Christmas in Russia

Merry Christmas Everyone! December 25 has come and gone, but I still have not had Christmas in Russia yet. Christmas in Russia is on January 7, because the Russian Orthodox Church follows the Julian calendar, and not the Gregorian calendar. But even then, New Years in Russia is bigger than Christmas. That is because during Soviet times, there was no Christmas. But New Years is when everyone gives gifts here. They still put up Christmas trees though, but instead of “Santa Claus” they have “Ded Morroz” or “Grandfather Frost.” And then I also heard that there is “Old Christmas” on January 14, but I don’t really know what that is yet.

So it has been a long time since my last post, almost a month, but a lot has happened during this past month. I departed the United States four months ago today. It is strange to think that I have already been here for four months. But it is also strange to think that I have been here for only four months. Four months is already a long time—already longer than most people spend away from home in a foreign country. It is already four times longer than I spent in France last summer. I am already over one third of the way done with my exchange. I have lived four months in a foreign country- and that’s amazing in itself. The even more amazing thing will be that I will be doing this for another six or seven months. I am still just at the tip of the iceberg.
But even during the last month a lot has happened. I am now living with my second host family, the Murzakovs. I was supposed to move on Dec. 15, but that was during the week, so I ended up moving on Sunday the 13th. It was hard packing up everything, mostly because since I arrived, I have added a lot of bulky winter clothes to my wardrobe, and I could barely fit everything into my bags. When I left the Nazaruks, I left them with some gifts- an American flag, and also a photo album that I made with pictures I took here in Russia. They really liked it. I now live with the Murzakovs. They are not Rotarians, but friends of the club, and their oldest daughter, Anna, is now a youth exchange student in Michigan. They live on the 9th floor of an apartment building right in the heart of the city. This is a great change from my last host family, because now I can walk everywhere, and I don’t need to take the bus half an hour into the city every day. My host parents, Yuri and Lena, own a couple of perfume shops in the city. They also have a younger daughter, Ira, who is still in school. They also have a dog, Masha, and a cat, Jessica, who looks like a sphinx, and has no hair. They are all very nice and they are a great family. I have my own bedroom here.

Last Saturday, I also did something a little crazy, kind of fun, very Russian, and completely cold. One of the Rotarians here owns a banya which is right next to the river Amur. For those of you who don’t know, when you do Russian Banya, you sit in the hot Banya for a while, and then you go into a pool of cool water, or if outside, you rub snow all over yourself, and then get back in the banya and repeat. Well I topped both of those methods. Once we sat in the banya for a while, we then ran onto the frozen river, and dunked ourselves into a hole in the ice. There was a ladder on the edge of the whole, and I climbed down until I was up to my chest in the river water, took a deep breath, and then dunked my head under water, blew out all the air and opened my eyes under water. I then did that four times in a row. The air temperature that day was -10 or -15 with the wind, and the water temperature was a toasty +3 degrees. It was still just about the coldest thing I have ever done. It was one of those once-in-a-lifetime experiences, but I’m glad I did it. As part of the tradition, I also drank some of the cold river water, kissed the flag of the sports club of the people who do crazy stuff like this all winter, and kissed the metal ice-breaker pole (my lips almost got stuck to it).

On that same day in the evening, we had our Rotary New Years Party. It was at a Ukrainian restaurant, and there was good food, and Ded Morroz came and led the festivities. It was a great time, and a lot of the Rotarians gave me gifts for New Years. The club bought me a new pair of ice skates so I can go skating all winter. They also bought me a pointy hat made of wool with a red star on it (you use it for banya, so when it gets really hot, it shields head and face from the super hot air), and also got other gifts like a photograph of a statue, signed by the Rotarian who made that statue. It was really nice that they gave me all those gifts.

