This Russian Life

I know it has been far too long since I've posted, so I thought (prompted by subtle and not so subtle hints from a few people) that I should write again. This post is about some of the unusual things I've noticed while here in Volgograd. I call the post "This Russian Life" because I'm not sure how universal any of these things are, but they've all happened to me. Some of these differences have annoyed or angered me, but most are fairly neutral. A few are even things that I would like to keep up when I return to America.
-leaflets: anywhere there are likely to be people walking, there are people passing out leaflets, some glossy, some on newsprint. I've been told that they are paid by how many they pass out and that they don't make much money, so I generally take them.
-tea drinking: This is something I would like to continue in America. The average Russian drinks about 6 cups of tea a day (my rough estimation, but I don't actually think it is an exaggeration). The practice is wonderfully flexible. It can be nearly an art with elaborate teapots and such, an excuse to have people over and sit and talk for hours, or simply a drink that tastes better than the boiled water you would be drinking instead.
-horrible post office: Do not trust the Russian postal service. I thought they would be a lesson in patience, but they've turned into a lesson in disappointment.
-marshutkas: There are several forms of public transport in Volgograd. I prefer going by trolleybus when I can't go by foot. It is inexpensive (25 cents) and straightforward, though a little slow. Marshutkas are another form. They are yellow vans that run along set routes. They are about 75 cents and much faster than trolleybus. You hail them by sticking your arm straight out. The difficulty is that you have to tell the driver when to stop. This can be pretty nervewracking if you are like me.
-tapetchki: When entering a Russian home, you must take off your shoes. Some Americans prefer this, but here it is an absolute requirement. Unless there are a large number of guests, you'll be offered tapetchki, house slippers. I don't have any at my place, which makes me feel kind of bad.
-obsession with clean floors: I didn't understand the tapetchki thing at first, but then the snow came and the streets got really muddy. All public buildings soon had nasty floors. The cleaning ladies then spent their time chasing customers around with a mop. I feel bad when the cleaning lady at the school follows me around in the mornings, but after wiping my feet, there's not much more I can do. Other places solve the problem by requiring you to wear blue booties over your shoes when you are in their building.
-odd repair jobs: When there is a problem here, they don't always fix it in a very permanent-seeming manner. For example, a pipe for my radiator was leaking. Instead of turning off the water and doing a real job, they just covered the hole with a kind of rubber belt with a metal clamp over that. Effective, but messy looking.
-bundling children up: One of the cutest things about the winter is that Russians bundle their children up beyond anything I've ever seen. The kids can't move properly. When they fall asleep on the trolleybus and their fathers carry them out, their arms are splayed out perpendicular to the ground.
-tiny dumpsters: I'm not sure why, but the dumpsters here are very small. There are two that serve my block of apartments. By the end of the day, they are full to overflowing.
-tiny dumptrucks to go with these dumpsters: each morning, the dumptrucks come. They are about the size of a medium U-Haul. It really doesn't seem very efficient. They must have to make a number of trips to the dump.
-crows: This isn't anything they can control, I guess, but surrounding the dumpster areas is a flock of crows. They steal food and shiny things and scatter them around.
-being late: People here are more laid back about times. This means things are often late. I'm learning to be okay with this.
-pointy shoes: Men here wear pointy toed shoes, and women wear pointy-heeled shoes. It is amusing to me.
-sporadic water: The water here sometimes is turned off. There is no warning and we never know how long it will last. We've learned to keep several 5 liter containers full of water just in case.
-primary colors: Things for children tend to be painted in primary colors. Every playground I've seen is painted this way. The majority of schools are painted colors, like the bright, but light, blue school next to my apartment.

There are others, I'm sure. But right now I think I should wrap up this post. I may follow up with more later.

