At least they drive on the right side of the road?

I know you've been waiting for it--don't lie. Some pretty weird stuff happens in Russia...

Today my friend Alexis told me this story... When her friend Sarah was studying abroad in St. Petersburg, she had a job teaching English. This was not like my job, though. She taught English to a Chechen prince. He would take her to all the fanciest restaurants and they would study over a meal. Apparently he had four cell phones: one for friends and family; one that he put on his business cards; one private business line; and one for his guy who "takes care of things" for him. Well, one night Sarah was in a bar and she gave her phone number to some guy, who then kept calling her and calling her. She wasn't interested, but the guy wouldn't let up. So, one day during her English lesson with the Chechen prince, her cell phone rings and she sees it's the guy calling her again and she makes a face. The prince asks her why she's upset and she ends up telling him the whole story. He says, not to worry and that he'll "have it taken care of". She never got another call. Now she kind of feels guilty because you never know what a Chechen prince with a cell phone just for a guy that "takes care of things" for him will do in a situation like that... Anyway, I thought this was like the best story ever.

People hassling you: a common occurrence in Moscow. The worst was when I went to the market to buy some boots. Their little shops are just like tall cubicles all stuck together. So to see anything you have to go in the "shop" (if you could even call it that; they're like the room equivalent of watches on the inside of a trench coat). Not that anyone would let you walk by their shop without trying to get you inside. They yell, "Девушка! Девушка! Заходите, пожалуйста! Заходите!" (D'yeh-voosh-ka! D'yeh-voosh-ka! Za-ha-deet-yeh, puh-zhal-stuh! Za-ha-deet-yeh!; literal trans. "Girl! Girl! Stop by, please! Stop by!" English equiv. "Miss! Come on in!") Then once you go in there's a barrage of questions. If you can keep you mouth shut and not look at them, the next step is suggestion. And when I say suggestion I mean grabbing something off the wall, shoving it in front of your face, and telling you why this is definitely the exact thing you need and that you won't find anything better anywhere else. If you're still following the keep-your-mouth-shut-and-don't-look-at-them rule, then you can leave now if you don't see anything you like. If you broke the rule, be prepared for them to keep offering you things and even block your path when you try and leave. (It took me like 4 shops before I figured this out.) Of course, if you do see something you like, you'd better really like it because if you try it on and it fits, they expect you to buy it. And if it doesn't fit, they'll pretty much do anything to make it fit. I bet they'd even bit off that nasty callous on your big toe if that's what it took... Why? Go back 4 sentences to the part with "if you try it on and it fits"...

Milk. In Russia (or maybe all of Europe?) they don't pasteurize milk, they sterilize it. This means it isn't in the refrigerated-foods section, but rather it's sitting on the shelf like Mac&Cheese. It comes in those half-liter boxes like the ones in the US that chicken stock comes in, so they're stackabke and easily shipped. And it's all good for 6 months! Ridiculously efficient, you say? Maybe, but it tastes a little different than US milk. At the school I work at they have cartons of milk, and they look like juice boxes. So weird!

One last thing for today: smoking sections. In the US it's becoming less and less common for places to have a smoking section (and not always because of laws). In Moscow it's very rare for a place to have a non-smoking section. In fact, in The Moscow Times (an English newspaper) restaurants advertise them: "... Free WiFi ... Happy Hour 3-5 ... Non-Smoking Section! ..." So funny! Although, you have to remember that smoking isn't cost-prohibitive like in America: a pack of cigarettes can be as little as $0.75 or as much as $2 (Marlboros at an expensive kiosk). Smoking laws would simply never happen here. Although I have seen a couple of anti-smoking ads... Maybe there's still hope! :-)

I realize my pictures didn't work in the last post. I'll get that worked out sooner or later... :-D

Testing... 1 2 3...

On Sunday we went to see this men's choir from Saratov sing traditional Orthodox music. It was good except for the whole not understanding anything they said. :-) But the hall was absolutely amazing! I took some pictures with my phone because I forgot my camera. Let's see if uploading them this way works.

There are two pictures of the portraits on either wall beside the audience and one picture of the stage with its huge and beautiful organ that didn't play because the concert was a capella.

If it doesn't work, I'll upload them soon. :-)

The places we go...

Today I had my first Soviet-Union-flashback experience. Two weeks ago I turned in the form to get my student pass for the metro. Well, it's now time to receive said pass at the same place I turned it in. Last time I waited about two hours. This time I waited OVER THREE HOURS and then the place closed. Ridiculous. It's like the most inefficient thing I've ever seen in my life. It drives me insane. Today as I got closer to the front of the line, people started pushing and shoving, and by the time there were ten minutes left, people were arguing and waving their passports in front of the window. You'd think it was a Soviet bread line or something! Nope, just a bunch of tired, irritated university students. I think I'm going to go back Friday morning and try again. I don't have to be to work until 4 so if I get there at a reasonably early time I have a chance of making it through the line. I guess there has to be something to make you maybe not want to get a student metro pass and just pay the full price. But seriously, we're not animals. Be civilized, people!

