Teaching in Tomsk

trial 2

2010-10-07T20:36:00.000-04:00

file:///C:/Users/J%20A%20S%20I%20K/Music/1-04%20Young%20Turks.mp3

trial mp3

2010-10-07T20:34:00.001-04:00

Photos galore!

2009-07-12T08:22:00.000-04:00

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2038438&id=14402037&l=c279cd612a
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2038439&id=14402037&l=6356829848
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2038441&id=14402037&l=6b1593b2b0
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2038442&id=14402037&l=71ede46137
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2038443&id=14402037&l=fe68cb4214
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2038444&id=14402037&l=8598cf8e84

Jason's Dream: The Musical

2009-05-25T02:05:00.005-04:00

So, dear readers,

I had such a funny dream last night, that I thought I'd tell you about it. It's already been a few hours, so a lot of details and developments have faded, but I still remember a few.

So at one point, I was meeting with some of my future graduate school professors, only I was going to Chicago and not Stanford. They decided to start showing me their old report cards from the university (which looked a lot like the Russian grade books). They had grades like, "m", "n", o", "j", "a", and "b". "A" and "b" were the best,"j" was the worst, and the rest didn't really correspond in any way to quality, but signified something completely different. Anyway, for a bunch of PhD's there were a heck a lot of "j's", especially one guy (who was actually Mr. Klein from Kenyon's English Department).

Eventually, I walked out of the mahogany-paneled room, where this nonsense was taking place, and found myself in this big, open, outdoor amphitheater place. Apparently I came late to rehearsal for some band I was involved with. The band was really a huge, Broadway-scale cast of dancers, back-up singers, a brass section (which was actually comprised of members of the Motown Band from Kenyon), some directors with megaphones, and me, in some capacity. Apparently, I was a singer, but while the directors were sorting out some technical problem, I, for a lark, started to sing this song from the soundtrack of the Bollywood movie "Bombay Talkie" which is featured on the soundtrack of Wes Anderson's Darjeeling Limited. For those of you who know what I'm talking about, it's called "Typewriter, tip, tip, tip, tip". It's this really silly Indian song I've been listening to constantly as I experiment with Indian cuisine.

So, I start singing this song, and to my surprise, the Motown Band knows the song, and they immediately start playing it. The dancers also seem to know it and start performing some funny dances to the music. I'm amazed and work myself into a frenzy singing "TYPEWRITER TEEP TEEP TEEP... blah dee dah" (I think the rest of the lyrics are in Hindi, and I just imitate teh sounds). If you want to know what I'm talking about check here http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=RU&v=x7e80rBSzC0 or here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzC3GQn_TC0&feature=related . I'm not sure if those links work, because I can't use youtube here, but you should try them. So, this was all really fun, more fun than I can express in words, and lasted about 2 or 3 minutes until I tried to video tape the whole thing and we fell apart. Quite a laugh.

After rehearsal, Steve Klise, my girlfriend, and I decided to go for a bike ride. At this point I realized we WERE in fact in Palo Alto, California, and we decided to bike to San Francisco. We went for a nice ride along some mysterious body of water, and about 2 minutes later ended up downtown at some bustling market place. I was amazed at how convenient it was to commute and decided I'd get an apartment in the city, rather than on campus. We were about to look for some water to quench our thirst after our monumental, two-minute, 45-mile trip, when we saw a guy ride by on a funny-looking bike, decked out in all kinds of speakers and electronic equipment. The guy was smiling wryly and somehow playing some really beautiful music as he rode. The song was familiar, but at first I couldn't put my finger on it. Then I realized, it was the guy from Beirut!

We, of course, all instantly remembered that the guy from Beirut was famous for riding around San Francisco on his bicycle playing guerilla concerts in abandoned parking garages. We followed and he winked the sort of wink you wink when you're a celebrity and someone recognizes you but you're not Hollywood enough to resent it (nor do you let it get to your head). Do you know that kind of wink? So, we followed him, and before we knew it, he and his group had set up and began to play. A personal concert for us! In a minute or two, all of my friends from Kenyon materialized and went googoo for Beirut. There was dancing and sing-alongs, and in general, a lot of merry-making. One thing I remember in particular was Liesel spray-painting a lot of amputated, styrofoam animal limbs. I wondered were she got them but then realized she and some other friends had ripped them off my styrofoam pig that I had apparently tied to the back of my bicycle. I was angry for a second, but I couldn't stay mad with all the great music and wonderful friends at my side. I swear they played about five songs before I woke up, all of which seemed to me to be Beirut, although I don't even know their music that well. There's one in particular that's been stuck in my head all day. I'll be listening to it when I get home today!

Well, that's about all I remember right now, but there was much more to the dream. Thanks to all my friends for appearing in my dream. Really, even if I didn't mention you, you were there. Everyone was there. By the way, I think this gorilla concert business stems from the article I read about Joanna Newsom playing a surprise concert in Big Sur a month and a half ago. Liesel was the one who told me about it, so that's probably why she had one of the lead roles in the concert sequence. If you're reading this Liesel, I'm not mad about the pig! Steve, thanks for showing us the way to the city!

I wanted to tell you about a real, waking-life bike ride I took a couple weeks ago, but I'm pretty tired of writing. Maybe next time.....

Okay, I'll give you a brief synopsis, you insistent readers, you.

So, we took a commuter train out to the village bright and early one morning (after the Victory Day holidays). It was pretty impressive. I definitely got the impression that, at least on the exterior, that village hasn't changed in the slightest since the 1920's. There are cows wandering around in the streets (you have to get there early in the day if you want milk), little wooden houses, two grocery stores, and a bunch of 20-something young men cruising around the village all day on motor-bikes with side-buggies. So we spent the day in the village, reading and picnicking (although the village kolbasa turned out to be green), until we got too scared of ticks with encephalitis and decided to go home.

We, in true form, missed the elektrichka and were told that the next one would come in 5 hours at 9:20 PM. We decided we had to get out and asked this old man how far it was to Tomsk. He said it was at least 50 km and forbid us to go. We asked how far away the next train station was, and he said it was the airport, and that we would have to take this gravel road 12 km to get there. He also forbid us to go there, and told us we could hide in one of the stores if it started to rain. We thanked him and set off. The gravel road really was awful, but we gradually pieced together the street-marker system, and realized the signs were counting down to something, something big, we hypothesized. It took forever, but we finally got to "O", which turned out to be not the airport, but another, slightly larger village called "Mizhininovka" or something. It's famous for it's huge chicken slaughter house, and I believe there was also a Soviet labor camp there back in the day. We tried to find the factory to see about getting some fresh chicken, failed, got a Snickers and the only bottle of water in the village, and decided to look for what we suspected would be a bigger road.

It was there! A huge, beautiful highway that was so gentle and encouraging after the gravel path. By the way, there were next to no cars out here. As we went on, there were more and more. But even then, we would sometimes go 5 minutes without seeing on, this on a major highway. It was the most beautiful bike-ride ever. The road cut right through middle-of-nowhere, dense, Russian, birch-forest. The whole time we were riding the sun was setting. We noticed the signs were counting down again, this time from 25, and we figured the next one must be the airport. The road was nice, the weather perfect, and we still had plenty of time to catch our train, so we decided to find out what was at the next "O-point". We saw a lot of these funny villages, my favorite of which was called "Mirnyi" or "Peaceful". The funniest name was "Protopopova".

At one point, after something like 12 km, I noticed a sign for a village called "Voskhod" or "Sunset". I knew the place, because my roommate and I had almost been suckered into taking a bus out there to buy him a bike. What was strange was that this village was supposed to be 13 km away from Tomsk, but we were supposed to be much further away and heading for the airport. It turned out that when we were 2 km away from this mysterious "O", my girlfriend recognized "Akademgorodok" in the skyline. Yep, we had accidentally arrived in Tomsk. It was such a wonderful surprise. We were thinking we were still two or three hours and one train-ride away, but really, we just ended up in our lovely "lyubimyi" city.

The long and short of this story is that Siberia is a beautiful place to ride your bike in the spring, especially if you get away from the city. Try it!

Love,
Jason

PS Maybe I'll add some pictures later!

N-sk/Novoikeavsk

2009-05-05T03:53:00.004-04:00

Hello All!

We're back from our four-day visit to blossoming Novosibirsk, or Nikolaevsk as they once called it. This is my second trip to Novo, or N-sk, or Novosib, however you prefer to call it, but last time I only spent a day there on the way to Ekaterinburg (Yoburg, if you will). So this time I got to see a lot more, plus the weather was about 30-40 degrees C warmer, so we were a bit more mobile.

Let's see, we had a holiday (Day of Labor), plus I don't work on even Mondays (yes, there are even and odd (or uneven, as some say in English) weeks in Russia, so we got to have an extended and free stay chez Matt "returning ETA" Nelson at the Sea-Bags Fortress. It was free thanks to my supposed extended lecture series at the university (thanks to Matt and Julia for hooking up that tall tale (actually I did do one lesson on geography, but all of Matt's students had already seen it)). Anyway, Matt got us lined up with a free dorm room, complete with a tower, two sheets, a blanket, a wash cloth, a TV, a tea kettle, a lamp, a brush for your clothes, a brush for your shoes, and a number of other items necessary for life in Siberia (for the rest of the items, consult the checklist on the door).

So, we got into town and rushed to the grocery store for all the necessary fixins for burritos with guacamole, including some delicious swine (we ain't afraid of no swine flu... Russia's banned all entrance for Mexicans and takes the temperatures of all Americans crossing the border). We met up with some friends, including Katya the local and Nick the Manchester (who had his first burrito!). We got pretty sleepy, having caught the 8:30 bus in, and dozed off for a good 12 hours.

The next day we visited the most sacred spot in Novo, MEGA, home to the only Ikea in a few oblasts. I had never been, so it was pretty new and astonishing for me, but Matt had already decked out his room in Ikea gear and was less impressed. All the same, he was a good sport, and agreed to take us on the pilgrimage. We took the metro (oh yeah, there's a metro, now covered with stickers from the city's new literacy campaign, explaining rare and little known facts about Russian spelling, stress, and grammar) to the Marx Square stop, and after missing 2 buses, hopped on the free super shuttle, which takes visitors out of the city to shopping central. It was every bit as sweaty and miserable as Matt warned it would be.

Anyway, Ikea was pretty fun. We had an endless series of photoshoots in which we pretended like we lived in each of the little fake rooms, and then I bought some bowls, glasses, candles, and things, followed by some hot dogs and sodas (Swedish meatballs for the traitors who skipped out on my lecture to stay in MEGA, when Matt and I had to bolt back to the university).

Let's see, what else, I learned about to play some banjo, including the boom-ditty strumming rythm. We went to a great (and rare!) microbrewery, and happened to catch the US-Russia championship hockey match. Matt applauded loudly after America scored the first goal and almost got our teeth knocked in by our neighbors in the next booth. Luckily, Russia scored the next 5 goals and our neighbors cheered up, although Matt did lose 100 rubles in a bet. The beer was delicious, and we went home to go to sleep.

The next day, we woke up early to buy some lotion and Snickers bars, and the weather was amazing. 20 degrees C and windy as the Dickens. I was afraid this sheet metal on this walkway was going to fly up and decapitate us, but heads intact, we marched on to Pyatorochka for Snickers and Ice-Tea. While we were enjoying our snacks on these freaky benches made in the USSR for the giants of the Soviet future, the weather went haywire. Storm clouds rolled in and the temperature dropped. A freak wind and lightening storm stranded us in the entrance of a hospital (the door was marked as being for patients who had been bitten by ticks and hoping to get immunized). When the storm passed, we headed home, and after some of Matt's delicious coffee, we headed off for the train station (we were headed to Obskoe Lake and Akademgorodok). We missed the train and went for some sushi (there were some rolls covered in black caviar called "OBAMA"... hmmm). We tried to change our order to all-you-can eat, but we spoke to late, and had to settle for more reasonable portions. Then we ran back to the train station and missed the train again.

While we were waiting, we went to the stall of a vendor of childrens toys and bought a. a fake ID featuring Luntik the cartoon moon-animal, b. some bubbles, and c. one of those New Years noise-making blowy toys. We didn't see the connection at first, but we soon realized that we had the means for an amazing game: battle bubble. While one person blew bubbles, the other popped them as quickly as possible with his festive, extendible noise-maker. Some of the station employees were not amused, but the todlers liked to stand and watch. We eventually caught our elektrichka out and enjoyed the accordion stylings of a blind man while laughing at the pictures of ourselves playing bubble battle.

The lake was beautiful, but the weather was freezing (the temperature was dropping all day, my friends can assure you) and there were mountains of trash everywhere. We took some pictures, reenacted the final scene from "Les quatre-cent coups" a few times, thought about crashing a bonfire, but ultimately tracked off through the woods to find the mysterious institution of higher learning known as AKADEMGORODOK. I didn't think we'd make it, but we did. We had a rendezvous with Irochka, who refused to show us to the critically acclaimed Mexican place, but agreed to take us for "NEW YORK PIZZA", which it certainly was not. It was fun though, and we played some bubble battle and then turned down a tour of NGU. The place was really nice though. It was the closest thing to an American-style university I've seen in Russia: a cloistered, well-forested, quiet, comfortable community centered around the university. I was intrigued, but not intrigued enough to hang around in the cold in the middle of nowhere, and so we hopped on a "gazelle" bus and headed back to the city. On the bus, we entertained ourselves )and some alcoholics and old Russian ladies) with bubble battle until Irochka said "I am tired... of bubbles", and we cut it out. Then, let's see, we got some Ramen noodles and Zhigulyovskoe and called it an evening.

So, the next day was spend showing my passport and explaining my address to about a million people at the university who were on to the scheme (luckily Matt was smooth enough to get me off campus without my being detained). We went for a stroll, picked up some cough drops, thought about trying Yugoslavian food, and then headed off to buy our tickets home. While we were waiting for our bus, we decided to go get some Rostiks (which Russian for KFC), and Matt treated us all to cheeseburgers, chicken sandwiches, and cokes. What is more, the lady didn't even blink an eye when Matt dropped a 5,000 r note (this would be like going into McDonalds and paying with a $200 bill). She was totally down though, and we feasted. In the end, we stayed too long and ended up sprinting to the bus station. We really almost missed it. Matt waived us off, and I think I saw a tear in his eye.

It was a quiet ride home, and the bus driver drove smoothly and quickly. We made record time. We stopped in Bolotnoe (a city that is literally a building of pay toilets, a motel, a snack bar, and something called a nigh cafe... oh, and the city's name means swampy). When we got home we jocked our Ikea bags upstairs to show them off to Michael the roommate, who was not impressed and didn't think too highly of our shopping at Ikea. You can't please 'em all!

Today I am in bad shape. I am tired, my nose is running like a faucet, I have nothing to blow it into, and I have to lead a seminar on how to motivate students to learn a foreign language. I could use a seminar on how to motivate myself to lead seminars!

Love y'all,
Jason

Sorry for the communication breakdown

2009-04-17T03:40:00.002-04:00

Dear everyone,

Sorry I've been so long in writing. I guess I have less new impressions and have gotten used to life here so much that I haven't really thought to write anything down. That's not to say that nothing interesting's been going on. Let's see....

