My Russian hat

Now I am a real Russian. I bought myself one of those Russian hats with the ear flaps. It wasn't cheap ($160) but I like it, and sometimes you just have to splurge. I mean you're only in Russia once, right? This kind of purchase is "good for one's soul" as my host parents said.

It will keep my whole head nice and toasty for the last month of the Russian winter, and from what I've been seeing on the news lately about the weather in DC, it will come in handy next year too!

Here is a picture of me with my new "Ushanka" (hat with ear flaps):

Pianos, Spleen, and $1000

In the last week or so, a couple interesting things have happened. I am now taking piano lessons twice a week (thanks to my Rotary Club here). I was really missing the piano, and its great to be playing again. I'm a little rusty, but not bad. I'm learning how to read sheet music better now too.
Also, I got good news from the Westerville Sunrise Rotary Club back home. My host club here is doing a project against Tuberculosis, which is still a problem here. They are trying to raise money to buy several machines to detect TB in patients early. But they are really expensive ($8,000 each, and they are buying 6). I thought that this was a great project, and I wanted to get involved somehow. So three months ago, in October, I wote a letter to the Rotary clubs at home, describing the project, and asking if they could help with some sort of donation for the project. Not only would this help my host club, and the people here suffering from TB, but it would also help create a bond of friendship between two international Rotary clubs. And that's what the Youth exchange program is all about, is being ambassadors of goodwill, and connecting people from around the world. Anyway, over the past three months, I was in contact with my sponsoring club at home, sending them updates on teh project, and scanned newspaper articles describing the project. The Westerville Sunrise Club just had a board meeting a week or two ago, and they discussed the project, and decided to donate $1,000 to the TB fund. Not only that, but they want to work together with my host club to set up a matching grant for next year so they might be able to give an even larger amount next year! This is an exciting step for both clubs, and for myself. My thanks goes to the president of the Westerville Sunrise Club, Walter Lundsrom, for working with me on this and championing the cause to the board, and of course my thanks also goes to the board, for without them, this wouldnt have been possible. Thank you all! Over these last three months, I had not told my host club about this, and last week, I presented this information to my club and they were overjoyed. It was a great and pleasant surprise for them.
On another note, on Feb 10, I went to a concert of a Russian rock group named Сплин (Spleen). They have an unusual style, but it is original, and I enjoyed the concert. It was funny though, becasue the lead singer sounds like a Russian Adam Sandler.
We are occasionally starting to get some warm days (-7 degrees), whihch is really nice. I never thought that I would consider -7 warm, but now I do. I have less than a month until my birthday, and also less than a month until I depart for a month-long trip to Nakhodka, Vladivostok, Moscow, and St. Petersburg. It will be great, because it will be the very first time that I have left the city since I arrived five and a half months ago. It will be nice to finally get out and see a different part of Russia. I'm counting down the days until my departure on my first trip here, which sould be the 10th or 11th of March. It will also be the first time that I get to see other exchange students since I arrived. I'm still on break from school right now, until the 24th. Most of my friends are all busy with school right now, so its hard to get together with them. But in general, things are still going well here for me.

New Photos of Russia

Well I finally got around to uploading pictures from the last month. I have pictures starting from new years eve in the "Russia Pictures Part 2" Album. I have also uploaded new pcitures in the "Artistic Russia" Album. Check them out!
I have moved the links to my photo albums. Instead of appearing in the slideshows on the side of the page (which made my blog load slowly), I have now created a separate page with links to each of my photo albums. On the right side of my blog, under "Pages", click on "Photo Albums from Russia" It will open a new page on my blog with links to each of the albums. Just click on the links to view. Then, if you want to return to my blog posts, just click on "Home" under the "Pages" header on the right side of the page. I did this so that it is easier and faster to view both my blog, and my photo albums. Enjoy!

