An ending, part 2

On June 7, I said goodbye to my host city of Blagoveshchensk for the last time. Most of the day I spent finishing up my packing, taking occasional breaks to go outside and walk around the streets and along the river, taking in the sights one last time. Finally, by 9 PM, I was ready, and at 9:30, we got in a taxi and went to the train station. I was leaving Blagoveshchensk to go to Vladivostok for a Rotary conference, so there were some Rotarians traveling with me. But when we got to the train station, many more Rotarians were there, and also a group of Rotaracters, my friends, were there. In all, there had to have been around thirty people who came to say goodbye to me. My friends and previous host families were there. We took a lot of photos, they gave me some last minute gifts, and we said our goodbyes. While we were saying goodbye, I didn't cry, although I had wanted to. My second host family, the Murzakovs, whom I really liked and got attached to, was there.

One of the Rotarians, who had always helped me out during the year, gave me a small souvenir, with an engraving on the back. When I showed one of the other Rotarians this gift, he was surprised, because he said that the other Rotarian is usually kind of reserved and doesn't connect a lot with people, but that I must have really connected with him and been seen as almost like a son to him. When I boarded the train, I stood by the window and looked out at all of them. I sang them a verse out of the Russian song "Katusha".

As the train finally started moving, my friends started running after me, alongside the train, shouting their goodbyes, with the Rotarians and host families watching from a distance.

I didn't realize what all these people meant to me until the train had rolled out of the station, and the clickety-clack of the train moving into the darkness replaced the departing shouts and goodbyes of the friends with whom I had spent the last 9 and a half months of my life.

Standing in the corridor of the train, staring out of the now dark window, the full heavy reality of my departure suddenly crashed down upon me, as if falling from a great height. It hit me so unexpectedly, and I let out a loud sigh. It was a sigh of sadness, of relief, of pain -- the kind of sigh that you let out when you are tired after having just put down a heavy burden that you have carried a long way. It was a sigh that one may use to break the silence, when he doesn't know exactly what to say, even though he wants to say it to somebody, to anybody, to share what he is feeling. It is a sigh that sums up all his emotions, in a single expulsion of breath.

I looked over at Larisa, my first host mother, who was also standing in the corridor of the train with me. She also looked back at me, and just smiled.

An ending, part 1

Tomorrow, I am leaving my host city of Blagoveshchensk. Forever. It still hasn't really hit me, that I will no longer walk along the streets or see the people who have become so familiar to me in the last 10 months. But maybe that is because of the fact that although I am soon departing my host city, I still have about three weeks left in Russia. Tomorrow I will be boarding a train for Vladivostok, where there will be a Rotary conference, and where I will be living for the last three weeks of my Russian life. Many adventures and old friends await me in Vladivostok, and while I am excited to go there, I also can't help thinking about the last few weeks I have spent here since I got back from China.

Summer has finally arrived in Blagoveshchensk, complete with daily temperatures above 30 degrees Celsius. I have been trying to take full advantage of this warm weather by getting outdoors as much as I can. Our classes at the university have already finished, so now I am free every day. The past couple of weekends, I have been spending a lot of time at different dachas or barbeques. Two weeks ago, I went to the dacha of one of the Rotarians, where we ate delicious shashlik, walked along the Zeya river, played ping-pong, relaxed in a Russian banya, and discussed deep philosophical issues. The next day, I went horseback riding with a different group. We rode all day, fording rivers, along the beach, through green grassy fields that moved with the blowing wind, and along small ridges and hills. By the end of the day, my whole body was shaken and sore, I was sunburnt, and I had had such a great time.

I have also had some time to see a few more concerts. A few days after having gotten back from China, I went to go see Bi-2 in concert. Bi-2 is a Russian rock band, and I thoroughly enjoyed their music and the concert. This past weekend, I also went to a smaller concert of a local rock band called Perekryostok, which means "intersection". It was held in a small bar, it was loud, and it was also a great concert. Last weekend I also went to another barbeque with Rotary out in a park, where they welcomed two new members into their club. I helped out with the grilling, and we had great food and a fun group of people.

