A Loose Cannon

Entry 10 -September 30, 2011

            If reading the title of this entry brought you alarm, fear not. The title has nothing to do with any individuals I have come into contact with. It is the result of three things: 1) a desire to break away from the alliteration train I have been riding, 2) it was my favorite idiom for the club this week, and 3) I couldn't think of anything clever or catchy.

            Naturally, now that I have selected this title and wrote the above paragraph I thought up the new title “Skipbo! Cats! And Cheesecake!” but I feel that to change this now would be a waste of time. Therefore, for those of you who were brave enough to read into “A loose cannon” you can be pacified with the knowledge that you are in fact reading “Skipbo! Cats!

            Wednesday morning began with me and my netbook, sitting at one of the American Center tables writing up the previous entry and facebook chatting with my wonderful mother. Ludmila brought over two plates of sliced melon, and I said good evening to my mother as Nadia and Yuliya came to join in our early morning melon feast. We don't have this type of melon back home. It's sort of like honeydew, but it's white and, in my opinion, much tastier. I remember having it in Kazakhstan and being very sad that our continent is lacking it that particular variety of melon.

            Ludmila mentioned that one of their students went to America to work for the summer, and was supposed to have come back to Nizhny Novgorod a few weeks ago, but has yet to return. That led to a conversation of the talent Russian women seem to possess in quickly finding husbands in America. Apparently it is not at all uncommon for young women to go to American for three months or less and not come back. Ludmila said that the record was a three week conference she attended with some colleagues in Florida. Often these women remarry numerous times. There is something to be said in getting to know someone before you marry them. I think it's good to date someone for 2-3 years before getting married, but I doubt you want a sermon on my personal beliefs about dating and courtship so I'll change the subject here.

            After we finished our delicious melon Ludmila brought ought a game, wondering if I knew how to play. The game, which if you paid attention and can put two and two together then you have probably guessed...was skipbo. I remember playing it a long time ago in Texas, but I couldn't remember off the top of my head. Luckily the instructions were included. We decided to play a mock game, and had a blast. After 10 minutes or so, we realized that we hadn't shuffled the cards, which made our game not quite fair. However, I had to go speak at a class, so we didn't have a chance to finish it. 

            The topic I was supposed to speak on in the class was “Big Cities.” They had been talking about New York City in particular. Every student I meet here either wants to go to NYC or L.A. We talked about various issues in big cities and how Russia deals with things versus America's way of dealing with things. Then, after we had exhausted our topic, we just talked about anything they were interested in. I gave them some of my perspectives on things that are difficult for me here in Russian (most going to the store and dealing with trying to give proper change and not having it), and they seemed pretty amused. I had originally thought that this was a class I had already spoken with, and as such I hadn't brought my pictures this time. They did ask about my hobbies and my family, so we talked some about that. Some of the girls in the class are hoping to go to America next summer on a work and travel program, and they both hope to go to NYC. One of the girls really wants to see Broadway shows, with which I completely sympathize, and specifically Cats. Apparently she knows all of the songs and choreography. I told her I knew it was still on a touring cast, but didn't know if it was still on the mainstage and promised to look it up for her. The rest of the day went relatively uneventfully. I had a serious date with my grammar workbook.

           

            Thursday morning passed with more grammar homework, chatting with Katya, and do final preparations for the idioms club. The list of idioms for this week was as follows:

1.      Don't bank on it/I wouldn't bank on it

2.      To ring a bell

3.      A little bird told me

4.      Don't look a gift horse in the mouth

5.      Cat got your tongue?

6.      To have a bone to pick with someone

7.      Bite the bullet

8.      (To open up) a can of worms

9.      A loose cannon

10.  To play your cards right

11.  Get carried away

12.  I rest my case

13.  Pull someone's leg/yank someone's chain

            My favorite, as previously mentioned, is “a loose cannon,” and the idiom comes from maritime terminology. As you probably know, when a cannon is fired, it jerks backwards from the explosion. Thus, during a battle, cannons are free to move. However, as they are very heavy and on wheels, it is imperative to successfully tie down a cannon when not in battle. A loose cannon will roll and can cause substantial harm to crew and the ship.

            The group this time was about half the size of last weeks, but luckily we had some new people. For review, I wanted to play charades with the previous weeks idioms. It didn't go as well as I had hoped however. I had hoped the students would act out the direct meaning of the words, and then we could go over the implied meaning from the idiom. For the most part though, they tried to act out the meaning, and it wasn't always as clear. Oh well. That was bad planning on my part I guess, as I assumed they would do the task a certain way when there were multiple options open to them.

            I think that the meaning matching went fairly well though. I gave them five-ish minutes to try to match the meanings to the idioms. The catch was there were two more definitions than there were idioms. However, they were definitions from the previous week, so I hoped that they might figure that out. They did pretty well with the matching, and the top score was tied between Katya and one other student at 11 out of 13. Their reward was getting to pick out a postcard from my stack of AK postcards I had brought with me. By the time we were finished with that it was four o'clock, so I decided to end the day there.

            After the club, Veronika and I made plans for Friday after school. We were originally going to try to find shashlik (like shish-kabob), but you have to be careful where you get it. As there isn't a festival going on, it's sort of hard to find. Therefore, she asked if I wanted to do sushi. I said I'd be game, but mentioned that there was one place I'd already been to for sushi, which was apparently where she was thinking of. Therefore we're going to go to Fonoteka, which several people have recommended to me. Apparently there are two main rooms there, and Veronika really likes the Tibetan hall, so that's where we're going.