Exams

Well, I'm sure all of you are dying to know how I did on my Russian exams... I got all 5's! 5 is the highest score that you can get, and my teacher said that I passed the exams best oof all who took them in our class. So that's good.
Not much other news in the past few days. I'm still having a great time here in Russia and I'm loving every minute.
We just had another Rotaract/Interact meeting on Wednesday, and we are making good progress on planning our future projects.
And I want to make a correction about the Russian 12th day holiday. I guess I misunderstood, or whoever told me about it didn't know what he was talking about, but I guess only some adults will jump into the frozen water after it has been blessed by the preists. They baptize their kids just like we do in nice warm churches.

5 Months in Russia...

It’s almost the end of January, so I figured that I would write something. It’s still cold here, and there’s still ice and snow on the ground. It seems like this stretch of my exchange, from January into February, is going to be the longest of my exchange. It’s still cold, and I have nothing big planned until March, when I get to leave Blagoveshchensk for about a month to go to Vladivostok for some Rotary conferences, and then go to see Moscow and St. Petersburg on my first Rotary trip. This will be the first time that I will have left the city since I arrived back on September first. Even though it’s still over a month away, it is this excursion that I am looking forward to, and counting down the days until.

Right now, I am studying for exams (just like I did in America – it never changes, even if I go to Russia…). On Monday and Tuesday, I have exams in the Russian language. Even though I know Russian pretty well, it will still be difficult, as there is reading, listening, grammar, writing, and oral sections of the exam. But after that, we will have a break from university until February 24. However, since I will be gone for a month during March/April, my teacher has agreed to go ahead with me and cover the material during our February break, which I will miss while I am gone. So at least I’ll have that to help keep me busy. Another thing that I am finding that I really miss is playing the piano. As of right now, I probably haven’t even touched a keyboard for two or three months. I want to keep playing though, so maybe I will ask if I can take some piano lessons anywhere. The problem is that not many people here have a piano.
My language is still getting better and better. I would now describe myself as being conversational in Russian. As I have become more confident with the language, I have broken out of my old shell of being afraid of talking to random people. The other day, I went into a store, and ended up talking with the sales lady, whom I had never met before, for over an hour (in Russian). It was great. People cannot believe that I have only known Russian for 5 months. They even say my accent is not bad either, just that I don’t always get the stress on the words right.

Speaking of which, I have a funny story about when I talked to the random sales woman the other day. We started talking, and I told her that I was a foreigner. She immediately said “American!” I asked her how she knew that I was American. I thought she would say that it was my accent or the fact that I was wearing jeans or something. But she said “It’s because you have a big nose. You either look like an American, or a strange Russian.” So there you are. I guess Americans have big noses. That took me entirely by surprise, but was actually really funny. So that means that once I speak really good Russian, instead of thinking that I’m an American, they’ll just think I’m a strange-looking Russian. Great.