I was accepted into some grad schools and actually got to go to America to visit them. This was quite a shock, having been in Russia for so long, especially as my first real stop was California (practically a foreign country in itself and quite a contrast from Tomsk). I had a great visit and ended up deciding to go to Stanford for Slavic Studies, although I liked UChicago and Northwestern as well. All in all, the trip was wonderful. I got to see my family and plenty of friends (in San Francisco, Columbus/Gambier, and Chicago), and I also got the chance to try some classic pieces of American cuisine (including Mexican, Italian, Indian, etc, etc, but you catch my drift). I also brought a whole suitcase full of American contraband back for myself and friends, including 3 bottles of Habanero Tobasco.

So yeah, I'm liking the prospect of spending the next 5-6 years of my life in the Bay Area working on Russian literature, although it looks like a lot of work. I was a little disappointed that these programs seem to put so little emphasis on spending time in Russia and providing opportunities to maintain your Russaian. I think they are flexible though, so if this is a priority for me, I think they can help make all that happen. I'd like to spend some summers and at least another year living in Russia before I get my PhD and start pretending I'm qualified to teach people Russian. I'd really like to spend a year in St. Petersburg!

I was happy to get back to my lovely Tomsk, though. Spring had sprung just before I left. It's amazing how great 0 degrees Celcius feels after a winter with temperatures in the -30's and -40's. Basically the sun, along with an army of probably homeless people melted and chipped away the feet of ice and snow that had accumulated over the course of the winter, and people came out in masses. Some places were and are still pretty muddy, but the center, where I live, was cleaned up pretty nicely, so Russians, dressed to the nines, came out to stroll and strut in the the above 0 temperatures (women, of course, in high heels and mini-skirts). The main drag, Prospekt Lenina, felt like Nevskii Prospekt in the summertime.

What have I been doing in my free time? In late February/early March I fell in love with EL Doctorow and read three of his novels, Ragtime, The Book of Daniel, and Billy Bathgate, which are wonderful beyond description. I'm so proud of our Kenyon alumnus. I can't believe we don't make a bigger deal of him. I think we need a statue. My concience has since directed me back to Russian literature, and I've been working away at some Bulgakov novellas and plays, which are pretty enjoyable. At Stanford I got the reading list for the comps exam to be taken after the first two years of study: 14 pages of works typed in size 10 font. Thing's pretty comprehensive. It sounds like a lot of work, especially in Russian, but I like the idea of having read all of those books. Also, I've been working on a top secret project that some of you may end up seeing in the next month or two. Hope you like it!

What else, oh yes, I got a bike through the used stuff paper "Iz ruk v ruki" (from hands to hands). A lot of the bikes seemed way too small, but one was advertized as "for a tall height". Some short lady but an enormous men's bike that she never even managed to sit on. She sold it to me for a song (5,500 rubles), at least as far as bikes in Russian go. They are unimaginably expensive at bike stores. Anyway, much to the shock of the local population, I've been cruising around the city, exploring new neighborhoods, getting some exercise, and, in general, just looking really cool. What shocks Russians most is the idea of using a bike to commute to work or school. From what I gather, they don't really use bike locks. The few that have bikes (bmx bikes have become a huge fad for Russian teenagers in the past few years) just take them out and bring them back home. They think I'm crazy for locking my bike to things. They're sure that cops or the unstoppable Russian criminal mind will surely jack my bike in the next few weeks. We'll see. The only down side is that I have to carry it up to my third storey apartment every day and park it in the living room. You know what, I don't even care. This bike has brought me unimaginable happiness in the past few days. I'll bring you all a picture soon if I get a chance. What a beaut.

So that's about it I suppose. I'm getting by at the university, chatting up my students about my trip to America (convenient for me). Everyone wants to know how the poor Americans are surviving the crisis. I think TV here has them thinking that most Americans now live in the streets and beg for BigMacs. Okay, I don't want to go into the crisis and Russians, so I'm going to stop myself. Hopefully I'll get back to you sooner than later.

Nice seeing you all in America,
Jason

P.S. Check out Alex Murphy's blog about Japan. It's way cooler than mine.

Pictures/too lazy to blog about the rest of the trip/an exciting encounter with the local artists' community

2009-02-19T02:21:00.003-05:00

So here are all of my pictures from Europe:

Ekaterinburg/Novosibirsk: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2033852&id=14402037&l=8ee7c

St. Petersburg:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2033962&id=14402037&l=597c3

Amsterdam:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2033851&id=14402037&l=08487

Berlin I & II:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2033964&id=14402037&l=48e2a
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2033989&id=14402037&l=01856

Prague I & II:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2034045&id=14402037&l=53850
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2034046&id=14402037&l=9d77e

Vienna/Moscow:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2034069&id=14402037&l=b768d

So, after you're done admiring all of these pictures, you can read on. So I left off somewhere in Berlin, and I think I'm going to leave it there. You get get a lot of the story from the pictures and descriptions if you're interested, and if you're really interested, I recommend reading Abbichka or Matt's blogs or asking me yourself.

So I've been back in Tomsk for about three weeks now. I've been loving it. It's so nice to stay put for a bit. I missed all of my friends here and the city itself. I even missed the weather. St. Petersburg and Moscow were so damp and gross. Tomsk, despite the -40 degree weather, is dry and predictable, no rain, not so much wind, etc. It's nice to be back in my cute little apartment living my cute little Siberian life. Only, after Amsterdam, I really, really want a bicycle. We'll see.

So what I really want to tell you about is the most exciting thing that's happened to me since I've been back. This Sunday I was asked to lead a special Valentine's Day film discussion at the American Center, the film selection, You've Got Mail. Woohoo! But, on the way out, after paying a 1.5 ruble fine at the garderobe for my coat hook thingy being ripped, I stepped outside and set my books and notebooks on the ground to put my hat on. Up comes this Russian woman with huge bag of books. She says, "That's no way to treat books!" I answer, "No, you see, I set the books on my notebook." She accepts my explanation and starts chatting me up. She says, "Today's my Birthday!" and I answer "Congratulations!" (I was not being a jerk, this is what you're supposed to say in Russian). So she says, "Do you like the theater?" "Yes." "Do you like Chekhov?" "Yes." "Well then let's go!" ("poekhali!"-an emphasis on the fact that we'll be taking a bus). I, in a silly mood from watching a romantic comedy and discussing it with a bunch of Russian twenty-year-olds, agree, "Poekhali!" She gives me a little plastic bag for my books and thrusts all of hers into my arms. So she drags me into the Pushkin library. We hop on a bus and we're off!

We're late. The coat check's full. We dump our stuff in some other room. She seems to know everybody, and everybody seems to know her. The place is packed, mostly with the over-seventy crowd. She keeps pushing passed people and dragging me along, explaining to everyone that she met "this young man" on the street. Eventually she finds us a spot sitting on these big foam children's toys. After 10 minutes of enjoying traditional Moscow gypsy songs, an elderly man starting complaining that his wife couldn't see over my big head, so I sat down. I couldn't see anything, but the music was great. There were all kinds of theatrical poetry readings and dances and witty speeches. This lady, Natasha is her name, kept taking pictures of me and giggling to some friends. Some old women kept murmuring things like "complete shamelessness!" and "no conscience whatsoever", in reference to my friend. She could care less. She was having a ball on her birthday with a young American chaperon.

When the thing ended, I was planning to thank her and make an exit, but she had different plans. She kept insisting on photographing me with different people, introducing me to friends. Only gradually did I realize that the people she was introducing me to were no ordinary Russians. It turned out that they were all silver-haired and celebrated artists, writers, sculptors, poets, musicians, and actors! They were reciting their poetry to me, showing me their artwork, inviting me exhibitions and readings, discussion 19th century literature, musing about meetings with my favorites 20th-century poets. It was incredible! After a whole lot of schmoozing, they invited me to have tea for Natasha's (and another man's... Lev Nikolaevich (not Tolstoy)) birthdays. In Russia, tea can actually mean sandwiches, wine, candy, and vodka. In this case, it did. There was no tea. So I sat for a couple hours with what turned out to be some writers'/artists' society called "Chekhov's Fridays". They were so charming and interesting. Reading each others' poetry, chatting about old friends, giving each other various gifts (always books except for one present, for Natasha: Sex Shampoo).

It was quite a bit of fun. I met the sculptor of this really famous "baby in a cabbage" sculpture that's in front of the maternity ward. He kept trying to give toasts but was really offended when no one would listen. One lady swore that she never drinks vodka (as she did shot after shot), and by the end she was trying her hand at French, telling me "Tu belle". I suggested that she try "tu es beaux", but she gave up and spilled a 2-liter of Pepsi on me instead. Lev Nikolaevich, a writer with what looked like a Soviet writers guild pin, recited a New Years text-message poem he had received this year, and then begged me to sing "Oh Susannah" with him. We did. He decided to start attending my English club and, since then, has! On the way out, one artist lady was drunkenly complaining about this other "outsider guy" who was tagging a long but who doesn't have any talent or "do anything". I was worried she'd find me out as another nothing-doer. I could never figure out who Natasha was. Apparently she owns or runs the Tomsk Gostinnyi Dvor, which is a pretty big deal. As far as I could tell, she somehow assembled this whole group. She gave a big speech about having met each and every one of the people seated at the table at different points, just on the street. She loves meeting new people, talking to them, learning about them. She just plain loves life, she says, and I believe her. She's a pretty fun lady.

Anyway, so yesterday I get a call from my pal Lev Nikolaevich, saying he's coming to my English club and that he wants me to swing by a studio of his friend. I say, "sure!" but am a bit nervous. He came to my club and got in a fight with this lady who is learning English (as of the past 8 months), because her son is living in Canada. She claimed that all American music teachers and professors are actually Russian. Lev Nikolaevich countered that "Mr. Armstrong and the other American jazz musicians are wonderful!" A good point.

So we hopped on a tram and headed of to his friends apartment/studio. Lev Nikolaevich, a pensioner, didn't have to pay, but, generous as he is, he paid my five-ruble fare. We arrived, and much to my surprise, his friend is the world-famous Leontii Andreevich Usov! The first thing I sought out when I arrived to Tomsk is this incredible, hilarious sculpture of Chekhov (see my first or second blog post for the picture). It is his work! He's had exhibitions all over Russia, Europe, and the world. Putin and Gorbochev have his works at the homes. He even has a picture of Gorby visiting his studio! My good friend Lev Nikolaevich has a diploma stating that he served as the hand model for the statue, and another poet there served as the foot-model. We had bread and tea, and then Usov took me over to show me his work. His studio is filled with beautiful wooden (birch and cedar) sculptures of famous literary figures and characters. It was all so life-like, light-hearted and beautiful! Search on the internet for his work. It's just incredible. He has a book published of his sketches of famous Tomsk personalities: "Tomskians through the eyes of Usov". He did a sketch of me in this style and gave it to me as a gift. I was star-struck. We talked literature and art, politics and travel. It was such a rewarding experience. He's headed to Moscow for a bit, but I'm invited back (they thought I should have brought a camera to take pictures and I agree). Man, what a day!

Time to rush to class!

Love,
Jason

More travels...

2009-01-20T20:57:00.003-05:00

So Piter...

As I was saying, Petersburg is the city of my dreams. When I walked out of the metro onto Gostinyi Dvor and saw Nevsky Prospekt and everything that had been so familiar it was like heaven. It's so strange that it had already been one and a half years since I was last there, that I was 21 then and am 23 now, that I have changed so much, especially in terms of my Russian and familiarity with Russia since then. It's interesting to try to measure the change in yourself against fixed things like cities. I found, however, that it's not always so simple. There are a lot of variables, things that were familiar that I only know understand, parts of the city that have radically changed while I was away. Revisiting streets, squares, monuments, museums, churches, and people really put a lot of things in perspective. It was a strange and overall, positive experience.

To start, the city really is pretty gross in the winter. Every Siberian will tell you that you're much better off facing -30 degree tempatures in Siberia than the disgusting dampness of Petersburg, and it might just be true. I take for granted how dry Tomsk is. It's too cold for slush, wet snow, and rain. Matt and I have a theory that it might even be too cold for a lot of germs in Siberia. Both of us had enjoyed pretty incredible streaks of good health in Siberia, but the further west we headed, the sicker everyone got. The dampness of Petersburg just compounded all of it and made a few of us pretty miserable.

Anyway, we had a pretty great time in our friend Lauren's incredible apartment right in the very center of the city. When I lived there in 2007 I was on the northern coast of Vasilevsky Island, which was closed off by the drawbridges at night. Living so close to everything and in such a beautiful, old neighborhood was really a treat, and you can't beat free lodging with friends. We cooked incredible meals, stopped into the Hermitage and the Russian museum, and somehow ended up sitting on stage for a production of the "Magic Flute" in Russian at the small hall of the Marinsky. We had some ticket problems and just barely made it to the right theater in time, but instead of being locked out, we were directed to seats literally feet away from the performers. I can't say that I'm a big opera fan, but being that close really helped me to get into the whole thing. It was a really wonderful experience. I only wish I had jumped out to sing a bit with the chorus. We really could have.

Best of all, I paid a visit to my old host mom and her daughter. I brought some wine and chocolate (not church wine like I did the first time I met them, thank God) and they already had a huge spread of tangerines, salads, meats, and all sorts of wild stuff ready and on the table. It was really wonderful to see them again! My host mom was exactly the same as she always was. She called my beard unattractive and swore that no girls would want to kiss me. When I told her I had been living in Russia she was shocked to find that I don't have a family yet. Whoops! We reminisced about all of my wacky misadventures from the summer before, and I tried to convince her that Tomsk was also an okay place to live. She told me all kinds of stories about long-lost relatives and bread-ration tickets. Great. Also, I met up with a friend Ksyusha who I had met the summer before. She told me about all sorts of interesting and outlandish things she's been involved with and working on. She's really brilliant. She has all kinds of funny ideas about revolution and anarchy. We went to an Indian place for tea and found a copy of Tarkovsky's poetry on their shelf. She had given me her father's copy the summer before, when I couldn't find one, and since then she has fallen in love with his poetry and his son's films (like me). It was funny that they had it there of all places, and, as I later found, they even had an excerpt from a poem written in the menu. The waitress came by, saw that I was leafing through the collection, and said that she is also a huge fan.

I was really sad to leave Petersburg so soon. There's so much more I'd like to see. I really hope I get to spend some time there as a grad student some day. There's something about the place that you don't find in Tomsk. Diversity, namely, in every aspect of life. There's so much culture and so much history that just emmanates from every building and every street. When I was cross the street I passed two Russian girls enthusiastically discussing Dostoevsky. So refreshing to hear!

Oh yeah, I went in the Kazansky Sobor (on Ksyusha's recommendation, which I didn't know you could do), and it was so beautiful! Anyone who'll be there should stop in. My favorite part was the flags from Napoleon's army and keys to various Parisian palaces that the Russians snagged after chasing Napoleon back to France. They're still triumphantly on display there, almost as if they're holding onto the keys in case they ever need them. Hope nobody ever thought to change the locks!

Let's see, we had an uneventful, empty couple of flights through Riga (where Abbie's peanut butter and Matt's multi-tool were promptlyconfiscated, despite having made their way safely through Russian security) to Amsterdam.

What a city! A shining, beautiful little slice of some far-fetched utopia! Even in the winter it was warm (with a few exceptions), and the locals just pedal around all day on their bikes, smiling serenely as if it was the most beautiful of summer days. There are so many bikes! I had never imagined such a bike-friendly city! I've never done urban biking, but the five of us rented bikes on the first day and hardly left the seats! Luckily, Lauren and Matt are pretty experienced bikers and good with directions. My memories of Amsterdam consist almost exclusively of us jetting around, from bridge to bridge, embankment to embankment, here and there and back again, in circles day and night, for four days, on our cruiser bikes. I'm so sad that I have to go back to my bikeless, icy, Russian existence. Maybe I can still find a used one?

