Day One at LUNN

Entry 3: September 11, 2011

            Today, despite being a sad day in the history of my country, was a pretty good day for me. I managed to not fall asleep until 8 pm, and I managed to toss and turn but stay relatively sleepy until about 5 am. Take that jet lag! I will defeat you yet! I noticed the weather outside was nice and sunny so I decided to try to see if the internet would work...but alas it still did not. Thus I did some more reading to pass the time.

            I had decided to go to the school around 9. It did not seem that many people were up in the dorm, but there were plenty of young people making a racket outside. I got to the school a little after nine and found the American Center, but it is not open until 10 am, so I decided to go back home and arrive a bit after 10. From here on out I will probably not arrive until 10:30 or so. Apparently Mondays tend to be slow, and not much went on there today. Luckily I had my handy-dandy “Glamor Galore” course book for the Advanced Grammar class I'm working through on my own. Thus, instead of pressuring for something to do, I can work on grammar until they have a free moment.

            Ludmila, who is one of the heads of the American Center, showed me around the American and English language departments. The English section at LUNN focuses on the American variety of English, and I had fun picking up a few American sayings books/dictionaries.

            My first big huzzah of the day was getting on a computer with an internet connection. HUZZAH! So I was able to send an email home telling my family I was alive. If I continue on a streak of world traveling, I'm getting an internationally capable and easy-to-use phone. I fully admit to the fact that I am a total American consumer where having no phone or internet access makes me feel like I'm locked up in the Chateau d'If with Edmund Dantes. If that reference is lost on you, you are missing out and need to read more Dumas. I got responses back from both of my parents who were understandably getting a bit worried, but hopefully all will be well now.

            Ludmila asked me if I had a phone, and I said that as of yet I did not and needed to get a sim card that would work here. She said she'd ask some students to help me out. I also explained to her my issue of not finding an ATM (bankomat is the Russian work for ATM, and I must admit I prefer it. I may just start calling them that. It makes them sound more exciting. Every time you use one Isaac Asimov is standing by your side) that would work for me. She said she'd see if the students could help with that as well.

            Ludmila also explained some of the things that they do in the American Center. They make a big deal out of celebrating American holidays, and I am going to help them out. The first thing they do is a Freshman party (not an American holiday, unless you count the general freshmen freedom frenzy that, unfortunately, tends to ensue at many American universities nowadays) which they do for the incoming class every year. There are also celebrations for Halloween and Thanksgiving, which I will later be apart of. The individuals in charge of these events were not at the school today so I will probably meet them tomorrow or the next day. Also, I will be helping out with some classes. The person who developed that part of my internship is out this week, so sometime next week I will find out what that entails. Finally, I will also be helping with website translations, proof-reading, and trying to help make the sites more active and engaging. Ludmila said they are trying to have engaging events for the students and would appreciate any ideas.

            In other words, I will be doing a lot here in Nizhny, and I'm looking forward to it.

           

            Around 3 o'clock two girls showed up to help me on my bankomat and sim card quest. They both speak very good English, and they seemed to want to speak English, so I obliged, though sometimes the Russian words came out first. The first two bankomats wanted nothing to do with me, but luckily the third one was the charm, so now I can eat over the next 10ish weeks. After that we went to get a sim card, but in order to get one you need your passport and registration. I will not have my registration until Wednesday as it is being processed by the school currently, so the girls and I will be journeying back on Wednesday.

            There are two things about walking about the city that I didn't expect. First, it's very humid here. It's not too terribly warm, probably in the mid to high fifties, depending on if it's raining or not, but the air is stuffy. I should have brought a lighter jacket with me, but oh well. In a few weeks, I'll be fine. Secondly, there are a lot of cars here. When I was staying in Vladimir in the summer of 2008 there were definitely less cars. Granted, Nizhny is a larger city, but everywhere I step I feel I'm about to be hit by a car. Maybe one of the main differences is that there are cars in the alleys and back roads. Whatever it is, there just seem to be a lot of vehicles.

            I parted with the girls and went back to my room to change my bag so that I could go to the “produkty” (roughly pronounced pro-DUKE-tea, meaning “products”) to get some real food. (Yes, I am about to give you my shopping purchases. Good gracious, is this what blogging does to you? At least I'm not tweeting each item individually). Here it goes: I bought a toothbrush (I brought a travel toothbrush, but it's been a bit persnickety, so it's getting downgraded to a sometimes friend), a box of raspberry black tea (which is like good black tea but with the surprise pizazz of the raspberry. This is a fad that America should really catch onto. We have this funny concept that herbal and black teas have to be in their own categories. We are so behind the times.), a 1.5 liter bottle of water (it's better than drinking the tap water, and it's not carbonated....oh yeah), liquid hand soap (this is strange of me, but bar soap sort of freaks me out, and that's what's in my bathroom....so I bought the better kind of soap), a bag of frozen pelmeni (basically the Russian version or tortellini...but better), and last but oh certaintly not least SMETANA!!! (which is translated as sour cream, but sour cream is on such a lower playing field in the dairy product community). I wanted bread, but there wasn't any....until I was leaving, which was when it was coming in. Oh well. Tomorrow I can get bread.

            When you buy things at a produkty, you don't just pick up what you want and go to the counter. You tell the shop keeper what you want, and she hands it to you. Imagine the smallest gas station mart you know, one of the ones with simply a counter, drinks, ice cream, and a few types of candy that you haven't seen or thought about since you were a kid. That's probably about the size of your average produkty. However, as most of the stuff is behind the counter, there are more items in the produkty than in quickie mart. Anyway, I began with the toothbrush and soap, which go into one hand-written ledger, and therefore have to be paid for alone first. Then you go to the next section and do the same. Thus, my six items consisted of four separate purchases. This makes it a bit difficult to keep track of what you're spending, so when I got home I did the backwards math by figuring out what I had had and subtracting what I had left. I figured I spent 315 rubles, which I roughly converted to be about $10.50. Show me a store left in America where you can still buy a good toothbrush and a box of tea for under $10.

            All in all, today was a good day, and I will now go make pelmeni.