Entry 6 -September 18, 2011
I am sitting here trying to figure out a clever way to begin this entry, but the task of telling you all that I did yesterday is so daunting that I'm already tired just from thinking about it. Therefore you'll have to envision your own opening for this one.
Where to begin? (Why is it that whenever I think, say or write that into my head immediately pops Julie Andrews singing, Let's start at the very beginning...a very good place to start?) Just to spite Rogers & Hammerstein for overly catchy tunes I'm going to start before the beginning. On Friday evening after I had finished writing “The True Meaning of Gulyat” I decided to check out some of the games on my computer and found one very fun and addicting game called “Penguins” where you help penguins escape from the zoo. Yes, it is just as ridiculous and simultaneously fascinating as it sounds. Anyway, while I was happily helping escaping antarctic fowl I got a phone call from Jackie, the other PSU student here in Nizhny. She got in a week before me and is at the Civil Service university, teaching a few students, and hosting an English club. We decided to meet up the next day by the Kremlin at 11 as neither of us had anything planned for the weekend.
The following morning, as I was being lazy and not wanting to get up, my phone rang. It startled me, and as I went to reach for it on my desk I accidentally hit the reject button, much to my dismay as the caller had been “Unknown” meaning either my family or James was calling me via Skype. Due to my continued lack of internet and inability to call or text back, I hoped the caller would try again, which he did several hours later as he was being considerate and thinking I was not up and wanting to talk yet. After a nice conversation with my favorite person, I slipped on some boots and headed off to the Kremlin.
I had received a text from Katya, who I had hung out with on Thursday evening, inviting me to a cooking party at her house around 4, and when I mentioned Jackie, she extended the invitation to her as well. Jackie is living in a hotel floor of a dorm, and apparently they kick her out of her room every day to clean it, so she's done a lot of walking around the city. We walked around for an hour and half or so, talking about our experiences so far and past issues with flying to and from this side of the world. One section we walked through reminded me a lot of Arbat (or is it Arabat? I can't remember now) Street in Moscow. Basically it's a wide road really only intended for walking (although of course there were a few cars driving on it) and it is lined with stores on either side. There was also a section with a lot of stands selling souvenir-like things. We decided we're going to try to do our Christmas shopping together later before we leave, but I'm going to ask Katya about better places to buy Russian things that are not so much intended for tourists.
We walked through several different areas of town and several parks. I live in a very nice part of the city. It's pretty clean and there aren't as many huge streets so it's easier to walk around without worrying for your life at every moment. Pedestrians are supposed to get the right-of-way, but you won't survive long here if you expect cars to just give it to you. You have to use common sense and a good bit of faith every time you step out into a street.
After a while we were starting to get a little hungry. Jackie doesn't have access to a kitchen so she's been buying a lot of precooked chicken and noodles. She has a electric kettle and fridge, so she doesn't get a whole lot of hot food. We debated whether to go to a cafe, but she really wanted Pelmeni, so we decided to have a kitchen adventure at my place instead. I realized as we were walking back that I only had one bowl, and I needed to buy a pot. I had used a pot in the kitchen before, but I realized later that it wasn't in the common area. I didn't want to use someone else's things, so I decided I could invest in a pot. To get the pot we'd have to go to Spar, the larger grocery store, but I didn't like their pelmeni choices there. Therefore, we made a short stop at my favorite produkty first to get the main ingredient for the meal.
Spar had a selection of very nice quality cookingware...all of which were much more expensive than I was expecting. It was a little difficult for me to get the pot I did (which was actually the most inexpensive) because it was around a hundred rubles more than my entire shopping trip had been there a few days before. However, it is a very nice stainless steel pot with a built in strainer, and when I did the math, I realized that it was only about $25. We also grabbed some more smetana, and Jackie bought some disposable bowls and spoons. Then we headed home to do some cooking. I chopped up a tomato, some onion, and a cucumber like I had the other evening and we had a very delicious lunch. We'll probably try to make a meal together at least once a weekend.
After we had cleaned up and gone back to my room I got another text from Katya asking if we had decided to come. I got directions from her as to which bus to take and where to get off. Katya lives in the lower section of Nizhny on the other side (the west side) of the Oka river, and the bus ride was about forty minutes long. Jackie and I saw several places we're going to have to go exploring one of these weekends.
A cool thing about Russian buses: Unlike in America where you get on at the front of the bus and put your money into the machine, in Russia you pay for your ride in one of two ways. Many buses have a conductor who is a lady who has a special seat somewhere on the bus. You give your 15 rubles (approximately 50 cents) to her, and she gives you your ticket. If there isn't a conductor, you give your money directly to the driver (often while he is driving) and he gives you his ticket. However, Russian buses do not stay still while the payment process is happening. The doors open and six people may get on and sit down in an open seat. They then pass their money to the person next to them who continues to pass it to the driver or conductor, and then the ticket is passed back. I just think it's really cool. I doubt it would ever fly back home.