            One of the new attendees, Zhenya, stayed and talked with me for a while after the club. The club got over at four, and I don't think he left until 5:30. He is pretty much self-taught (though I'm sure he had English somewhat in school), and is very interested in America. He really wants to go to “Cali.” He didn't think that I knew any American slang though and was telling me he knew more than I did. He was very insistent that urban dictionary was a pure slang dictionary, and I had a hard time convincing him that a lot of urban dictionary is a joke. The one word he kept insisting every American used when playing basketball was something he kept pronouncing as “bweeyuh.” I finally figure out he meant “booyah.” I tried to convince him that that was old slang and isn't really frequently used anymore, but I'm not sure he believed me. I would be the first to admit that I'm not super up on American slang, but my most prominent memory of the word “booyah” is from The Emperor's New Groove which came out when I was in 4^th grade...so I'm pretty sure I'm correct on this one.

            Zhenya is very fascinated with America. He said the thing he loves about America is that everything is big. Big houses. Big cars. Skyscrapers. He said it's his dream to see skyscrapers, which, for the life of me, I don't really understand. I tend to dislike them. His dream vehicle is a Cadillac Escalade, to which I just shook my head. I told him I'd much rather have a Corvette. We spent some time helping each other with each others accents.

            While we were talking, at the other table in the library, there was a meeting of American exchange program alumni led by Katya. She had made cheesecake for it, and she said that she made quite a mess at home in the process wherein her mother wished she had never entered the kitchen. She had saved a piece for me, and I thought it was delicious. Yuliya (who works in the American Center) was also in attendance as she was in Portland on a Fulbright for a year. I had met one of the other girls, who goes to a high school here, and of the two others, one did her exchange...guess where? Anchorage Alaska. Small world, eh? It gets better. She went to high school at...West High, my alma mater, and she worked with...guess who? Michele Whaley, my first Russian teacher. I don't believe in the 7 degrees of separation. There seems to never be much more than 3.

            The alumni are going to try to plan some sort of event or series of events, and one of Katya's ideas was to have me teach folk dancing. She also had an idea to do something like a living library where you would come and meet with people who were experts on a certain topic and speak with them. The other idea I remember was to do a sort of photo scavenger hunt. Long story short, Katya's awesome.

            I left the university somewhere after 6, went home to drop off my computer and get my smaller purse for a trip to the store. I managed to find some strawberry jam this time. Last time I was there there was no jam to be seen, and I wasn't just blind because I remember looking at that shelf in particular. I also bought some more cheese, yogurt, bread, and smetana. I find my favorite meal is just bread and cheese. It's my fallback. Every once in a while for breakfast I make cream-o-wheat or an egg, but usually I just have bread with cheese and a cup of yogurt. Yum. :)

           

            I expect that my next entry will be rather lengthy, so I may have to split it up over two entries. I'm going on an excursion with some of the teachers from the university on Sunday, which I think I mentioned previously. I've now come to the end of my third week here. It's hard to believe that ¼ of my time has already past here. It's definitely getting colder here. This morning was quite chilly when I stepped outside, and I find my room gets pretty cold at night. I'm hoping the heaters in the dorm will turn on and start working somewhere in the next week...but I'm not going to get my hopes up. Luckily I have a hoodie sweatshirt and a flannel blanket, thanks to my dear relatives the Powell family in Washington.

Skype, Svetlana, Spaghetti, and Sushi

Entry 9 -September 28, 2011

            For those of you who think I'm overusing alliteration in my titles and have dreaded opening a new entry to find yet another repetition of English Phonetics, I hope it makes you feel better to know that I am similarly suffering from such a streak (alliteration here unintentional). For some odd reason, it seems that my activities and adventures tend to group themselves into letters of the alphabet. If you are sitting there bemoaning the fact, be thankful I haven't caught Seuss or Shakespeare fever. I could be writing in couplets.

           

            I believe I left you at the end of my adventuring on Saturday. Saturday morning was uneventful. I did some Bible reading on my own. I've been asked by some people if I have found a church here, and the answer to that so far is no. I haven't seen anything other than Orthodox churches, and I don't think the majority of them are actually functioning right now.

            Jackie came over around lunch time and we made spaghetti. We had a Russian spaghetti, and it definitely had a strange sort of consistency to it. I had found spaghetti sauce and added onion and cucumber to it. I have been unable to get my hands on zucchini, and as a result, I have been using cucumbers in things. All of the cucumbers I've found here are smaller, no more than four or so inches. They're not quite as crunchy as ours and they have a slightly different taste. I have been using them in all sorts of ways I would never have previously cooked with a cucumber. After lunch, we talked about our project, and Jackie liked the legends idea, so that's what we've decided to go with. We walked to a different part of town, where Jackie is living. She's living in a hotel of sorts, associated with her university. It's very nice. She has a fridge, a bathroom, and a large room with a tv all to herself. Unfortunately, she has no kitchen, only an electric kettle. Therefore she's been buying a lot of precooked chicken and instant soups. Apparently earlier last week her kettle stopped working. The hostess went to see if they had any more, and they didn't have any new ones. She gave her one that has some wires sticking out of it, but it works. Jackie's just careful not to spill water on it. We talked briefly about how, back home in America, we would never even try that, but for some reason, being here in Russia, you end up being more daring and resourceful. NASA spent tons of money to create a pen that would write in null gravity; the Russians used a pencil.

            I had brought my computer with me to Jackie's so it could charge. YAY! Power at last! So now I knew that I just needed to find an adapter for my poor little netbook. Jackie and I came up with a working plan for our project and worked on composing an explanation to be sent to our professor in Portland. Much laughing was involved as we joked around with grammar. When we were done, I still wanted to let my computer charge a little longer so we turned on the TV to see if anything was on that was either worth watching or amusing enough to hold our attention. Spiderman 3 was playing with Russian dubbing, and it was some where towards of the end of the film, we figured. Also, neither one of us had seen the film, so we didn't know what was going on, but we thought it might be amusing. We went and sat down on the couch and were confused as to why it seemed there was a song playing in the film and no more sound effect sounds. When an announcer voice came on, not matching the film, we realized the television was picking up a radio station. We tried switching the channel away and then back, but very soon after we did that, the radio station invaded again. The next station was playing one of the Harry Potter films, and we were immediately sent laughing at some of the pronunciations of names which pronounced a few silent letters. However, by that time it was getting dark, so I decided I should probably leave.

