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. November . December . February . 2008 .
Here is my first update! Sorry it's taken so long- I've been pretty busy, and I wanted it to be a good update. :) I made it to Russia okay. I'm not even feeling jet-lagged- I guess I slept enough on my flights. The time change was pretty crazy though. I ate breakfast just before landing in Moscow, at around 7:00 am, and then had to change my watch to 3:00 pm and had supper less than two hours later.
The airport in Moscow, Sheremetyevo, was kind of stressful- especially going through security. I was nervous, because I didn't want to do anything wrong or embarrass myself, and I was lugging around literally 70 pounds of luggage plus carry-on. I watched what the lady in front of me did, but I was slow and the guard kept saying stuff to me and getting impatient when I didn't understand. Finally she said “Itdi!”, which means “Go already!”. It's too bad you can't talk back to security guards.
We had to take a bus out to our plane, and this one guy seemed to find me very funny. He said something to me, and I said “Izvinityeh nyet Russky”, which means “Sorry, no Russian”, and after that he kept saying stuff to me and then chuckling to his friend, and he winked at me whenever I looked over at him on the plane.
This nice couple, Kirill and Yulia, met me at the airport and took me out to dinner, so I didn't have to sit by myself in Sheremetyevo. When we stepped out of the airport, I thought we were in a packed parking lot, but then I realized we were in the middle of the street, in a traffic jam. We got into their car and waited 5 or 10 minutes for the traffic to get going, and then Kirill quickly sped up to 120 km/hour. He explained to me that the speed limit is 20 km/h everywhere in Moscow, because there are so many cars, but that he sometimes goes as high as 240 km/h. When we first got in touch, he had asked me to bring an electronic device with me for him, because he couldn't have it shipped to Russia, but he didn't tell me what it was. There wasn't time to get it shipped to me however, so that didn't happen. Now he told me that it was a device that stops the police from reading your speed with their radars. This sounds kind of sketchy and maybe illegal, so I'm glad I didn't have to try to get it past customs.
The one thing I really didn't like in Moscow was that people didn't seem to smile very much in public. Even the waitress in the restaurant took our order with a blank expression. A lot of the women didn't seem to stand so much as pose. I was kind of nervous for a little while, because Kirill and Yulia weren't smiling at me, but once we started talking they were very friendly. Now I'm finding out that Russians are actually really affectionate. I've had people hold my hand, and kiss me on the cheek, and there is lots of hugging.
When we got off the plane in Khabarovsk, I felt a lot happier, because it was a nice day, and I wouldn't have to go through any more airports. My host parents, Svetlana and Alexey were there to meet me in the building we were taken to. Svetlana is very friendly and talkative, and Alexey is quieter, but very warm. They have a little baby who turned three months old this week, called Yegor. We call him Sooslik though, which is Russian for ground squirrel. When we went to their car, I was really confused for a second because they all drive Japanese cars, so the driver's seat is on the opposite side.
I've met lots of really great people, with cool names- Svetlana's brother Vasya, and his girlfriend Yulia, and their friends, and Svetlana's friends Jhanya, Irina, Igor, and Sergey. One of Vasya and Yulia's friends is called Vasillina, which sounds hilariously similar to Vaseline. I went to a party with Vasya and Yulia yesterday, and at the end we all sat in the kitchen in the dark, and they smoked sheeshah and sang songs while Vasya played the guitar. It was really cool.
I've been fed all sorts of interesting food- the first day I had borsch for lunch and dinner, and it was good. There is this yummy stuff called halva, which is a crumbly peanut and sugar mixture. I've also had kefir, which is like yoghurt that isn't sweet. It isn't my favorite, but apparently its really healthy, so I eat it all anyway. When we went to the supermarket, Alexey bought literally 20 litres of milk, and some of it is 6%. I'm used to drinking skim milk at home so it's like drinking cream. There is also kasha, which is like porridge, and tvorog, which is like cottage cheese.
