From the house of Irina Ivanovna
Updates from Minskaya ulitsa, building number 9, apartment 3:
- Sunday marked the day of my second ever limo ride, and it was just for the heck of it. Irina Ivanovna reserved a limo for everyone on the Midd program to go riding around Moscow in. Then, when she invited our coordinator, Kari, who agreed to come, Irina Ivanovna decided that she would go to the dacha instead. Don't ask; she's just crazy. But so we all took a limo ride up to Arkhangelskoe, where there is a big old estate and beautiful gardens and forests and all the leaves were changing and it was absolutely gorgeous. We had fun in the limo too, of course, taking plenty of pictures and in general having an amazing time.
- I was informed the other day that tomato juice is very good for you. Even better than normal juices. This is something you may often wonder about when you, say, see many people drinking tomato juice on airplanes. It's something Irina Ivanovna often wonders about. But then, she saw an article about how it's very полезно, healthy, helpful, and apparently better for you than even normal juices. Nectar. Something about nectar. This is an example of a time when I don't think being fluent in Russian really would help me to understand Irina Ivanovna.
- We have a dog! We're taking care of Irina Ivanovna's daughter's dog for the week and he is big and slobbery and oh-so-very cute. His name is "Boy", as in мальчик, and he has taken to following me around the apartment and begging to be pet more than I've ever seen a dog beg before.
- We ate tongue last night. Tongue! It was actually some kind of sausage-y tongue thing, but it was most definitely tongue. She informed me of this and, seeing the look on my face, changed it to "meat, some kind of meat", but it was tongue. It mostly just tasted like every other sausage, but I can't say I ate very much of it...
Last night, I saw the Bolshoi Ballet for under a buck
Yes, yes I did. I saw the Bolshoi Ballet, quite possibly the most famous ballet company in the world, do
Carmen. And I paid 20 rubles. Sadly, the Bolshoi Theater itself is under reconstruction for at least a year, but the company is still performing at another, smaller theater right next door. If you go to any performance about 2 hours in advance and show your student ID, you can get tickets for 20 rubles (and 26 rubles = a dollar, so now you understand !!). Unfortunately, you are then stuck standing in the balcony, but if you get lucky, as we did, you can usually get a seat by the second act. It was absolutely unbelievable! I had never seen
Carmen before, but I definitely knew the music, and I pretty much fell in love with the ballet. It was amazing and so much fun, and we're definitely, definitely going to do this more often now. :)
In other news, today is Friday the 13th. Irina Ivanovna informed this morning that this means before you leave the house, you have to look into the mirror and say:
Ангел мой, поидём со мной.
Ты в передний, я за тобой.
Which, roughly translated, except it rhymes and sounds pretty in Russian, is:
My angel, come along with me.
You go in front, and I'll follow behind.
I'll let you know if it worked...
I don't know why I go to extremes
I think the most interesting (or you could say wonderful or you could say horrible, but I'm going to go with the neutral "interesting") thing about being abroad is the way in which your mood just jumps from one extreme to another in a matter of minutes.
This morning was dark, cold and rainy. My alarm rang at way too early a time, and I would have done anything to stay in the warm sheets and sleep for a few more hours. But, alas, I got up, found an all-too-enthusiastic Irina Ivanovna for 8:00 in the morning, and was, let's say, not in the best of moods. It wasn't a bad mood, per se, but just a gloomy one. Kind of like the weather outside my window.
The gloom, however, fairly quickly changed to frustration (unexpressable frustration, of course) as I struggled to finish a homework assignment I didn't quite understand and found the line to obtain my metro pass too long to wait in and still get to class on time.
But after a class full of many words I just didn't understand, the sun had decided to come out. I went outside, got some lunch, and put on my iPod as I walked around in the sunshine. If there is one thing that will lift your mood everytime, no matter the problem, it's a bright sun and a blue sky. I saw a couple of friends who I hadn't seen yet today and we stood and talked for a few minutes. And if the sun doesn't lift you out of a bad mood, then friends are sure to do it. So as I walked to my next class, I was feeling all together much better and happier and even ready to tackle another class I probably wouldn't understand too well.
