If there is to be no other credit to my personality, I have a wildly rampageous imagination.

15 April 2009

И вот и всё. I can’t speak English anymore. Half of it comes into my head in Russian, which is good on the one hand, but bad when I am trying to extol the virtues of my study abroad program to my advisor back home, and my email is intelligible.

And as a result I am in serious fear of reverse culture shock.

What will I do when I have no one to speak Russian to? I think I may go mad. My habit of interjecting Russian phrases into my everyday speech must rapidly come to an end, lest my sister (whom I dearly love, and she would probably be right in attempting this) might kill me for what must seem such an officious affectation.

This week marks the beginning of the end. For real. Well, for Russia. Starting now, I have less than a month in country! I can’t believe it! Where has the time gone!?! Too quickly! I remember getting here, I remember all of the individual events, but it is undoubtedly unfathomable as to where the time has flown. It doesn’t feel like nine months (for which I blame the weather, winter is going on 5 months. It snowed again today; although yesterday was absolutely gorgeous). The days are getting longer, and now at 8 p.m. I can still see blue skies when the clouds break up.

Yesterday I sent off what was supposed to be one box of books, but according to Russian post office regulations, was turned into 2 5-kilo boxes, of course I use that term loosely, and since I accidentally put a false return address (I realized that about a half an hour ago, it’s a really long and rather boring story, if I was telling it to Heather, she’d being sighing by now. Hahaha, oh, I do love my sister, we torment one another quite adeptly), so I do hope that they don’t get sent back at customs because of shifty looking packaging. That would be quite disastrous. All those books. Lost. Like poor little lost….books.

But it does bear mentioning that the Pochtamt (big postal office headquarters) in St. Petersburg, is really a gorgeous building, and a short and very pleasant walk from Nevsky which skirts in front of St. Isaac’s Cathedral. Directly across is the State Museum of Religion (which used to be the State Museum of Atheism, which used to live in Kazan Cathedral back in Soviet Times), which I will be visiting tomorrow, barring illness and getting hit by trams/marshrutkas/bikes. Back to the subject matter: the building is glorious and quite beautiful. And if you are ever in town, it is worth bopping in for a few minutes and taking it in.

Along the way, I ran into a consulate, but I had to do a double take, because it was one sad, broken little door and a flag with the obligatory policeman’s booth next to it. But on second glance, I confirmed that the depressing little place was home to the Turkish Consulate. Poor fellows.

Ah, and now it is time to tell you what I have learned lately, well, things you might find funny for that cocktail party in 20 years (in my high school U.S. History class, when the teacher would give us new information, it was often with that preamble):

The reasons Russians don’t like laughter, reason the first: if you laugh too loud, your soul will fly out of you; reason the second: laughter is what happens when the devil tickles people.

Cheery, no?

This last week in grammar we learned a construction that reaches to the heart and soul of Russia. The phrase is structured and carries the meaning that there is no hope at all for something to be done (no hope for someone to write you a letter, go to the movies, or no time, or no place, etc.). We’ve learned other constructions that can yield this to a lesser effect, and unless I am quite wrong (which is likely) or we haven’t been taught them yet (also likely, they may be saving the most depressing for when the sun comes back and spring arrives): there are no less than 4 different steps to say depressing things in Russian, and each consecutively becomes more and more depressing.

So now, I return to that mass of papers that calls for me to continue studying, as our next translation class is a test of the most recently studied material. (The last test she didn’t even bother putting our grades on, she just handed them back, dripping with red ink) It is undoubtedly my worst class.

Which, of course, would have nothing to do with my imagination running wild, as Amelia the Adventurer (or Adventuress, I suppose) battles the forces of evil and finds fantastic treasures.

Castles or Pyramids? Pyramids. No. Castles. I'm a decisive person.

29 March 2009
Okay, the panic has passed; the resume has been updated and I am now officially applying for jobs. Sort of, people don’t really want to talk to you when you live 8 to 11 time zones away.

This has been an argumentative week in many regards: my bank closed me out of my accounts (just as I was buying my plane ticket from Budapest to London; CURSES), my university and I have different ideas of what qualifies as an international diversity course (because, apparently, out of my majors in Anthropology and Russian, I don’t have a course which can as of yet be applied as being internationally diverse. Really.), and my umbrella decided to break on to my face (no amount of argument helped that one; but I am honestly a little thankful that we are finally transitioning into the time when it just rains, no more of this snow stuff).