We hit the museums hard, including the Rijksmuseum, the Sex Museum, the Van Gogh, and the Cat Museum (on the recommendation of a local friend of Abbie's who we just happened to see on the street). It was some really incredible art and we really took the time to take it all in, discuss it, appreciate it. We even noticed two flies hidden in paintings, as if they were flying by the artist while he was painting. Here's one. Zoom in and look to the left of the boat in the middle: http://www.rijksmuseum.nl/images/aria/sk/z/sk-a-447.z .

We did a lot of speculating about Dutch culture, about which, admittedly, we knew and still know very little. We decided they have something figured out that we don't. It's hard to describe, but everything there seems to run so smoothly. People really seem happy wherever you go. It's hard to describe, but anyway, it was nice to see, and I'd like to take a little piece of the Dutch mentality with me, whatever it is.

Okay, so now we're in Berlin, at another hostel. It's been really nice staying in these hostels, meeting all sorts of young people from all over the world. I wasn't counting on that being an added bonus. We saw a Jeff Koons exhibit that I didn't like and a Paul Klee one that I absolutely loved. We followed the old Berlin wall all the way around town and checked out the East Side Gallery, where there's a lot of famous graffiti. Let's see, there's a lot more, but I'll get to it later. It's late and this post is already pretty long. I'm having a blast, but missing everyone and everything in both America and Russia. In other news, I might give myself a moustache!

Love you,
Jason

Travels

2009-01-19T19:04:00.003-05:00

Wow,

I've been on the road for about 18 days now. I took the train through Russia, stopping to stay with my buds in Novosibirsk and Ekaterinburg, the third and fourth largest Russian cities respectively. Seeing my friends has been wonderful, and getting to see so many different Russian cities has been quite an experience. I feel like I have a much better perspective on Russia as a whole, better, in fact (and in part(, than some Russians, who've never been outside of Petersburg or Moscow, and who scorn the smaller "regional" cities as primitive and backwater.

We saw quite a bit in those few days. Novosibirsk, so close to Tomsk geographically, is a whole different beast of a city. Enormous, uniformly grey, very young, very Soviet, but as Matt (Fulbrighter living there( would tell you, not without its charms. Ekaterinburg is famous for a number of reasons. We visited a church recently constructed on the spot where the Tsar's family was murdered. It was pretty moving. It's also the rock capital of the Urals and Siberia, if not all of Russia. From what Abbie tells me and from what I saw, the music scene there is pretty great, especially by Russian standards. We even went to a Beatles-themed bar. The river there translates from some local language to "stinky dog river". It did smell. In fact, all of the water there smelled pretty foul, worse, in fact, than a stinky dog. Anyway, Tomsk is dwarfed by these two little-known metropolises. They both have metro lines (Ekaterinburg even has two hypothetical lines sketched on the metro maps in the wagons... luckily Abbie was there to keep us from trying to transfer onto them.

So the three of us continued the train trip all the way in to Petersburg. I could tell you a lot of things about Russian trains, good and bad, but I'll just mention a few. People bring all kinds of food and booze on, pack mini-feasts even. Really. One of our bunkmates named Sergei brought an entire, enormous chicken for the ride, but about half-way through he started trying to sell it to us and to the attendant ladies. No sales. He also tried to steal my pocket knife and trade phone batteries with Matt. All in all we rode the trains for about 2.5 days, stopping only to buy chips and beer from ladies who wait by the stations. You can't use the toilets when the trains stopped, or half an hour before or after a stop, which makes for some difficult situations when there's nothing to do but eat and drink for days at a time. One form of currency that goes a long way on a Russian train is being able to play the one Russian card game that anyone knows, "Durak", which means something between "idiot" and "asshole". Anyway, as Matt explained when he taught us in Kiev, you basically have to know the game to successfully ride trains in Russia. We played until we could play no more. Once we played with this surly Russian man, who was so good that by the end of the game he knew exactly who had what cards and collected cards specially to ruin other people's hands. Amazing. By the time we got to Petersburg we were ready to be done with the whole train thing. I got fined for sneaking my luggage onto the metro, but I didn't care. I was in the most beautiful city in the world!

I'll continue this post later, because my friends are waiting for me to start a game of Durak, but stay tuned for stories from Piter, Amsterdam, and Berlin!

Love you all,
Jason

Christmas party!

2008-12-26T03:59:00.003-05:00

Dear readers,

So my work for the semester is over, apart from a pesky oral exam in Russian literature that I'll have to take on Monday. I've almost recovered my hostage visa (still waiting on a copy of one last train ticket), so I might actually be allowed out of the country. We foreigners are in full holiday-celebration mode. We did Christmas Eve at a friend's apartment and Christmas at mine. We exchanged gifts, baked cakes, cookies, and what not, and I made an extra-large batch of eggnog, which was very delicious. I've substituted out rum/whiskey (way overpriced in Russia) for Russian "Balzam", a sort of spiced, berried liquor that goes well with the spiced nog. We have a lovely tree decked in all sorts of decorations that somehow accumulated over the past few days, along with some really finicky chinese Christmas lights. We put out some socks, cookies, and milk for Santa Clause, and on the first day he just ate the goods without leaving anything. He made up for it last night and slipped us some fancy "Cote d'Or" chocolate.

Up next: a few days of extreme, Russian New Years celebrations.

Anyway, enjoy the pictures.

Merry Christmas to all my loved one back home!
Jason

Winter in Tomsk

2008-12-22T04:00:00.001-05:00

At long last I've managed to get together an album of pictures of Winter in Tomsk. Pretty beautiful, I think. Here's the link:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2032426&l=7d105&id=14402037

Siberian news/blues

2008-12-10T02:13:00.004-05:00

Dear faithful readers,

I guess there's not a whole lot to report here. The weather's warmed up, and we've had some wet snow lately that's really starting to pile up. A lot of the little old wooden houses are really starting to look like a cottage out of a fairy tale, with a foot and a half of snow piled on top. Some New Years decorations are starting to come out, my students are starting to panic about "zachet" and the exam week (I won't even pretend to fully understand how zachet is different from exams... it's just before New Years instead of after). I'm doing a unit on Christmas, which is proving to be a lot of fun. My parents sent some Christmas songs for me to show my students, I'm teaching them to sing Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer (including the light bulb/George Washington bits).

I've been pretty exhausted lately. I don't know how it works out this way, but I never manage to get enough sleep and I just keeps adding up. I've been busy with applications, e-mailing professors, and directing my dad on where to send which form for which university. If I get into grad school I'll have buy him a nice present for doing half the work for me. Anyway, I turned in my first application, for Harvard, and now I'm really starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

I've talked with my friend Sveta about the possibility of getting a class in American-literature during the next semester. It would be so wonderful to get to do some work that is in any way related to my studies, instead of talking about AIDS, globalization, religious diversity, the financial crisis, global warming, and other natural disasters all the time. My grandfather is currently scouring all sorts of books for the best selections from American literature, which is planning to scan and then transfer to text, so that I can use them in the classroom. Needless to say, I'm pretty excited and grateful.

In other news, today we're organizing a forum on "Englishes", featuring myself, Michael from England, and Cate from Canada. It's shaping up to be very interesting. We're going to cover the history of English, the divergence of the different dialects, grammatical, phonological, and lexical differences, as well as local dialects in each of the countries. We've been preparing a bit, and I think it is just as interesting and surprising for us as it will be for them. If it's a success, we may give the forum at a few of the other universities as well! I'm practicing my NY accent, as well as a handful of different southern ones. I've even brought a recording of an old folk song performed in Cajun French.

We watched Life is Beautiful in our American film club this Sunday, which I had never seen and really enjoyed. The students had a lot to say about the movie, so it worked out well. One guy listed four things he liked, but then added that he didn't like that there was an American flag on the tank that came to liberate the camp. Since it's common knowledge that the USSR won World War II, there should have been a Soviet flag, evidently. This is, of course Hollywood's bias, he explained (Hollywood, Italy). Oh well.

So yeah, I have about a week and a half of work, and then it's a well-deserved vacation for me. I just have to figure out how exactly to sneak into the forest at night to chop myself a "Elochka", since there are no tree farms here.

Best wishes,
Jason

New personal record low

2008-12-02T03:26:00.003-05:00

-29.7 degrees Celsius.

I'll keep you posted as winter rears its ugly head.

At -30 your eyelashes turn white and you start to feel a really awful pressure on your forehead and eyes. Also your legs go numb after only a few minutes.

I don't know how all these Russian writers survived in those Siberian camps without heat. JEEZ

Little bits and bytes

2008-11-28T03:03:00.002-05:00

So,

What's new here? I had Thanksgiving with the Mormons yesterday, which was great. As it got closer to the holiday, I was missing my family more and more, so I was pretty happy to have some firends to eat and talk with. They are quite an interesting bunch. The younger ones are in "companion" pairs, and they are bound to each other for 2 years, or until they get a transfer slip in the mail. They literally can only be apart in the bathroom! But yeah, a week from Saturday they'll get their new orders in the mail, so some of them might be getting shipped off to a new city in Siberia. We even played a game of risk, although I can never take board games quite so seriously anymore. It was also good in that they live in the North of the city, so I finally had a good opportunity to see a new neighborhood.

I've been teaching Thanksgiving for the past week, and for the students it's kind of boring, but I tell them the whole story just the same. I even make them go around the table and talk about what they're thankful for. Most of them are thankful for the families, their friends, their universities, and so on, but some real wise acres today were being thankful for the table, the floor, the chairs, and other pieces of furniture. Some of them are even thankful for me! I've been giving the best Thanksgiving speeches of my life, which leads me to believe that I have a lot to be thankful for. More than ever, I know what it means to have a loving family and loving friends, and that's pretty great.

All my foreign friends are having birthdays and celebrating them in all sorts of adorable ways. Everyone's getting pretty close by now, so that's nice too. I might even have a chance to rap in the club with a guy from Ghana sometime soon! I'll have to practice.

Grad school applications are still weighing me down, but I've made quite a bit of progress. In fact, I only have 3 personalized sections of my personal statement to go! Then: ENDLESS EDITING. I'm feeling more relaxed about the whole thing, but will be very happy to be done, to just wait and enjoy life.

I'm also just about ready for our break from work. Teaching is fun, and there are a lot of rewarding moments, but the daily grind is getting to me. I am planning a sort of forum on different dialects/accents of English, to which I'm inviting the Canadian Kate and the British guy Michael. I think it should be interesting for the students as well as the native speakers. Anyway, I'm getting pretty excited about the prospect of travelling with some other ETA's around Russia and Europe. I'll probably be leaving Tomsk for Novosibirsk on the 2nd of January or so. There I'll meet Matt and we'll head to Ekaterinburg for Abbie. Next stop: PETERSBURG! Then we're planning about 2 weeks in Europe: Germany, maybe Amsterdam or Paris, Prague. It'll be just what I need, I think. After Europe we'll be back in Moscow for a Fulbright orientation thing. If anyone will be in any of these cities or countries, or nearby, let me know so we can meet up!

Lots of love,
Jason

Mormons, Mormons, Mormons!

2008-11-12T02:20:00.003-05:00

So, I have a funny story that I'll tell you briefly. A girl from one of the English-speaking clubs asked to interview me for a psychology project, and I said okay, a little nervous that she would think that I stand out as a good candidate for psychiatric research. We met and she took me to some strange building, to the top floor, and unlocked some room that had some flyers about learning English up everywhere. There were a bunch of really unusually religious paintings everywhere, of Jesus and what looked like his clone. At first I thought maybe it could have been Boris and Gleb, this two Russians brothers/princes/saints who were murdered for the thrown, but then figured it wasn't them. I asked why there were two Jesuses, and she explained that one was God the father. I thought it pretty unusual that God was depicted at all, let alone as a perfect double of Jesus, but assumed it was some wacky Russian thing. I did think it was strange that there was one picture of Jesus with what looked like a Native American.

Anyway, so she conducted this endless interivew in Russian. She said it would last one hour but it ended up taking three and a half, with a tea break in the middle (she served some strange, red, flowery tea, explaining that she couldn't drink black or green tea anymore). Anyway, so she asked me a bunch of questions about my life, my childhood, about my feelings, about whether I was every beaten, about how I interact with various people, about what I look for in girls, etc. It was interesting to have a chance to get into some self-reflection, especially in Russian, but I was pretty tired by the end.

But.... towards the end of the interivew, some guy with a beard showed up, and was evidently pretty upset at this girl for using the space. He spoke in English, very naturally, I thought, and with a great American accent. I was impressed at the language skills taught at this place. So they argued, and he eventually agreed to let us continue the interview (I was sitting behind some divider so I only caught a short glimpse of the man), but only on the condition that these two other young guys who had just arrived could wait in the room to make sure there was no trouble. So the older guy left and I heard them refer to him as "Elder Dixon", which I thought was strange. They also kept saying "It wasn't the right way for her to go about doing this, kicking Elder Dixon out, and this guy's not even a member!" Their English was great and the membership business was awfully suspicious.

So we finished the interview, and I finally decided to ask about these strange, English-speaking people. She explained that they're part of a religious organization that rents the space and gives free English lessons. I asked which one, and it turned out that they are Mormons, and Americans to boot!

So that's why there were all these strange pictures of Jesus, God, and some Native Americans. So that's why this poor Russian girl had to reject her heritage and quit drinking normal tea! It all made so much sense!

Here I thought I was the only American in Tomsk, and there are actually six of them, Mormons! I decided to go have chat with them. They thought I was a Russian and asked me where I learned English so well. I told them "in Ohio". They didn't get it at first, but then I explained that I too was an American. They were nice enough, although when we introduced ourselves they wouldn't tell me their first names, only "Elder so-and-so". I thought this a bit odd, but whatever, I'll call them elders if that's what they like. But yeah, they're organizing a Thanksgiving dinner complete with a real turkey and I'm invited. It turns out that one of them lives nearby. I thought of inviting them over for tea or a drink, but they don't drink tea or alcohol, and as they explained, they're not allowed to be out past 9:30. Oh well, at least they won't get mugged.

They were pretty okay guys and even gave me a copy of the Book of Mormon in Russian (there are some great pictures), but I couldn't help but wonder what could drive a Russian to the Mormon faith. After all, I would think that Russians wouldn't be too big on an addition to the bible in which all sorts of miraculous things happen in America. Still, so I have heard, the Mormons attract a lot of Russians with their English lessons and appeal to them in some way that's bringing them members. Evidentally there's even a church here in Tomsk. Also, I hear there's an enormous babtist church that's formed a pretty big congregation. This is all pretty strange to me, but Russia is a surprising place.

But anyway, don't count on this bezbozhnik falling in with these Elders. I would like to hang out with them sometime, though, if they're okay with that. Something tells me they might not be. When I gave them my number they just gave me their businesss card they use to lure Russians to their church. Oh well, I can only hope!

In other news, I NEED TO APPLY TO GRAD SCHOOL!

Love,
Jason

Halloween/Elections

2008-11-07T05:10:00.002-05:00

Hello all you Americans,

It's Friday here and I thought I'd update you on some of the latest developments here in Tomsk. Let's see, last Friday, after a few phoney Halloween celebrations with my English clubs (in which many of the students were too bashful to dress up), Dima and I threw a real Halloween party at our apartment. It was a lot of fun, and most of my foreign and Russian friends did manage to come up with costumes. Unfortunately, they also managed to break a lot of our glassware and prevent me from sleeping until 6 in the morning. I was worried about disturbing our neighbors, since we had so many noisy guests, and not surprisingly, on Sunday one lady came to complain about us disturbing her sleep and insisted on my cleaning the entire stairway with a broom and rag. I can understand the horror of being an old Russian woman and having strange, masked Europeans parading around in your stairwell, so I agreed to do so.

