Big Russian Soul and an update

Someone in my Fulbright group sent out a link to this amazing, funny website – Big Russian Soul - which I wanted to pass along.

Other than my recent post of a poem by Aleksandr Blok, I haven’t written anything on this blog during my time in Russia, which is now approaching a full 4 months. I could write a novella about my life here so far, my impressions, musings, but I do not have time, nor do you have time to read it. So for now, I will just give a somewhat brief, functional update, with only minimal editorializing. This journal is often in the back of my mind as I’m moving through my daily life and ideas for articles come into my head not infrequently. I don’t want to let this year get away without better analyzing life here and without documenting these things in a better format than my sporadic emails to friends and family, so I hope to write more often. (I have also kept a semi-regular Russian journal for writing practice, which you are welcome to read, but its analysis is limited by my Russian language ability).

I left Ohio at the end of July, sadly parting with my few remaining good friends there and especially my family, whom I did not expect to see for an entire year. I flew to Moscow and spent the entire month of August there with a group of 13 or so other Fulbright grantees. We lived in an authentic Russian dormitory (authentic, in this case, means really run-down, probably equivalent to welfare housing in the U.S. ) at Moscow Gumanitarnij Universitet (MosGU), listened to presentations about teaching English at Russian universities, went on a few excursions to museums and interesting places, and, somewhat half-heartedly, took classes in Russian language. This month went by much as the rest of my time here has gone by– simultaneously slow and fast. On a day-to-day basis it seemed to drag on, and I was so eager to go off on my own and live in Siberia, speak Russian with real Russians rather than English with Americans. But in retrospect it seemed to fly by and I miss some of the people and experiences there quite a bit. At that time it was still warm and sunny in Moscow. I have good memories of running under the sun around the campus of MosGU, wandering around the streets of our dirty Moscow suburb, Vyxino, with some of my good friends on the Fulbright program, drinking 40 oz beers in the rain on the campus and speaking Russian with my American friends. But our time came to an end and we all went our separate ways–to Nizhniy Novgorod, Samara, Irkutsk, Tomsk, Omsk, Rostov-na-Donu, Vladivostok…. and I to Novosibirsk.

I arrived in Novosibirsk wearing my giant Sorrel boots which weigh about 7 pounds each because I did not want to pay the overage penalty to the airline for exceeding my baggage weight limit. But despite this, I still exceeded it by quite a bit and had to bribe the Aeroflot clerk (per his suggestion) so as to not pay the astounding charges for heavier luggage, which rivalled the value of the luggage itself. I was tired and felt a bit ill after the upheavel of the flights in the middle of the night, but I imagine I felt much better than I would have felt had I taken the 45 hour train from Moscow to Novosibirsk, which I had been considering. I was met by a teacher from the university where I teach, Novosibirsk State Technical University (NSTU). She was timid, awkward, and very kind. We spoke in a mix of Russian and English. I was eager to speak Russian, but as she is an English teacher by profession, her English surpassed my Russian. I spent the following couple of weeks living in a hotel at the university and trying to find an apartment with the help of my colleagues at the university. During this time I knew virtually no one and spent most of my time in my hotel room reading and playing a guitar (which I bought within a few days of arriving in Novosibirsk). As it was still reasonably warm here at the beginning of September, a large crowd of students would congregate every night on the stadium bleachers of an outdoor hockey rink, empty and iceless at that time, about 30 feet from my hotel room window. There they drank, talked, laughed, and sang loud drunken pop and folk songs. I found it charming and wished I was one of them.

Eventually I found an apartment. Everything is very expensive in Novosibirsk, and from what I gather, in Siberia and possibly Russia in general. My 1-room apartment is about $600 per month (1-room meaning one bedroom plus a kitchen and bathroom). It is nice, spacious, and my land-lady is great, but all in all it’s still very overpriced. Food, coffee, clothing, real estate, plane flights– these things are all exorbitantly priced here in my opinion. I settled into a routine and began teaching English at NSTU. I was given 6 groups (known as “para” –the Russian word for ‘pair’– because each class is a pair of hours) of pre-intermediate level English students, all in the first year. In Russia, by the way, freshman students are 17 years old because they have one less year of grade school somewhere along the line and so are a bit younger in starting university. This means, unfortunately, that many of them are like high school kids. They giggle, they talk to each other while the teacher talks, and they don’t particularly care about learning English. Not all of them, of course, but many of them fit this description. I was a bit disenchanted at first by the fact that I was teaching low-level English to teenagers, because I felt my advantages as a native speaker would be better utilized by teaching some sort of advanced conversation classes. My desire for this was sated when a teacher of older students majoring in English translation asked me to create an “American Studies” course for her students. I agreed, and soon began teaching 2 more groups (para) of these advanced, older students. I was very happy about this because I had complete freedom with them, could play good music for them and we could analyze the lyrics, watch interesting films, and discuss nuances of American and Russian culture.

In my free time, I managed to track down the coach of my university’s basketball team and he agreed to let me play with the team. So for the past 3 months I’ve been practicing with the NSTU basketball team Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and on Saturdays we often go to the banya. This has been overall pretty fun, and more importantly, my main source of exercise since running in Novosibirsk’s sub-zero weather is not an option. I often miss having access to good gyms or being able to go running in parks or cemetaries in America, where the climate is more mild. I am not allowed to play in the actual games with the basketball team here because I am not a real student. But the practices and banya are worthwhile, and it is an interesting sub-culture to experience– young, funny, foul-mouthed athletes. I’ve made a few friends here, but it was slow-going. I felt lonely for a while. I find young Russian men somewhat difficult to relate to in general, because often they act rough and macho, and are not very friendly nor sophisticated. Of course there are plenty that are not like this, but I would say at least half are. And conversely, young Russian girls are equally complicated as potential friends in their own way. Guys and girls in Russia, from what I can tell, do not usually spend time together one-on-one or even in small groups together unless there is some kind of romantic element. Thus, befriending girls becomes challenging, risky. They might get the wrong idea or you might get the wrong idea. And another problem, as one of my more insightful but soft-spoken male Russian students described, Russian girls are “ambitious.” So you always have to wonder if a girl has some kind of designs on you as a future husband, a free ticket to America, etc. It makes simple friendships a bit more complicated. But yes, I’ve found a few really great friends here, with whom I already have a strong connection.

I have some extensive travel plans for the end of December through the end of January. I’m going home for a week. I was not planning on it, but in these past four months I’ve changed my mind and started missing home quite a bit. After this week, I’m going to fly back to Moscow and meet up with my friends Ross and Becca and spend the New Year in Moscow– probably on Red Square. It should be pretty wild. Then Ross, Becca and I are flying to Istanbul, Turkey and spending about 12 days there. I am really excited about this trip. I know very little about Turkey, but have heard it is an interesting and cultural place. And just the idea of freedom and having fun with my friends in this other country for 2 weeks, and getting away from the frigid cold of Siberia, sounds perfect. Even more, my friend Kate from Ohio is going to meet us for the last few days there, and I am really happy about that. After Turkey, I’ll spend a couple more weeks in Moscow, waiting for the Fulbright conference there at the end of January. This should be an interesting time. My only concern in all of this traveling and leaving Novosibirsk is that I will take such a long break from regular Russian speaking that I fear I will fall out of the groove I’ve gotten into with the language. And at the end of January, I’ll come back here, to cold, cold Novosibirsk.

Well, this wasn’t exactly ‘brief’ as I originally said. But for a 4-month summary, it is still fairly brief. I hope to post some more detailed and interesting posts in the near future.