            Jackie was going to walk me back a ways, but she ended up going a different way and we were very lost. However, we kept walking straight, and ended up cutting the trip about it half. We're not sure what we did. Everything looks different at night. We also agreed that it was not a way we would have wanted to walk alone at night.

            On Monday morning, I had agreed to talk in a class about American Health Insurance and general health in America. One of the professor had approached me and mentioned that the students had read some information about our health and insurance system and were confused, so she asked if I would come and talk about it and answer questions. I did my best, and I was just glad that no one asked me about the specifics of Obamacare as a knowledge of health insurance is not really one of my specialties.

            Later that day I planned out my next Idioms session. This time, instead of having students try to think of what the different idioms may mean, I'm going to give them a list of idioms again, and pieces of paper with the definitions on them. They are going to have to work in groups and try to match them up as best they can. The catch is there are two extra definitions from last week. There will be some sort of bonus for the person who can name the idioms those two definitions fit.

            One of the instructors has been concerned that I do not have enough to do, and she asked me to come to her office for a minute. She says that there is a Medical Institute here where the instructors would like to be able to practice their English with a native speaker. There was a representative from the school there, and they said they would get in contact with me to set up some sort of meetings with the instructors. I still have not heard anything more about it, but it may be very interesting. I don't know what sort of things they'll want to talk about. I just hope they won't be as interested in Jack London as were my host parents in Vladimir a few years ago. There has also been discussion about me speaking at a high school, and I am waiting to learn more about that as well.

            I was checking my email when two students approached me to see if I would want to hang out with them. Naturally, I said I would love to do so, and I figured that they would want to plan a time for later in the week.....and in such thinking I was wrong. As soon as I agreed to do something, they asked if I was free right then. It was around 3 o'clock so I figured it would be ok for me to leave. I told them I'd need a moment to gather my things, and I told Ludmila I was going.

            Katya (who introduced herself as Kate) I had seen in a class I had spoken to, and she introduced me to her boyfriend Sasha (who introduced himself as Alex). They asked if there was something I wanted to do, and we decided on something cultural. Thus we went to an art museum in the Kremlin. They said it was free for students, but we didn't know whether or not they would accept my student ID from PSU as it looks like a credit card. I suspected the cashier would protest and was correct in my assumption. However, Alex argued for me, and she ended up letting me in for free with a student ticket. :)

            There was a school excursion that we followed along with for a while to learn about some of the pieces of art. Alex didn't realize at first that I spoke Russian, and I think they were surprised to see that I could follow along with the tour guide. It's not a very large museum, and a lot of the paintings there are copies of original copies that hang in the Tretyakov in Moscow, but it was still interesting. They had one painting which I really like where a young Russian girl is seated in traditional costume looking into a mirror. You only see her face in the reflection. There was an old story that girls believed that on one night (maybe All Hallow's Eve) if a girl dressed up and looked into her mirror she would see the man she was going to marry. There is a story based off of the painting that the girl saw the man she was going to marry be shot and killed in the war. I can't remember what she did after that, but it was quite sad and tragic. The painting is called Svetlana Guessing at Her Future and you can see it on this website: http://www.wikipaintings.org/en/karl-bryullov/svetlana-guessing-on-her-future/ The colors are more dull on the website, but you get the idea. If you’re really interested and/or intrigued you can search for it on google images. The light used by the painter and the girl's expression are phenomenal.

            After an hour or so in the museum, we left and decided to go get something to eat. We ended up going to a sushi restaurant. From what I have learned from other students since then, apparently the one we went to is not really that great, but the sushi I had definitely tasted different from the California rolls we have in America. At dinner we talked a lot about movies, and I think I disappointed Alex in all of the films he knew that I had not seen. Katya is pretty quiet so most of the conversation was between Alex and I.

            After dinner we went and walked around. They took me to one bridge where you could look over the other part of the city. The lighting at the time was very beautiful, but it was also super windy in that area, making walking uphill an additional challenge. We kept walking and walking and got a little bit lost. By the time we had figured out where we were we were pretty cold, so we decided to go get coffee. We went to a very classy cafe on Bolshaya Prokovskaya. You check your coat at the door, and there are bird cages on the window side of the cafe creating natural music for your dinning pleasure. When we got there Alex asked me if I wanted a water pipe. I didn't know what he was talking to and he pointed to something that look like hookah. I said, thank you, but definitely not. We each ordered something warm to drink and enjoyed the atmosphere. I would have been more appreciative of said atmosphere if people weren't smoking cigarettes at nearly every table, but oh well. I ordered a caramel latte (as that was the only latte they had), but after a few minutes the waiter came back and said they were out of caramel and would I like a different flavor. I said I would be fine with just a straight latte. A few minutes later he came back again to ask if I would be alright with a cappuccino with chocolate. The poor kid seemed so distressed, and I didn't really care, so I said that would be perfectly fine. It was dark by the time we left the cafe. Katya caught a bus by the Kremlin, but Alex walked me back to the dorm as he was going in the same direction. The only downside to the evening was that my mom called me when I was walking back, and I didn't want to be impolite so I didn't talk to her. I had told her earlier that she could give me a call, but that was before the unanticipated excursion. Flexibility is my motto while traveling abroad.

            When I got home I used the USB modem to get online. I tried to voice skype with D-dad in Texas, but, unfortunately, the connection was not good enough and just kept dropping. The girls who lent me the USB device told me they had tried to call the ISP help for me, but the person they needed to speak with was unavailable so they would try back the next day. The did bring me a piece of cake they made with squash. It was unusual but absolutely delicious.