The pure chaos that is national holidays in Russia further disturbed my attempts to live a somewhat normal life. This Tuesday we had "The Day of People's Unity and Coming-Together", or something like that. This meant that even on Monday, everything important was closed, even though nobody even really knows what this holiday is (it's supposed to replace an old Soviet holiday on November 7th celebrating the revolution). So I couldn't use the internet, and half the town left for Kazakstan, Altai, Kemerevo, or wherever everyone here is from. It was nice to get a little extra sleep though.

Then came election day. The results were announced when I was in my morning class, so I only heard the news afterwards on the internet. Not really a surprise, even to us living so far away from America. What was most remarkable about election day for me, however, was that a television company called my boss and asked to interview me about the election, about Obama, and about myself as an American living in Tomsk. At first they insisted on conducting this interview in my apartment, and I, of course, said, "No, that won't quite be convenient for me". They agreed to take me to a cafe or a bar. At first I didn't know why it was important that they interview me in a place with a TV, but I soon figured it out. It was pretty funny, how artificial everything is. They had me pretend to walk into the bar (which was almost empty, and they didn't even treat me to dinner), they had me pretend to talk about the elections with the anchorwoman (we were really talking about Petersburg), and they had me pretend to be watching Obama on television (really at this point they were showing Medvedev's speech with Putin looking on).

When I watched the interview on TV, I learned that they had assembled all of this into some hilarious narrative about me, a poor American teacher, not having a TV and desperately making for the bar to learn the results of my country's elections. It sounded really funny on TV in Russian. Anyway, they interviewed me about what kind of president I thought Obama would be and how I felt his election would affect American-Russian relations. It was kind of an interesting conversation, except I had to wince as I watched myself make mistakes in Russian in front of the entire city. All in all, regardless of the fact that they didn't feed me, it was an adventure.

So now it's the weekend, and I am exhausted. I'm about to head home and take a nap, before I go to see Madagascar 2. I think on Saturday we're going to the second house-warming in a row at our friends place. A Swiss and a French friend of mine moved into an apartment and had a novosel'e last weekend. Since then, I hooked them up with a third roommate, a Canadian who recently arrived in Tomsk. Oh! Also a British guy moved to the city last week and is living with this professor of oil-drilling technology. He has never studied Russian before and so is going to get his first earful of it here in Siberia. Both of them are working as English teachers, and so now I have a whole host of English-speaking peers. It's refreshing to speak English every now and again!

Miss you all,
Jason

A sobering encounter

2008-10-30T03:07:00.002-04:00

Hello you loyal readers. I had a bit of a bad experience here in this Siberian wonderland. I decided against posting a full account of the event online, but if you're really curious, I can forward you a full account. The long and short of it is I was almost mugged by "gopniki", common cap-wearing, street thugs who stick people up for there cell phones and cash, usually in the more distant neighborhoods. Basically, they demanded my cell phone and cash, I chatted them up a bit, and then, on a split-second jolt of adrenaline, I sprinted after cab. It didn't stop for me, because the driver didn't want a run in with the thugs, and so we ran. We ran and ran. I've never run so quickly. I was on a pretty isolated street, and so I was pretty hard up, but finally I turned down a different street and found a corner store, where the security guard took me in, only to turn me back out onto the street when he suddenly got scared, maybe that the thugs would come give him a hard time for sheltering me. So I ran some more, althought it's possible that the thugs had already run off, fearing that we had called the police. Eventually I landed myself a cab and made it back to my apartment, literally sick with fear and exhaustion. I consoled myself with watermelon, and wheezed all night long from the exertion. So, yes, a pretty bad experience, but it happens everywhere. These criminals seemed particularly inept and unprofessional. Morever, in America, they probably would have had guns. My Russian friends scolded me for walking alone at night, and now I know better. One of my friends was even stuck up for a bunch of balloons she was carrying. She was tough and refused to hand them over, made it away unscathed and without losing a single balloon.

In other news, my financial problems seem to be over. Also, I went to see the Tomsk Tom' play the St. Petersburg Zenit (best team in Russia, featuring international allstar Arshavin), and much to our surprise, it ended in a tie! Hooray!

We've been celebrating Halloween this week, and it's been a lot of fun. I've been realizing just how great this holiday is. I asked the students at the English club to dress up, but most of them were too nervous. Only a couple came in costume. I also had the hardest time tracking down a pumpkin. Finally, after a 3-hour search, I found one, but it is sort of green. When we tried to carve it at the club, it turned out that this pumpkin was in fact a strong, Russian pumpkin, well prepared to weather the Siberian winter. It took fifteen minutes just to get it open, and I still have yet to sufficiently scrape it out. So I will finish the jack-o-lantern at the other English club on Friday. Luckily another girl brought a pumpkin that she had already hollowed out, so she carved it and the students were amazed by it's beauty (once we stuck the candle in). I showed pictures from Halloween at college, and they were pretty impressed by our costumes, especially by Arden's Edward Scissorhands costume.

Also, in the last few days I have become a celebrity. There was a feature about me and the Enghlish club on the Tomsk news site. A photographer was at the club yesterday taking pictures of my stabbing a pumpkin in a surgeon's costume. Evidently these pictures will be a part of an article about me and the club in the newspaper. Then, this morning I received a text saying they were talking about me on the radio. Finally, an hour ago I learned that they want to interview me for Russian television. I am terrified. This interview will, of course, be in Russian, so I will be broadcasted to the entire city, speaking in broken Russian about the English club and maybe Halloween. Great. Just as long as they don't ask me about Georgia, WWII, or Russian girls (the third most common question you get as an American male in Russia is "So what do you think about our girls, eh? Pretty? Prettier than American girls? Eh? Eh?").

So yes, that's what's happening here. A Canadian girl just moved to Tomsk to teach, and I'm excited to meet another representative of the North-American continent. We (myself and the Russians) are all anxiously awaiting the elections, as I'm sure you all are. We'll see what happens!

Tschuss,
Jason

Plagued by financial woes/Dmitrii Denisovich Strikes Back!

2008-10-20T05:42:00.002-04:00

Well, well, well...

The last few days have been some of the most emotionally trying and fatiguing days of my life. Having resolved the issues with Chase blocking my credit card, I thought I could breathe easy and, well, feed myself, pay my landlady. I was terribly wrong. For the past few weeks my credit card has still been acting up, or more specifically, just plain not working. I called chase about once a day to find out what the problem was, and they insisted that they hadn’t blocked the card, and that they had no records of denials at the ATM’s. Basically, I had no choice but to try different ATM’s every day, hoping that they would let me take money. Every once in a while it would work, for some inexplicable reason. Each time I foolishly assumed that my troubles were over, only to find that the next visit to the ATM would end in a humiliating, flashing “YOUR BANK HAS INSTRUCTED US TO DENY YOUR TRANSACTION,” or sometimes, one of about ten Russian variants. It’s hard to describe the despair that I felt. I would spend all day at the office trying to resolve the problem, and because of a lack of time and money, I wouldn’t eat. This only amplified my desperation. I, overreacting and with an empty stomach, imagined myself begging for kopecks on the street, maybe even tinkering out a little “Katyusha” on the guitar (did I mention my landlady gave me a guitar?) for some cash. I wanted out… out, out, out. But really, in Siberia, with no money, there is no out. Luckily, I borrowed some money from my lovely, Belgian roommate and have survived to tell the tale, although right now, I still have only four dollars worth of Rubles at my disposal.

I am optimistic, however, that I will not starve, not perish on one of these increasingly snowy Siberian nights (yes, it already snows every day now, and will be about -14 degrees Celsius tonight. Today, after a few failed trips to some Bankomats (ATM’s) and an endless day of babbling about mass media in the classroom, I called Chase and, much to my delight, was connected to a brilliantly competent representative, who, within seconds, recognized the problem (something a week’s worth of calls did not resolve). Apparently, even though I have a total credit limit of $1,000, my cash-advance limit is only $200. I have been pretty zealous about paying my card off, but it turns out that I can only make a payment every 5 days. Since there are very few opportunities to actually pay with a credit card, I make virtually all of my purchases (and pay my rent, of course) with cash. This all adds up to me waiting out apparently undefined periods of time for chance moments when my card would work. It turns out, however, that this is no voodoo magic. I had to wait for my cash-advance maximum to be paid off, which it turns out, takes longer than possible. This lady is fairly sure that my payment will go through at about midnight my time. Light at the end of the tunnel. Finally I can pay back my roommate and maybe, just maybe, begin to live a normal life once more. With a little foresight, I’ll be able to take out money regularly, in advance, so as not to live on a starvation diet in a constant state of depression. Plus, I found out that I could have been using my credit card all along at the one enormous supermarket in Tomsk that I know accepts credit cards. No more hunger!

This is all speculation, and who knows, maybe it’s naïve to think that this will all be over soon, but I certainly hope so. Despite all of this awful business and my mounting fear that I will not successfully apply to grad school, I’ve managed to have some good times in the past couple of weeks. I had a very successful film screening at the ungodly hour of 11:30 this Sunday morning (my Russian friends were sure nobody would show). I’ve decided that it’s a shame that most Russians only see the Hollywood garbage that we faithfully export every week. The American Center has an excellent selection of movies, in English with English subtitles, and so I thought showing a quality movie might be interesting. I selected Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind, one of my favorite American films of the last ten years. The students came, en masse, and really seemed to like it. As opposed to some of our other discussions, which are usually either one-sided (me talking) or completely off-topic, we had a really great, thorough discussion of the film. The students genuinely wanted to express their reactions to the movie, and even had some serious debates on various issues that I raised. When I suggested that we have these screenings/discussions more often, they were uniformly enthusiastic. Next we’re going to watch Memento (I decided it’d be fun to continue with another film portraying memory loss).

As the title of this post suggests, Dmitrii Denisovich is back in a big way. Last week I sat on my bed to put my shoes on, and it collapsed underneath me. I told my landlady later that day, and she promised to send our good friend, Mr. Fixit. For some reason, he didn’t come for five days, but sure enough, at 7:00 this Saturday night, he called and promised to be on the scene within 10 minutes. Half an hour later he appeared, tool bag in hand. He promised to be done by 8:30 so that I could meet my friends as I had planned. Four hours later we were drinking tea and debating the merits of hot and cold tea (he obviously championing the former). During these four hours he explained all sorts of various tools, screws, bolts, clamps, glues, and I cannot even begin to remember what else. In our operation we explored the verb “bit’” or to beat in each an every one of its conceivable, prefixed forms. We “otbili”, “pribili”, “perebili”, and maybe even “ubili” so many “gvozdiki” that he nearly ran out (sorry, this joke is for Russian-speakers only). Anyway, I am making excellent progress in my studies of Soviet-era plumbing, electrics, and carpentry. Dmitrii Denisovich is a wonderful, kind-hearted, and above all house, astoundingly respectable man, and quite a chatterbox to boot. Also, he still insists that we demand a new TV-cable from our landlady. Maybe I will, just to have the pleasure of his company in the near future.

Well, I’m going to go home and have a nap. I am so very tired. I love you all, that is, especially all of you who are still taking the time to read all this nonsense. I promise to get you some pictures of beautiful, snowy Tomsk as soon as I see fit. Also, I hope my boots get here soon. So cold.

Sincerely,
Jason

Don't worry, I'm alive and well-fed

2008-10-13T06:17:00.005-04:00

For those of you who read my post from last Friday, I wanted to let you know that I am alive, fed, and spending cash like it's my job. She offered to lend me money (I declined, but it's nice to know she was willing to help) and then she and Sveta helped me get to an office phone where I made an international call and sorted everything out with the bank. What a relief. Don't use Chase if you need to go to Russia. They will block your account. Anyway, it was great to have the support of Sveta and Evgeniya Nikolaevna. At one point I was nearly in tears and on the brink of trying to buy a ticket home (not really, but I was upset).

Anyway, my friend Matt, the Fulbrighter living in Novosibirsk, visited this weekend. It was really great, first of all to speak some normal American English, and more importantly, to be able to have a conversation with someone and understand each other so simply and naturally. In another language, it can be so hard to explain yourself, not just because of a lack of words, but because of different cultural experiences. When I was talking to Matt, relating about our teaching experiences, I felt as though I could read his mind, just because I knew so much about the sort of experience he must have been having over there as an American from a similar background. We agreed that Linkin Park is the favorite band of 90% of Russians and that it is not even worth explaining to Russians the concept of being too snobby to listen to mainstream music, let alone too snobby to admit to listening to standard alternative or independent music. These subtleties of the young American mentality cannot be translated into Russian.

Anyway, it was really great to have Matt here, and if it wasn't for a whiney, hung-over Ukrainian girl who complained constantly, the weekend would have been perfect. The weather was incredible. As Matt said, every Russian seemed to sense that Saturday was the last day of somewhat tolerable weather. He was right. Yesterday it was wet, windy, and voobshche merzkaya. Today was the first snow. I knew it was supposed to snow in the next few days, but when I looked out my window this morning I was terrified. For some reason my brain didn't process what my eyes were showing it properly. Something seemed very wrong. Matt and I were saying that we've heard so much about how harsh the winter is going to be, but that we really don't have any concept of what it's going to be like to live in it. It just seems like it will be so inescapably endless. Oh well, we'll see!

Love ya',
Jason

The time of troubles...

2008-10-10T02:30:00.002-04:00

Dear readers,

Okay, so if any of you are interested in a little update, here it is: I am having more and more problems with Russians and being reliable. People just plain don't show up to appointments and meetings without saying anything, or at best, let you know an hour in advance. It happens all the time.

This issue (about which I was upset yesterday) has been moved to the back-burner. Much to my chagrin, I found out that both my credit card and my bank card have been blocked. Even if you tell your bank that you are going to Russia and not to be suspicious of Russian charges, they don't believe you and block your account just to be safe. Thanks.

I have no money, well, I have less than a dollar in rubles. I finally figured out how to call Chase, and in a 4-minute phone call in which I successfully told a woman my debit-card number, I ran out of money on my phone card. I used up an ammount that would ordinarily have lasted a month. That's it. I'm broke. I have no access to money. I have no access to my phone with which I could theoretically regain access to money. I am very hungry.

I am not kidding.

Love,
Jason

Scenario for the intro to a movie about my life in Russia

2008-10-07T02:06:00.005-04:00

The action takes place in present-day Russia, in an ancient apartment in the downtown area of the capital of a far-flung Siberian region. The camera pans from a shot of a recently remodeled mayor's office, 180 degrees to a tall, young man, sleeping in a comically small bed, an entire foot too short for him. He looks a clown on a tricycle. His blankets have been thrown off the bed over the night, and one foot dangles off the side of the bed.

His alarm sounds. An obnoxious robotic voice alerts our sleeping hero in English, that "It is now 8:55, the temperature is 82 degrees." That is why the blankets are on the floor. Our hero blindly struggles with the alarm clock and finally manages to subdue it. Minutes later, a cell-phone sounds. It is a second alarm, a chirpy little jingle specially selected to start each day off with a bit of inane joy. The effect is not achieved. Our hero lumbers across the room in a stupor to silence the second alarm and finds his way back to bed.

