Exploding refrigerators

So Wednesday evening, I went to my choir class at the university at 6 PM. When I entered the building, I showed my pass to the lady at the front desk

(Now let me first tell you about these passes... I got back to Blagoveshchensk on April 14, and on April 15, I started back at the university. As I walked into the university that morning and started to walk though the turnstile, a big, calloused hand hit me in the chest and stopped me in my tracks. "Pass" said the big security guard in military uniform whose hand had just stopped me. "What pass?" I said, a little annoyed, as I was already late coming in. "Your student pass. You need a pass to get in."

"Listen," I said, "I've been coming here every day for the last seven months and no one has ever asked me for a pass before!" (Plus I don't have a pass or any kind of student ID from the university). He just pointed to a notice on the wall next to the entrance. I read it. "Starting April 15, all students will be required to show their student passes to gain admittance to the building." Oh crap. Well today was April 15, and I didn't have a pass. "I was out of town for a month," I explained, "but I could call my teacher and have her explain that I'm a student here." And I started to pull out my phone, but by this time I was already holding up a line of people behind me, and he just said "Go, go... but get a pass as soon as you can!" So I got through, and asked my teacher about getting one, but she said that it would take a few days. Apparently, they started requiring passes because of the terrorist bombings in the Moscow metro that happened while I was in Moscow. So for the next few days while I was waiting for my pass to be done, I got in the building either whenever one of my friends working as entrance security, letting me though with a handshake and a "privyet", or by one of my friends seeing me in the entrance lobby and ushering me though, saying that I am a student, despite the protests of the old lady that sits in the booth at the turnstile.)

So anyway, I went to the university for my music class on Wednesday at six o'clock, and as I was walking through the turnstile, flashed my pass at the old lady in the booth. "You don’t need to show me your pass..." she said. "Thank God that we don't have to go through that hassle anymore" I thought. She continued "... because they cancelled all the classes because of the fire. There's nowhere for you to go." "What?!" I exclaimed, "what happened?" "There was a fire here a little earlier. Now go home!“ she ordered me with her stern old-lady voice. She wasn’t going to tell me any details, so I just left and walked back home. When I arrived the next day, all of the floors, walls, chairs, and desks in my corpus were covered with a layer of black soot, none of the lights were working, and there was the lingering smell of smoke in the hallways. I learned that on the second floor, in one of the labs, a refrigerator filled with chemicals caught on fire and exploded. It blew out a couple windows, covered everything in soot, and knocked out some of the electricity, but no one was hurt and only one or two rooms were damaged (thanks to, in part, the fact that the whole building is basically built of 2 foot thick layers of concrete).

The next morning there were brigades of students armed with buckets of water, rags, and bright yellow plastic gloves roaming the sooty halls, trying to clean everything up. It was an interesting experience, the result of which our teacher decided to conduct class out on the street, which meant that we walked around the city and talked in Russian for a few hours.

The smell of rain

This morning I woke up with my alarm at 6:55 AM, and the first thing I noticed was the smell of rain from outside. I jumped out of bed and looked out onto the street nine floors below. Sure enough, the streets were damp, and a light morning drizzle was underway. Now for those of you reading back home in Ohio, rain probably doesn't seem that exciting, as we seem to have it all the time, but here, rain is one of the things that I have missed the most. Ever since the snow started falling at the end of October, I have been waiting for the next time that I would see rain again. As we got deeper into winter, and the frost and layers of ice on the street got deeper and deeper, I just wished for a spring rain. So I had a long time to wait, but they told me that spring will be here in the end of March or so. Ok, that's a little longer than back home, but not to worry.

However, I found out that this year Russia had one of the longest on snowiest winters on record for a long time. When I returned to Vladivostok from Moscow (where it was +20 and already blooming), I was reminded of this fact. April 13 in Vladivostok, it snowed. The middle of April is too late for winter, even by Russian standards.

Within two days, I boarded a train and took it all the way back to Blagoveshchensk by myself. This was an okay experience; I traveled in a coupé (a room with four bunks and a table) with an older couple from Blagoveshchensk, and some other random guy that didn't really talk much. Except for the stuffiness of the train by the end of the 34-hour journey, it was a pleasant experience. It was nice that they trusted me enough and thought that I was able enough to travel by myself on the train. It is almost a compliment that they know my language skills are good enough to cope with traveling alone for that distance. It's over 900 miles from Vladivostok to Blagoveshchensk by train, which would be like traveling from Cleveland, OH to New Orleans, LA. On the way to Blagoveshchensk, the train stopped in Khabarovsk for an hour and 15 minutes, and a couple of my friends from the Rotaract Club of Khabarovsk came to meet me at the train station. They brought me balloons, and we walked around a little and talked. I would love to come back to Khabarovsk in June to visit for a few days, as I've heard that it is a very beautiful and interesting city. As I boarded the train again, my friends danced for me (and the rest of the amused passengers on the train) for a full ten minutes before the train finally pulled away. The conductor in our wagon told me "What fun friends you have!"