            Tuesday was relatively uneventful. I worked on homework during the day, Alex stopped by to chat, and then at 3 o'clock I went to the Tourism group's celebration of “The Day of Tourism.” Each student had to come representing a country with information about their respective land. One girl represented Northern Ireland and taught a few Irish dancing steps; the girl representing Egypt brought a roll of toilet paper and we nominated the only guy there to be our mummy (there's a picture on facebook); Veronika represented Canada, and she had a list of amusing Canadian laws; and so on and so forth. I was representing (surprise!) America, but I tried telling them something they wouldn't know. I asked them what the official language of the United States was, and they were surprised to find out that it was a trick question as we have no official language. Ludmila was leading the event, and she had trivia questions about the smallest countries of the world, the 7 wonders of the world (of which there are also several different lists), the most popular countries for tourism, etc.

            When everyone had presented their country we had pizza. Pizza is very, very, very different here. Instead of a tomato sauce there was a sort of alfredo sauce with mozerella, a few slices of tomato, and LOTS of mushrooms. After we ate, the students wanted to play mofia. I don't know why that game is so popular everywhere. I've never really been a fan of it. I ended up being the leader, and we had a pretty good time. Both times we played the mofia picked the doctor to kill on the first go around, which was pretty amusing.

            During the party, Katya (the one who went to Arkansas, not the Katya from the day before) brought me an adapter for my computer. She is such a wonderful person. When I got home I was pretty tired, so I just read a book until it was time to go to bed. I don't know why I get tired so easily here. Maybe I'm not getting enough nutrients, despite the fact that I'm taking vitamins consistently for the first time in my life. Thank you, person who invented adult gummy vitamins. The last time I took vitamins regularly was when they came in the Flintstone variety.

            Two final notes: 1) As you might have noticed, the blog lied when it said it would send you an email update. Sorry. I have no control over the application. You'll have to go back to waking up, running to the computer, and jumping with glee when you find a new update. :)

            2) I'm sure someone out there is bound to have a question about life here on the other side of the world. Beneath this post you should see either a lovely white box or a word that says “comments” that you can click on for the magic white box to appear. If you want to ask me a question about something write it in the comments below, and I'll answer it in the next blog. You don't have to have a google account as you should be able to post anonymously (however, if you'd like to include your name in the anonymous note it will bring me some comfort to know that I'm not answering questions to a complete stranger.)

Of Blini and Blisters

Entry 8: September 27, 2011

            Somehow, despite my intention to have written days ago, it seems that I’ve been to busy doing more to write about. You will be glad, however, to know that I have decided to not bombard you with one horrendously long entry and will instead write two covering the last few days.

            The school day on Friday progressed fairly usually. One of the students who had attended the idioms club and in whose class I had spoken in earlier in the week approached me to see if I would like to hang out and get coffee sometime. We planned to meet at noon the following day. At three o’clock Veronika came and found me in the American Center to go walk about the city. Veronika is a tourism major, so I got a history lesson of the city as we went along. Nizhny Novgorod (formerly known as Gorkiy to all you Soviet Geography history buffs if you are out there and reading this) was home to a whole lot of rich merchants who all built large houses to live in, show off their wealth, and conduct business. One of my favorites was the home of an Old Believer who wanted a big fancy mansion, but he also had to follow the rules of his beliefs (which I myself do not really know). The result was that he built a wooden cabin like home inside his big fancy mansion. Apparently the walls of the wooden house could be moved around so that it didn’t get in the way.

            After a bit Veronika got a phone call from Lena (the other girl that originally went sim card searching with me in the first week), and she came and joined us as we walked about. We went and walked through the Kremlin, which I had only walked around before. Each of the 13 towers of the Kremlin has its own name, and there are two different types of towers. The rounded towers are for military defense, and the square towers were for storing supplies and ammunition. There are far more defensive towers than storage ones. Some of the towers also have a legend associated with them. My favorite was one called the Yoke Tower. In older Russia, peasants would carry two buckets of water by means of a short of yoke one laid across one’s shoulders. The legend says that during the tartar invasion a young girl left the protection of the Kremlin to go down to the river to draw water. Upon her return, she was ambushed by a group of tartars. She took the yoke and used it to defend herself, killing several of the ambushers in the process. Unfortunately, they ended up killing the girl, but they said to each other that if one young Russian girl had the ability to kill three or four of their fighters, the Russian warriors must be too fearsome and terrible to be able to beat. Therefore they left and did not attack.

            Veronika and Lena had a lot of really good legends that they knew associated with certain places and it gave me an idea for my Capstone project that I’ll be working on with Jackie. I thought it would be fun to collect some of these stories to write up into a small book. Jackie and I had talked about doing a book on the history of Nizhny Novgorod, but it’s kind of hard to find a lot of information on the city because it was a closed city for a long time. Also, it’s a old city, and we wanted more of a focus.

            Here’s another fun little story: Bolshaya (which means big) Prokovskaya is one of the main streets in my section of the city, and there is a large portion of it that is only for walking on. It’s the street similar to Arbat in Moscow, for those of you who have visited there. There is a clock tower that stands up against what was once just an apartment building or housing, and it seems a little out of place. The legend has it that Tsar Nikolai II was coming to Nizhny Novgorod, and the city was preparing for his arrival. One man, who lived in one of the apartments of the building where the clock tower now stands, had a balcony filled with junk and garbage. The city had come to him several times and asked him to clean up his balcony, as it was right in the path that the tsar would take through the city. Despite their continued requests, the man was disinclined to clean his balcony. Not knowing what else to do, the city built the clock tower in front of the man’s flat so that the balcony was safely hidden from sight. My thought was that, if the municipality gets super angry at the man who builds Snowzilla again, maybe they should just built a giant clock tower in front of his home. J

            Around five o’clock, Lena had to leave to go home, and Veronika and I found a bench to rest our feet awhile. I learned a new word in Russian: mazol (second syllable stressed). It means blister. Even though I had worn flats and not heels that day, endless hours of walking through Russian construction sides and along paths with uneven stairs and uneven sidewalks takes a toll on ones feet. We eventually made our way back to the university, and then I went to the store. Thus I finally got back to my room around 7:30, and luckily it didn’t begin to rain until I got inside.

