Into the Woods

You might remember from my excursion to the Dacha that Russians love to go into the woods and make barbecue. So this Sunday, that's what we did once more! We found a lovely little piece of woods on the top of a hill. The view of the city (before we got into the dense woods) was spectacular. The woods, however, seemed a little dangerous to me as a place to build a fire. There were dry leaves galore and our fire pit was much too small. Also, our fire was built on a hill and all the embers kept rolling down. Smokey the bear would not have approved, but I tried really hard to safety-fy the area. I kicked leaves out of the way and even pulled up a couple of small trees (the Russians thought I was nuts). In the end though, we had a successful barbecue with no forest fires, delicious food, and fun friends!

Breakfast/Lunch/Dinner of Champions

So as you may remember, I often find food options in Russia slightly discouraging. Lately, my solution has been ramen. Ramen in the morning, ramen in the afternoon, ramen for a bedtime snack... so much ramen! As the winter weather has set in there's just something about a nice hot cup of soup that I can't get enough of. (Although they did turn the heat on in my room, so I no longer live in an icebox).

Now you may be thinking that I've become the classic destitute college student who eats ramen for every meal... but you're probably forgetting that I currently live in Asia, where even the dried comes-in-a-styrofoam-cup ramen is DELICIOUS. I even occasionally add vegetables like my mother taught me to.

Bon Appetit!

A Quick Note on Eyes

For those loyal followers out there, you might remember my post about my Korean friend Anton and our realization that Americans look at people more when they're talking with them. Well, if Anton was uncomfortable with how intently Americans look at him, he's doomed talking to Russians. I myself, being American, wouldn't really have noticed how intently Russians stare into your eyes when talking to you...

Except that, on literally more occasions than I can count on my fingers, I have been talking to a Russian and in the middle of a sentence he/she will interrupt me and ask, "Do you wear lenses?" I can't get over it. It cracks me up every time it happens. Here colored contacts are still pretty popular, though, and contacts are a little more novel, less everyday occurrence. But still. Never have I been talking with an American and been interrupted by the realization that I wear contacts. It's just one more of those quirky Russian things that I so greatly enjoy.

And Anton said I have eagle eyes.

A Real Russian Family

Yesterday I had my first experience with a real Russian home and family. Jeff, one of the Americans, is in a home stay here and we went over to his house after dinner yesterday to meet up with them.

When we got there, Jeff's host mother Ludmila welcomed us in with typical Russian hospitality. She made us tea, shared some cake, offered us socks, and plopped us down on the couch. Jeff's family has six boys, and it was the youngest's birthday. We got a tour of the house, which was very kid-friendly and quite charming. All of the rooms had cartoon characters painted on the walls - Monster's Inc, spiderman, and some other little Russian cartoons I didn't recognize. After the tour, we started talking about the boys' hobbies. Ludmila got out tapes of her son's dance recital and one played guitar for us. It was the sweetest.

I felt a little bit uncomfortable since Jeff and Jordan speak much better Russian than I do and I didn't always understand the conversations. I understood most of what was said, but even then I didn't really feel like I could formulate my thoughts well enough to contribute wisely to them. I mostly smiled a lot and nodded and enjoyed my tea. But it was quite charming having these Russians welcome us so warmly into their home.

This brings me to something we discussed in our RFE class the other day. That weeks' visiting lecturer was an American who's lived in Vladivostok for twenty-ish years. He mentioned that in his opinion there are two versions of Russians: the Street Russians and the Home Russians. The Street Russians are curt and sometimes pushy. They're not really concerned with anyone other than themselves. Home Russians, however, are the exact opposite. They're welcoming, concerned with your health, your hungriness, your comfort... everything. Although I think our professor may have been exaggerating a little, but after going to Jeff's house I see a grain of truth in this. It really warmed my heart hanging out with this cute little Russian family who truly seemed to enjoy having us (or at least Jordan and Jeff, who could contribute to intelligent conversation) there.

My experiences with Russian people thus far have been some of my favorite parts of being here. They're always excited to meet Americans and they love to talk about Russia, America... basically everything. They always seem to be having a good time. They can be bossy, overbearing, and difficult sometimes but somehow I find that a little bit endearing too. Maybe it's the anthropology student in me, but I love hanging out with Russians for all the weird things they say and do. Seeing the family side of Russian life for the first time gave me a new love of these people and their crazy, sometimes confusing, but overall good-hearted ways.