I was told that Russia would be kind of bleak, and its true that a lot of the buildings, especially the apartment buildings, are kind of dingey and run down, but the streets are wide and most of the buildings are pastel coloured. There are lots of little make-shift, shed sized stores along the sides of the road, with colourful signs. A lot of the billboards and stores have a kitschy, colourful, asian feel to them, which makes sense because China is just across the Amur River. Most of the women I see on the streets are wearing high heels and beautiful fur coats. I feel very casual and underdressed.
I went to a Rotary meeting with Svetlana and Alexey on Thursday. I was told
that in a lot of countries Rotary is kind of elitist, with mostly male members.
The Rotarians in this club were definitely dressed up, but 4 out of the 11
people there were women. There was one man who was bald and asian and didn't
say anything, dressed in a burgundy turtleneck and a black suit. He looked
really slick and villainous, like he belonged in a James Bond movie.
I think that's it for now! I start school on Monday, so I will have lots more
to talk about. If there is anything in particular you want to know about that
I didn't talk about, email me back with questions!
Suvajheniem,
Meghan
ps. I've written in transliterated Russian because cyrillic letters don't always work in emails
. November . December . February . . 2008 .
I have a vague feeling that my English has been deteriorating, from listening to Russians speak English all the time and concentrating on Russian. I think I've begun to speak English like the Russians do- I phrase things differently, use different words. So if I write something kind of strange in this update, that's why.
School has been as great as I could have possibly hoped. Everyone at school
is so nice to me!! I guess they don't get a lot of foreigners around here,
because on my first day at school the other students mobbed me. They all had
so many questions for me- what music do I listen to, what are my favorite
movies, what do I think of Russia, why did I come to Russia, do I like the
food....I haven't had any trouble making friends.
Even now, random people I've never talked to will say “Hi!” to
me in the halls. I've never felt so special or interesting before!
Our class is kind of small, only 30 of us, and very tight-knit- they've been really great about welcoming me into the fold. They've all been together in the same class of 30 people since they started school, so they're all really close. They've even had the same class teacher that whole time- we don't have her for all our classes, just math and geometry, but she oversees our class. Her name is Olga Danilovna, and she's very kind- a lot of the time she treats the students like her children, and she is very affectionate towards me too.
School's really different in some ways. The guys wear suits and ties, and
the girls wear general nice stuff, no jeans and minimal bright colours. A
lot of girls wear high heels and skirts. Since I am foreign, I can get away
with wearing my normal clothes. As well, our school is for grades 1 through
to 11 (the final grade in Russia) so there are lots of small children literally
sprinting through the halls. I remember when I was in elementary school, we
were never allowed to run in the halls. The school cafeteria serves pastries,
juice, tea, and water, and there isn't really a lunch break, only 20 min.
breaks after the second and third lessons. We don't have our own lockers,
only a communal cloak-room that's PACKED at the beginning and end of the day.
The school building is very old.
Apparently it used to be a hospital. Sometimes it doesn't seem to me quite
how a school should look, but in subtle ways- there are lace curtains on the
windows, some of the classrooms are really small, and there are sinks and
mirrors in all of the classrooms.
There are six classes a day, but school ends at 2:00, 1:00 on Tuesdays.
Sometimes school ends as early as 12:00, even 11:00 once. I have to go to
school on Saturdays though. The only classes I can understand right now are
french, English of course, sometimes math, and on rare occasions physics.
In English technical translation, all the other students are translating articles
on free trade and the pharmaceutical industry from English to Russian, and
I am translating 'The Ugly Duckling'. Their English is so excellent, I have
to work very hard to practice my Russian.
Our school, Gimnaziya 5, specializes in English. I think my Russian has improved a lot though- I can have simple conversations with taxi drivers and people on the street who don't know English without too much difficulty.