On Thursday, two Americans arrived in Blagoveshchensk, and came to live with my host family here in our apartment. Clyde and Vivian are an older couple from Alaska, who are Rotarians and will be going to the Vladivostok conference with us. My host parents speak some English, but I have also been translating for the Americans. It has been funny though. Russian has become almost more automatic for me now than English, so sometimes when I am translating something for Clyde and Vivian, I will start talking at them in Russian and not realize it. And of course they have no idea what I'm saying.

On Thursday night, I did my farewell presentation for my Rotary club. We went to a Chinese restaurant, and I made a slide show with pictures from my entire exchange year. I talked in Russian for almost an entire hour. I told about my life here, I told jokes; I thanked them for everything they have done. They presented me with gifts, and I also gave them gifts. It was all very emotional, and I will be sad to leave them.

On Friday, I traveled to the Bureiskaya GES, which is a hydro-electric dam about four hours away from Blagoveshchenk. It was a long bus ride, but it was definitely worth seeing. We got to go inside the generator room, which is basically a big empty hall, except for six big generators protruding from the floor. The whole hall was filled with a low rumbling hum, and I reached down and placed my palm on the floor, and could feel the vibration of the entire station working, the water pouring down, and the generators spinning. It was one of those feelings that I will never forget.

That night, once I returned, I went to dinner with Alexander Udod and his wife. Alexander Udod was the Russian politician whom I taught about the American political system and political jargon before his month and a half long legislative exchange program in Washington DC. He recently returned and invited me to dinner to thank me and tell me about his experience. We went to an Armenian restaurant. I had never had Armenian food before, but it was really delicious.

But now I'm getting ready to leave, excited to go, but also sad at the same time. I just know that I'm going to make the most of what little time i have left.

Greg goes to China

So last week I returned from my great adventure in China. I traveled to three different Chinese cities (Heihe, Haerbin, and Beijing) for a week, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Not only was it my first time in China, but my first time in any Asian country. It was super interesting and I would love to go back some time.

So on the afternoon of Monday May 10, I went to the Russian travel agency from which we were leaving. I traveled to China with a group of 12 Russian tourists. This meant that my trip to China was even more interesting, because I wasn't just seeing China as any old tourist, but from the point of view of a Russian tourist, complete with Russian commentary. When we had all piled onto the bus to go to the border control, our tour guide, Liza, told everyone on the bus that "This time we have a special tourist coming with us... an American!"

When we got to the border checkpoint to cross the river into China, Liza explained to all of us the procedure for going through customs, and told me that I would go first, because my situation is more difficult. You see, there is an agreement between the local Russian and Chinese governments that Russians don't need a Chinese visa to cross the border into Heihe, the city across the river. But I'm an American, so that means that I had to get a visa (and a fairly expensive one at that). So I went up to one of the desks and handed the customs agent my American passport. She kind of looked at me funny. I guess it isn't every day that Americans pass through Blagoveshchensk to go to China. She asked if I spoke Russian, and I said yes, and we started talking about random stuff as she stamped and evaluated all my documents. I got through the customs, and then we went out on the shore of the river to board the hovercrafts to cross the river. They use hovercrafts because not all of the underlying ice had melted yet, and it wasn't safe for ships to cross. But it was really interesting to ride in the hovercraft. So we crossed the river, and for the first time in eight and a half months, I got to see what my host city looks like from the other side of the river. Then we went into the Chinese customs, which wasn't as easy. I think this must have been the first time an American had passed through their border, because as soon as I handed my passport to the Chinese customs officer, her already stern-looking face became even sterner, and she said something in Chinese that sounded to me like "Oh, shit!" She started looking at my passport really carefully as if it were fake, and looked back and forth from my passport picture (which was taken over 4 years ago and really looks nothing like me) to my face. She called over one of her military-clad comrades, who took my passport into another room. Fifteen minutes later, he finally returned and waved me through.
So I had made it to China. Heihe is larger than Blagoveshchensk, but is not nearly as interesting. We all went to a big shopping center called "Hua Fu", and they let us walk around and shop for a couple of hours. Finally after 18 years of buying stuff "Made in China", I could see what it was all about and get it straight from the source. T-shirts in China are funny. The Chinese think that English is "cool", so they put it on their T-shirts, even if the English words on them don't really mean anything in particular. For example, I found a shirt that read "Me pimpstyle" and had a bunch of random other words in what looked like was Dutch. This shirt I found rather humorous, and actually ended up buying it for the heck of it.