So I arrived in Blagoveshchensk on a Thursday morning. I had been gone from my city for over a month (since March 11), and I didn't know what I should expect. My host mom met me at the station, and drove me back to our apartment. As we drove through the streets that I had not seen for such a long time, I (to my relief) saw that there was no more snow or ice on the ground here. That being said, it was still cold (like around freezing). Spring hadn't started yet, nothing was growing, and the whole city was just brown. Brown, leafless trees, brown dirt and sand in the streets left over from winter, brown grass. Not quite what I had hoped, but nonetheless better than all white (although that might have been cleaner).

With the melting of the snow and 3-inch layers of ice also came the unveiling of all the stuff that had been covered and frozen in time for the last six months since the beginning of winter. Beer bottles, shards of broken glass, melted piles of dog poop, used needles, and thousands upon thousands of cigarette butts appeared on the street. And it's still laying there. Sometimes I notice that someone has swept some of the trash into a pile, but the wind just scatters it again, and people keep adding their collection of fresh cigarette butts to the ground.

I have started back in with my choir group at the university. These are the times that I really look forward to all week. When I start at Georgetown next fall, I have decided that I want to join an a cappella group do some singing as a side thing. I have also continued with my piano lessons and have recently been learning all the different chords and how to do harmony.

Since I have been back, I have also been to a couple concerts/performances. I went with my host mom to a performance of a local, but very talented dancing ensemble. It was an amazing performance. I also went to an "International Youth Concert" which featured singers, dancers, rappers, and other performing groups from Russia, Azerbaijan, China, and Israel. They all performed traditional dances and songs, and it was amazing to see a collection of all these different cultures. There was even a French rapper who performed.

Last weekend I went with my second host family to their "dacha" or summer cottage, outside the city. It is a small shed and plot of land where they grow fruits and vegetables, grill "shashlik", and relax. Even though it wasn't green yet, it was a warm, sunny day, and it was almost like paradise to relax out in nature, do some raking and yard work, and eat delicious food. We ate grilled meat, drank tea brewed over an open fire, and also ate "ukha" (with the stress on the last syllable - ukha with the stress on the first syllable means "ear", and we certainly didn’t eat that) Anyway ukha is a type of soup made out of fish, but not quite. They asked me if I knew what ukha was, and I said "yeah, it's soup made with fish." But they said "No, soup made with fish is soup made with fish. Ukha is ukha" I didn't really see the difference, so they explained it to me, and from what I understood, ukha is soup made with fish cooked in a vat over an open fire at your dacha. So there it is.

So that brings me back to today. It's raining. But it's really only a drizzle. And while most people would say this with disdain and go outside with an umbrella. I am walking in the rain, getting wet, and being as happy as can be.

My trip to the Two Capitals of Russia

I was in Moscow and St. Petersburg for a total of 11 days and finally got to see the “European” part of Russia. Each day that we spent in these two cities was different, and we saw a lot of Western Russia. I roke it down into days, partly so I remember everything we did, and partly so that you can follow the action better and get a better picture of the “two capitals of Russia”.

Day 1: Arrival in Moscow

We had just flown across Russia, nine and a half hours from Vladivostok to Vnukovo Airport in Moscow. When we landed, we found out that while we had been in the air, there had been two suicide bombings in the Moscow metro. Instead of fearing for our safety, the first thing that we all worried about is what time our parents back home would be waking up and seeing that there had been two explosions in Moscow, the day that we were supposed to be arriving. We were all okay, of course, but we wanted to contact home to make sure that our parents weren’t worrying about us. After we retrieved all our bags, we piled into a private bus and drove into Moscow in the middle of five-o-clock traffic. We finally made it into the center, drove around a little, stopping at the main campus of MGU (Moscow State University). We then drove to the Arbat (a pedestrian street with shops that is closed to traffic). We walked around the Arbat for a while, found a McDonalds, and ate my first Big Mac since I left for Russia. We then found an internet café and were able to use that to email our parents at home and say that we were okay. Then we went to the train station, where we boarded our train for St. Petersburg, which left at 11PM.
[picture: me, Gabi (US), Margeaux (France), and Joao (Brazil) at the airport in Vladivostok]