Next week we're going to Kazan. It's east of Moscow over by the Urals. It's the capital of Tartarstan, in case you were interested. ...Feel free to Wikipedia that and then tell me exactly what that means. I'm assuming Tartarstan is a region in Russia, but then again the "it's" might be "it was" and not "it is", and then I'd have already assumed too much. :-)

I know I'm a horrible person because I haven't posted any pictures yet, but I haven't found a place to do it yet. ...And I kinda haven't actually taken that many pictures. Oops. But think about it, do YOU carry around YOUR camera everyday and take pictures of everything? No. Why? Because you live there. So be patient. :-)

So... Russia...

Basically, my entire Russian life can be explained by one phrase: "I think she said..." Most people are pretty hard to understand, including my teachers. My politics teacher especially because she isn't supposed to be teaching us Russian, she's just supposed to lecture. And it's not a dialogue or anything: we sit around a table in her office and she talks until it's time to go. About once a class (twice if we're lucky) she'll ask if we understand And most of the time this question is at the end in an "Any last questions?" manner. I also found out that I'm in the harder grammar class, which is good because it'll be challenging, but bad because I'm the weakest person in the class. This is strange for me because I'm always in the top when it comes to grammar. I'm not sure if I'm actually worse, but I read out loud really horribly so it seems like it. We get tutors for free if we are struggling in our classes so I asked our coordinator, Karen, to get me a tutor for "Phonetics" but I'm really just going to make the poor sap teach me how to read out loud. Hopefully that will make a big difference.

Also, I have a cold. It started on Monday with a sore throat, but now it's just a stuffy nose. This is after I missed two days of school last week because I had the flu. I think I slept something like 40 of 48 hours. It took me 4 or 5 days to get over it. Hopefully this cold clears up soon. My friend Annie, from the UK, told me that Americans always get sick when they go to Britain, and the English always get sick when they go to Russia, so Americans must get doubly sick when they come here. Ну, что делать? (Nu, sh-toe d-yell-let?; trans. "Well, what is there to do?" Implied answer: "Nothing.")

How do I have a friend from the UK when all of my classes are only with Americans, you ask? I GOT A JOB! Before I left everyone was asking what I'd be doing in Russia and "just taking classes" seemed like very little to be doing, but I thought for once in my life it might be nice to not have a job. Yeah... I had a job before I was here for a week. :D My speech practice teacher said she had a friend who needed native speakers to teach English. Native speaker? Check. Freaking nothing to do? Check. Money-grubbing? Check. Well, looks like I'm perfect for the job. So I go to what I assume is an interview and Helen (Елена) the principal asks me these questions: "What days can you work?", and "Do you have any experience teaching?" So I answer that I can do the Tuesday/Friday classes, but not the Monday/Thursday classes, and that the only experience I have is tutoring college students. Then she asks me to start the next day (two weeks ago). :) I teach two one-and-a-half-hour classes twice a week. One group is eightish and the other twelveish. One and a half hours is too long for ME to have class (Every class in Russia is two "academic hours" long, called пара (pah-rah, trans. "pair").) let alone a bunch of eight-year-olds. Luckily, most of the other teachers actually know what they're doing and I just steal their games and activities. Robert is from England; Annie is from Scotland; Andrea is from Germany (but her mother's English); Justin is from western Pennsylvania (or should I say Ohio?); and Luda (Люда), the music teacher, is Russian. There are also a few other people who work there, but they don't go out with us after work so they're less important. On Sunday, we had a dinner party at Luda's apartment (which is closest to my metro station, but still like a half an hour away if I walk. There are маршрутки (marsh-root-key; trans: "marshrutkas"? They're vans that drive on specific routes like busses, but have better routes and stop more often... I think. I've never been on one.) that go over there in less than ten minutes though, and Luda is very sweet. Anyway, dinner party: we got together and had appetizers while we cooked delicious Indian curry. Oh, and we drank. Somehow they ended up finding out that I hadn't had vodka since I'd been here, and were shocked even though it had only been two weeks at this point...so they went out and bought some. You know how alcohol usually kind of burns when you take a big shot of it? Yeah, that doesn't happen with Russian vodka. I can't really explain it. It's kind of like that first big gulp of coffee/tea/cocoa when you're REALLY cold--except warmer. But that's it, just warm..all the way down. It still leaves an unpleasant after-taste, but not anything like American vodka. It's rather tolerable. I'm sure there will be more vodka stories to come... :)

Oh, I lost my phone the other day. I took it out to look at the time and when I put it back in my bag I think I dropped it on the ground. Either that or the person who stole it was really stupid for not taking my wallet which was right next to it in the pocket. Now I have an ultra-spiffy phone that does email and everything. In fact, it's what I'm writing this on. :) So, if I gave you my old number, or you didn't get it all, let me know and I'll get you my new number.