Now I want to talk about food. I’ve already told you before about Russian cuisine (and that it’s delicious), but now I just want to compare my diet in America, and here. It’s actually really funny, because all the Russians think that we Americans eat really unhealthily, but the truth is that I’m probably eating more unhealthy stuff here than in the US. Now let me explain. Here it’s not like they eat junk food all the time like chips and soda and stuff like that. It’s just that they eat really rich food. I’m eating so much fat here, that I don’t know how I haven’t gained a ton of weight. Every day, I’m eating sour cream with 10% fat content, 3.2% milk, a ton of meat, a lot of cheese and sausage, mayonnaise, chocolate, sweets, and Chinese food. But their diet musn't be too bad, because I havent really put on any weight while I have been here. Of course I have lost a lot of muscle mass, but that's just because I havent been excersizing like I had been in the US.
Also, They think it is unhealthy to drink something cold when eating something hot or warm (On a side note, it is required that you drink something hot when you eat something cold… how this is not dangerous to your stomach feng shui, I don’t know). They are also concerned about how certain foods mix in your stomach. For example, you shouldn’t eat something spicy or tomato-y and drink milk, because tomatoes and milk don’t go together. I don’t know, I love a nice cold glass of milk with a steaming plate of spaghetti, and I’ve never gotten sick from this before, but maybe it’s just in Russia. They also think that sandwiches are unhealthy to eat. I’m talking about just a regular sandwich – two slices of bread, some meat and cheese, lettuce, tomato, and mustard. They thought it was ridiculous if I ate a sandwich for lunch. They said a sandwich isn’t “real food”. Now I could understand if I told them that I downed a mountain dew and some chips and called that a lunch, but a sandwich in my opinion is pretty healthy. It has meat, dairy, grains, and vegetables. Maybe I’m just being too defensive of my good old American sandwiches. But I'm not complaining. I still love Russian food. It's very delicious. It's just interesting to observe the differences in attitudes about what we eat, and we we think is healthy and what is unhealthy.
It’s also funny that by living away from the US, I have actually learned so much about it. I have learned about the US though the eyes of foreigners. I have learned more about my feelings and patriotism for the US. I would even say that living abroad has made me appreciate the US even more, and has made me into a more patriotic person. I never really understood what it meant to live in the US, but now I really understand it.

I also have just recently been in contact with the travel agent back home. I will now officially be leaving Russia on July 2, and arriving back in Columbus on the morning of July 3, in time to see the fireworks on the fourth.

I keep going to the ice skating rink, and every time I get better and better. I actually really like ice skating, and I’m going to bring my skates back with me, so hopefully I can go ice-skating next winter somewhere in DC. I also am going to the swimming pool once a week with my host family.

This past Tuesday, January 19, I also decided to go dive in a hole in the ice of the Amur River again. My host dad wanted to try it, so I went with him. The air was colder this time, but that meant the water felt a little warmer maybe. January 19 is also a holiday in Russia called крещение or which means “baptism” and it’s known as the “twelfth day”. It is the twelfth day after the Russian orthodox Christmas on Jan 7. People thought I was crazy when I tried the “prorub” as they call it, the first time. Now that I have gone back and done it a second time, I can’t even imagine what people will think of me.

In all, this feels like the longest stretch of my exchange, as I wait for warmer weather, my birthday, and new and exciting travels coming in March. Even though this is the longest stretch, it is also going really smoothly. I am really starting to fit in and feel normal living here. I am taking a more active role in Russian life. I’m in a good mood, healthy, and still loving the experience. Honestly, the hardest thing for me right now is just the winter. I am already ready to be over, but I know that I still have another month or two. That’s what makes this the longest stretch, but it also allows me to understand how environment rally can shape culture and attitude, as I see how having to face winters like this year after year could really get to you after a while. But the good news is that they told me that it will only be cold for another month, and then it should start warming up again in March. Now the only thing I’m scared of is what will happen when it goes above freezing and all the layers of frozen ice, snow, dirt, and dog pee melt all at the same time…

It always feels like there is something I’m leaving out when I write these blogs. I try to explain to you my life, and I give you a pretty accurate picture of the events in my life, but that is only the tip of the iceberg. There are so many mental, psychological, and personal aspects of the exchange, which I just cannot simply describe to you. It will really only be something that you can understand by seeing me again, and seeing how my personality, my character, my thoughts and ideas have changed from this experience. But that’s something that is not ready to be unveiled yet, and will only become apparent in another five months when I have set foot on American soil once more.