Day 2: Tired

Our train arrived in St. Petersburg at 6:45 AM. We were all tired, dirty and wanted to take showers (we had just flown across 7 time zones, and then took a night train ride with little sleep and no showers). We just wanted to go to our hotel, but we were told that we would be going on excursion until afternoon. The sun was just rising over Petersburg, and despite my sleepiness, I couldn’t help noticing the beauty of the city from out the window of the bus. It has a lot of low buildings, rivers and canals, and I couldn’t help comparing it to Paris or even DC, with all of their historic architecture. After we ate breakfast, we went to see the Petropavlovsk Fortress, some statues and monuments, and an old Russian battleship anchored in the harbor. We went to a café, went to the “House of Books” (a large bookstore), where I bought some books. We returned to the hostel where we were staying (located in the middle of St. Petersburg). We took showers, relaxed, and bought some food from a nearby supermarket, which we ate for dinner.
[picture: me standing along the banks of teh still-frozen Neva river, with the Hermitage Museum in the background]

Day 3: Peterhof
Today we went to go see Peterhof, which was a big palace outside of St. Petersburg, built by the last emperor of Russia. In the summer, they have amazing fountains that all run off gravity, but they were still all covered from the winter. I also found out from my parents today that Georgetown is giving us $25,000 in financial aid for next year! I was so excited when I found out, as this will help us a lot. Despite my tiredness, I decided to start a new approach of always being positive and finding the bright side of things. Have to walk a long way? Good exercise. Tired from the flight? That means I sleep great tonight! I’m in St. Petersburg with my friends, what more can I ask for? It’s really nice to be in a good mood, so I’m going to use it for the rest of my last three months of exchange so I really enjoy them.

Day 4: More points of interest

Today we say Yusupov Palace. It was in the center of the city, and very interesting. I liked it better than Peterhof, and it was where Rasputin was killed. We also saw the Isaac Cathedral. It was Holy Thursday today, and it was interesting to see. Then we saw the Church of Spilt Blood. In the evening all the exchange students went to a Chinese restaurant together.
[picture: Pachera (thailand), Ethan (US), and I along a canal in Peter]



Day 5: Hoofing it

Our excursion today was on foot. We walked along one of the many canals, went to Kzanskiy Cathedral. Then we went to the Hermitage Museum. It is a huge museum (one of the largest in the world). It the square outside the museum, they have a tall pillar that stands without foundation of any kind. It is the only of its kind in the world. For dinner, we ended up buying food from one of the local supermarkets and bringing it back to the hostel. It was cheap, and it was delicious (especially the lavash – like a big long tortilla that costs < $1)
[picture: me with lavash]


Day 6: Last day in Peter
In the morning we went to Catherine’s Palace, and then went to the train station to drop our bags off at the luggage locker. Then we had the rest of the day, until 9PM, free to walk around. I went with Ethan (American), Pachera (Thailand), and Mauricio (Columbia) to go walk around. We walked around Nevskiy Prospect, the main avenue in St. Petersburg. We watched people. We went to a music store, McDonalds, and saw all the expensive cars parked outside the Grand Hotel of Europe. Basically, we just walked around for about 7 hours straight. But it was a great way to spend our last day in Peter, just walking around the streets, watching the people. That for me is sometimes even better than doing a tour-guided group. We boarded the train, and set off towards Moscow once again at 11 at night.

Day 7: Moscow in the Morning

Our train arrived at 6:02 AM. From our red-eye arrival, we all packed onto a private bus right away. It was Sunday morning, the sun was just rising, and it was still cool and damp in the streets. We drove through the almost empty Moscow streets (enjoy it, they said, while you can—Sunday morning will be the only time that the streets are this empty). We stopped at different areas around Moscow to walk around for 15 minutes at a time and then move on the next spot. We saw some monuments (see picture of me with famous Russian actor), the home of MosFilm (think Russian Hollywood), Moscow City (a development of brand-new, high-tech, bright and shiny office, residential, and shopping skyscrapers along the bank of the river), and Victory Park. We went to go eat some breakfast, and then we went to Red Square. Red square actually isn’t really red at all, except for the walls of the Kremlin. The reason that it’s called “red square” is because the current Russian word “red” krasniy, in old Russian meant “beautiful”, which is now krasiviy. Anyway, we waited in line for about half an hour, and then were finally admitted to the Mausoleum where the (real) mummified corpse of Lenin is kept. No one really knows if he is real anymore, or if he is just a wax dummy. Either way, it was serious business. You can’t even take electronics into the mausoleum, you have to go through a metal detector and security check, and there are guards that stand on every corner on the inside, and you are not allowed to stop, talk, or wear hats. They honestly probably have better security for this corpse than they did at the airport on the way here. So I saw Lenin. He actually looked pretty good for having been a dead body for almost 90 years, but his complexion was a little, ahem, waxy.
We finally got back to the hotel, showered, rested, and then got hungry. All the restaurants around were expensive, so we just went to a supermarket and bought food there to last us the week. We bought cereals, water, bread, cheese, meat, juice, snacks, pastries, and other stuff.