Well, that's probably enough for now. Even with school and a job, I still find I have a LOT of free time. I've read two whole novels just for fun in less than two weeks. Now that I have a way to update from anywhere, I'll be able to update more often and about a greater variety of things. For example, Russian fashion: Why do Russians wear so much denim? It's not that everyone is wearing it, but rather that the people who do, wear way too much. Your jacket, pants, and purse should not all be denim, especially not three different colors of denim. Or, music: if I hear the songs with the lyrics "I'll be your number-one fan!" or "Out of my head / Out of my bed / All the things that have been said" one more time, I think I'll scream. The first one is just ridiculously bad, but I think the second one is good except for these three lines that literally make me cringe when I hear them. Ugh, I don't even want to think about it...

Ну, спокойной ночи. (Nu, spa-koi-nieghy no-chee; trans. "Well, goodnight.")

*PS* It takes approximately 9 days for a letter to go from Philadelphia to Moscow. (Thanks, by the way!) ...Hint, hint to everyone else. :)

Увежаемые пасажеры!

"Caution passengers!"

I would say that about sums up our trip so far. It's what they say when you're on the metro: when you get to a station, when you leave the station, and if someone keeps the doors from closing. And I guess it kind of applies to everything in a metaphoric way. So far we've only had orientation, but it's been enough...

Thursday:
We arrived at the hotel and had some time to just hang out, rest a little, eat dinner, etc. It was kinda nice because I'd been going and going and going for almost 24 hours straight.

Friday:
We had a bunch of host family/safety/academic things to talk about. It was pretty amusing, actually. Hrm, we can't physially abuse our host family? That's strange... Then at 6 my host mom came to the hotel to pick me up. Her name is Ludmila Petrovna and she has a little dog named Lada--"like the car". She's very sweet. She's made me feel like I'm at home, and she's a very good cook. For dinner we had pan-fried, breaded chicken; pan-fried potatoes; a "salad" of cucumber, tomatoes, red peppers, and corn; two kinds of bread; two kinds of salami; two kinds of cheese; and some sort of onion-y spread. Then we had tea with two kinds of dessert. Oh. My. God. Amazing. All of it.

Saturday:
I bought a cell phone while we were out. Everyone did, and everyone's phone worked. Everyone's except mine. Yeah, I know. By the time I had given up on it maybe working in a couple mins, I was almost home, the group long gone. So, I went to the same kind of store that I bought it at and they were very confused about what I wanted, but after playing with it a while decided that I had a defective SIM card and needed to go back to the EXACT store I bought it at. Well, I told my RC (Resident Coordinator of my program) and the next day she took me back to the place--I had no idea where it was--and helped me get it straightened out. So, if you would like my new number, email me and I'll make sure to get it to you.

Sunday:
We went to this beautiful park a couple of metro stops away from my house. It was really amazing. There was a wooden castle there during the old times (middle ages maybe? I couldn't really read any of the signs). Oh, yeah, where I live. Here's a map of the metro...
If you click on it, it gets bigger. I live at the south end of the green line (Krasnogvardeiskaya). Our school is where the grey line crosses the brown ring at the north (Novoslobodskaya), but it's to the west of it, so I can get off one of the green line stops and walk there in like 5 mins or so. Not bad at all. Also, since I live at the end of the line, when I go into the city, I ALWAYS get a seat, because the train is empty when I get on! Also, it's safer and cheaper to live way out because people who live out there don't have as much money, and thieves know this. The metro is very easy to navigate. Only one line goes to each platform, so at a transfer station, you always have to switch platforms to switch trains which makes it really hard to get on the wrong line.

Today:
Today wasn't much. We saw a little more of the university. We ate in the cafeteria. It was amazing. I paid $3 for macaroni and meat sauce, a pastry with meat, a pastry with apples, cabbage salad, and a glass of apricot juice. All huge. Everything in Russia is pretty cheap for students. 10 metro rides for a regular person costs about $5.50, but unlimited for a month costs about $6.50 for a student. Amazing.

Anyway, I really like it so far. Except for the whole not being able to look at people's faces things. It's hard for me because it's what you do in America call the time. And school starts tomorrow. So we'll see how I like that. Doing everything in Russian is really difficult, so I can imagine school will be difficult too. Oh well, can't do anything about it now :-) Da svidania!