            The next day I met up with Oksana outside of the Linguistics University around noon and we walked to Minina square, which is by the Kremlin. I learned that she is from Sarov which she jokes is the “super secret city.” Apparently it used to be a monastery town, and the monks built a city under the city. Stalin decided that it would be a perfect place for a nuclear weapons facility, and that is what it became. Even today, she said it’s impossible for her parents to get permission to visit countries outside the former Soviet bloc. Oksana herself did an exchange in UP Michigan, and her boyfriend has come from there to visit her in Nizhny. Long distance relationships are a great commiserating factor.

            We went to a little café called Shokoladnitsa (essentially, “The Chocolate Lady”). We each got coffee (I had a latte that was actually not bad. It was better than Starbucks, at least, which was better than I was expecting) and had blini which are the Russian version of crepes. Mine had some sort of blueberry cream cheese and a blueberry glaze with actual blueberries that tasted just like the wild berries from home. It was very good. After we ate we just sat and talked for a while. We talked a lot about stereotypes we had had of each other’s countries before we visited, and what people told us that either scared us or gave us an impression that was completely false. I found out that in Russia you usually don’t tip. Or, if you do tip, you tip a lot. For just a normal outing with friends, you wouldn’t give a tip.  

            After a while, we went walking (every day I learn the true meaning of gulyat more and more), and met up with Oksana’s roommate Sasha. We switched into Russian with Sasha, who doesn’t really like to speak in English. This, of course, was good for me, and I had a good time.

            Later in the evening, the girl who I have been helping with homework who lives in the dorm came and knocked on my door with her roommate. They brought me a piece of a cake they had made which was absolutely delicious. They also have been helping me with my internet problem. They said that they would call the provider for me (apparently I was supposed to receive a whole packet of information when I arrived, but I did not), but until then, they’ve given me a little USB uplink that I can use. I don’t get really great connectivity, not enough to voice skype, but it sure is better than nothing. I gave them some of the candy I had brought with me in return.

            So now I had a way to get online…and therefore, as I had a temporarily solution to one technological problem, another one ensued. My computer would not charge. I had left it plugged in all night to see if that would do anything, but it did not. I realized that the surge protector was not being friendly with my power converter, and thus, my poor box was getting no power. This was a problem because I only had a converter with a built in adapter, and not an adapter alone. I knew that Jackie had an adapter, and I decided to take my computer with me the next day to her place to try to give some life back to my netbook. Thus, I went to bed, glad that I had somewhat of a solution and frustrated that I had developed another. I felt like I was catching computer issues like the common cold.

Idioms and Irritations

Entry 7: September 22, 2011

            I know I have been amiss in my posting this week, but I haven't felt I had much new to report on. Moreover, I have been fighting with my computer which has made me very irritated and upset. I have tried several system restores, to no avail, and now even when I'm not trying to connect to the internet, Skype will not load fully and is wreaking havoc upon my CPU until I can get windows to dismiss it. A few nights ago I didn't know whether I felt like crying or throwing my computer against the wall and smashing it into a trillion pieces of oblivion. I restrained myself from doing either, but was very put out and disheartened.

            Ludmila was out on Monday and part of Tuesday due to a family illness, so I did not attend the first few lectures I was interested in earlier in the week. On Wednesday I went to talk to a class about the interviewing process in America, what to expect, how to prepare, etc. As all of my visitations have gone thus far, once a topic has been reasonably exhausted we talk about Alaska, America, and anything else the students are curious about. I've been bringing my photo album with me and end up showing pictures to everyone. The one reaction I get consistently every time I show pictures is one of surprise at the size of my family on my mom's side. I usually talk about the different traditions my family has, and so far the group favorites have been the Easter egg hunt at Grandma and Grandpa's and our family secret Santa at Christmas.

            I was given a package of course outlines, goals, and topics for the English Department, which I spent a lot of time reviewing. I wrote out a list of subtopics that correlated with the course goals that I felt I could speak on and gave them to one of the professors. She made copies of the list and put it on the counter at the American Center, and I have noted that most of them have disappeared over the last few days, though anyone has yet to approach me in regards to them. I also had an idea for a pet project of my own: an American Idioms Club. I knew I wanted to do some sort of fun learning event series, but I couldn't figure out a topic for the longest time. Jackie had mentioned that she has been teaching slang, but, after a linguistics course I had a few terms ago, I found that my knowledge of slang is rather lacking as several actions, states of being, or things we tend to have a lot of different slang terminology for in English are things which I either do not association with, participate in, or care to know more names for. Therefore, slang was automatically out. I had noted that there was an American Idioms dictionary on one of the shelves in the American Center library, and I thought to myself, “Self, what about an American Idioms Club?”

            Me, myself, and I all felt this to be a much better course of action than one relating to slang. I had a few different ideas in mind about how to teach them and make it interesting such as playing pictionary, making skits with newly acquired idioms, or having to “translate” for someone using idioms into plan English. When I posed the idea to Ludmila she was all for it, and we decided to host it at 3:10 pm on Thursdays. I made up a flyer with the following advertisement:

(Imagine these first two phrases going on a diagonal in a fun wordArt manner) Cat got your tongue? Are you drawing a blank?

AMERICAN IDIOMS

Do American idioms leave you feeling like you're missing half of the conversation? Are you left in the dark? Worry no longer! Come jump on the bandwagon and come to...