That night after dinner, we went on the train station to take the overnight train to Haerbin. Now let me tell you, Chinese trains are pretty great. Now I know that no one back home cares, because Americans never travel by train, but having logged over 100 hours on Russian trains myself, I can judge. The Chinese trains have smooth rails that don't go "Clickety-clack" the whole way, they have air conditioning, they have TVs, carpets, and semi-decent toilets and washrooms (all of which Russian trains don't really have for the most part).

We arrived in Haerbin early the next morning. At 4 million inhabitants, Haerbin is a big enough city, with a lot of sights and things to do. We were only there for a day, but we did a lot. We got to ride a big ski-lift type thing over the Sungari River, and got a great view of the city. We went to the Haerbin "Polarland" where they have polar bears, penguins, seals, sharks, dolphins, and other seafood whatnot. After that, we went to the Siberian Tiger Park. We rode in a safari-type bus through the tiger land, and got to see some tigers up close and personal. There at the park, we also got to see a Liger (a lion and tiger mixed), which I had previously thought only existed as a joke from the film "Napoleon Dynamite". After that, we went to see a silk factory, and then we went to the Haerbin TV tower. At the top of the tower, the floor is made of glass, so you can look down at China 300 meters below you. It was cool. Later that night, we got on another train and made our way to Beijing.

The next morning, we arrived in Beijing and immediately went to go eat breakfast at... McDonalds of all places. As I was enjoying my Big Breakfast™, I looked out the window and enjoyed the view of a huge, modern and bustling city. With over 12 million inhabitants, Beijing is huge, and I hadn't seen anything lke it for a long time, even Moscow doesn't compare. As I sat there, I thought about the impression that this city is making on the Russians I was with. I have traveled a bit, and I have been in big, modern cities before, but even for me, Beijing was an amazing city. I couldn't even imagine what was going through the minds of the Russians, some of which who have only been in small Russian Siberian cities all their lives. This city, with it's cleanliness, hundreds of skyscrapers, bright, diverse architecture (as compared to the hundreds of 6-story, gray concrete apartment blocks built with the same blueprint that scatter our Russian hometown), and other signs of high technology and 1-st class citiness, must seem almost fairy-tale like to some of the Russians.

Our first day in Beijing (or Pekin as it is called by the Russians), we went to go see Tiananmen Square. It was huge, and interesting to be were the famous "tank man" stood some 30 years ago. Even though I was traveling with a group of other white-skinned tourists, somehow the Chinese picked me out as something else or just thought that I looked good or something, because a few different Chinese on the square asked to take their picture with me. Maybe I just look too American or something. After Tiananmen Square, we walked to the National Center for Performing Arts, which is a huge metal and glass dome-shaped structure surrounded by a moat. The only way to enter is to go underground, under the moat, where they have a glass ceiling and you can see the water rippling above you. Inside the huge outer shell are several separate buildings holding theaters and concert halls. We even got to listen to an orchestra reciting and an opera singer practicing. Inside the building, everything is made of wood and marble, which I ended up knocking on. Ever since I have been in Russia, I have gotten this bad habit of knocking on wood/stone/marble decoration to see if it is real. You see, in Russia, whenever something looks like expensive marble or wood paneling, 80% of the time it is really linoleum or some sort of plastic composite made to look like wood or marble. Anyway, as a result of my knocking, I found out that all of the material in the center was real whatever it looked like. Which, for some reason, was sort of comforting to me. That evening, we went to go see the show "The Legend of Kung-Fu" which was really cool with all of its martial arts acrobatics.

The next day, I climbed the Great Wall of China, which was indescribably cool. The steps for the most part are really steep, and even going at the fast pace that I usually walk, it took me about 40 minutes to get all the way to the top. But it was well worth it, as the view was spectacular, and I had just climbed the great wall. Before I had left, my parents had told me over skype that they had heard that you can even buy a Coke now at the top of the great wall, and how strange it was. Well, I confirmed that you actually can buy a Coca-Cola (and several other drinks) on the top of the great wall by buying one and enjoying it on the way back down.