We don't get to choose our classes, so everybody takes everything. I have 16 classes: history, geography, geometry, math, French, Russian, Russian literature, physics, chemistry, English, English literature, English technical translations, computers, biology, phys.ed, and “O.B.Jh.”. O.B.Jh was explained to me as a class about “rules for safe living”- so far I think we have learned how to put a gas mask on and survive a terrorist attack, and about healthy living, but I am not sure. I only understand the odd word like “evacuation”, “individual body suit”, and “teenage health”.
One thing that I found strange at first was calling my teachers by their first name and otchestvo- a middle name derived from their father's name. My teachers have names like Oksana Stanislovovna, Mihail Petrovich, Lydia Alexeyeva, and Edouard Mihailovich.
A few weekends ago, I went to a cottage in a little village with two friends from school and their families. It was so beautiful! There was already a thick layer of snow there, even though it was just the start of December, and the temperature was in the -20°'s. We went ice fishing and tobogganing, and I also got to experience a Russian “banya” for the first time. A banya is a very hot sauna, where you sit naked (we wore our bathing suits because there weren't separate saunas for the men and women there) until you are literally soaked in sweat. When we got too hot, we would run outside in just our bathing suits to cool off. We all wore special felt hats to protect our hair- I'm not sure why. Maybe the heat could have harmed our hair? A special Russian banya tradition is hitting one another with birch branches, kind of like a massage. I think this is the most bizarre Russian tradition I've encountered so far. Since then, I've gone to banyas in town with my host mom a few times, and I love it- it's very relaxing.
Everyday I have to take a taxi to school, but I walk back home, even though it takes around 40 minutes. I like it, because I get to see so much of Khabarovsk. Khabarovsk is a very beautiful city. There are plenty of parks, and in particular a beautiful children's park filled with gorgeous fountains (you can tell they are gorgeous, even though they're not going at this time of year), fancy lights, and a skating rink. There are lots and lots of statues and monuments everywhere- there is an enormous monument for all the people from the Khabarovsk area who died in WW2, and there are so many names on it it's incredible. Lenin Square is very beautiful too, with a shiny, slippery marble on the ground and fountains. Right now it's filled with ice sculptures for New Year's. There are also many beautiful old buildings.
Its been very strange not to hear Christmas music in all the stores, and not see Christmas decorations everywhere- Russians celebrate Christmas, but only as a minor holiday. New Year's is their big holiday, and since I arrived here there have been signs everywhere saying “2009!”. While I was at the cottage, we cut down a little Christmas tree for me. I filled a bucket with rocks as a base for the tree, and poured in water. I think my tree is dying though, because the water level doesn't go down very much, and the needles are falling off more than they should, I think.
Something I forgot to mention in my last report that I thought was
interesting: all Russian guys must serve 1 ½ years in the army when
they turn 18. It is possible to buy papers saying that you are too ill and
physically unfit to be in the army. Yes, this is technically illegal, but
apparently most Russian guys do this rather than enter the army- the papers
cost around $2000. My host dad's friend explained to me that its easy to buy
anything in Russia this way. A driver's license costs around $500 (cheap,
so lots of people buy them) and a university degree costs $50,000. I asked
Svetlana a friend of hers, who is a terrible driver, bought her driver's license-
I was joking, but Svetlana nodded.
My little baby host brother is already bigger- he likes to shriek randomly a lot now, and grab at things. Svetlana says that I've taught him to smile all the time, because I am always smiling. I hope so- I'll teach him to be polite and friendly and smile a lot, just like a Canadian.
Tomorrow is my last day of school before I have a two week break off
school- I'm really looking forward to it. I'm sure I will have lots more to
talk about after the holidays! Happy New Year's everyone, and I hope you all
had a good Christmas.
Poka!!
Meghan
. November . December . February . . 2008 .
Privyet!
I apologize because this update is a little late. I've been trying to think of more things to talk about, but life here is getting more and more routine and normal.
I think my Russian is getting a lot better (it still has a long way to go though). Simple, short conversations, about what to eat for lunch, what I did yesterday, the weather, and stuff like that are pretty easy now. If I try to talk to anyone for an extended period of time though, or about anything complex, it gets really hard, I think because I just don't have a large enough vocabulary yet. There are too many words that I don't know, so it's pretty frustrating. What really makes me happy is when I can understand my friends when they're talking to each other, because of course they talk really fast.