A minute goes by before the phone rings again, this time a different song. Our protagonist sits up straight it bed. This is a phone call and not an alarm. Our hero is visibly puzzled. He hastily stumbles out of bed and over to his phone. The number is not a familiar one. He clears his throat, takes a deep breath, and then answers in hesitant Russian "Allo?" The Russian dialogue is accompanied by occassional English subtitles.

“Allo!” says a woman, and continues in an annoyed, official tone, “I am ……… calling from…… and we would ……. you……. you……?” Our hero frowns. Clearly the woman is speaking to quickly for him to follow. He asks politely, “Could you please repeat that?” “I am…….. calling from the office……… you….. you…………..we do not…… number. May I speak with Aleksandr?” “Ah,” thinks our hero, “a wrong number. Thank God!” “I’m sorry,” he says, “There’s no Aleksandr here. You must have the wrong number.”

He frowns as she insists, “I do not have the wrong number. You are….. need to….. I must………..tell me………………………………………………..Aleksandr….. phone……”. “I’m sorry, I really don’t understand,” our hero stammers. “In what sense?” the woman asks, incredulously. “I don’t understand what you’re saying, I think you have the wrong number.” “I do not have the wrong number….. Aleksandr….you… call…………number.” “Look,” exclaims our hero, clearly losing patience, “if you expect the person you are trying to call to understand what you’re saying, that is, in Russian at the speed at which you are speaking, then you clearly have the wrong number. It’s logic.” The woman hangs up the receiver.

As our hero slowly makes his way to the bathroom to shave, he thinks to himself about all the other lines of reasoning he could have used with the woman. He should have said, he thinks, “Imagine, your phone rings, you are awakened, and it is 7 o’clock in the morning in the capital of some remote country. It’s me on the line. I bark at you in English at an unbelievable speed and insist that you, no matter what you say, are Aleksandr and have some business to discuss with me on the phone. You protest, try to prove to me that you are in fact a foreigner, a Russian woman who clearly has no business to carry out on the phone in English at 7 AM, but I don’t believe you. I have the right number, you are Aleksandr, and it’s very strange that you’re not following our conversation or admitting to being named Aleksandr.” But our hero didn’t say that. Maybe next time he will.

FIN!

That’s my life folks. Anyway, things are still going well, although I’ve been incredibly, suffocatingly busy. The weekend was nice. Twice I went to this forest near the TPU stadium, and it is so beautiful! There are thousands of birch trees, all of which are a radiant shade of yellow and in contrast to the ever-graying landscape. We went with a big group of foreigners and Russians and played some old, Russian children’s games, while munching on Russian doughnuts and sipping juice. It was quite a lot of fun. We now have gas, and Dima and I have already made one ragingly successful meal together: pan-fried beef, potatoes, peppers, garlic, and onion. It’s so great to eat real food after all that Ramen, bread, and salami. I’ve done a few more English club meetings and am meeting a stifling number of new acquaintances. I can’t even keep track of all the Zhenya’s, Lena’s, Sasha’s, Masha’s, and Pasha’s. I can’t complain, though. I’m living an exciting life and learning a whole lot. Special thanks to my grandpa for writing a four-page response to my post about Russian’s and historical details! It helps to have a little support from back home!

Okay, that’s all for now.

Love ya’,
Jason

P.S. Enjoy some more pictures. I've included another shot from my window at sunset, some pictures from the forest, and a frightening picture of what appears to be one of the old, traditional wooden houses, destroyed by a fire (presumably arson). On the fence is written a grave threat, "I will be taking revenge!" If I understand correctly, this house is one of many that have been burned down by arsonists in the name of development, progress, and profit. I saw such a fire on Saturday night. Pretty sad.

Pictures from the war memorial, the soccer game, and my apartment

2008-10-03T03:14:00.002-04:00

Here's the link to the full, Facebook album, for those of you who don't have it:

http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2030420&l=89e7e&id=14402037

Новоселье

2008-09-30T11:10:00.000-04:00

Новоселье (novosel’e) is the Russian word for a housewarming. You move into a new place, get settled in a bit, and then invite friends and family to come celebrate (and maybe even bring some gifts for the house). Dima (Belgian roommate) and I organized a новоселье last Friday, to mark our settling down into our new place. There really is much to celebrate about the move, (I’ve already detailed the perks), and so a whole legion of foreign friends, along with a few Russians, came to congratulate us on the move. Nonetheless, we have a few problems here that have not yet been resolved. The all-capable Dmitrii Denisovich has been under the weather and so has not (unfortunately) come a’ calling. The heat has been turned on, but it turns out that two of our 5 radiators (including the one in my room), do not work. On one, the pipe is even severed. We still don’t have a doorbell (not a big deal), but the biggest problem is that two weeks after moving in, we still do not have gas for the stove. That is, we are living off bread, sticks of meat, cheese, tea, and the Russian equivalent of ramen noodles. For this last of our five main food groups we are endlessly scolded by every Russian we know.
I assure you, however, that Dima and I would be more than willing to eat real food had we the means. It’s not the landlady’s fault. She’s even sent her mother, Rufina Pavlovna (a rare name) to wait for the gas men a handful of times, but to no avail. They won’t come. Rufina Pavlvona does, however, putter about the house cleaning up after me and Dima while we’re at school (much to my embarrassment). This is the same lady who fixed our electricity. Anyway, Dima and I feel like we’re wasting away. I’m sure I’m losing weight. Soon I may resort to eating raw hunks of beef.
Anyway, this moving in of ours is similar, in many ways, to my overall experience here. It has been overwhelming positive with a few helpings of negative. I already growing weary of the Russian style of arranging meetings. In general, plans here are subject to change at any moment. “Yes, your schedule does say Tuesdays at 10:30 in classroom 302 of the main building, and no it might not be there, but we can assure you that it will probably be somewhere in one of the 2 following buildings, almost every time”. In fact, I would say that about 15 percent of the English classes I teach (and I’m only counting the ones with designated locations) actually take place in the indicated classroom. Usually, the best option is to show up to the right building and wander through the hallways until a professor yanks you into the proper classroom. The worst case of this sort of unreliability or just plain laziness is the visa-registration office. Because I moved, I have to change my address on my registration (and pay 400 rubles again). I also have to renew my visa (for some reason they insist on giving you a 3-month visa to start and then require that you renew it for a year almost immediately). Anyway, I found the right office and asked her what I need to do. She found a time for me to return, about 10 days later, and provided that I brought my money, passport, registration, landlady, and some special paperwork regarding the apartment, I could change my registration. So I arranged all of this brought my roommate to boot. We all woke up early, including my landlady who took off work, and we made it to the office for our meeting. Within 5 minutes it was decided that either I didn’t have a contract and would need to leave Russia immediately or I could return with my contract, my money, my passport, my registration, my landlady and the paperwork on Friday. Maybe then she will talk to me. I have my contract now, and may even get to stay later than November. We’ll see. This sort of unpredictability is a normal part of life in Russia. Plans are rarely definite. I’ve found it’s helpful to ask ahead of time “наши планы в силе?” (“are our plans in strength?”). Sometimes or even often it turns out that they are not. Such is life here.
Something else that has been bugging me is what has turned out to be the most burning questions in the minds of most of my students and acquaintances. I’ll say that my experiences with Russians so far have been great. They treat me wonderfully with incredible hospitality and generosity. But I’m really getting the impression that somewhere in Russia there are scores of people who think very poorly of Americans. My Russian friends are always amazed to find out that other Russians have been treating me well. They all want to assure me that they don’t necessarily believe what everyone (especially on television, apparently) says about Americans. “That’s funny,” I think, “I don’t know what they say about us on Russian television”. It turns out that on Russian television, they talk about how stupid Americans are, how little we know about geography, history, and how ridiculous American laws are. Lucky, so say my Russian friends, not everybody believes this. Some have friends who have travelled to America and ascertained that, in fact, not all Americans are stupid. One Russian I met said there’s even a show called “Тупые Американцы,” or “Stupid Americans”. This is something I really don’t understand. I really cannot imagine this sort of program, even on our sleazy television networks. In part, I think we’re too PC for this sort of programming. More importantly, I think we’re less aware about cultural stereotypes than Russians (and oh do they love them). If an American were asked to give a cultural stereotype about Russia, maybe he would say “wearing fur hats” or “playing chess” (“drinking vodka” in the worst case). Anyway, we are far less aware of Russian culture than they think they are of ours. Perhaps this is a fault of ours, not caring to know what people do in other cultures, but at least we don’t sit around watching television shows like “Drunk Russians”. Most of the impressions they have of America are from Hollywood movies, which may account for some of what they consider is stupid American behavior. Still, if I judged Russia based on the Russian movie “Gitler Kaput” that I saw last weekend, I would have a pretty bad impression of Russia.
Anyway, I’m pretty tired of being grateful that not all Russians consider me stupid for being an American. There is one question, however, that I’m asked at least three times a week. I always know when it’s coming, because it’s usually after we’ve already discussed “stupid Americans” and because it’s always at the same part of the conversation. The person will get a clever grin on his face, and at this point I know it’s going to happen: “Now we hear about what you learn in history class. Tell me if it is true what they say, that you are taught that America won World War II. The whole world knows that We, Russia won World War II. Do you think you won World War II?” I’ve already been answering this question for a year, and so I’ve gotten used to answering automatically, “Well, you know, we were allies. There were many fronts in the war, and together, with the help of the rest of the allies, we defeated the Germans. You won on your front and we won on ours”. This rarely satisfies them, and I’ve already grown tired of taking the time to explain the whole thing. Now I’ve resorted to a much cleverer answer that someone (I forget who) suggested when we were at the orientation in Kiev. It is simple and I think true. “It is my opinion that in war, nobody wins. Everyone loses”. Really, if you think about it, Russia, more than anyone else, felt the impact of this war. I don’t remember the exact statistics, but unimaginable numbers of Russians died, both at the front and at home (Petersburg Blockade for instance). The war was a tragedy for everyone involved, no matter how you look at it. How they have decided that WWII was a victory for them alone is beyond me. What I remember hearing in school is that the Russians fought the Germans on their front and we on ours. I have heard it speculated that had we not entered the war on our front, Germany would have had an easy time handling the Russians. This, of course, is speculation. If my memory serves me correctly, the Soviets even had a pact with Hitler that Hitler broke when he invaded Russia. I don’t know if Russia would have remained neutral or fought on the side of the Nazis if Hitler hadn’t attacked, but regardless, I don’t think it’s right to consider Russia the solitary victor of WWII. As you can imagine, this question was an unusual one to answer the first time it was asked, and now that I’ve heard it about 20 times, I’m quite tired of being tested to see if I’m stupid enough to doubt that Russia alone won World War II.
Anyway, so now I know that it must become my mission to prove the competence of the American intellect to as many Russians as possible. I’m starting to think I should start watching a little television to find out what else every citizen in Russia is being told about me. Like I said, however, I have yet to meet a Russian who has treated me badly just because I’m an American. I have had an overwhelmingly positive experience here, but I thought it might be appropriate to show everyone what is apparently common knowledge about Americans. Most interesting, however, is the extent to which this interest in the behavior of people in another country is one-sided. Every Russian is filled with ideas about what life in America is like (some of them, as I am explaining, are wildly unfounded), but I think it is fair to say that very few Americans have ever stopped to ask themselves what Russian people are really like, how they live. When Russians ask me what Americans say about them and whether these stereotypes have turned out to be true, it’s always a little uncomfortable. How can you tell them that your people, far from having a lot of negative things to say, don’t really have anything at all to say about them. Which is worse, I don’t really know.
Well that little thought has exhausted itself. Apart from the whole food situation, things are slowly moving into place. I’ve started the rest of my classes this week, the ones at my main department. At first I had a bad feeling about them. I was told that I would merely be reading texts for people to translate. I felt like this was certainly not me and my education being using to the fullest potential. It turns out that so far, these courses have been very interesting. The students are at the 4th level of a department that specializes in languages alone, and so their English is at an incredible level. I have been amazed by how eloquently these students have been discussing politics (the theme for these two weeks). More incredible was the simultaneous translation itself. These students listen to a paragraph of complicated political material at a somewhat normal speed, reflect for a split second, and then proceed to repeat what I say in well-formed, Russian sentences. Their memory and attention to detail amazes me. As in every classroom in Russia, there’s one student who’s at a level twice as advanced as all the rest. This student might not even be paying attention, and yet when another student fumbles with the translation, she chimes in with a verbatim, idiomatic translation, as if she was reading it off the back of her eyelids (I knew she wasn’t, because I brought the article). I was humbled.
Anyway, I think that’s enough for now. Hopefully the excess of this entry makes up for my not having written in quite a while. Be in touch all of you. I really do love hearing from you.

Jason

Photo albums for those of you without Facebook

2008-09-25T01:08:00.001-04:00

I've found a way to create links to Facebook photo albums, so that those of you without Facebook can see more than I can post on this blog. Here are the links:

http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2030250&l=f4120&id=14402037

http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2029851&l=4a51c&id=14402037

I plan to make some more soon!

A couple pictures from a presentation

2008-09-23T02:44:00.003-04:00

Hey all,

I've added some pictures that I took a while ago to previous posts, and here I've included some pictures from meetings of the English club at TGU. Enjoy them! Since I last wrote you, I've been to a soccer game, and I've had a few more adventures with Dmitrii Denisovich, who's currently planning to do "remont", that is repairs, to our whole apartment. He's wonderful. He came and fixed our electrical outlet which was slowly burning up the wall, and he stayed for 3 hours, explaining various particularities of Soviet electrical wiring and coming up with a huge plan for suping up our place. He even plans to get us a new cable for the television, so that every kanal will be as clear as "sport". He recommends the educational programming on "culture". I'll take him up on it I think. Things are going well, though. I'm busy as can be.

More soon!
Jason

First Days of Class

2008-09-20T04:46:00.001-04:00

So I’m done with my first week of class. The experience varied very much from group to group. So far, all of my students are in the second year, but each group seems to be on a drastically different level as far as English is concerned. Some have been very bashful and timid, too afraid to speak in front of everyone or in front of me. Others have no problem going on endless tangents or grilling me with all sorts of questions. These groups have been a lot of fun.

As of last week I had been given 8 groups, each of whom I see only once every two weeks. They arranged it this way so that as many students as possible could have interactions with a native speaker. I realized what a big deal this is when one student told me after class, “You’re the first foreigner we’ve ever met.” It’s funny, though, ‘cause I seem to be constantly surrounded by foreigners. Anyway, so far I’ve been doing the same class over and over again. My theme for these two weeks is entertainment, and so I just blab on and on about what’s it’s like to entertain yourself as a young person in America. I tell stories from college, show pictures of my friends, and try to draw them into a comparative discussion of American and Russian entertainment. Depending on the group, this can either be all too easy or impossible.

The students are all (mostly) really great. Even those with lower language skills are genuinely interested in hearing what I have to say and listen attentively. I explain to them what it means to be from a suburban area and then from a rural area and talk about what it’s like to try to amuse yourself in a place where there aren’t so many obvious solutions (Gambier). I try to show them that in a rural place like Kenyon, you often resort to more original forms of entertainment. Usually, by the end of the presentation, they’re thoroughly convinced: my friends and I are unusual. They are often amazed that we have the free time to do all of the things we do. Looking back, I’m kind of amazed too. Then again, I think people at Kenyon tend to squeeze as much as possible into every day.