When we got to the stop, Katya, Osa (the girl from Sweden), and Katya's friend Natasha were there. We waited a while for Andrei, but he was late so we gave up waiting and went to the market, having decided to make borsh (no, not “borsht.” There is no final “t” in Russian so I absolutely refuse to write the “t” and woe to you if I ever hear you pronounce it. It's one of my biggest transliteration pet peeves) and a dessert which I explain later.
As Thursday had been an English day, it was decided that Saturday would be a Russian day, which I was very happy about. I feel that I'm not always so good with conversational Russian because most of the language that I have been using over the last two years has been more focused in soemthing academic. I know that I need practice with conversation, and, luckily, yesterday I got that chance.
Katya lives on the outskirts of town, and she lives in a house, not an apartment building. The area she lives in reminds me more of the country, and the homes there look like dachas. Katya knows the area very well, and Natasha said that she's never taken the same path to Katya's twice. The area we walked through to get there was very dirty and polluted. There was a sad excuse for a stream that was more garbage than anything else. The Russians laughed it off, proclaiming that they wanted to show us there impeccably clean and beautiful nature, but Katya at least seemed a little sad and ashamed of it.
Katya's home is very nice. True to Russian style, the living room walls were lined with hanging rugs, and the wooden floor was bare. The living room was very beautiful, and it seemed very Chekovian to me. The living room, however, was not were we spent the evening. The real “living room” of a Russian home is a kitchen. This is usually complicated by the fact that Russian kitchens tend to be rather small, probably about the size of a bathroom in an American home, but luckily, Katya's kitchen was a pretty open room with plenty of space. The bread and cheese we sliced, the grapes were washed, and I grabbed an dark chocolate bar with orange that I had brought with me from Alaska for occasions such as this. We all sat down for a pre-cooking snack with one of the two bottles of wine that had been purchased.
Now before you get in a huff, no, I did not drink wine. Even though it's legal to drink in Russian once you're eighteen, I have absolutely no desire to take advantage of the reduced age here. I refuse to voluntarily drink something that smells worse than cough syrup. Therefore there were 5 glasses of one and one with filtered water with which we made our toasts. Toasting is very important in Russia. Andrei, being the only guy, took on the responsibility to pour the wine and make the initial toast. We also learned that in Sweden you say something that sounds like “skol” (final “l” is palatized for you linguists out there). “Skol” means “bowl” like what you eat soup in. We asked Osa why you say “bowl,” but she didn't know. Natasha later asked Katya to pass her a “skol” for borsh though.
After talking about our respective countries and trying to pin down what exactly would be the staple of “American food” the cooking began. Andrei was in charge of making a very traditional Russian salad consisting of hard-boiled eggs, canned peas, tomato, some sort of seasoning, and the ever present and necessary...mayonnaise. One of my classmates who is in St. Petersburg was teaching a Russian there how to make American pizza, and, according to her facebook status, the Russian had exclaimed incredulously, “What, no mayonnaise?” Believe it or not, that's a true story. I'm not the biggest fan of hard-boiled eggs, but I partook anyway.
Making borsh involved every one. Katya got the potatoes boiling, I graded carrot, Osa chopped cabbage, Andrei shredded beets, etc, etc. In the meanwhile, Natasha was working on desert. There is a Russian cream cheese like substance called “tvorzhnik.” It's sweeter and more spreadable than cream cheese. I don't really know how else to describe it, but I was first acquainted with it when I studied in Vladimir and have been bemoaning the fact that it doesn't exist in America ever since. Natasha mixed the tvorzhnik with flour, sugar, and raisins, and then put it to bake in the oven.
While we were eating our salads and waiting for the borsh to finish, Andrei openned the second bottle of wine, and Katya refilled my glass of water. Natasha led the toast this time, and then we began our meal. Long story short, I consumed the best borsh of my life last night. All you need to do is grab a bowl, add a healthy scoop of smetana (sour cream's more delicious Russian cousin), and then eat to your heart's content. By the time the borsh was served I was already full, but there was no way I wasn't going to eat to the bottom of that bowl. The main course was chased with a most scrumptious desert. We added a blueberry sauce with full blueberries and smetana on top. Simply wonderful. It actually tasted a lot like the blueberry pie grandma makes that I so love.
After dinner, Katya went and grabbed an old Russian game called “loto.” It's sort of like bingo. Everyone gets two or three boards, depending on what you decide, that are 3x9 squares. However, in each row there are only five different numbers. Thus, four of the blocks are empty on each row. Katya grabbed her jar of change and everyone got one ruble in kopeks to start. (There are 100 kopeks to a ruble, and the current exchange rate is around 30-33 rubles per dollar. So obviously, we play with high stakes). To begin with everyone puts 20 kopeks into the jackpot. If you fill the top row on one of your boards, everyone but you has to put in 20 more kopeks. If you get either the middle of bottom row, you get to take half of the jackpot, and you win when you are the first to fill your whole board. When you win, you take all the money. The trick is, if more than one person fills a row at the same time, no one does anything as it's canceled out. There is a big bag with all of the numbers on wooden pegs which one person calls out, like bingo. I remember playing this game in my first year of Russian. It's really good practice with numbers, which go from 1 to 90 in the game. The game goes pretty fast, so you have to be quick. It was a lucky evening for me, as I continually got to take the money in the jackpot, and I won two out of three games. Katya and Natasha read the numbers the first time, and when Natasha handed the bag to me for the final game I tried not to panic. I don't know what it is about numbers, but they seem to be one of the hardest things to do on the fly in another language. I think it probably has something to do with the fact that we associated value with the symbols, not the words themselves. Obviously God knows that the best way for me to learn and practice things with Russian is to be pushed completely out of my comfort zone. Getting handed the number bag was definitely a swift kick out of the comfort zone for me, but I did okay and still had fun. Learning is fun!