Well, after waiting 20 minutes for the teacher who doesn't seem to ever show up to class, and trying to make conversation with two girls who were also waiting for the same class, but refused to say more than two words to me, the happiness had faded into something that more resembled homesickness. I wanted a teacher who had office hours; I wanted a class that didn't change constantly; and I wanted friends, or at least people who like to make friendly conversation (...preferably in English).
Which brings us back to the fact that if sunshine doesn't lift your mood, true friends will. After giving up on the teacher who doesn't show, I came here, to the internet cafe, and talked on AIM for about 45 minutes with Rachel, and I don't think anything else could have better helped lift my mood. I wouldn't call it a happy mood at its current state, but at least I'm not ready to hop a plane to the states.
I'm not really sure why your mood jumps so much when you're abroad. Maybe it's the new experiences, which inevitably end in frustration or elation. Or maybe it's just not always knowing what's going on, which also generally ends when you finally give up, or actually understand. But I guess it all just shows that home means comfort, which in turn means some kind of level, constant feeling of understanding and contentness. I'm not really complaining about the extremes, just stating that they're there, inevitably, I think. And I guess until they go away, I'll just listen to Billy, singing about the same thing...or singing about ice cream, whichever you prefer.
One week in Ukraine
So, the reason I haven't posted in a while is because I spent the last week in the Ukraine on a trip with Middlebury. All the kids on the Midd program who are in Moscow and Yaroslavl (except one, who went home to Turkey for the week instead) took a group trip together. We were in Kiev for most of the time, but also spent two days in L'viv, which is a town in far western Ukraine. But because I can't even pretend to sum up the whole experience in one post, I'm going to fall back on the oh-so-classic highs and lows format, and hope I hit all the important stuff.
lows: to tell the truth, the lows were few and far between, but let's see... our guide sometimes deciding we didn't need to eat and just continuing with the tour for 6 or more hours without lunch. being super tired most of the time mostly due to overnight train rides and customs control waking us up in the middle of the night to check our passports. realizing that with a group of 14 people, it is next to impossible to make any decision such as where to eat for breakfast or which way we should turn on a street.
highs: ok, let me just begin by saying that the trip was AMAZING! ukraine is like russia, except the people were friendlier, and the city prettier. it also gave you a bit of a more european feeling, especially in l'viv. my favorite part of kiev was the main street, which they close to cars on the weekends, so people are just out and about and walking around. we caught a free Tarkan concert (Tarkan is a famous Turkish pop singer) which was super fun. we saw a million and a half cathedrals, each one more beautiful than the last. i really, really enjoyed l'viv, though. the city felt very european, with skinny, little, cobblestone streets. it was a much smaller city, but absolutely beautiful. my favorite few minutes in l'viv were probably when our guide announced to us that there are very few traffic lights in l'viv, so people just cross the street wherever they want, and then proceeded to run out into the middle of the street, held out his hand to stop the car speeding towards him, and we all ran across as the car patiently waited for us to cross. we travelled a few hours outside of l'viv as well, and got to see a lot of very pretty ukrainian countryside, and a couple of cool old castles. my friend kathy and i also took it upon ourselves to learn the entire ukrainian language in the week we were there. while this goal was not
exactly realized, we did have fun writing down words and trying to figure out why they're spelled the way they are (ukrainian and russian are very similar, and for the most part we were able to understand signs around the city, menus, and things like that). and when it came down to it, none of us really wanted to return "home". i think we all could have spent much, much longer in the ukraine, and together, if we had been able to.
smilehigh: no doubt about it, the smilehigh of the week were the people on the trip. i feel like we all really bonded, even the kids from moscow, eventhough we all already knew each other pretty well. but we also really bonded with the yaroslavl kids, and the two groups seemed to work really well together. i had a great time being able to be with friends constantly, and definitely realized that's one of the things i miss most from college - just having people around all the time.
p.s. my shutterfly site has been updated with pictures from the trip, if you're interested! :)