The Bull Market

Here in Russia, the major holiday for the year is New Year's. I got to celebrate this with some friends and friends of friends and so see what the traditional celebration is like. Basically it means sitting around a table with friends and/or family at someone's home with loads of food, juice, and champagne (well, vodka is traditional, I think, but these were classy people) and talking, watching tv, and singing karaoke until the wee hours of the morning. At around 11:55 the president of Russia gets on television every year to give a short speech and wish the country a happy New Year. (Well, literally, he congratulates them on a New Year, but that's just an idiosyncrasy of the language.) I was told it was a nice speech, but all I understood of it was "New Year" and "2009". They asked me whether our president does that, and I told them I didn't think so. But apparently the Queen of England gives a speech, but hers is more like half an hour than 5 minutes.
Many people were shooting off fireworks outside, and the men from our party braved the cold to go out and do so. I assume that no one was trying to sleep anywhere, which helped me not feel bad about our loud karaoke at 5 am. They kept trying to make everyone participate and so pulled up all the songs they had in English for me and Ivor to try. The idea that we didn't actually know most of these songs at all, and only the choruses of the others, didn't seem to be accepted. So we faked it, making up our own non-melodious melodies. Listening to some of the Russians sing, I suspect they were doing the same thing.
I took a taxi back to my place at around 6:30 and spent most of New Year's in bed sleeping or reading. I think my neighbors had a party that continued until around 2 pm on the first, which is pretty impressive stamina. The day was pretty dull, for the most part.
Yesterday I braved the telephone company's office to go and pay for the internet. It actually went smoothly and easily. There weren't many people there, so they were relaxed and helped me. Megan told me I needed to fill out two different sheets, one for the modem rental, but they told me, after I did the one for the internet itself and had paid the money, that my internet was working and so that was all. I tried to explain that I should pay for the modem, but failed. They just said "It's working, that's all" (in Russian), so I left. And it is indeed working. I'm hoping they don't come to reposess our modem, but it's only about 2 bucks anyway.
After that, I went ice skating with Ira, one of the Russian English teachers, her friend Olya, Ivor, and this guy named Dima, who we know through Zhenya, another teacher. Dima is a really interesting guy. He spent 4 years in a monostary before deciding he liked sports and interacting with people too much to make that his life. That's a strange path anywhere, but especially in Russia. But since his English is extremely limited, I can't really ask him about it.
Ice skating was an interesting experience. The first place we went was closed without explaination. The second was in a shopping center, tiny, and over run with the under-ten set. We finally found a place that was large and open, but the management was, well, Russian. There was a small entry way with a window to pay for and rent skates. When we got there, we were told they were out of our sizes and we would have to wait until the current session got out and turned in their skates. The current session was just then starting, so we had to wait an hour. First indoors, then outside in the cold so they could clean the floors, and then back inside. As the time drew nearer, more and more people arrived, squeezing into this small lobby. It only got worse when people came out of the rink as they had to return their skates to this window and push through the crowd to get out of the building. If anyone had fainted, I'm sure they would have remained upright as there was not even room to fall down.
Skating was fun, but pretty difficult for me. Better exercise than I've had in a while, and I was kind of glad to see there were plenty of Russians having difficulty too. It isn't a congenital thing that they can strap on skates to two year olds with an inborn knowledge. After an hour, it was time to experience the other side of the crush, pushing through the crowd to return my skates and escape the building. One thing I'll learn from my Russian experience is the willingness to shove through a crowd.
Now it is the year of the bull. Russians seem to get into the Chinese year symbols, and I've been given two stuffed cows already. I don't know about the rest of the economy, but in Russia, the bull market is doing well.

Christmas Eve

The sun is now setting on the first day of nearly three weeks of vacation from teaching. (Of course, it being winter, that doesn't mean the day is over.) The last few days of teaching went really well. We did a lot of Christmas-sy kinds of things, like little parties for the children and teenagers and Christmas discussions and communications games for the adults. Maybe it shouldn't have, but it surprised me how unimportant Christmas is to Russians. I had already found it impossible to buy actual Christmas cards (which means many of you will be receiving New Years cards eventually), but it hadn't really sunk in. All of the commercial and secular aspects of our Christmas have been transfered to New Years, leaving Christmas as a religous holiday. Since not too many people are religious, it is apparently a pretty quiet day. I'll comment more on that after I see the Russian Christmas in January.
Several of my students did give me presents. The business men I teach gave me a matrushka nesting doll, and my upper-intermediate adult class chipped in to give me a linen tablecloth with matching napkins. The best part of that present was the accompanying card with an original "rap" in English inside. The words are as follows: "Droppin' this line at the time when Christmas & New Year is around the corner we sorry 4 our actin' up & wich U 2 be full of beans all 2009 year. We back on your teachin' us next year. What's more U're our neat teacher! We honestly try 2 rack our brain but we couldn't create more words ;))) !!! Happy 2009!!!"
I'm glad to be their "neat teacher."

Tomorrow will be my first, and likely only, white Christmas. Volgograd was very nice looking during the end of summer when we arrived, but after the leaves all fell, it looked dreary for a long time. Now, it looks really beautiful under a layer of snow. I'll be going to Christmas dinner and then to church in the evening, so I'll get to celebrate the holiday properly, if not traditionally. Aunt Karla's card even arrived yesterday, so I even have something to open!
Since it has been a while since I've posted there is much more I could say, but I'll save it for a later post.
Merry Christmas, everyone
!