2010 in Russia

I am just now finishing up my first winter break, before I start my second, month-long winter break within two weeks. In Russia, the first seven days of January are considered a federal holiday, as New Years (новый год - Novi God) in on the first of January, but their Christmas (Рождество - Rozhdestvo) is on January seventh. However, since I am studying Russian at the university with Chinese students, and they have yet another set of dates for their holidays (I think their new year is in February this year), I also get another month long break from university during February.
But speaking of New Years, the Russians celebrate it more or less the same way as we do in the US (but they don’t watch the crystal ball drop in Times Square…). The Russians have their own set of unique traditions for New Years Eve. New Years is the biggest holiday of the year in Russia, bigger than Christmas. In fact, New Years is like a combination of new years and Christmas, because they give out gifts to each other on new years instead of Christmas (more on the Russian Christmas later).
So on New years eve, there is this tradition in Russia that every year they show this old Russian film on TV called “Ирония судьбы или с лёгким паром” (“The Irony of Fate or s’logkim parum” (this phrase cannot really be translated. Literally it means “To easy steaming!” It is traditionally said to someone after going to the banya, or can be said to someone after they take a shower or bath)). I think it is kind of like in the US how every year they have to show “A Christmas Story” on TV before Christmas. Anyway, it’s a good movie. We prepared a lot of food, mostly a lot of salads (Russian salads are not made with lettuce, they usually contain meat, fish, mayo, and/or vegetables and eggs), cold meats, fish, and caviar. Then, on TV, Dmitry Medvedev came on and wished everyone a happy new year. Then right at midnight, they have this tradition where you have a little slip of paper, write your wishes on it, burn it, drop the ashes in your champagne, and then drink it. I think it is a cool tradition.
Then there are the fireworks. I have never seen such a fireworks display in my life. It is not really a city organized fireworks display, but instead people all over the city set of their own fireworks. I cannot even begin to explain how cool and how beautiful it was to see fireworks exploding above the buildings all over the city. You could look in a 360 degree circle and see fireworks exploding all around you. Not only that, but this "home-made" fireworks display went on for a full hour after midnight. It was spectacular.
On New Years Eve is also when you receive your gifts. All the gifts are sitting under the Christmas tree (an interesting fusion of x-mas and new years). For new years, from my host family, I got two books in Russian. One was “crime and punishment”, and the other was a collection of stories by Anton Chekhov. I actually really liked this gift, because I like collecting books in foreign languages. From my host councilor here, I also got this really cool old soviet military cap with a bunch of pins from the soviet era. After midnight, the tradition is that you go out on the street and walk around and go visit friends. So that’s what we did. We went to various friends, talked, watched TV, and played games. I didn’t get home until 6 AM and I promptly fell asleep. I didn’t wake up until about 4 PM, which was kind of strange, because the sun was already going down then.

In my city, Blagoveshchensk, in Lenin square, they have built a huge “ice city”. There is a city built out of snow, with dozens of ice sculptures, and a huge Christmas tree. It was pretty amazing to see. I have also been going ice skating a lot with my host family, and we have also been going to the pool. I’m still not an amazing ice skater, but I’m learning, and every time we go, I get better. We also went to a “nature base” together one day, with another family. There is a big lake there which has frozen over, and you can go ice skating and sledding. We were there all day, had a barbeque, and went skating and sledding. It was really fun.

As for Christmas in Russia, it is not really celebrated at all. They have no special traditions, and didn’t even really mention the word Christmas at all. It was just like another day off. However, on Christmas day, our Rotaract club did our first project at an orphanage, acting out their Christmas story and giving out gifts. It went really well, and all the kids there were really happy to see us. It was a great experience not only for the children there, but also for us.

Other random thoughts:
My language is still getting better. I am now reading Chekhov in Russian. It is really cool that I can actually read and understand this now. Being able to read in a foreign language is a great feeling.
I have seen on the news that all over Europe and the US there are freezing temperatures (20 F in Florida!!), but here, we have been experiencing relatively warm temperatures, getting as high as -6 C one day. And most important of all, it is still sunny all the time here.
The travel agent back home is already contacting me about booking my return ticket. It is kind of strange to already be thinking about my return home. I have only been here for a little over four months now, but I will soon be reaching the midway point of my exchange. The four months that I have been here already seem like such a long time, and I am excited that I still have another 6 months to live here.

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…