Холодильник

After that one freak day of winter all the snow disappeared, but the cold is here to stay. It is officially fur coat weather here in Russia, which I love, Not that I have a fur coat of my own, but it definitely feels a lot more like I think Russia should to have people walking around all bundled up in their ridiculously large furry coats and hats.

There is, however, one down side to the wintery wonder. They have yet to turn any sort of heat on in the dorms, and my room is very cold. The central heating in the building is on, so classrooms are warm and the entry to the dorms is normal. The dorm rooms are slightly colder, but most get some residual heat from the hallway and are tolerable.

My room, however, is located at the very end of the building where no heat dares to travel. It's about ten degrees colder than the hallway. We keep the curtains closed all the time to try to keep some of our meager heat supply in, but to little avail. Yesterday Iuliia came home to find me bundled up in my sweatpants, sweatshirt, scarf, hat, and hood. We literally remark on how cold our room is every time we come in. Basically we don't even need a refrigerator, we could just leave our food on the counter and it would last forever. No bacteria can withstand the icy confines of our living area.

I keep hearing rumors that soon they will turn on the heat, but soon I might go ask someone if they could just turn ours on a little earlier. When I emerge from my snow cave with blue lips and numb fingertips, I'm sure they'll be understanding.

A Lone Photo

I think part of the reason I've been less diligent about blogging lately is that I haven't been taking many pictures. When I have great new photos I'm always excited to share them! Plus, I think blogs are more fun to read with more photos. So here I offer the one and only photo I have taken recently. It's of Iuliia (my roommate) and I out the other night. 

Sexism in Russia...

Sexism in Russia is a topic that I've wanted to address on my blog for a while, but it's too daunting a task. There's no way to make you, my loyal blog reader, from the comfort of your probably fairly gender-equal home, understand the multifaceted monster that is gender relations in Russia. It's positively archaic.

However, I will share this one small anecdote with you that should help illustrate the cause of my dismay. It's not a usual occurrence in itself, but it is entirely characteristic of Russian culture. Read and enjoy, and hopefully appreciate your equal gender standing in society a little bit more........

So I'm not sure if I have written much about my Russian Far East class here yet. Basically, it's our only class taught in English. It's a twice-weekly lecture given by various professors and "specialists" about different aspects of the Russian Far East. They are all Russian, and some have better English than others. It's a difficult class because usually we're talking about subjects that the students don't have the Russian to discuss and the lecturers don't always have enough English to satisfy them. But we manage.

On Tuesday, we arrived at RFE to find not one, but two professors! And, lo and behold, one of them was male. Until that time I had had zero male professors. In fact, the only male professor I'd even seen was an American who teaches English here. Anyways, here they were, a woman and a man, whom I assumed were here to co-lecture our class.

The woman introduced herself and mentioned that the man was her husband. He didn't really introduce himself, just nodded a lot and occasionally added a word here or there. Today's topic was the economy of the Far East. She began to lecture.

But as she lectured (in English, which she was clearly not very comfortable with) the man would interrupt her in the middle of about every other sentence. Sometimes he would correct her English (which was really unnecessary because we understood what she was saying). Sometimes he would ask her skeptically where she got a statistic. Sometimes he would ask devil's advocate questions that weren't really helpful to our conversation, and only seemed to undercut her. A couple of times he flat out told her she was wrong. He also called her powerpoint boring on several occasions.

The woman was very patient and submissive and waited calmly while the man bashed her lecture. It was painful to watch. I have literally never seen adult professionals behave like this. It was like I was watching them have a marital dispute while discussing the different mining regions of the Russian Far East. It was wild. 15 minutes before our hour-and-a-half-long class was over, the man physically took the mouse from the woman, exited her powerpoint while she was talking about it, and tried to open something else on the computer. The woman took the mouse back and reopened her powerpoint. The man got so agitated that he simply left. He gave a little bow, announced his departure, and that was the last we saw of him. Those last 15 minutes were the most productive of our day.

So that was a weird and uncomfortable day of class. Yep.