Red light, green light

As I walked out of school tonight, I looked up and saw the light change from red to green at the large intersection near my apartment. Now, this would be unremarkable in America, but this particular intersection has lacked traffic lights since we arrived at the beginning of September. For the three months we've been here, cars have treated this intersection as a giant four way almost-stop-unless-you-are-in-a-hurry. I didn't mention it before because I cross this intersection on a more than daily basis and I didn't want to provoke any undue, or even very due, concern. But now it is all better and I can cross when the little man is green. Before my method had often been to wait until a Russian also needed to cross and cross with him or her, with myself on the side away from the traffic.
That's just one little oddity of Russian life I had started to feel was normal. Another was the proclivity of Russians to put meat in pastries. This isn't unheard of in America, of course, but here it is the expected norm. Mike, the short-term missionary here, learned of this the hard way, biting into what he thought was going to be a huge roll but which turned out to be full of greasy and no longer heated meat. My lesson came a little differently when I expected normal meat and was surprised to find tongue. At the Thanksgiving dinner at our flat, the Russians kept expecting to see meat in all our bread. They were suspicious when I told them that the dinner rolls were just bread, and they even asked if the pumpkin pie had meat in it!
By the time June comes, I think I will have a lot of surprises waiting for me when I get home and have to re-define normal. The other day we were reminiscing about having clothes driers when I suddenly realized I had been picturing them in bathrooms and I had to remind myself that that is a Russian assumption, that it is different in America. Don't worry, though, I'm very much looking forward to getting to re-define my normality back to American standards.

Knock on Wood

I sent my brother David to Thanksgiving dinner with an update about my year for him to read in my place. In it, I said I was thankful that we hadn't had a freeze here yet. So, of course, as I was walking to Adam and Olya's on Friday, I saw a young boy skidding from one length of a long puddle to the other, unabashedly enjoying the first ice of the season. The city now looks more like the mental image I had of Russia, with trees covered in frost and the sky a low, cold blanket of grey. Thankfully, my apartment is still warm.
Speaking of thanks (trust me, that transition was completely organic), I enjoyed both my Friday Thanksgiving and the one we had at our apartment on Saturday. Adam and Olya have really been great about making me feel wonderful and welcome, and Olya is a really fantastic cook. She even made green bean casserole complete with homemade onion things on top. A lot more has to be made from scratch here, which is inconvenient at times but seems to have really good results. I was the only non-missionary at this gathering of Americans, and it was great to hear all that these men and women were thankful for. Mike, a short-term missionary who is here, and I stayed late as the four of us watched Becoming Jane and then talked late into the night.
I was a little nervous about our Saturday dinner as I've never done anything close to preparing a Thanksgiving meal. We were really excited about the prospect of turkey but prepared to settle for cooking a couple of chickens if the turkey couldn't be found. Thankfully, we did find a 4 1/4 kg turkey (9.4 lbs). Though at about 40 bucks it was probably a bit pricy, sometimes you just have to spring for it. I went to class and Megan got to prepare and cook the turkey, as well as mashed potatoes and some green bean casserole, all of which came out very well. I got back to finish preparing some dinner rolls and to make some pumpkin pie. The Russians hadn't ever seen dinner rolls before, at least not the kind that are rolled, and asked if they had meat inside them. I'll explain why that's funny in a different post. The pumpkin pie wasn't especially pumpkiny, but it did taste good. The crust was good, too. I think I might have assisted in the making of a crust before, but I never really paid attention, an oversight I regretted as I tried to figure out how the crumbly mess I had in a frying pan (we don't actually have mixing bowls in our apartment) was supposed to look flat and appealing in a pie tin. The result just went to show that anything with that much butter in it is going to be pretty hard to mess up. The meal also included cranberry sauce made by Sarah from Russian cranberrys and gravy prepared by Randy, the Canadian. While the conversation at the dinner did keep going back to Stallone, Rambo, and Schwarzenneger, I did enjoy sharing Thanksgiving with this international group.
After church today I got to go to lunch with Adam, Olya, Mike, and kids to the house of a couple from the church. This was the first time I had been in an actual house here in Russia. It was very nice and impressive. Originally it was an old train car, but it has been improved and expanded to the point that only in the entry way where we hung our coats could you see a hint of the original. I kind of hope they leave that siding exposed. In America some people would pay a lot of money to put in an accent piece like that to hint at being rustic. The people themselves were also neat and the son, who I think was about eleven, read from his English book for us.
Now I'm pretty tired, and I do have to teach in the morning, so I'm going to try to call home and then head to bed.