THE AMERICAN IDIOMS CLUB

(information about the when and where placed here)

Led by an American student from Alaska, you'll learn American idioms in non-traditional ways and have fun while doing it!

(End advertisement)

            If you noticed the use of idioms, yes, that was intentional. I thought that the information was still specious enough and hoped the idioms used would make people want to come to figure out what in the world the whole advertisement meant. Nadia and Yuliya, the two girls that work in the American Center, helped me find a good border for it in Microsoft Word. Once we had a poster we sufficiently liked, we made several copies. Yuliya decided that it needed color, so the three of us went to town with some highlighters (coloring: an eternal pastime). The result was a few colorful and eye-catching flyers, which we then put around the school.

            A few smaller flyers were also given to some of the teachers, and the word was passed around. However, we had no idea how many people were going to show. I started flipping through the idioms dictionary and picked out a few of the first good ones that I thought people should know. I decided on 12 different idioms to begin. They are as follows:

1.      To get someone's goat.

2.      Hard/tough act to follow

3.      Cost an arm and a leg

4.      Cover all the bases/have all the bases covered

5.      To twist someone's arm

6.      Climb/jump on the bandwagon

7.      Got up on the wrong side of the bed

8.      To be (or not to be) big/hot on something

9.      To draw a blank

10.  To be chompin' at the bit

11.  To get brownie points

12.  Over my dead body

            In preparing, I not only wrote out the meaning of each for myself, but also the stories behind them, if I knew them. I am happy to say that for all but one or two, I had an explanation. I also learned that “to get up on the wrong side of the bed” comes from the superstition that if you put your left foot down first when you get up in the morning, you're supposed to have bad luck all day. Therefore, it seems to me that “to get off on the wrong foot with someone” comes from the same superstition. Interestingly enough, I know from reading Dostoevsky that Russian culture used to share the same superstition.

            Around 4 pm (which is when the American Center closes) on Wednesday, Yuliya, Nadia, and another girl whose name I don't actually know, decided to have coffee and cookies instead of just going home. They invited me to join them, and although I was tired, it was more important for me to get to know them better than to go home and be lazy. It was nice to just talk and laugh together. Nadia made a reference to an intellectual internet slang, and they were surprised to find I knew what they were talking about. Yay for linguistic pet projects and interests.

            This morning I spoke in two different first year classes, showing them pictures, and answering any questions they had. We talked about stereotypes of Russians and Americans, my impressions of Russia and Russian, how languages are taught in America, the university system in America, how to get a job in America, tips for foreign exchange students, and the complications of working while being a full-time student. Both of the classes were much more talkative then previous ones had been, and we had a lot of fun. Granted, the second class was supposed to present dialogues in the second half of the class, but they got the teacher to let them ask me more questions instead. Thus, there may have been an ulterior motive in continuing to be interested in me, but I'm not going to complain (which makes me think that perhaps, “Don't look a gift horse in the mouth should be on my next idiom list”).

            In both classes I advertised shamelessly for the idioms club. I made 10 copies of the worksheet to begin with, and we were surprised to have somewhere between 15 and 20 students show up for the club. I began by having them work in groups to try to guess what the idioms could mean. Then we went through the one by one, and I explained them. They all guessed the meaning of “to cost an arm and a leg” and “over my dead body,” but the one that stumped them most was “to get someone's goat.” (For those of you who don't know, the idiom comes from when racehorse owners would buy a pet for their horse to keep them company. The pet of choice was often a goat. If a competitor wanted to mess with someone else's horse, they'd take their goat the day before the race. Hence “to get someone's goat”). After we had gone through all twelve idioms for the day, I had them divide up into groups to come up with short skits using as many of them as possible. They did remarkably well. They used anywhere between six and ten of the list, and I gave “brownie points” to one group that also used the idiom “driving me crazy.” We gave a prize to the best two groups, and challenged them to return next week with the Russian equivalents of each of the idioms.

             All in all it went very well, and I was quite pleased with both the turnout and enthusiasm on the part of the students. They seemed to have a good time, and I hope they come back next week with more friends. Granted, we're not quite sure where we should hold the club, as we didn't really have enough room for the group, but we've a week to figure that out. I've decided to start next Thursday with a review. I'm not sure if I'll attempt it through playing pictionary, charades, or just doing a simple matching. I want to try and do something different every week to keep it new and exciting.

            I got a phone call from Anna Anatolevna, my Russian professor from PSU and our fearless leader in this senior project that has us Flagship students spread all across the world right now. She explained more of the plans for the project and the specifics we need to nail down. Jackie and I are going to try to figure out this weekend what exactly we want to work on. Originally Jackie thought to do a comparison of student life now and in Soviet times, but she's no longer too fond of that idea. We briefly talked about doing a sort of then and now e-book on Nizhny Novgorod. Jackie likes to draw, and I have a camera so we figured we could draw the past and photograph the present. Come Sunday we're hoping to come up with a concrete plan.

            Tomorrow I plan on attending the Methods of Teaching Russian course again, and at 3pm I'm meeting up with Veronika (and maybe Lena as well) to go around the city and maybe see a movie. Also, on October 2, which is next Sunday, I'm going on an excursion with several of the teachers to a nearby historical town. I don't know what it's called or how far away it is, but that's alright. Ludmila hoped that Jackie could come as well as she didn't want me to just be alone with the teachers without a peer, although I wouldn't have minded. Jackie, however, has a different excursion on that day, so Ludmila found a girl who works in one of the directors' offices who will come. Her name is Valentina, Valya for short, and I met her just briefly today.

           

            My father plans to call me in an hour or so to do some more troubleshooting on this bellicose box of mine, but it will do no good as it's currently raining, hence the internet is down. Thus I was not able to do my pre-call troubleshooting. I know that patience is a virtue, but it has never been one of mine. It seems God sees fit to work to change that.