Day 8: A cemetery, GUM, and a really good cheeseburger
In the morning, it was raining a little, and we went to a beautiful cemetery where famous Russians like Chekhov, Yeltsin, and Molotov (who invented the Molotov cocktail) are buried. After that, we went back to Red square, went inside the church with the big colorful spires, and then were free. I went with Gabi (one of the other Americans) to GUM, or Glavniy Universalniy Magazin (Or Main Department Store). It is a HUGE shopping mall located right on red square. It is beautiful inside (see picture), and has a lot of expensive shops (some were so expensive that they didn’t even put price tags on their products… if you have to ask, you can’t afford it). After being in there for a while, we wandered a little around the streets and happened to find a “Steak Café”. Being Americans, and seeing that they also had hamburgers made with steak meat, we had to go in and eat lunch. We were served some of the most delicious cheeseburgers I have eaten in a long time (it’s the first real burger I’ve had since America). And it only cost about $11 which isn’t bad considering it came with fries and is right in the middle of Moscow, where everything is really expensive. That evening back at the hotel, all of the exchange students reserved the spa area in the basement of the hotel. They had a swimming pool, a Jacuzzi, a sauna, and billiards. It was a fun and relaxing way to spend 2 hours.

Day 9: the metro a week after and the Gulag museum
So today was another walking day, but we didn’t just walk, we also used the metro. Some of the students were a little concerned about using it a week after there were 2 suicide bombers on it, but they reassured us saying that “you can also die at any time by a brick falling off a building and hitting you in the head, so don’t be afraid.” Which is true.
So we went on the metro, and there was actually so much security and such that we didn’t really have to worry. We went inside the actual Kremlin, and saw the almazniy fond, where they have a hug collection of diamonds. There they have the second largest diamond in the world, and a lot of other precious stones, gold, and platinum. Then we walked around inside the Kremlin, saw all the churches there, and saw the big tsar bell and tsar cannon. After that, Gabi and I decided that we wanted to go see the Gulag history museum. No one else, especially the Russians, wanted to go with us to see that. So we went, got lost a little, and finally found it. It was very interesting, and very sobering at the same time. There were gulags all over Russia, including, I found out, in my host city of Blagoveshchensk. They had artwork, artifacts, and information. And the museum only opened a few years ago, so this is all relatively new. It was a really nice warm day out (+20 C), and I spent part of the evening sitting outside in the park near our hotel without a coat or sweatshirt, enjoying the nice weather.
[picture: self-explanatory]

Day 10: Tsaritsino and an old acquaintance
Today, we went to Tsaritsino, which is a palace/park compound outside the city. The grounds themselves were very beautiful, and the palace was as well. The palace had sat as ruins for about 200 years, and they finally within the last decade or so decided to rebuild it. So it was all finished just a few years ago, so everything inside was new. When we were back at the hotel, Mauricio, the Columbian exchange students, was talking to one of his cousins through Skype. He said that his cousin had actually been in Ohio a couple years ago through Rotary youth exchange. I started talking to him, and found out that he lived in Sunbury and Galena, right next to Westerville! I asked him when he was there, and he said in 2007-2008, which was when I was preparing to do my short term exchange to France. I asked him what his name was, and he said “Juan Pablo”! I knew this guy! We went to all the exchange weekends together 2 years ago. Of course, the first thing he asked me was “what the hell are you doing in Russia?!” It’s so funny how small the world is sometimes. That night, I went with all the exchange students to the Jazz club “BB King”. It was a fun way to celebrate our last night in Moscow.

Day 11: Tretyakov Gallery and going back home (to Vladivostok)
This morning, we packed up everything, left the hotel, and piled onto a bus. We first went to the Tretyakov Gallery, a famous art museum in Moscow. After that, we drove to the airport, went through security and such, and then boarded the plane back to Vladivostok.