I also gave a talk at the American Center at TGU, the main state university. The topic was liberal arts education in America and student life. For this reason, it was sort of similar to what I have been teaching in class. I explained to them all of the obvious differences between state and private schools, along with a lot of the values and educational ideals emphasized at liberal arts schools. One of the things I try to emphasize is how drastically different it is to live on a small, isolated campus, to be a separate, academically oriented entity. In Russia, most students live with their parents at home, since it would be way to expensive, not to mention difficult to find an apartment. Only students who were raised very far from the city (and I mean very far… many students explained that they live close to the city… just a quick 400 km train ride away) live in dorms. To live on a small campus with everyone you know, a lot of your professors, and everything you need in your daily life is something totally foreign to Russian students. As a result, the experience of studying in an American college is very, very different.

One thing that’s surprised me about teaching in a Russian classroom is the professors. The first part of the surprise is that they sit in and watch me teach the class. At first I was uncomfortable about this, as I didn’t want to have someone watching me do my job and didn’t want to filter what I was going to say, but it turns out that most of these professors are very young. One I know for sure is only a year older than me. They must be encouraged to teach as they are working on their masters and doctorate. I soon became completely comfortable with them in the room, as I realized they are just as genuinely interested in what I have to say as the students. I’ve even started asking them to introduce themselves like the students. They are curious, ask questions, and are just as enthralled as the students. I know at least one of them has recently spent time in America, doing a work and travel program, and she had some interesting stories to share about American entertainment as well.

So far, organization is not something I’ve found to be typical of a Russian university. Half of my classes so far have been in different places than they were supposed to be (as written on my schedule). On top of that, more and more classes seem to be trickling in, as representatives from countless departments all around the campus slowly get their act together and decide it’s time to pencil me in. At first I was disappointed that I had only been given 4 classes a week, but now it’s turning out that I might have way more classes than expected (that is, more than Fulbright recommends). From the way people have been talking, they seem to think that I should have 9, 90-minute classes a week. This wouldn’t be quite so bad if each building wasn’t 20 minutes away from the next. They also all seem to think that it would be most convenient for me if I have 4 back-to-back classes in one day. I wonder, when am I supposed to eat?

Then there’s the whole business with TGU. Fulbrighters are all recommended to volunteer at the local American Center. The AC in Tomsk happens to be affiliated with the TGU library. I have been there a few times, and they are wonderful. It is through Nataliya Nikolaevna at the AC that I went to make shashlyk, that I went bowling, and now, that I have a wonderful apartment (more on this in a bit). I did the presentation at the AC, and it went very well, except that I spoke very quickly (as I always do), and as one friend reports, even some professors didn’t understand what I was saying. Anyway, the English professors there liked my presentation and have decided that I should start teaching classes there too (I heard this first through a student). At the same time, they decide to offer me free Russian classes at the university (an employee at the AC told me about this offer). It turned out though, that as soon as I met with them and agreed to the free classes, they announced their plans for me to begin working at TGU. I was sort of offended. They had devised a plan to trick me into working for them. They said that because of some Fulbright rules, I couldn’t pay for classes and then couldn’t pay me, so in order to return their gracious favor, I should begin teaching classes for them. Apart from my being offended at this underhandedness and, as of that day, already having a packed schedule, Fulbright strongly warns against volunteering to work at different universities. These local universities compete for Fulbrighters. TGU had the Fulbrighter last year, but this year TPU won the bid. TGU was disappointed and now seems to be trying to steal me away. I have a really bad feeling about it.

Apart from this bad feeling, I’m a little anxious about the sort of work I’ve been assigned in these last two days. As of now, I’ve been asked to conduct 4 separate English clubs, three within TPU and one in TGU. On top of that, both universities want separate monthly presentations. One department of TPU (they divide my total number of working as sparsely as they can amongst every conceivable department of this polytechnic university) wants me to teach one class per week, each time with a different group of students, each time at a different location, and each time at a different time. That is going to be a real pain. On top of that, some of what they want me to do is to just read business and technological texts for the students, because they have few opportunities to hear native speakers. Business and technological English are not exactly my cup of tea, and I really feel like, as a recent graduate of literary and philological programs, I have more to offer than the ability to read. Maybe I can just make some recordings of myself and drop off CD. I had been looking forward to my classes at IMOYAK, which I had convinced myself was the most straightforwardly philological department of the polytechnic university. It turns out that most of the classes they want me to teach there are simultaneous translations classes. This means I read a text while Russian students try to translate what I’m saying and their professors correct them. Not exactly fulfilling work. All in all, I am feeling like I have more to offer than tales from my college days and the ability to read English aloud. I’ll give these classes a shot, but I’m a little disappointed.

Okay, I’ll tell you a bit about my apartment, but this entry’s already 3-pages long, single-spaced. So I decided to move in an apartment downtown with a friend from the dorm. He’s from Belgium, but he has a conspicuously Russian name: Dmitrii Voronov. Anyway, we’re renting the place through my friend at the American center, and so we avoided paying an agency. It’s also been great, because this woman already treats me like a son and wants to be sure that we’re nice and comfortable in the apartment. Th apartment would have been too expensive had I not found a roommate, but now it’s quite affordable by American standards. By Russian standards, it’s unheard of that I should have my own apartment, and I’ve heard an earful from about 5 of the employees from the dorm and a few others, about how what I’m paying is more than their monthly salary. It is true, and I feel a little guilty about it, but I’ve decided that it’s worth it to have a more normal, human existence. I want to live here, to have neighbors who aren’t students, to be able to invite people over, to see what real Russian life is like. I realize that real Russian life for a young person does not involve an apartment, but I’ll just pretend that I live with my parents, and that they’re never home. When I’m in the dorm I can’t help but flash back to my college existence, which was nice, but in a way, not the real world. It’s hard to explain. Anyway, I moved. I signed an agreement in technical Russian that I did not understand, by candlelight, in my own, freezing-cold apartment.

What was that last bit you say? Yes, I moved in and the electricity went out. It flickered on and off all day, and then gave out for the night. My landlady and her son came to fix it to no avail. The city hasn’t turned the heating on yet, and so we couldn’t use our freestanding heaters. It was cold. At that moment, signing the incomprehensible contract with the aid of a candle, I had moment of doubt. I had a day-long series of doubts. These were resolved only when my landlady’s mother came over while I was at the university. This aged, venerable Russian babushka instantly figured out the problem and fixed it. She then waited around in my apartment all day for me to come back so she could tell me. What a woman! Pyotr got scolded for being a man and not knowing how to do it.

So now one problem was solved, but we still had now gas for our gas stove (and oh, were we hungry). The landlady called the gas company to come and change the “balon” as it’s called. So me, a Russian friend, Dima the Belgian, and a whole posse of international students anxiously awaited the gas men. Hours later when they hadn’t come, Natalya Nikolaevna (landlady) decided to call in a specialist, her good friend Dmitrii Denisovich. We waited a few more hours, and the Russian Mr. Fixit arrived. We tinkered, prodded, poked, and conjectured, all to no avail. Dmitrii Denisovich made rounds to all the different neighbors, asking them for gas keys or a bigger wrench, interrogating them about their own ovens, polling them about their preference: gas or electric. The results were mixed: some neighbors insisted on upgrading to electric, others still prefer gas. Some had some wrenches, some had deceased grandfather’s who left the gas keys at the dacha. After Dmitrii Denisovich had finished his recon mission, he resumed his battle with the gas tank. Finally he got it loose and tried the reserve tank. It was also empty. He made a big speech in which he insisted that we beg the landlady for an electric oven, and then tried to fix our doorbell, which had been disconnected because of the obnoxious bird sound that it made. It, however, was broken, and Dmitrii Denisovich took it with him to tinker with at home. He left 3 hours later, and though he didn’t fix anything, we were sure glad that he tried. Hopefully we’ll have gas by Monday, or if Dmitrii Denisovich gets his way, maybe we’ll get an electric stove.

Other than these problems, the apartment is great. It’s very old and so it has high, lofted ceilings and is remarkable spacious in comparison with the later Soviet apartments. I have my own room with a beautiful, old, wooden wardrobe. My bed is two beds in one, but isn’t very comfortable. Dima’s room is somewhat smaller, but has the most incredible collection of Russian literature stacked on a shelf that covers an entire wall. SO BEAUTIFUL. I’m planning to raid it all year long. I’ve now done my second load of laundry, and am so happy that I will soon have clean clothes. We do have a general lack of furniture. Dima and I might look into a writing desk and some extra chairs.

Now I will quickly detail two other stories of interest:

1. I missed Russian class, I arrived late and couldn’t find the classroom (it moves every day). I was stressed and hot, and so I took off my sweater and scarf. As I was leaving the building, and oldish, female professor chased me down. “Young man! Young man! Who’s things are those? Where did you get them? Young man! Whose things are those?” She was accusing me of having stolen somebody’s sweater and scarf. I was really not in the mood and couldn’t think of anything clever to say, so I just said “Mine” and sulked away. Thanks lady.

2. I learned of this story way after the fact, but it is surprising and worth telling. It turns out that our French friend Joan (I don’t know how that’s spelled but it’s not Jean, and it’s a boy) was walking at 4 o’clock in the afternoon on the main street, Prospekt of Lenin, on a Sunday. So this is broad daylight on the busiest street in the city. A girl approached him and started asking him questions, where’s he from, etc. I’m guessing she was flirting. Anyway, all of the sudden, five men jump out and beat him up. They stole his passport, his cell phone, all his money, and left him beaten on the street. One man offered to take him in a cab to the police, but it turned out later that this man was with the other assailers. Somehow, thank God, the police call three days later, saying they tracked the girl down, because she had been using his cell phone. They called back an hour later and said that they had recovered the cell phone, his passport, and his wallet, and that they had caught 3 of the men. Apparently, they’re going to be locked up for years. What an experience. This is his first time abroad, and he almost got sent back. All the Russians I know where just as surprised that this happened in broad daylight on the busiest street. They insist that this sort of thing is a rarity in Tomsk. It is a good lesson for us international students though. We had come to understand Tomsk as a safe place, where, unlike Moscow and Petersburg, you don’t really have to worry. We know now that there are always exceptions.

Okay, hate to end on that note, but I really should wrap this up. I swear I’ll get some more pictures up soon.

Love,
Jason

Life in Russia: A Comprehensive Guide in Dialogues

2008-09-14T10:58:00.000-04:00

There are days in Russia when you hear the distant echo of the carefully scrutinized dialogues and situations from your introductory textbook and think, “Wow… it’s a good thing I learned that.

Please act out the following situations in pairs:

1. You have been invited to a restaurant but learn that most of the cafй’s in town are reservation only. You must go to the cafй in advance to reserve a table for two at 6 o’clock. You have heard that you must pay 500 rubles to secure your table. At the restaurant they are amazed by your foreign name and do not remember to ask you for the money.

2. You have just arrived in Russia and need an apartment. You must call the apartment agencies and describe to them the sort of apartment you need, the location, and your ideal price. Be sure to ask how much they charge for the finding fee.

3. Your Russian friend has invited you to go bowling. Ask him for directions on how to get to the alley, and find out how much money you should bring.

These are pretty basic situations for which the textbook prepares you pretty well. There are, however, some unforeseen variation in day-to-day Russian life

4. You have heard about the harsh Russian winter and decided that you need adequate footwear. Your Iranian friend offers to take you to the street market to find a pair of boots. At the market, you are told by the merchant lady that your shoe size does not exist in Russia and that you should settle for something three sizes too small for $100. Also, the only shoes available are shiny, pointed, leather loafers with a thin layer of fuzz inside. What do you do?

5a. You have arranged to meet a representative from the apartment agency at two outside of a potential apartment to take a look. It is a half an hour later and she has not arrived. You call and she instructs you to enter through the locked door and take a look at the place yourself. You see big piles of filth and trash everywhere. Apparently people just dump their trash out the window. You follow and man through the locked door and see a big pile of what appears to be dog feces in front of the first apartment. You hope it’s not yours. You wander the winding, gloomy stone corridors inspecting the addressless, apartment doors, all of which have holes in them, some of which appear to only be fences. You get lost and worry that you’re going to die in this Soviet-era nightmare of an apartment complex. You go back outside and call the representative, who laughs at your and says something about the internet. Eventually she arrives and lets you in. You wonder through a million scenes of lower-class family toil until you reach a shabby looking apartment with nothing in it. Do you want it? No. Neither does the young couple who’s also waiting inside. The owner is disappointed.

5b. You have been offered an apartment by acquaintance from work, outside of an agency. She offers to show you it at 6:30. You are to meet her next to the biggest wooden ruble in the world. She shoes you the place. It’s incredible. Enormous. Clean. Spacious. Washing machine. Incredible view of the most downtown part of the city. Turns out it’s way too expensive. “Maybe you can find a roommate?” she suggests”. In order to give you the chance to think and show any potential roommates, she gives you the key to hold onto for a while. You start to mull over some likely candidate from your foreign friends, because no Russian college students live in their own apartments. Later it turns out that a Belgian named Dima might just take you up on it. But who will sleep on the couch bed in the main room? Also, there is an incredible library with complete collections of many of your favorite authors. Also, the ladies son is the one who took you bowling in dialogue 2, and he takes the key back the next day.

6. You are preparing a presentation at your local American Center, where you have been asked to give lectures from time to time. The topic is American liberal arts colleges and student life. You go eat shashlyk with the son of the person in charge of the American Center and later friend on the Russian friend site. You arrive at the American Center to establish the time of the presentation and learn that somehow the word got out that you were in a rap group in college. They want you to rap at the end of your presentation about liberal arts education. You’re not sure whether hip hop was one of the original liberal arts but figure you’ll do your best. You get nostalgic and poor some out for your hommies back in America.

7. You are invited to a restaurant/bar on a Saturday evening by your international friends. You are denied at one cafй, where it turns out, yes you do need to make reservations. You are an optimistic young foreigner, and you and your cronies decide to try your luck at another cafй. After an endless wait, everyone enjoys one beer. It is 11:30 and you decide you had better leave to make your midnight curfew. Some Germans invite you to go to a club, but you a select crew of goody-two-shoes decide to hike it home. Unfortunately, the bill takes forever and you are delayed 15 minutes. When you finally arrive home, it is 12:15 AM, past your curfew. You, a Belgian, a Swiss girl, and a Korean girl take a collective gulp and ring the buzzer. A stern, old Russian woman bursts out the door spitting condemnatory remarks. You decide to speak on behave of your friends and explain that you do not yet know how long it takes to walk back from the center. You explain the business about the tip. She’s not having it. “You have come to a foreign country to live. There must be order. I’m going to report you to the Rector. Give me your ID’s. Don’t tell me you tried to make it home in time young man, you always say that”. It really is your first time being late. She accuses your terrified Korean friend of smelling of something. You ask what. She says booze and accuses the poor girl of being drunk. You try to explain that you only had one beer each, that the Korean girl only had half of one. Then you decide to cut your losses and head to bed. You wonder what will become of the Germans. Later the Germans knock on your door and invite you to watch crappy American chick flick dubbed into Russian in your room. You figure, “Why not?”

Yes, yes, these are the situations encountered in everyday Russian life. About a year ago I decided I would like to become an editor for foreign-language textbooks for college students. I figure I should start collecting these sort of situations to better prepare America’s future generations of Russian scholars for real life in Russia.

But really, things are going very well here. I’m meeting more and more people. I’m very excited for my first day of teaching tomorrow. I spent all day preparing for my lectures on entertainment in America and for my presentation on liberal arts colleges and rap. For those of you who would know Sombrero Fallout and are in the neighborhood, I’ll be performing the hit single “Pickles” in its entirety at the American Center in the Scientific Library at 34, Prospekt Lenina. It starts at 4:30! Just kidding, I don’t think you’ll be able to make it. But maybe there’ll be pictures all the same!