After that, we went back into the city and say all the Olympic structures left over from 2008. I saw the "bird's nest" stadium, the "water cube" aquatic center, and a big office building that is shaped like the Olympic torch. After seeing all that stuff, we went to a Chinese tea ceremony, where were tried a bunch of different types of tea. Then we went to a flying acrobatics show which was really amazing and fun. That night, I decided to go for a walk, as walking through cities at night is somewhat of a hobby for me. I found a large pedestrian street with large stores on either side. It was really cool just to walk through and enjoy the sights of all the buildings lit up in various colored signs and TV screens. I also found a side street that looks like a stereotypical Chinatown with all the red hanging lamps along the street, and vendors selling all types of Chinese meat on skewers and noodles. I also found a foreign book store and even though I had told myself that I didn't want to learn any Chinese and that it wasn't interesting, I bought a small Chinese survival dictionary. I am somewhat of a language aficionado, and couldn't help learning some of the characters and basic phrases. I returned to the hotel and went to bed.

When I woke up the next morning, I could barely move. My whole body was stiff and sore, my nose was plugged, my ears were full of fluid, I had a headache and a sore throat. I was sick, but I managed to get out of bread, eat breakfast, and get on the bus. We went to a natural hot spring, and relaxed there for a while. Then we went back into the city to do some shopping, and I was able to end off some postcards. Then I started getting chills, and I decided to go sleep in the bus. When I woke up a few hours later, I had a fever. They bought me some Tylenol, which I took. They also brought me a thermometer, and I had a temperature of at least 100 degrees. I went back to the hotel and went to bed. The next morning I woke up, still not feeling all that good. We had free time until noon, and I had wanted to get up early and do some exploring on our final day, but it didn't happen. I did really want to see the subway system though, so I managed to walk to the nearest station, buy a ticket, and ride the metro one station and back. Later that day, we went to the World Park, where they have miniature replicas of famous buildings from all over the world. After that, the tourists did some more shopping, and I did some more sleeping. We got on the train that night and returned to Haerbin.

The next day in Haerbin, we had all to ourselves, which meant I slept most of the day, and then in the evening went walking around the river shoreline, which was very beautiful. There were dozens of kites in the air everywhere, and it was a nice sunny day.

The next morning, we arrived in Heihe, ate breakfast, and went back across the border, this time on a boat instead of a hovercraft. So thus ended my adventure in China. My trip to China really changed my opinion of the country and of the Chinese people themselves. Before my trip, I had a different opinion about the Chinese people (based on the Chinese who live in my host city), but after seeing people from a different part of the country, my opinion changed. I am very glad that I went, and would love to return again to explore more of the country.

By the way, I went to the doctor after I got back, and found out that I had strep throat and tonsillitis, and started on medicine right away, and now I'm all better.

Chinese Negotiations and the Minnisota Vikings make an appearance in Blagoveshchensk

So I decided to get in shape. And to do this, I decided to run. Now running wasn't my first choice, and isn't particularly my favorite thing to do, but I don't really have other options. Biking would be my first choice, and I see plenty of bikes on the streets every day, but the problem is that no one I know owns one. Or maybe I could try rollerblading. The problem with that is that I never learned how to rollerblade, and I also don't own rollerblades. So that left me with running. All you need to do to run is yourself and a pair of running shoes. Even this posed a slight problem, as the only shoes that I had with me, besides my winter boots, are a pair of beat-up Sketchers which are fine for walking around, but would probably destroy my feet if I tried anything above the level of speed-walking.

Luckily, I have a Chinese market in my city. All of our shoes (including my Sketchers) are made in China anyway, so I figured that getting them straight from the manufacturer would be the cheapest way to get in shape.
So on Saturday morning, I went to the Chinese market. You walk into a large building, and Chinese products are all laid out in front of you in endless alleyways of sunglasses, coats, women’s underwear, shoes, toys, and even Chinese food. There is just so much stuff there. And buying it is like a game.