            On a final note, for personal amusement (and as distraction from the frustration of technology) I am currently reading Emma by Jane Austen. I was most tempted to write this entire entry in her style, but I held back. I don't know whether you will count yourself blessed or saddened by my restraint. I, for one, am a smidgen saddened, but my next conquest will be Shakespeare, and I figured if I started a trend now to imitate the style of the author I was reading, my poor blog would suffer from being unread. So far, my blog has been technologically uncomplicated and kind to me, and thus I deemed it unfitting to set it up for such failure. If Jane Austen was hiding in the syntax of a few of my sentences, I'm sorry. There is a bond between us wordy women which is avowedly difficult to overcome.

3 Russians, 2 Americans, and a Swede

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 1^st and 2^nd floors. Button two is between the 3^rd and 4^th. The button labeled three is between the 5^th and 6^th, button four, between the 7^th and 8^th, and the final button is between the 8^th and 9^th. 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.

The True Meaning of “Gulyat”

Entry 5: September 15, 2011

            A whole week at LUNN finished now. I'm starting to make more contacts with people. Having a cellphone really helps a lot. I got to hear the lovely voices of my parents and my wonderful boyfriend Thursday morning thanks to the ability on Skype to call phones. Even if voices sometimes lag a bit and sound a little funny, it sure beats silence.

            On Thursday I met a girl named Katya who did a year of exchange last year. The poor dear, they sent her to Arkansas. Apparently to study abroad you have to apply at the Embassy, and you just apply to go. Students don't know where they will be going to, and they do not really have any say in the matter. Katya said she cried when she found out where Arkansas was. This year Katya is doing a practicum and finishing her last year of university.

            (Sidenote: I know it sounds a little funny to the American audience to here things like “last year of university” or “she goes to university,” but over here on this group of continents the term “college” is not really used. “College,” when used, does not mean the same thing as university. Usually a college is more like a vocational school...not to be mistaken for a technical institute. Forgive my digression, but I'm sure that it crossed someone's mind that I was using a Russian syntactic construction there. If that did not cross your mind, you are free to skip the next sentence. If that was exactly what you were thinking, for your information “last year of university” is perfectly acceptable and grammatically accurate, it's only scarcely heard in American English (aka. retract that snicker). If you are British and wondered why I'm making such a hubbub, I sincerely apologize).       

            Katya invited me to meet up with her and a few other international students she recently met here in Nizhny. She said to meet her near the Kremlin at 6:30pm. I didn't really know where the Kremlin was, but I knew what direction to head in. I got Katya's phone number to call in case I felt lost. After I left the university for the afternoon I returned to my dorm to drop of my grammar books and grab my handy-dandy cloth shopping back to embark on my self-coordinated excursion to Eurospar...dramatic theme music crescendos in a moment of suspenseful anticipation...the grocery store!

            Eurospar is more like what we Americans are familiar with. You can grab a basket or a cart, fill it to your hearts content, and then go to the check out stand. I'm going to probably have to make another trip this weekend, as I bought a lot of basic things like salt, pepper, oil, and sugar which are heavy and did not have room for a lot of more substantial food. I was also very happy to find a decent produce section there. It's all uphill from the store, and I was wearing too warm a jacket for carrying 20 lbs of groceries a mile uphill in four-inch heels. When I got home, I boiled some pelmeni (to refresh your memory, pelmeni is a sort of Russian meat-filled tortellini) while sauteing up tomato, cucumber, and onion. Once it was all done I mixed it together and added a healthy dollop of smetana (the “dollop” reference hopefully gave this one away, but, once again, smetana is sour cream, but better). The combination was altogether delicious and filling. It was good I had such a good dinner, because I definitely needed it for the evening ahead of me.

            I didn't know how far I was from the Kremlin, but figured it couldn't be too far. I decided to wear my flat boots instead of heels at the last minute (my wisest decision of the week), and left my room at around a quarter past. I kept on walking and started to past some official governmental looking buildings. I was walking by an old church, behind which I could see a part with a large statue. I decided to walk towards the statue as it looked like something that would be near a kremlin. A brief digression: If you amazed at my walking from Nizhny Novgorod to red square in 15 minutes, let me clarify. There are many kremlins in Russia. The one we always here referred to in the media is the Kremlin in Moscow, but a kremlin is really just an older fort that also had a connection to the governing body of the region.

            When I reached the statue I called Katya to try to get further instructions, but she was in a busy area and couldn't really hear me. She asked me to text her instead. I sent her a text, and decided to keep going down the street. When she texted me back, she said that I was right to go to the statue and needed to continue to the street after it. I had to do a little back tracking, but I found the river walk (made convenient to find by overlooking the river, go figure). After a bit more walking I ran into Katya and three students. The only guy in the group had to leave after ten minutes or so, but the four of us girls had a great time. The other two girls are from Sweden and Slovakia. They are both here studying Russian but the evening progressed in English as that was the language of the highest collective proficiency between us all. I'm not sure how long they have studied Russian. Every once in a while I'd help supply a word or translate a word from Russian, but they all have extremely good English. Once again I am humbled by how unskilled I am in languages. I feel I need to pick up at least two more at least. I'm thinking French and German will be my next two conquests.

            We walked down the river walk to the Kremlin, and Katya told us about it's history. Unlike the Kremlin in Moscow, the one here in Nizhny is no longer being used for government. Katya said that the original Kremlin here was built around 1550, but it did not survive for terribly long. The current one was reconstructed during the soviet era in the 1920s-30s...but it's falling apart because no one took care of it. There were originally thirteen towers, but the reconstruction architects did not take the slant of the ground into account (the Kremlin is on the side of the Volga river), and one of the towers fell over and is no more. The lost tower divides the Kremlin into two sections. The western part is open for people to walk through, but it costs money and we didn't do that. The other section has fallen farther into disrepair and is off-limits.