From a sweaty internet cafe filled with possessed gamers with love,
Jason

Getting down to business

2008-09-11T11:13:00.000-04:00

So the last few days have been good! I found a coat, found some more cheap clothes, found my class, found it boring… all important findings. The class really was kind of dull. The first day was really bad: way too many people, the…. professor… was.. talking… like… this, and the material really did seem to be at an intermediate level. I went back today, and it was a little better, so I’m going to go again tomorrow. I might look into switching to a literature class. I am paying after all.

I got my schedule for my English classes, well, half of them, and I start on Monday. From what I gather, I’m just going to be chatting about my experiences in America. When I asked if I’m supposed to give grades or homework, my boss answered, “You are not here to give grades. You are here to give pleasure!” Interesting work!

The international students had a tour of the candy factory, which turned out to be a lot of fun. We had to buy some funny little feet coverings called “bakhili” at the drug store, as well as a bottle of water. The water didn’t make sense to me at first. So we were there with all the international students from Germany, France, Switzerland, Austria, China, Vietnam, Korea, etc, and we suited up in little “Red Star” hats and t-shirts. They ran out of shirts, so I got to wear a big doctor’s smock thing. I got to practice some French and German while we were waiting, which was fun, but then the tour guide announced that since not everybody will understand, she would talk less and we would try more candy.

So we proceeded through these dreary, old corridors, and around every corner was a fresh batch of candy to try. They make over 150 types of candy there, including their famous “Bird’s milk”, and they’ve been in business since the 1800’s. Later I asked if it was always called the “Red Star” plant, and of course, it wasn’t. It was originally named after some Polish guy, but after the revolution, when they decided that the best thing to do with orphans was to let them work in the candy factory, the orphans, ripe with socialist fervor, renamed it “Red Star”. So the story goes. Anyway, I soon found out why we needed water. I ran out pretty quickly and was desperately thirst from all the mounds of candy. There’s also a beer factory we might get to tour. Maybe they’ll recommend that we bring some bar snacks. Well, soon the workers had their break and our tour ended. They showed us some top-secret candy from R&D, including various blatant rip offs of American candies, one of which, “SPRINT”, was stolen from Snickers (even the packaging), only with added energy (taurine, etc) to “improve your mood on a cold Siberian day”.

Well that was an adventure. Later that day, the international crowd invited me to dinner at some shabby but cheap place near the river. It was fun to act as a translator from Russian to German, from German to French, and every possible direction in between. Later, they decided to stop into a bar, and it ended up being the funniest little family establishment. The beer was ridiculously cheap, and they were just about the friendliest people you’d ever meet. They were so impressed by their international patrons that they had us all autograph a piece of paper. We chatted for a long time with the barman, then later played “durak” (only Russian card game, thanks Matt for teaching me) with the proprietress (I’m guessing). It’s turning out that my Russian is serving me pretty well! The barman Nikita told me all kinds of stories about his Grandpa the expert hunter of bears and elk. Later he tried to catch me up in an argument about the current political situation, but I deftly navigated myself into a fairly neutral position and assured him that I wanted nothing more than peace and friendship between our countries. I’ve had a little practice with this question, and I’m learning how to answer it! Anyway, it was a great experience, the whole thing, and I left feeling great about my whole situation (experience for the pouring rain).

Today Sveta (as she’s now called) and my boss spent all day helping me in my quest for an apartment. They worked long and hard, calling, discussing, recalling, answering calls. Finally we got to tour a couple of places. The first was incredible, truly surprising, but a little far away. The second was closer and terrible. My boss seemed to think the owner was an alcoholic and got us out as quickly as possible. The last one was also closer and also not great. Tomorrow we’re going to be able to check some more places out, including a couple that are very close. I’m really hoping they’ll be okay. They’re all priced a little higher than I had hoped, but I think it’ll be worth it.

Well, I’m working on my second week here, and things seem to be getting off the ground. For those of you that have been reading, thanks! Hopefully, I’ll be able to do a better job of keeping in touch once I get my own place. We’ll see!

Love ya’,
Jason

Goings on

2008-09-08T23:56:00.001-04:00

Well, well, well,

So according to my calculations, I’ve been here at least a week. I now know that internet café’s here are sort of like the DMV in America. It’s really too bad that I fiend the net like a наркоман, that my hands start to shake when I haven’t checked my e-mail in 24 hours, and that I’m like a slobbery, wild-eyed puppy who doesn’t know what to focus on when I actually get my hands on the stuff. That said, I’m looking for an apartment for reasons I’ll explain in a bit, and hopefully I can get the net installed there.

I’ve still been doing almost nothing, and yet there’s not enough time in the day. I wake up and make myself a breakfast of bread cheese and sweet little grapes, take a shower, grab my trusty passport pouch, and hit the road. Speaking of my morning routine, I think I’m going to be just about out of laundry in the next two days, so I might have to confront the cruel desk ladies about our laundry room being locked 24/7. My other option is to sneak into the 4th floor laundry room without being seen by the locals who monopolize it.

So, I’ve decided to get serious about my apartment search. The cockroaches keep making suicide dives at my boiling pot of food. It’s not quite as close to the university as I thought. The curfew is strictly enforced, and I even get grilled if I don’t waive my ID in the face of the ladies at the desk. I also learned that there is a no guests ever policy. I would imagine that in the -40 degree weather it will be nice to have a place to entertain company, so as not to spend the winter singing to the cockroaches in the kitchen. Plus, all the Russians on my hall are planning to evacuate the dorm as soon as they pass some English test. It will cost a little more, but I’m ready to be out of the dorm after 4 years of undergrad.

I start Russian classes tomorrow and still haven’t heard much in the way of when I’ll be teaching what. My contact Svetlana, or Sveta, as I’m now allowed to call her, says she’s going to look into the whole teaching thing tomorrow. I’m pretty excited to get started. I tried to find my Russian class in the wrong building, which I suspect was the subject for that one painting where the staircases go up, down, and upside down. Then I tried the right one, but found only a closet where the map of the building said there should be a hallway leading to 5 more classrooms, including my own. Hopefully I’ll find it tomorrow. I’m interested to see how the classes are. They could be either really helpful or a waste of time and money. Judging from the test, they might be kind of a joke.

I’m slowly managing to meet people. The extremely helpful and hospitable lady from the American Center, after having shipped me off on a very interesting tour of their old-book archives, invited me to go with her son and his friends to the river to make shashlyk (shish-kebobs). This is one of the best old Russian traditions, and I had never been invited, so I was pretty excited, and a little worried about having been forced on these people by their mother. Pyotr and his girlfriend Olya, who’ve both been to America (met their in fact) on work and travel trips, were great. We drove out the Ushaika River (Pyotr just got his license after failing it some incredible number of times and paying dearly for each test) and deliberated for about half an hour on how to get the car through the woods to an ideal place. Finally we chose one and started setting up camp, preparing food, lighting the little portable shashlyk grill (Russian starter fluid leaves much to be desired). Their other friends arrived, including Sasha who wants to move to New York and become a teacher or a post man, and we had a good old time. They even toasted to my birthday, which made up for my having spent my birthday night (the night before) alone. After eating the sashlyk, which was delicious, we tried to make a fire. Apparently some wild looking Russian man with an axe helped them find some firewood, and just a few minutes later, he came over with some nervous looking friends and asked for a ride to the hospital. His arm was hanging out of his socket. He took it pretty well. Pyotr came to the rescue, and, much to the chagrin of Olya “They stole the music!” (the car had been blasting Russian pop into the forest, along with a song that plays about once every fifteen minutes here, “I kissed a girl and I liked it!”).

Pyotr came back and the fire finally got going, but only when we dumped a bunch of trash on it. They regretted not having started the fire that way before (to cook the shashlyk) and I suggested that the little shashlyk stands around the city advertise shashlyk “so vkusom musora”, or “with the taste of trash”. This is probably the first joke I have told in Russian that got a real thunderous bout of laughter (all flavors are advertized in Russia as “with the taste of ___”, including “chips with the taste of crab”).

So I got home and was invited by my neighbor Kolya to watch a movie and drink a beer with the whole section (4 rooms). It turned out that it was the new Batman, which I’ve seen quite a few times. I told them I liked it a lot, but they, somehow, all seemed to be bored to tears with it. They also didn’t know it was 2.5 hours long. I tried to point out some of its merits, but they just weren’t having it. I also explained three times that Gotham was not a real city. They did like the parts with lots of action, and expressed their approval with unanimous cheers of “normal’no”, which literally means “normal”. Really though, if you can get a Russian to agree that something is normal, then that’s something, and so all things considered, normal’no would translate better as “INCREDIBLE!”

Unfortunately, I haven’t had too many chances to speak Russian, but I’ve met with Anya, a friend of Megan’s (former ETA in Tomsk) to do a sort of conversation exchange (we talk half the time in English, have the time in Russian). This has been very helpful, and I hope my conversational Russian will start to improve significantly. Anya is from Seversk, which is north of the city and forbidden to anyone who doesn’t live there, because of the nuclear power plants that are there. It’s fenced off and everything. Still, according to Anya, 120,000 people live there. That’s one place I won’t be able to get a tour of.

Welp, it’s 1 AM, and I’m itching to make a good impression in my first class tomorrow, so I’d better be off to bed. Stay tuned for more updates on my quest for a decent apartment and adequate clothing. I’m also embroiled in a failure of a quest for a used bike. We’ll see where that leads.

Love ya’,
Jason

Old news...

2008-09-07T11:30:00.000-04:00

I typed this up a few days ago, but troubles with technology through a wrench in my spokes... more to come when I have the time to jot it down!

Phew,

Thursday was a victory for me. By Wednesday night I had been getting pretty depressed about not knowing anybody, about not being able to speak Russian as well as I would like, about the internet cafй’s having huge lines and hoards of game addicts, and most of all, about the prospect of spending my birthday alone in a foreign country. I had never really thought about what it means to have all your friends with you for your birthday, but now I’m realizing it’s something I really took for granted.

Anyway, today started and ended on a series of good notes. First, I found a bike store and was told that I might find a cheap used bike on the internet. We’ll see about. Then, I finally found the mega-store “Fud-Siti”, which has everything your average American needs to feel at ease (almost). I got some slippers, a rope to hang my laundry on, and something I have been searching for ever since I first tried it last January: a pomegranate. I’m going to save it for my birthday.

Anyway, I came home and napped, woke up, and set off to take my Russian placement test. On the way I found a clothing store that actually sold things at somewhat decent prices (usually, prices here are absolutely outrageous). I’m going to go back for some sweaters and a jacket. I took the test with some German “specialists” and a nice assortment of other foreigners (French, maybe?). I was happy to find that it was a multiple choice test at a low-intermediate level, so I finished it in about 20 minutes, tried to leave, was instructed to sit back down for a reading test, took that, and then proceeded to the oral section. This turned out to be about 4 questions (where are you from, etc), and then I was told I was “free”. Overall, I’m glad to see my education from Kenyon is at least good for taking entrance tests, if nothing else.

Later, Svetlana introduced me to our boss, who seems really young and has a habit of saying “yes?”. After proctoring a test to some girl who wanted to learn English in order to study in Prague, Svetlana suggested showing me the “Lagernyi Sad”, which might translate to “Camp Garden”, but which is actually a gorgeous forest/WW II memorial. On the other side of the forest is one of the most incredible views I’ve ever seen. I’ve heard that the city just drops off into wilderness, but this was ridiculous. There’s a practically panoramic view of the river and surrounding country side. You can see for miles and miles. It’s so still that it looks exactly like a life-size landscape portrait. I’ll get a picture to put up here.

Anyway, I came home in a good mood, met a Vietnamese boy in the kitchen, and on my way back, finally met my Russian neighbors. This is my major victory, as I’ve spent the last few nights in my room, listening to their loud gallivanting a carrying-on, desperately lonely and craving any sort of social interacting. They invited me in, and we talked a bunch, in English and in Russian. They answered the enormous list of questions I had about the mysterious goings-on at the dorm, and even told me that there was a decent and super-cheap cafeteria that I should definitely be going to. Also, there’s a ladder to climb onto the second-story balcony. If you don’t know why this is important, than you must not know that there is a 12 am curfew in most Russian dorms.

So we talked a bunch, and eventually it came up that they were all desperately studying to pass this big English exam they all have next Wednesday. They all study at the university of oil or something. Basically, they’re all planning to be rich oil men. I helped them translate 20 wacky Russian sentences about oil, vapor injections, and 3-D modeling into decent English, and realized what a huge task it is going to be to explain a lot of things to my students, especially articles, which seem to be the universal blight of all Russian students. I joked with one guy who was having trouble, that anywhere he sees some open space, he should insert a “the” just to be safe. This reminds me, apparently I’m going to have introductory and intermediate students instead of advanced. It’ll be a fun adventure but not quite as easy as what was already not going to be easy.

All in all, it was a day of small personal break-throughs that amounted to me not having a large break-down. It was also nice to get a couple of calls from Jackie, my parents, and my brother, who’s just arrived to college. So I’ll get by for the time being, even if getting by means eating my birthday pomegranate in the dorm and day-dreaming about landing myself a bicycle.

Tchuss!
Jason

P.S. I might get to brush up on some German with the specialists. Their English, like every German with whom I’ve spoken English, is impeccable. How do they do it?

Abuh?

2008-09-06T01:16:00.001-04:00

I typed something for you all and put it on my Flash Drive, but it seems to have disappeared, so I'm going to try to find it when I get home. Eeks! The theme of the post was having a great day, so you can try to imagine what that might entail until I tell you.

Missed you all on my birthday!
Jason

2008-09-02T10:12:00.003-04:00

From Tomsk

Well I made it in on Sunday. Svetlana from the department was there at the airport to meet me (bright and early) and had a cab drop me off at my dorm. The dorm is for foreigners, is about 10 stories tall, and is pretty luxurious as far as Russian dorms go. I have a fridge, a microwave, a tv, some shelves, a desk, and sheets that almost cover the bed that I can almost fit on. I have a little subdivision «Секция» where 3 or 5 other people live (I can’t decide), all of whom speak Russian way better than me. For some reason I have feeling way too shy to talk to talk to anyone around the dorm, but maybe eventually I’ll make some friends. I asked this administrative lady at the university about the cockroaches in the kitchen, and she said it was because of the Chinese students. My eyes bulged and she apologized and said that they make a lot of food and leave it out.

Anyway, so I passed out for 7 hours and when I woke up, I realized I had nothing I needed to survive: no food, no towel, no soap, no utensils, no plates, no card for my phone… I could go on and on. Anyway, I went out to see the city and try to track down the things I needed to get me through the night. My host contact Svetlana, who, by the way, speaks great English, was skeptical about my being able to find a SIM-card for my phone, which surprised me (since they’re sold on every corner in every Russian city I’ve ever been in), but I found a million stores selling them. I had to go back to my dorm before I could actually get one, since I didn’t remember my address. I wandered around tracking down the necessities: a plate, a bowl, a mug, a fork, a spoon (I later accidentally threw the utensils down the trash shoot and had to go find new ones). Yesterday I even got a pot and a pan to make pelmeni and who knows what else in the future.

The city is pretty gorgeous as you can no doubt tell from the pictures. Coming in from the airport the landscape changes from deserted wilderness (dark, dark forests) to large city in a matter of seconds. Still, even in the city there’s lots of vegetation and plenty of parks that look as dense as the forest surrounding it. When I first set off into the city it seemed a little desolate, but then I wandered over towards the main drag (the Prospekt of Lenin) and was amazed at everything that was available. Luckily I had studied a bit of Tomsk geography on the internet before arriving, so I had an easy time of getting around, at least on the main streets. I’ve figured out that the #3 bus gets me everywhere I’ve needed to go so far.

