Новый Год

Well readers, I'm out of this fair land in 2 days... as the semester's wound down a few neat things have transpired... but I'm pretty schooled out by this point and don't feel like writing too much. I'll just post a few pictures I guess to give you a taste of the last week and a half. 

First, we had a Russian New Year's celebration (early... their Christmas-like holiday is in the beginning of January) put on for the international students by some Russian students and the Russian language department. There were games, songs, a tree-lighting ceremony... it was quite silly, but fun.

There was even an appearance from the Russian Santa Clause, Ded Moroz, and his helper Snegurochka!

Another Apology

I feel like you, my loyal readers, deserve an explanation for my lack of blog-itude. So here it is:

...and that's my explanation WITHOUT windchill. Basically, it's been cold as ____________ (fill in your own creative explicative here) out lately and I basically spent the past week and weekend attempting to avoid spending any time outside. On Sunday I had to go to the grocery store, and my face almost fell off. Because my fridge doesn't work I've been storing my food in the inside of my windowsill where it's cool... and this morning it was frozen. Inside. Anyways, the moral of the story is that the coldness has zapped all the motivation out of me. And one can only blog about drinking tea and eating popcorn so many times... Apologies.

Ewww

As I sat writing my last blog post, what should skitter up the wall in front of me but... *cringe* a roach.

I mean, it's nothing new. I know that we have roaches here. Our friend Jenya's room is full of them. But I've never seen one in MY room before, and that's a fact that helps me sleep at night without first shaking out all of my bedclothes.

But there this little sucker was, scampering up the wall like it was nothing. After I got over the initial disgust and shock, I made a move to kill him with my water bottle... but he was too fast and vanished behind the drawers of my desk.

A few moments later, as I was writing about the tragedies of the aquarium, he appeared up the side of my desk and crawled over my notebook. I might have jumped up out of my chair and shivered in disgust just a little. I probably would have shrieked like any young girl should, but my roommate is asleep so I contained myself. As it scrambled about my things, I waited patiently for it to come out in the open so I could get another good shot in. It headed for the crack of my open closet door, so I tried to slam it in the door... but the door doesn't shut all the way. Foiled again! The evil little roach went through the crack and into my inner closet wall. I grabbed my vitamin bottle and lunged *once!* *twice!* trying to squish it against the inside of my closet... but it escaped behind my bathrobe and folded jeans.

Moral of the story: I will never put my clothes on without shaking them out, and I will never again crawl in bed without first removing all my blankets to check for invaders. This means war.

An Ocean-Themed Excursion

Last week, we went on a field trip to this place:

It's kind of like an oceanography/fisheries research institute, from what I could gather. They've been around a long time as far as the Far East is concerned, because fishing has always been a main industry here. They've cooperated with lots of US fisheries organizations, and with some in Alaska too. We toured their museum and then their old book collection, which was pretty cool.

 Outside, there was this great mural. I think perhaps Homer High should invest in something like this. It reminded me of the mariner man all grown up.

They had all kinds of stuffed animals in their museum - freaky fish, majestic albatrosses, a HUGE turtle, and sea mammals ranging in size. No whales though - just seals mostly.

Here's their map of important research areas. We're all pointing to where we're from! This map was pretty great because it had Homer labeled on it. It's rare to find a map with Homer on it in the US... let alone in Russia!

After our visit to the Research place, we decided to go to the aquarium. It was exciting, because I'd never been to any aquarium-esque thing other than the SeaLife Center. This one was a little bit depressing... they had some cool stuff, but you could tell that the animals weren't very well taken care of. My first clue to this was their very sad looking crocodile, who lived in a cage with no foliage just cement floor and a little pool. Poor guy. The little fish looked fine... But then we came to a room with a huge cylindrical tank with a rock mountain in the middle filled with sturgeon, which are one of the prize fish of this area. The sturgeon might have been happy once, but since then they'd grown to be up to seven feet long and looking at the tank I could tell that with the rock mountain there, they were now too big to turn around. They could all only swim one direction. I envisioned releasing them into the wild, only to have a cluster of giant fish that could only swim in circles. Even worse than the giant circle fish was a tank of fairly nondescript fish... I'm not really sure what they were. There were about 16 of them lolling about unhappily in their little tank... but the unhappiest fish in the whole aquarium was the one nondescript fish that was a dead plank of fish propped upright in the corner, where the current from the bubble-maker had pushed it. The dead fish had clearly been there for a while, and I wanted to tell someone that they should probably remove it... but alas it is difficult to locate the proper authorities and explain to them that their average-looking fish is dead and should probably be disposed of. So alas, that dead fish might still be sitting in the corner of its tank scaring small children. Who knows.