New Year's was really cool. At midnight we went up onto the roof of our apartment building, and EVERYONE was setting off fireworks- there were fireworks going off nearby and on every horizon. We even set off some of our own. It was very beautiful, and it continued for hours. After watching the fireworks, we went to Lenin Square. The streets were packed with people, more than a typical afternoon, even though it was 3:30 in the morning, and there were even more people in Lenin Square and the parks. The ground in Lenin Square was littered with empty bottles, party hats, balloons, and other debris. From there we walked around, through the Children's Park where there was a crowd of people dancing, and on from there until we finally arrived back home at 5:30 AM. Everywhere there were beautiful light displays, people in costumes, and crowds of people drinking and celebrating.
For the next few days there were always fireworks going off in the evening. My host family doesn't celebrate Christmas however, so I didn't do anything on the Russian Christmas- I didn't even remember it was Christmas until just before I went to bed.
A couple weeks ago I went to Vladivostok for the weekend- I stayed with some friends of my host family, who have a daughter my age called Stella. I got to travel on a Russian train for the first time, which was cool and not nearly as sketchy as some people warned me it would be. :) The train ride was from 8:00 in the evening until 8:00 in the morning, so I slept for most of the ride- there were four little bunks in each train compartment, and it was really nice, falling asleep to the sound of the train wheels.
On the way to Vladivostok, I shared a compartment with a quiet couple and an older businessman called Sergey. Sergey and me talked, and I was really excited that I was able to chat with someone in only Russian. On the way back, I was lucky enough to get a compartment all to myself. In Vladivostok, me and Stella spent the afternoon walking around, and went for a walk out on the frozen harbour, which was gorgeous. We saw a movie with Stella's friend Katya- Syem Zhizny. I think it's called Seven Pounds in English. I was really pleased with how much I understood. I really like Vladivostok. It's not as clean or beautiful as Khabarovsk, but I think it's less quiet and more exciting.
A lady from the Rotary Club here runs an English school, and she's asked me to come a couple times a week to talk to the students. Today I went for the first time. I talked to two classes, a class of younger students, maybe around 7-11, and then a class of kids my age- about Canada, my family, my school, Deep River, and things like that.
I've also been going to an art school a few times a week, with a friend from school. The teacher is really big on still-lifes- she'll put out an assortment of objects, a vase or some kind of pottery, usually with flowers, a bird, and some vegetables or fruit. When we finish one, we move onto the next- she has an impressive collection of fake birds. My current painting is of a duck, some sunflowers and wheat in a clay jug, and three gourds.
Last week my class went on a trip to a ski resort. We went tubing, skating, and some people snow-boarded or skied. It was really fun. Skating must be really popular in Russia, because lots of different friends have asked me to go skating with them, and whenever we go, the skating rinks are always packed.
Flavors of chips are very strange in Russia- I've seen swiss cheese, mushroom, and caviar, and crab seems to be really popular. I tried caviar for the first time a few days ago- I'd just eaten ice cream and was shocked by how salty it was, so I spat my first mouthful out into the sink.
My host dad's nephew, Andrey, is visiting from Kamchatka, a peninsula off the eastern edge of Russia. Fishing is the big industry there, so he brought lots of fish with him, including the caviar. I'd love to visit Kamchatka- from the pictures I've seen, it's gorgeous, with lots of greenery and mountains, kind of like British Columbia. They have a mind-boggling amount of snow there- Andrey says he once jumped out of a five storey window onto a snow bank, and I believe him. I've seen a picture from Kamchatka of a car that was completely buried by snow and had to be dug out.
Well, that's all for now! I'm sorry this update isn't as long as the last two, but like I said, life here is just getting more routine.
Poka!
Meghan
. November . December . February
. . 2008 .