Once wewere done with the game it was around 9pm and time to go home. We figured out how to split the cost of the meal, and then we set off to trudge back to the bus stop. Natasha and Andrei caught a tramvai (sort of like a streetcar or a tram), but Katya continued on to take Osa, Jackie, and I back to the bus. I'm convinced Katya knows every inch of this city and how to get everywhere. She told Jackie and Osa to get on one bus, and then I had to wait for another 15 minutes or so to catch a bus home which was perfectly fine with me as I enjoy talking with Katya. She's one of those people that just has such a fun spirit. You can't help but love her.
It took me about 40 minutes to get home, and I was glad to realize that I can recognize my area pretty well. The bus stop is about twenty feet past the Linguistics university, and my dorm is behind the building next to the university. Thus, I had less than a minute to walk after I got off the bus. I was very tired, very full, and very happy. It was by far my best day in Nizhny Novgorod so far, and it was really fun to just hang out with people my age, or there abouts anyway. I find it amusing that now that I'm going to classes at college anymore I'm finally getting my college experience.
After all of the excitement of yesterday, I've taken it slow today. I went to make a hot breakfast, but there weren't any matches and I don't know how to use a lighter (yes, pitiful I know. Obviously there is no worries of me taking up a smoking habit) and my attempt to figure it out crashed and burned...and unfortunately I mean the latter in only the figurative sense. Thus I finished off the bread I had and had another yogurt. I did some homework for my capstone project and then got call from James. :)
I did a little bit of writing for you, dear blog, but then my stomach sounded like two grizzly bears having it out, so I decided I should probably do something about linner. Because I'm at the university from 10-4 I don't eat lunch, and I've just decided that it's easier to do two meals a day. Therefore my bigger meal of the day falls somewhere between 5 and 8 usually, thus, as it's more dinner than lunch, I have so entitled it “linner.” I checked the kitchen to see if more matches had been supplied and was disappointed to find they had not been. Thus I decided to make a trip to spar to get some matches, some more water, bread, and a dishtowel.
Spar had no matches or dishtowels. I did get bread though and grabbed some cheese, eggs, water, dried pineapple, and coffee. The coffee I got is an instant kind put out by Nescafe which is actually pretty good. It's the same stuff they have in the American Center. I sliced up some cheese when I got home and made Russian sandwiches. Sandwiches in Russian consist of one piece of bread and whatever you want to put on it. Usually you top them with some combination of mayonnaise, kolbasa (“sausage” is how it's translated, but it's really more like a giant hot dog. I pass on kolbasa whenever possible), and cheese. My sandwich, or “buterbrod” (the “u” is pronounced like the vowel sound in the end of the English word “you.” If you have any knowledge of German you may be thinking, Huh, that sure does look like a German word. If you were thinking that, you, my friend, are absolutely correct. You get today's gold star of historical linguistics aptitude) consisted only of bread and cheese, but that is perfectly fine with me.
I don't know what's going on in the room above me. I've been hearing a chainsaw sound on and off all day. There's also been some hammering going on. From my new favorite spot to sit in my room (in the windowsill) I can feel the walls shaking...which I find slightly disconcerting. If the ceiling is going to cave in though, I think that the windowsill is the safest place to be, so here I will remain. I plan to do some more homework today and probably read another book. Tomorrow starts week two at LUNN, and the Russian dialectology lecture is tomorrow so it's shaping up to be a fabulous day.
I'll leave you with one last fun fact about my dorm. There are nine floors total in the building. To get to the elevator, you go into the stairwell and walk up the first flight of stairs. You know how you walk up two flights of stairs every time you go up a story? Well, the elevator, instead of being on a floor, is between floors. It's not very wheelchair friendly. If you decide to take the elevator, you walk up the first flight of stairs and wait for it to come to you. Then, when you get into the elevator, you're faced with a puzzle. Remember how I said there were nine floors? Guess how many buttons there are. If you said 9, you're wrong. If you figured 8 because of the lack of a half flight of stairs after the ninth floor, you're still wrong. If you thought 7 because you subtracted a floor on either side, the pattern continues, and you're still wrong, There are 5 buttons. How does that work, you ask? Well, I'll tell you. The first button is for the stop between the 1st and 2nd floors. Button two is between the 3rd and 4th. The button labeled three is between the 5th and 6th, button four, between the 7th and 8th, and the final button is between the 8th and 9th. Don't ask me why. I don't understand either. I usually just take the stairs. I figure it's better for me, and the elevator is really uncomfortable with more than one person in it. The next time you're in an elevator where the button number “4” actually takes you to the fourth floor, appreciate it.
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