8 April 2009

Winter will never end ::glancing out the window.:: Never, never, never. ::glancing again::

I’m trying to see if reverse psychology works on nature, because, as of yet, every time I’ve confided in someone that I think winter is close to being over, it starts snowing again.

So I’ve neglected remarking anything in my journal lately for lack of anything to remark on the one hand, and finding very little time to do the remarking. I have a very busy schedule of sleeping.

Only joking! My weeks are action packed with very many things I find interesting but don’t bear repeating over and over. I continue translation work for a human rights organization, watching documents headed to the European Union, and the U.N. cross my translation table. I meet with the student club who watch English films, and give lessons to one of the women who works at the human rights organization. The Hermitage is rapidly losing its appeal to me, as all of the interesting projects are impossible.

My courses continue on as ever: Literature has us reading Mayakovsky (who the professor swears is her soul mate) and having contracted discussions on the evolution of the fairy tale in Russian history (she lectures, and I interject “how interesting;” so it’s not a real discussion). Translation has us studying gerunds and –ing participles, which is an improvement because we aren’t studying the word ‘for,’ but is also frightening, as we spent so much time on that word and my mind is still reeling. But I do so horribly in that class that I feel my confidence in the overall language slipping, which is just silly.

I fell down the escalators last Friday. Not all the way, of course, (that would be quite a horrifying prospect, considering their jagged metal edges and the sheer length of the escalator; at my stop there are 696 rotating steps) but I fell far enough to get evil looking bruises along my back. And then this morning I dropped a rock on my foot. I have no good luck left.

Sometimes Russian is very useful, and sometimes cursedly inconvenient.

The flexibility of the word order can buy you a few second to try and remember which verb you want to use (imperfective or perfective? Uni- or Mulit- directional? Prefixed?), but the down side is the case system again. There is no sure fire way to predict what case a verb will take, so when you mumble out your sentence, putting all the other words first, you really need to be sure you’ve put it all in the right case, so you don’t look like an idiot. Or you need to turn it into a complex sentence. Or just mumble it really fast and try your best to drop the endings, or always try to pick an object that is feminine (we have genders for all the nouns in this language), because in most of the cases, feminine words have similar endings.

Today, we (my travel buddy Elli) and I are looking up train to tickets to different parts of Europe, as we are trying to make our way to Budapest at the end of the semester. I really really (I could add about 50 more) wanted to visit Italy, but it looks like that country will be put on hold. For now. Drat.

Oh well, Eastern Europe has all the really neat crumbling castles. Maybe we can hit Transylvania.

I am a jelly donut.

20 March 2009

Let me start with saying that I am not a crazy person.
Despite whatever you may think after reading all my wonderful adventures, all the screws are tight.

But I can’t believe only 10 days have passed!! It feels like ages. Ages and ages. Now I am back in Russia. Break was fun.

And it’s still cold here. Classes start on Monday. Back to the study books.

…

Just kidding! Muahaha, did you think that was all I was going to tell you about break? This is likely to be the longest post yet. So you might want to get that coffee before you read any farther.

We did the midnight train thing again, and since I knew what to expect, I was ready and prepared, and mercifully got to sleep for part of the way. In Moscow, we year long students were spared a second round of tours which opened up my museum time! I think I have visited more museums in the last 10 days then I have at any other time in my life.

The Pushkin Gallery of Fine Arts is the only museum I will deign to mention from Moscow (I went to the Tretyakov gallery, and well, it was interesting, but meh.:: ducks for cover::). Here’s why: The Pushkin Museum has Priam’s Gold…Schliemenn’s Treasure…in short, all the gold from Troy! This was the main aim in the museum-tripping of the day, but it lead to so much more. Imagine if you will, a massive marble staircase with a lush red carpet down the center, and columns meeting a glass ceiling. There are Greek and Roman statues in equal measure for marveling, but first is a room dedicated solely to Egyptian funerary rites for commoners, specifically in Coptic and Roman times. There were funerary shrouds, and an exploded coffin and Coptic textiles! There was room after room (after room, they really went on for ages) of statues and figurines from every era. But bah humbug to that modern art collection, because after the Trojan treasure room was the Assyrian Gallery, which was flanked by two massive statues of Man/birdy griffin things (Assyrian Mythology is a confounded weakness for me) and there is a wall solely devoted to slabs taken from temples and palaces, while there are exquisite pottery pieces, jewelry, and finery.