At the university last week, it was the anniversary of the English faculty, so all the students in the English faculty did a lot of presentations recreating stories from famous British and American writers and playwrights. They invited me to sit on the jury and judge the presentations. It was actually really good, and it was funny to see famous English works, such as “Fall of the house of Usher” or “Romeo and Juliet” acted out, but with a twist of Russian humor. This week, I went back to the group and made a presentation to them (in English) about Rotary, Rotaract, and a little about myself.

The language. I continue to get better and better each day. I am now starting to think in Russian, and sometimes if I try to think of English, a Russian word pops into my head first. My host parents also speak a little English, so sometimes when I don’t know a word, I can ask them and they know. But I am able to speak more fluidly now, and also add emotion into my Russian. I’m not translating things in my head anymore, I just know the idea of the word or I can just picture the object in my head without thinking of it in English first. I am also learning words and phrases that I am having a hard time translating into English. The meaning and connotations are perfectly clear to me in Russian, but I can’t always find a word or even a phrase in English to describe it. It’s strange. I’m also starting to be able to read stories from books and understand them. In my opinion, being able to read in a foreign language is one of the most rewarding things. I like reading anyway, but reading in a foreign language is great, because when you read, you actually have to form the picture of what’s going on in the story in your head, and if you are able to play this story in your head from reading a foreign language, it means you are really starting to “get” it. I also got mistaken for a Russian the first time since I arrived. We were at the banya, and I said something about living in the US, and some guy asked me where in the US I lived. I said that I lived in Ohio, but that I was born in California. He said “Oh, you were born there! I thought you just visited there. I though you were Russian.” I think that being mistaken for a native of whatever country you are living in is the greatest compliment that an exchange student can get. It is also kind of funny when people ask me how many years, or from what age I have studied Russian, and I say “four months.”

I also went to the movies a couple times in the past month. I went to go see the new movie “2012” about the end of the world. I was able to understand a lot of it.
I also went to go see the movie “Avatar” in 3D. If you have not yet seen this movie, I recommend that you go see it. It not only has amazing visuals and special effects, but also has a good story. If you are an exchange student, or will be an exchange student, I especially recommend that you see this movie. It has a theme of moving to a new world, trying fit in with a new culture and balance it with your old culture at the same time, and also of eventually becoming a part of and fitting into your new culture. I recommend that exchange students go see it. You will like it.
I also heard that back in the US, there is a boondock saints 2, and that it was better than the original (which I find hard to believe), but unfortunately, that movie is not here in Russia, so I’ll have to wait until I get back to see it.

On Christmas Eve, I decided to cook some spaghetti for my host family. I had never cooked spaghetti on my own before, but I had watched and helped my parents make it many times back home in the US. I used onion, red and yellow pepper, garlic, ground meat, tomatoes, tomato paste, sugar and red wine. I let it cook for a few hours. It was delicious. I even made some garlic bread to go with it. It was kind of funny, because my spaghetti sauce was pretty international, made with ingredients from many different countries. There were vegetables probably from China, Iranian tomato paste, Russian “farsh” which is like ground meat made from beef, pork and other stuff, spaghetti noodles made in Italy, and some sort of Scandinavian cheese to top it off. Then on Christmas day, I just slept in, because I decided not to go to school (yes we had class on Christmas day). That evening, six of the Rotarians took me to the Banya again, and we relaxed there, and then we went to a restaurant afterwards. That was about as much as I celebrated Christmas, but it was nice.

According to the statistics, I should be experiencing the lowest point of my exchange right now, being around Christmas. But I am at one of the highest points right now. It seems like thinks just keep getting better and better. If I’ve already made it through the hardest uphill part of my exchange, things can only get better, as it will be all downhill from here on out.
December 21 was the winter solstice, the darkest day of the year, and the official start of winter. On the 21st, the sun rose at 9 AM, and then set again at 4PM. It was our shortest day of the year, only 7 hours of daylight. However in the summer, I heard that on the longest day of the year, the sun will rise at around 4:45 AM and set around 10:15 PM – 17.5 hours of daylight.
But the darkest gay of the year has already come and gone. It can only get brighter from here on out…