups at every intersection.

Now for my language report. As I said before, my progress slowed a little bit because we weren’t in school for a few weeks, but I have still made a lot of progress since my last report. Even though we weren’t in school, I was still speaking Russian all the time and watching Russian TV and whatnot. During our break, I watched more TV than I usually do. But even now, I am starting to understand more and more. I like watching Russian comedy shows when they are on. I am beginning to understand some of the jokes and laugh at them, which is a big step in my language progress. One of the things that I’ve found out is that they like to talk about Obama a lot, and also Hillary Clinton. Since we are right across the river from China, we also get a couple of Chinese channels broadcast. The name of their channels is “CCTV”, which is kind of interesting, and slightly ironic, considering the fact that there is still government censorship of the media in China, and they named their TV station “Closed Circuit” TV. One of their channels basically just shows the Chinese military doing drills and exercises all day. The other channel has some strange medieval-china soap opera-ish show, and also a cooking show titled “A Delicious Dish of Dog”. I’m not kidding. But anyway, back to my language. We are now back in school again, so I’m getting back into the swing of that. Also, the daily journal that I have been keeping since I arrived in Russia, I began to write completely in Russian, which is a big step and also good practice for me. I’ve also learned some interesting new Russian words and “Russian-isms.” For example, the Russian word for “roller coaster” is американские горки, which literally translates as “American hills”. Also they call the “at sign” (@) собака, which means “dog” in Russian. Some other interesting observations: раб means “slave” and работа means “work (as in your job)”; the Russian word мир means both “world” and “peace”; the verb пытать means “to torture” and the reflexive verb пытаться means “to try (literally- to torture one’s self)”. Also in Blagoveshchensk, there is a chain of malls called Хуафу “Huafu” which is owned by a Chinese company. I was told by my host mom (who studied Chinese) that Huafu in Chinese means “The wealth and prosperity of the Chinese Nation”. It s just kind of funny, because nobody here knows that they’re shopping at a mall named after the wealth and prosperity of China. Also, the three different “Huafus” in the city are named “Big Huafu”, “little Huafu”, and then, of course, there is “heavenly Huafu”. I just found this kind of humorous. I continue to get more comfortable and automatic with the language every day. I can now have conversations with people on the phone. I have begun to think in Russian, I am also now sometimes having dreams with Russian words and sentences in them.

Everything is still going great here in Russia, and I am still not homesick. I have been in contact with some of the other current exchange students from our district, and who are also in Russia right now, and it is always fascinating to hear about how their lives are going. We are still just now entering the beginning of winter, and I have many cold months ahead of me. But I think that if I can survive this Siberian winter fine, I’ll be able to make it through any other challenge in front of me. It still almost seems surreal that I am actually doing this. Molly McKinney, who was an exchange student to Germany last year, told me two days before I left for Russia, that once I return to the States, the past year will just seem like a dream. It already is like a dream, but a good dream, one that I don’t want to wake up from—at least for another eight months…

PS- today is Thanksgiving! The only reason I remembered is because on the news this morning it showed Obama doing his presidential turkey ceremony at the white house.

I have uploaded new pictures from the past month. I have created a second picasa album for these as each album can only hold 500 pictures. You can see these new pictures by clicking on the slideshow for my first album and then clicking on the link to view all of my albums. The second album is titled "russia pictures part 2". I have also uploaded some more artistic photos.

Russian Post... maybe it would have been faster if they walked it here

Well, today, Saturday, the package that my parents sent to me five weeks ago arrived. Five weeks! But I was lucky. They said it usually takes about 2 months from the US. Here in Russia, they don't deliver the package to your door, but they deliver a notice to your mailbox that you have to go to the post office to pick it up. And it is a Russian tradition that whenever you receive one of these notices that you got a package from home, you have to dance to get it. So I did a little jig. Actually picking up the package was surprisingly easy though. We just went to the closest post office, gave them the notice, and signed a piece of paper. I havent opened the package yet, but I think it contains the much needed autumn warm clothes that I needed a month ago that will be very useful now that it is sub-zero and snowing. Haha. But I was really excited to receive the package. The reason that the government post is so slow here is that all mail that comes into and leaves the country has to be processed through Moscow, which is on the opposite side of Russia. DHL could have had it here in 2 weeks, but it would have cost about $400 I think. So it was worth waiting, and now that I know that my packages wont dissapear into a black hole or fall off the truck somewhere between Moscow and Blagoveshchensk on a deserted stretch of siberian highway, I wont have to worry for five weeks the next time my parents decide to send me something. Thanks parents! (PS if you send me another package now, it might arrive by the holidays...)

UPDATE: I opened the package and somehow my parents knew that it wouldnt arrive until winter so they sent me a lot of warm winter clothes. I really loved getting the package and thank you a bunch for sending it! All these warm clothes will really help.

Thanks a lot, H1N1!

Quarantine. It's what all of out schools have been doing for the last 2 and a half weeks. There was a large breakout of the flu in Blagoveshchesnk, and therefore, all the schools in the city, including my university, closed on October 28, and will not reopen until the 16th of November. At first it was just the normal flu. Then ther were a few dozen confirmed cases of swine flu here in my city. So I have been without school for over two weeks now. But I havent gotten sick yet, so I guess the quarantine worked. It was just kind of strange to see everyone walking around in surgical masks everywhere. But then I found out that it was strange for the Russians too, as this is the first time that they have ever worn surgical masks in public too. But don't worry, it's quieting down now, and I'll be starting back at the university on Monday.
Meanwhile, I have been busy, still learning Russian, celebrating halloween (which still isnt really big in Russia-- when we walked around in the streets all dressed up, most people just looked at us funny), and working on starting a Rotaract club here in Blagoveshchesnk. So I've been staying busy.

(The newspaper headline is "Swine or not Swine?")