Evidently I’m going to be taking some Russian classes, but not yet, and it’s not really clear when I’ll actually start teaching English (supposedly it can be as late as October), so really, I have nothing to do yet. I’ve gone from buying the bare necessities to starting to consider some clothes that I might need, including new shoes (I’m thinking I need to pointy Russian-man shoes, to fit in), but they don’t have a lot in my size, which, as I learned last summer, is 48. I found a couple of pirated mp3 cd’s (4 bucks for the complete collection of any group you can find). I took home the complete Leningrad and the complete Kino but might go back for Snoop Dog and a few others. I really need to start buying some more substantive food and things to make it with, but finding it for a good price isn’t always easy. In short, I’m still finding my way, but I’m getting very good at spending money.
Today I stopped into the American Center, which is in the middle of the huge library of TGU (the other big university in town), and once I explained my way past the surprisingly formidable security checkpoint, I slowly made my way to the center.

When I introduced myself as the new American in town, I got the whole she-bang. The lady explained all about the center and told all kinds of stories about Megan, the former Fulbright ETA who evidently made a pretty big impression on everyone here. She showed me their video collection, which I think will come in handy, and let me browse their American literature section. She then insisted on showing me all the reading rooms in the building, setting up a tour of the historical books for me, showing me the section on Russian art, and getting me a little pass so I can come back. It was nice to get to see what seems to be a pretty great resource, but I was detained so long that I was late in meeting Svetlana to go get my registration.
When I got there she was talking to the French “Specialist”. I forgot to say that my official title here is “Specialist”. Not bad. I think I’ll get it put on my “Vizitka” (business card, if only I could see Anatolii the doctor with that kind of vizitka to give out!). Anyway, I confused the French girl for a Russian student, because she was speaking in English me. Oh well!

I got my passport , migration card, and brand-new registration from a lady at the university and now can say that I officially exist in the Russian Federation. Great!

Well, I’m going to crack open one of the books I just got at «Академкнига» and round myself up some dinner. I’ll post this whenever I get my hands on some internet. Enjoy the pictures. I will have included a few from Moscow and a few from Tomsk. I’m going to try to find a good place to post more than 5 pictures at a time for you all to admire.

That’s all for now,
Jason

I love Russia!

2008-08-30T06:16:00.004-04:00

It worked! I got the money back! It was waiting for me at the desk. I'm so happy, so enamored with the Russian people! I really can't believe my luck!

Lesson learned

2008-08-30T02:42:00.003-04:00

Wow,

So I’ve had some adventures in Moscow. On our first day we went to the Embassy and met with a lot of advisors and representatives of various departments, which, apart from being very tiring after a night of train-travel, was pretty interesting. The US Ambassador’s wife even approached us (she, a former Fulbrighter) and invited us to “the residence” at some point. We hear d a lot of interesting things from various briefings and left in a bit of a daze.

That night I met Zeke, an old friend my summer abroad in Petersburg. He has been working for the Moscow times this past year and it was great to catch up. The next day we stopped into the American center and then to the Fulbright office. We took care of some official business and then were set loose into the city. I desperately needed to exchange some money (I was told to bring a lot of cash and so needed to change it all to Rubles eventually). I was nervous about the street exchanges, but heard you don’t have to pay as big of fees as at a bank, so after visiting Red Square and wandering towards Arbat with some friends, I finally chose a decent looking exchange with a door for security and a good rate.

I had calculated how much I should get in exchange for $1,300 (31,850 Rubles) and thought I was in good shape. The lady told me that amount, counted out the 850, and pulled the rest out of the machine. I, stupidly, was afraid to stay in the little room too long and get scolded, so I went back outside and put of counting my money until later. Also, I didn’t get a receipt and didn’t think about it until later. I enjoyed a nice afternoon and some shuarma on Novyi Arbat and went home with a sense of achievement (having exchanged my currency).

After folding some laundry, I remembered to count the money I had gotten, and much to my surprise, I was 5,000 Rubles short. That’s $205. As you can imagine, I went into shock. How stupid of me not to have counted the money, not to have asked for a receipt. I have an obvious accent and a foreign look. It would be so easy to rip me off. If I had noticed that I’d been short-changed, she could have apologized and given me the right amount, otherwise, I have no proof, the police would do nothing, and she’d walk away with $200. I was an idiot. I eventually found some friends to consult. Everyone agreed, the situation was grim. I could go to the police and maybe get a passport check and pay a bribe to get my documents back. I could go back to the lady and be sworn at to no avail. Basically, I had no options. Finally, I decided to go ask the ladies at the hotel desk for advice.

They were wonderful. They heard me out, asked for all the financial details, explained that nobody should ever go to an exchange in an underground tunnel (banks charge fees, but are secure and give receipts)… they told me that yes, going to the police would be useless. Finally, they said that my once chance was to go back and hope that it was an honest person making an honest mistake, and that she’d rectify it. Even then, I had no proof. The situation was pretty hopeless. Nonetheless, they recommended that I try, and even reminded me of the word for “receipt”, which any native-English speaker might forget in favor of a word that means “recipe” or “prescription”, none of which would have helped me. When they asked where in Russia I was headed and heard Tomsk, they smiled sweetly and promised that nothing like this would ever happen in Tomsk. This warmed my heart greatly.

Finally, I asked some friends, and they agreed to accompany me for courage. I decided that the reason I was in this mess was that I was too afraid to talk to people, too afraid to say that I needed a minute to count my money. This was a lesson I needed to learn. Talking to the hotel ladies gave me the confidence I needed to realize that I can speak some Russian, that I can express myself, and that the only way to thrive in another country is to have what it takes to actually talk to people.

With my friends’ help I prepared some tactics. I’d appeal to her as if I assumed it was a mistake, say that I am sure she is an honest person, that I was foolish not to have counted, that I certainly had no evidence, and that I really just wanted to make sure there was no way to settle things. We, my friends, the ladies, at the desk, and I, were all sure, however, that I had been had, that I was a stupid foreigner in a wild metropolis, and that I had walked into an obvious trap.

I buzzed at the door and was allowed in. “Were you working here at 5?” I asked. “Yeah, so? She answered, pretty hostilely. “Do you remember me?” “No, can I help you?” I fumbled, “I know people make mistakes, everyone makes mistakes.” She looked puzzled. “I came in here and gave you $1300. You should have given me…” I really started to fumble. I was nervous, forgot numbers, stuttered, apologized. Finally, she realized I was really worked up, calmed me down, and asked me to explain. I did and she did the calculations, figured out how much I should have received and how much I did. It all added up. I didn’t know what would happen.

To my amazement, I started to sense real sympathy. This person I took for a swindler really felt for me. She said there couldn’t have been a mistake, that the machine counted the money, etc. Finally, she asked me to come back the next day. I told her I was leaving for Tomsk and that I might not be able to. I asked what she could do tomorrow that she couldn’t now. She explained that she could call the bank and find out if there was a problem with the numbers, and if there was, give me the money the next day. When I told her it’d be hard to make it, she got agitated, begged me to understand that she was also in a bind, that it was a legal issue and so on. I understood that she really wanted to make things right. Eventually she called her boss, explained the situation, and when told that she couldn’t just hand out $5,000 Rubles, pleaded that he understand that I was on my way out of the city and couldn’t come back. Nothing came of the phone call, and we started talking again.

I told her I could try to come back, and she said that I absolutely need to, that she would be there, and that she would look into it for me.

I was amazed. I came there feeling cheated, feeling disillusioned with the country I had devoted so much time and energy into studying, feeling like I wanted to at least vent my frustrations on this lady in a perexod ( can’t really translate). What I found was a real person, sympathetic, caring, real. I really believe her. If she had really taken my money and faked that performance, then she is a talented enough actress to deserve it. I’m going to go back tomorrow, and maybe somehow I’ll get my money back. If not, I don’t even think I’ll be that upset. If nothing else I have a renewed faith in people, in the Russian people, in everything I thought I loved about this country. If nothing else I learned that to get by here, to learn anything, I’m going to have to stop being so nervous and self-conscious and actually talk to people. That’s what I’m here for, after all. If nothing else, I have at least a little bit of renewed faith in myself (obvious counting blunder aside), that I have managed to pick up a bit of Russian in the last few years.

We’ll see what happens tomorrow. Regardless, I have an expensive cab-ride to the airport at 7:30, and my flight to Siberia leaves just before midnight. Despite the stress of this misadventure, I’m really excited to finally get to see my home for a year.

More to come,

Jason

PS, I've posted some more pictures from Kiev

Moscow!

2008-08-28T12:39:00.003-04:00

Hello again,

We've been pretty busy, and I haven't had much time to update. I just got to Moscow after a 13 hr train ride with a character names Anatolii about whom I'll tell you in a bit. Kiev was beautiful and the people were great. We didn't see a whole lot of it, since we were busy and only really knew the main streets. We left and, sadly, said goodbye to about half our ETA's, who are stuck in a plush Kiev apartment (or flying back to the US, as the case may be) because of visa troubles. I'm going to miss some new friends a lot, but I'll see 'em in Moscow in January, if not sooner.

So the man in the train...

Before we set off, a very drunk man hugged our director and said something to him. As I was getting on, our director warned me to avoid the creepy guy who he had been talking to. As luck would have it, he was in my cabin.

He was pretty drunk. He shoed the mother and daughter out of the cabin so he could change into his shorts and, as I found out, so we could drink some vodka. He was too drunk to fold his pants or find his shorts. He forced tons of food on me, including some delicious pirozhki with berries and an ernormous, nasty tomato that exploded onto my pants and stained them. The mother was (with good reason) noticeably concerned for her daughter's safety. The daughter was cute and seemed used to dealing with characters like this guy.

So after he had fed me and forced a few shots of vodka down my throat, he pulled me aside to watch the sunset and talk about the universality of love and people, how there should be no boarders, how we should all live together in harmony, because people were all the same everywhere. It was a nice speech and I agreed. He wished God to be with me (as a doctor, he specified) about 20 times. He couldn't remember my name and wanted my business card. I didn't have one so I wrote my name on a napkin for him a couple hours later. He was either too drunk to read or couldn't, so the lady had to fill out his migration card for him and I had to write down his name and phone number when he wanted me to have it (in case I got sick, he swears he's a doctor (not a vrach, the Russian word for a doctor). He claims to have treated Pope John Paul the II's best friend and that he was going to treat the Pope, but that he died before he could. He says he didn't want to make a bad impression, but that he would sober up and be a real doctor again when he got to Moscow.

When I told him about my Ukrainian great-grand-father, he said he real relatives came from Kazahkstahn. I thought he was calling me a liar, but apparently there was a big migration a long time ago. He also read my fortune and said that two girls have deceived me (been unfaithful). Interesting news!

Anyway, it was a long and interesting train ride. He laughed, told stories of friends, cried (really), apologized to the girl for crying. He said this was him being weak, that he had a lot of pain in his soul, but that he used to be a strong man, used to read, write poetry, stuy karate, play instruments, all sorts of things. All in all, it was an interesting experience, pretty sad, but altogether telling. He was really a kind old man, full of good intentions and love for his fellow man. I don't know that I'll be calling him up, however.

That's all for now. I leave for Tomsk on Saturday night. More stories to come!

Love,
Jason

More tank pictures...

2008-08-22T09:03:00.004-04:00

Tank demonstrations escalate. These have nothing on the videos Becca took of Tanks rolling by at night. A parade of increasingly enormous vehicles and missiles. We'll see what happens on Independence Day on Sunday

(more pictures)

2008-08-21T10:42:00.004-04:00

Live from Kiev

2008-08-21T10:14:00.003-04:00

Hello all,

I've been in Kiev for a few days and have finally gotten some reliable internet. The city is gorgeous, and the people, for the most part are especially friendly. We've seen a little recreation of a traditional Ukrainian village that was interesting. Since my great-grandfather moved from a village probably not-unlike this one, I felt a sort of connection (maybe phony) to the area, and it was neat to imagine that it was somehow akin to my "rodina".

On the second night we made a picnic in this little park between two streets, bread, cheese, and beers. An ETA brought his banjo and, to our luck, we lured ourselves a real, live Ukrainian guy named Sasha. He ended up staying for about 4 hours, and we had some great conversation. I was glad to see that my conversation skills aren't as rusty as I had feared, and was, with a few exceptions, happy to find this Ukrainian to a friendly, enthusiastic, and pleasant person.

Fast forward through some classes and adventures with vicious mosquitoes, street noise, a broken AC, and late-insomnia, and I'll tell you about yesterday afternoon and evening. We took the metro to a tourist market (about ten cents a ride, wow), and walked up a pretty hill to inspect their collections of dolls, rusty rubbish, thimbles, and traditional wooden maces. I wanted to grab some Ukrainian memorabilia for my dad, but my luggage is exactly at the max of 20 kg for domestic flights, and so I cannot afford to accumulate anything. We saw some beautiful churches, a neat tram, and then stopped into the local MAKDONALDS for a shake. A beggar girl with cheeseburger in hand asked for some cash, and our friend hooked her up with an American dollar. She said "PHFLANKS" in English, cheeseburger flying forth from her mouth, and returned minutes later with a milkshake. Talk amongst yourselves.

I was luck enough to meet up with a friend who had been teaching English for a year, along with another American teacher and 3 of his Ukrainian students. It was a whole lot of fun, and I even got some good insight into what teaching English in Russia is probably going to be like. I hope to meet up with the friend again, and maybe even get a picture to show our mutual friend back home (Emily Whalen, if you happen to be reading this).

We had some homework for today and have been examining some fine ESL materials all day long, and now we're free to blog, facebook, and get some grub. Becca Dash, a Kenyon grad, is in charge of the orientation and is pencilling in a dinner with me (things are not going well with visa's and everyone's got a lot of stress to deal with). It turns out that the new officer in charge of Russian Fulbright's is another Kenyon grad from '95 or so. Small world.

Anyway, I'm going to check into putting some pictures up here. If not, there should be some on facebook. More to come.

L0ve,
Jason

An august departure...

2008-07-17T14:49:00.004-04:00

That's right, I'm studying for the GRE, and it's already paying off in puns.

So I had my Fulbright orientation in DC, and I'm slightly less at ease about what I have to do between now and August 17th, when I leave for my in-country orientation in Kiev. I'm to book a flight from Moscow to Tomsk and plan to pack less than Russia's domestic luggage maximum (22kg) for a year in Siberia. All the same, I'm realizing more and more how much fun it's going to be to teach English at a Russian university. And even though Tomsk is a two-and-a-half-day train ride away from Moscow, everyone continues to to assure me that Tomsk is one of the best places in Russia to live, work, and study.

My visa invitation is on its expedited way to Ohio, so they might even let me into the country. In the mean time, I'll be in sunny Gambier, OH, so stop on by.

Will blog for friendship

2008-06-20T11:12:00.001-04:00

Just letting anyone who's interested know that I'll be updating this site with news, stories, and pictures from my stay in Siberia this year. I'll be leaving for Kiev for Fulbright orientation around August 18th and from there I'll set off for a few days in Moscow, and then I'll end up in Tomsk, where I'll be teaching English for the year at TPU, the polytechnical university.

I decided to start this blog because I'd really like to stay in touch with everyone, so stop by often and let me know what you've been up to.

Love,
Jason