Around the World...and then some

A Week without a Schedule

Technically, the entire country of Russia begins school on September 1. That was last Friday, one week ago. On September 1, we went to our university, RGGU (Russian State Humanitarian University), and took placement exams for our Middlebury classes. We were then informed that they didn't yet have a schedule for us because someone had to move something to some new building, and the teachers weren't set up yet, and basically they just didn't know our classes yet. Welcome to Russia. So, we had a week without a plan and a whole lot of free time on our hands.

It actually all made for good exploring time. I definitely feel better acquainted with the Metro now, and with the millions of Russians that I'm squished up against every morning and evening. We made friends with the guy who sold us cell phones who has friends in West Virginia. We told him we didn't think we had ever met anyone from West Virginia. He was not impressed. In general, though, we've spent a lot of time trying to get to know the area around our university. Karen, our RC, suggested the "sprial theory", in which you pick a spot - your house, the university - and sprial out from it, exploring streets, restaurants, stores that you otherwise would have never seen. It's a great idea for getting to know an area and not feeling too overwhelmed. So on one day with no schedule to speak of, we sprial theory-ed our way to the other side of the university, opposite the metro station, and beyond. Before too long, we found ourselves completely lost on little side streets. Completely lost, that is, until we came to a large, busy square with a statue in the middle and the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall on one side. Ok, so we were still completely lost, but at least we had heard of the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall. It took us another 15 minutes, but we finally found a Coffee House (their version of Starbuck's...they're everywhere) to sit down in and pull out a map. Turns out we had ended up on the well-known Garden Ring that marks the "downtown" area of Moscow. Also turns out that the building in which this particular Coffee House now stands was once the home of Bulgakov, author of Master and Margarita. Not having read Master and Margarita, this didn't mean much to me, but my two companions were quite impressed. We also then walked to the nearby Patriarch's Pond, where the opening scene of Master and Margarita takes place. So, I suppose you could say that the sprial theory wasn't a complete failure. And I definitely feel as though I have a better idea of where exactly the university is in reference to the rest of Moscow, which, I suppose, is one goal of the spiral theory.

So, let's talk about linguistics for a minute... Because everyone loves linguistics (ahh, the funny - and amazing - thing is that about half the people reading this just agreed with that statement). A week without a schedule meant that we got plenty of time to try out mainstream classes. Our mainstream classes are the ones we take with real students, real teachers, real Russians! I'm probably going to take one mainstream, or two if I find more that I especially love. But since real Russians like to be just as unpredictable as our building-changing Middlebury Russians, they suggest we try out as many mainstreams as possible in case in a week or two a class gets cancelled or changed to conflict with one of your Midd classes, or something like that. Now, going to as many mainstreams as possible has been absolutely no problem for me because, you see, unlike my lovely little liberal arts college back home, this university has a real linguistics institute! They offer classes such as "General Linguistics", "Theory of Spoken Communication", "Thoery of Translation", and *gasp* "Syntax" and "Phonetics"! Needless to say, looking at this schedule made me very happy. I tried out two classes this week - one that I really liked, one not so much - and have 1 or 2 more on the schedule for next week. In general, I'm just really happy to have options like this, and love how giddy I get by just looking at the names of some of these courses.

Ok, enough of this really long, update-y post. Michael's right - I feel like I'm writing a travel novel. You know, one of those books that everyone says would be interesting to read, but no one actually does. Sorry, I'll try to be more random and exciting next time. Until then, miss you all!

posted by Becky @ 9:04 AM