I did see some cool things there too though, like piranhas, which I imagined would be bigger with more threatening-looking teeth. They had turtles and an octopus (who also looked sad), and little tropical fish in the front entry area that looked very well cared for. Upstairs they had a collection of preserved animals: fish, birds, marine mammals... that was also interesting. The day was an odd mix of preservation and mild animal abuse and exploitation. 

Souvenirs

Another thing I finally got around to doing this weekend is some souvenir shopping! I won't tell you what I bought... that's a secret. But I did get this lovely shot of me being Russian...

You might be able to tell from my slightly awkward body position, but it was incredibly COLD out yesterday! I was glad I had the Russian gloves I bought a couple weeks ago and my lovely hat. Megan and I about froze on the way home! But it was worth it, because Megan got these gems...

Megan had a whole list of people she needed to get matrioshkas for. She didn't open them all all the way in the store, just picked out some that looked nice on the outside. When we got back and were admiring our goods, I of course felt the need to open them all all the way. Moral of the story: life is rough as the littlest matrioshka. Most had pretty normal faces, though much simpler than their older sisters. However, the last little red matrioshka that I opened might be the homeliest wooden doll ever painted. 

Concerts

My school here has what I consider to be an abnormal number of concerts/talent shows where students perform. Because Jordan is a superstar here, she's always in them. So quite often I end up going, either with the Americans or with my roommate Iuliia. On Thursday I went to one with Iuliia and her friends. This one was a competition with all sorts of categories. There were rappers, singers, music groups, dancers, dance groups... and on and on. It was a very long concert. Some acts were slightly painful to watch. Others were downright amazing.

One of my favorites was a guy who did traditional Russian dancing, like you think of in the Nutcracker. He had on a sailor outfit. His routine was pretty long, and you could tell that he was exhausted because he had little breaks worked into it where he kind of just walked around in circles. But I was still thoroughly impressed. It was kind of the highlight of the concert for me, because it was just so Russian...

The best act was another dancer, a sort of ballerina/ribbon twirler/gymnast who was more flexible than I thought was possible for humans. It was amazing.

Jordan was awesome too, of course. Her act was last and as usual the Russians went crazy. She ended up winning Grand Prize of the whole contest, which was cool and came with a pizza that I too got to enjoy.

A lot of the singers at the concert were the same people I'd seen in other similar concerts, but it was still fun to go! I was also impressed at how relatively well attended these concerts always seem to be. If only we could muster this much excitement this often for concerty things back home! (Sorry I have no pictures for you... you'll just have to take my word for it).

Боулинг

On Friday night we felt like doing something exciting that we hadn't yet done in Russia. As our time here dwindles (I have less than three weeks left!) I feel like there are so many things I want to do here that I haven't gotten around to yet. This weekend was a time to do a few of those things, starting with...

 In case you couldn't guess, боулинг = bouling = bowling. Bowling is kind of a novelty in Russia. When we mentioned it Jenya got very excited about our unique idea. There were several bowling alleys in Vladivostok. The one we ended up going to was very small - it only had four lanes and the lanes started right up against the wall - there wasn't much room for those steps you're supposed to take before you throw the ball. But it was cute!

Russian bowling shoes come with these nice little booties to wear inside them instead of creepy spray afterwards. Bowling shoes everywhere are gross, and they all look the same. We felt right at home!

Of course, one can't go bowling in Russia without drinking a little too. While we were selecting our balls Jenya disappeared and returned with a tray full of shots. This may or may not have affected my bowling game... In Russia you pay for a lane for a period of time (the number of bowlers and number of games is not important). The four of us bowled three games. I got a 101, an 88, and a 129. Dylan won the first two games and I won the last.

The bowling alley was an odd place. We had to go through a little metal detector check to get in. There was a regular pool hall area attached (not abnormal) but then upstairs was a very small club-like area. We checked it out after we were done... but it was mostly just really weird so we left. Quite often in Russia things are kind of lumped together in odd combinations. I like it.