And then dear reader, if that wasn’t enough to make a girl’s head spin: there came the darkened room at the end: the Egypt Room. It was a replica of a temple, perhaps taking after the tomb of Ramses the Sixth, but the ceiling was painted to resemble the generic tombs of royalty and the well to do. I almost started crying.

Of course, you weren’t allowed to photograph anything in this hall. But I think my memory has been indelibly marked. There were mummies, cosmetic ornaments, and statues, even a mummy of a cat and one of a bird. There was a woman’s head mummified who had curly hair and an earring still in one ear, while next to that case was the still closed sarcophagus of a young child. There was a pair of statues that stood next to each other: a husband and wife who were priest and priestess in the temples, and they looked so at peace together. There was even a little sphinx: not for the last time, I really wished it was appropriate to hug things in museums. In the sculpture hall was a reconstructed statue of Nike like the one in Paris. It was wonderful.

But enough about Moscow. Been there (twice now, it was even more expensive this time around, funny how that works) done that.

Sunday was a wonderful adventure; in so many ways, somehow, between being trapped in a metro tunnel for half an hour, running to meet my train, and getting lost in the airport (which of course is undergoing construction) I still made my flight. Of course, it was only when my plane was landing in Berlin that I realized that I really hadn’t planned this trip, and wasn’t exactly sure what to do next. But I will spare you the small details, and rest assured I survived to meet my cousins!

And my cousins! They are wonderful! They remind me a lot of my mom’s side of the family, so I see how some parts of my personality are definitely inherited. They have these two puppies that are the sweetest things in the world (and they don’t jump on you. Baloo hasn’t quite mastered the instinct which compels him to knock people, that is, me, over). And western things! Like Lucky Charms! I was a very very spoiled little person. It was fantastic: they introduced me to late night talk shows (because the channels that they got were the same ones piped in for troops, so there are all these shows that I know and love like Jon Stewart. And Craig Ferguson, you have got to see this guy! His show is perhaps the funniest I’ve ever seen), and we got all this traditional German food (not that silly tourist stuff, I’m talking döners and chunks of meat, and vegetables! Oh sweet salad, how I missed thee. I’ve said it before, and I reassert now, that I think I may go vegetarian for a couple of months when I get back to the states, just because I can), and since they have lived in Berlin for quite some time over the years, Laurie (my cousin) showed me all of these sights that I wouldn’t have been able to see otherwise like the bridge where the east and west Germans used to trade spies, and the lake Wannsee, and this tiny hamlet, I guess you could call it, where for a time after the Berlin wall was built (that is, the ‘anti-fascist protection wall,’ oh the soviets were quirky), where servicemen lived had to be flown in and out by helicopter! And at the same time, I got to hear a lot of their stories, because they have lived everywhere! And been even more places (I know that seems like it might not be possible, but don’t worry, it is). It was awesome.

So let me break it down, because there is so much to see in Berlin:

You’ve got the leftover chunks of the Wall, with Checkpoint Charlie in its original location (the actually little building isn’t the original Checkpoint though, that one is at the allied museum). You can still follow a healthy chunk of the wall down its old location, although nowadays it’s denoted by a row of stones in the ground. By the way, unlike Russia, starbucks has taken hold in Berlin. They say that you can buy little chunks of the wall, but be forewarned, most of these are fake.

There is this massive building, the Reichstag, where nowadays the German government meets, but the real attraction is the glass dome that is perched on top, with a winding ramp on the inside so you can slowly climb up and be in some serious awe.

Just down the street is the Brandenburg Tor, which is very much like a triumphal arch, and flanking it is the American embassy (of course, the guide book I bought in Moscow was about 5 years old and did not reflect this new location). The Tor sits between Unter den Linden and another street whose name I’ve already misplaced (but it’s a date name). Anyways, this second street cuts across this massive garden complex, in the middle of which is the chick on a stick, which is really an angel or some feminine figure on top of a column, but according to my cousin, is lovingly referred to as the chick on a stick. And the reason I’ve imparted this, the vaguest of descriptions, is that this is the place that Kennedy and more recently Obama have given speeches.