            To get down to the level of the Kremlin you have to walk down a few flights of stairs and then down a very, very steep path. If you've ever seen The Man from Snowy River there is that scene where he is galloping down that 45 degree incline. That was essentially what we were walking down. Not wearing heels was a really good idea.  Katya said that one of her friends who was studying Russian made the comment that she did not fully understand the verb “gulyat” until she came to Russia. “Gulyat” translates as “to go walking” or “to stroll,” but truly we don't really have a good equivalent. People go out walking a lot in Russia, and you just seem to do more walking here than you would in the states. Compound a larger quantity of walking with the fact that the stairs are many and often larger than is standard and the paths maybe ridiculously steep, and you start to get a different understanding for “gulyat” than a simple leisurely stroll.

            We walked down by the Kremlin was Katya talked about it. Then we went back and walked almost to the end of the river walk. We were all about to share and laugh about situations you get into being a foreign exchange student. One of the girls is having a birthday on Wednesday, so hopefully we'll all get together and do something for that. None of us are really party people, but we're thinking it would be fun to do a cooking party. Katya also knows a lot about off-the-map or hole-in-the-wall sorts of places that she told us about. Hopefully we'll be paying visits to those in the future. All in all it was a really fun evening, and when I got back to my room I was contently exhausted. I at a few dried pineapple rings which I had purchased earlier at Eurospar, took a quick shower and then easily fell asleep around 10pm, very tired from all of the walking I had done.

            Happily, I am now sleeping in until 6:30am! I got a phone call from my dad in the morning, and we tried troubleshooting why I can't get online at my dorm. I show that the connection is working, and I can ping out to google using the web address or an IP address without dropping any packets, but none of the programs or browsers on my computers will recognize the connection. It's very frustrating, but my fearless tech leader is troubleshooting at home, so hopefully, fingers crossed, by the end of the week I'll be able to connect from my room.

            I went with Ludmila to one of her tourism classes this morning. She had asked me to talk about tourism in Alaska or American cities, and although that's where I began, I ended up showing my photo album and answering any questions the students could think of. They were pretty shy at first, but I had them laughing pretty quickly so they started to relax. Ludmila left after a while, thinking that they might be less intimidated if she wasn't there. They did open up a lot more, and we had fun together. Ludmila came back towards the end and somehow we got on the topic of 9/11.

            They asked me where I was when 9/11 happened and what I remembered. I gave them my short story, and talked about some of the changes that occurred after the event. It was very interesting to watch their expressions when I talked about 9/11. The best way I can explain it was that I could see them empathizing with the horror of such a terrible event. I definitely was not really expecting the kind of response I received. I don't know whether the terrorist attacks last year in Moscow made it hit a little too close to home or not, but I was quite touched by the way they responded.

            After the class, Veronika came to find me in the American Center to see if I wanted to hang out this coming Wednesday. We'll probably go to the cinema, and she may practice her tour guiding on me as well.

            The Methods of Teaching Russian as a Foreign Language lecture occurs on Fridays, and Ludmila went with me to see if the instructor, Natalya Petrovna, would be okay with me sitting in on her course. She said that would be fine if I could understand. Ludmila keeps insisting that my Russian is very good, while I feel it is adequate. However, I was pleasantly surprised that I had absolutely no issues following the lecture (this is 400-level class). Natalya Petrovna lectured on the realities of Russian vocalic reductions, stress, intonation patterns, and how to teach them. I realized that the Russian phonetics course I took at PSU very much followed the style she was teaching. It's interesting to see how Russians view their language, and I learned a lot of good insights into teaching practices. I had a nice chat with the instructor after the class when I went up to thank her for letting me sit in. I very much look forward to attending the class in the weeks to come. She also teaches another course on Wednesday she thought I might be interested in.

            Later in the American Center I met Anton, who is heading up the different events coming up. The first of which is the Freshman Party which will be on the 30^th of the month. Anton, like Ludmila, speaks flawless, only slightly accented English, and he has a great sense of humor. They both code-switch, i.e. switch back and forth between languages, often. Half of our conversation are in English, the other half in Russian. There is a special place in my heart for code-switching. Don't ask me why. It might stem from playing bilingual word association the first time I was in Russia.

            I also learned that Anton's church here has done several musicals, and he has directed some of them. I guess one of the other professors at the school writes lyrics or translates musicals, and there is another man at the church who composes. Anton said the first production he was involved with was Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat which the one professor completely translated. My hat is off to her. Not only is translation complication, but to make it rhyme and fit within the rhythm of the music for that show...I am seriously impressed.

            Eventually I made my way to the computer to check my email. I got a message from Jackie who is also from PSU and is at a different university in the city. We're going to try to meet up and do something this weekend.

            Finally there was senior from one of the local high schools who stopped by the American Center. She went on exchange to Iowa last year and is now apart of an alumni association sponsored by LUNN. We talked for a good while while she was waiting for some paperwork. I may go and speak at her high school at some point.

           

            Here I was thinking that I hadn't really done much over the last two days, but I think this is my most long-winded spiel yet. If you're still awake I hoped you enjoyed it. Brief commercial: If you didn't see the lovely blue letters I put at the top of the page, I've added a feature at the top of the right toolbar above the archive that lets you subscribe via email. Basically, you'll get an email every time I update my blog so you don't have to sit on pins and needles at the edge of your computer chair constantly refreshing the page to see if I've had yet another adventure. Also, if you have any questions about my life here on the other side of the world, feel free to ask them in the comment box at the end of the page or to shoot me a message via email or facebook. Well I'm sure you've had enough of me and my commercials for the day, though I suppose I won't get this posted until Monday, so for those courageous souls, there is probably a post after this by now if you wish to press on. If not, please go enjoy a cup of Kaladi's for me.