Believe it or not, there is actually a special technique to shopping at the Chinese market. This wasn't my first time there, but today was the first time that I was there alone, without a Russian to help me do the shopping or negotiating. Before I went, I told my host parents of my intentions, and they gave me a few pointers. "When you first go in, don't stop anywhere. Just look around the entire place first and scout out where you are going to do the bargaining. Never pay the first price that they offer you. Always name a price a little below half of their offer and then move up to half and don't go above that. If they don't want to negotiate, just start to walk away, and they will usually start lowering the price. But you have to be careful, because sometimes they will start following you and getting aggressive. And you don't want to let them know that you are not Russian, otherwise they will never negotiate." This last bit of advice was not particularly worrying-- I probably speak better Russian than them anyway and they aren't going to notice if I don't conjugate a verb correctly. Even if I told them that I was from the United States, they probably wouldn't understand anyway.

So I went, and I scouted. I stopped in at one of the stalls I saw. I looked at some of the running shoes on the wall.
"You like? What size are you? I will find for you!" said the Chinese proprietor of the stall.
"45" I said, using the European metric measurement that was printed on the tongue of my Sketchers. She brought them, they were too small. She didn't have anything bigger.
So I went to the next stall. I tried on a pair of 46's but they were still a little small.
"Do you have anything bigger?" I asked. He did. He had 47s. So I tried them on, and they fit well, but they were made of black leather with no ventilation.
"They fit? Good! So you will buy?" He excitedly prodded me.
"Yes they fit, but I'm going to be running and I want them to breathe."
"They won't! Don't worry! They are good quality!" I think he thought that I said I didn't want them to break. I repeated that I wanted them to breathe, and started taking them off, but go the same response. When I started to walk away, he got mad. "They fit! Why don't you buy?! They fit!" he started yelling at me. "I know. But I want to look around more, at other shoes." I calmly responded, even cracking a friendly smile. It didn't faze him.
"Just name your price! What price do you want? You will buy!" He said glaring at me.
"Good bye" I said, and walked away as fast as I could.

I went into another shop and tried some on, and the sales guy started getting aggressive too. But then my phone rang. It was my friend Vika, and we started talking. It gave me a perfect excuse to get away without being nagged.

Finally I went to the fourth booth. I found a nice pair of running shoes, ventilated, and with air cushions. I asked for 47's to try on. She kind of looked at me, because 47 is already really big and hard to find. "Fine" she said "I'll be back. Stay here." she was gone a long time. She finally came back.
"Are these 47's?" I asked. I looked at the tongue. The four was intact, but the second number had been scratched out. In both shoes. I tried them on anyway. They fit, and were comfortable. I wanted to buy them. I asked how much. She said 2,600 rubles (about $90). This was a lot, even if I bargained it down half. I had wanted to pay somewhere around 500 rubles for shoes, and I didn’t even have that much with me.
"Oh" I said, disappointed "I was looking for something cheaper"
"I can make discount for you!" She said eagerly. "But I wanted shoes around 500 rubles, so maybe I could look at another pair"
"How about 1,600?" she said "It's a good price"
"You don’t understand... I only bought 500 rubles with me. I don’t have 1,600."
"1,000 then!" She replied.
"I can't pay that." I repeated.
"Look and see how much you have!" she ordered.
I looked. I had 1000; I told her I had 700.
"That's too low! Minimum 800, but I'm already losing money!!"
"750!" I tried.
"No! 800 minimum. It is already not profitable for me!"
"Fine 800" I conceded. She already had the shoes in a bag. She took my money counted it, and returned to her position at the stall without looking back. I walked out with my new running shoes in a plastic baggie, feeling pretty good about myself. I had just negotiated a 2,600 ruble ($90) pair of shoes down to 800 ($26). It was a little more than I had wanted to pay in the first place, but I felt content with my purchase and my new mastery of bargaining skills. Even my host parents were impressed when I told them how much I talked it down.

So the next morning, I woke up early and went running, and I looked pretty American while I was at it. Jogging in itself is still not super popular in Russia, and is actually pretty American, I have been told. Plus I had my big headphones on, and as sporting the "Minnesota Vikings" T-shirt which Ethan (who conveniently happens to be from Minnesota) gave me as a present while we were in Vladivostok together. I ran about 3 miles in all, along the river embankment. When I returned home, I hurt. This was the first serious physical activity that I had done in 8 months, and my muscles were aching all over. But it felt good to get a good lung-pounding workout in again, and I was just glad that I survived.

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.