Rejoining the 21st Century

Before leaving America, I passed on my cell phone to John. It would be pretty useless in Russia, and I was interested to see what life without a cell phone would be like. Since it had been five or six years since I had been without the ability to communicate constantly with other, I wanted to see if I had grown dependent, if I would experience withdrawal.
I consider the experiment a mixed success. While I failed to notice any symptoms of cell phone withdrawal, there were confounding variables that I didn't take into account. For one, my feelings at the loss of family, friends, and all things American could have effectively masked those of separation from a phone. Also, I really didn't have much of anyone to call.
Yesterday, however, I gave in and bought a phone. I realized that what was a very minor inconvenience to me was much more of an inconvenience to other people. Besides, I could get a phone for about 40 dollars, and the minutes are very cheap. Rather than signing a contract and having a plan, here in Russia they just have little SIM cards in the phones and do a pay-as-you-go deal. If something happens to my phone, I can just take the SIM card out (it is smaller than the memory card for a digital camera) and put it in a different phone, and my phone number will work. I can even save my phone book to the card so that it will transfer easily too. America could learn something from this system, I think, but the phone companies would probably prefer we didn't. Another cool thing about the SIM card is that it is effectively free. It cost 50 rubles (2 dollars), and came with 50 rubles worth of minutes on it. The only difficulty is that the shops have to do some paperwork when you buy one, and a lot of paperwork if your passport isn't Russian. So, they just tell you you need a Russian passport. Thankfully, one of my friends was willing to make the purchase for me.
Well, that's my technological adventure for the week. I hope you all have a great Thanksgiving. I have to work all day on Thanksgiving, but Friday I will have dinner with some church friends and Saturday with my work friends. I'll write up how those go. Hopefully we can get a hold of a turkey. There is a frozen goose at the grocery store, but I don't think it would be quite the same.

If it's Tuesday, this must be Alexei, oops

So, I woke up this morning recharged from a good night's sleep. After eating a bowl of oatmeal and grapes and doing a little reading, I went to school with time to spare to get ready for my lesson with Alexei. Only, that lesson is on Wednesday. I don't have anything until noon today. So, being up early and energized, I decided to update this blog.
I had a really great weekend. My Friday was restful and amusing as I watched my landlord bring a variety of handymen into our apartment to replace a broken shower hose. I don't know where he was finding these men or why they were needed, but the new hose broke and Megan was able to replace it herself on Monday.
Saturday my classes went well. In the conversation class we talked about immigration issues. There is very little in the way of political correctness here, and so they openly said they weren't too happy about people from the Caucasus who lived in Russia. Of course, they tried to call these people Caucasians. When I said, "Well, actually, I'm a Caucasian," their faces looked both shocked and confused. I went on to explain, and they just laughed. After that the teachers had a seminar on teaching vocabulary and then went to "The Steak House" one of the nicer restaurants in town and which caters to English speakers.
Sunday was the great day. I got a call from some missionaries here who I had gotten in touch with thanks to friends of a friend, and they invited me to go to a Russian Baptist church. Two and a half hours and three sermons later, I will never complain (I hope) about a pastor who preaches until 12:10 again. Not only was listening and singing hymns a great way to practice my Russian (Olya, the missionary wife, translated for me), it was also great to see the work God is doing here. After Russia opened up to religion, the government gave the land to a Baptist pastor. At the time, there was no church building or members, but now there is a small congregation about to move from meeting in the basement to their newly completed sanctuary. The service was most like the Mennonite service I went to in that the congregation was very active and vocal and children were noisy through the whole thing. The kids left during part for a Sunday school time, but the back area was full of benches where a few mothers sat and the kids could come and go as their parents permited.
After church I went with Adam, Olya, and their four little girls to their apartment. A short term missionary from America who has been working with them also was there. We had great food and fellowship. We were able to have great discussions about life and theology like I haven't been able to have since coming to Russia. They were gracious and let me stay a really long time and even are going to have me over for Thanksgiving. Hospitality is something I really want to cultivate, and they are great examples. They were also kind enough to lend me several books in English, which everyone knows is a great way to win my affection and appreciation.
After I got back to my apartment, I found that the others were at Zhenya's place for his birthday. He's been kind of down and hadn't let anyone know about it, so this was all very last minute. I got to see the tradition of "If you respect me, you'll drink," but women are allowed to drink wine instead of cognac or vodka. Don't worry. It wasn't a drunken night or anything like that. I also got to try some traditional Russian foods, like a kind of fish jello. If I hadn't been so full from lunch I would likely have appreciated it more, but I doubt I'll be making it myself.
Today, walking back from school, I got stopped by a woman looking for directions from some store. This keeps happening, and each time I'm able to get a little closer to understanding enough to be helpful. This time it actually took her a bit to realize I'm not Russian. Even though I feel sometimes like I must stick out as obviously foreign, it seems I actually blend in pretty well.