Going the opposite direction, down Unter den Linden (as I then proceeded) you pass massive libraries covered in ivy (the staatsbibliothek), and Humboldt University (I can’t get over the fact that the Brothers Grimm worked here).

I spent about 8 hours a day doing tourist things. For like 5 days. Here ends day one. Of course, in Berlin all museums are closed on Mondays, so Tuesday was the beginning of the museum fest; which began with the massive Pergamon. The Pergamon is the epitome of what all museums should be. Having spent a great portion of my time here at the Hermitage, I had gotten used to its grandeur, to the fact that it is both a palace and a museum. But really it is a palace that became a museum, and it was never meant to perform that function, so the lighting isn’t that great, and most of the time you are so overwhelmed by the palace itself, or exhausted trying to follow the most insane of map systems, that you can miss a lot of the art. But the Pergamon was built it seems, with an eye for astonishment, with respect to the artifacts. The altar which serves as the main attraction takes up a room that must be a hundred feet by seventy-five and the entire altar, along with the statues of the gods and goddesses which once adorned her is laid out in a simple manner that is logical and easy to follow. The following exhibits on depiction of the gods (the exhibit was called ‘Return of the gods,’ very interesting) was flawless; it depicted the role of the deity in the common person’s life: not only different depictions of the god, but their role, their parishioners, their histories. It was wonderful. I could go on and on. I went on and on. The execution was remarkable and understandable, even introducing the idea of the liminal period (which we talk about in anthropology forever, especially when studying religion in cultures).

After so much learning, it was time for the lion to feed. And so I found KaDeWe, which is like a mecca for western goods. On the first floor were pretty things like Tiffany’s (siiiiiigh), but what was really important was the sixth floor; because that’s where all the food lived. And by all the food, I mean all the classy, healthy, exotic, familiar, fresh, baked, sautéed food that you could ever dream of (even if you haven’t been living off beets for the last 7 months). I got fat there; also met a funny German who spoke Russian but not English, as he called the English imperialist pigs (I assume he grew up is East Germany. He was nice to me either way). ‘Nuff said.

So, more museums were visited the next day: the DDR museum (worth it, it’s on the river bank just by the Radisson, some tour books don’t have it listed; it’s an entirely interactive museum! You are allowed to touch the exhibits!), Kultureform (a complex of museums all housed in the same building, the engravings museum I found the most interesting of all), the Dahlem-Dorf museum complex (must-see!!! So well done! Their Mesoamerican archaeology display is to die for. Of course, I was the only on there at the time. I did buy a pair of very cute earrings. Even though I haven’t pierced my ears yet, I was going to do that here in Russia, but decided to wait since it is very likely I would get HIV if I got that done here), and the Deutches History Museum (which is worth every penny, I was floored, this place covered German history from the earliest of Neolithic scrapings through the fall of the wall; they even had a little tribute for the American Revolution).

I shopped a bit, because even if the dollar is weak against the euro, you get more bang for you buck outside of Russia. This is when I encountered Fassbender and Rausch, Chocolate Makers since 1863. If you’ve ever read Harry Potter, it’s kind of like Honeydukes, but just for chocolate. It was glorious, there was a volcano fondue (no touching), and a scale model of the Reichstag (perhaps it was that, I was paying attention to how much chocolate there was, not the architecture in this case). I bought a little baggie of candy, a little box of chocolate, and a little basket (but the basket is edible!).

Of course, had Amelia the Adventurer (think like Calvin and Hobbes Spaceman Spiff) had her way, she would have dragged the volcano home (in a sanitary manner), and probably accidentally knocked over the 12 foot tall rabbit made out of candies. She is the same character who does gleefully hug statues in museums, and successfully pilfers all relevant Egyptian-artifact carrying museums, as well as the copies of Kepler and Galileo which the History Museum had (those would be gifts for Heather).

So, all things considered, Berlin was a wild success. I had such a wonderful time (even though I didn’t get a chance to see the bust of Nefertiti, but that is still a sore spot, or more accurately, an excuse to return) that I was more than a little sad to get back to Russia. Of course, my flight from Moscow to St. Petersburg was an adventure, as I sat in a plane where I could see the padding between the cabin wall and the outside wall of the plane, could tell that my emergency exit door had been used before, and nearly had a panic attack because the big lit up signs which recommend ‘Exit’ all lit up about half way through the flight, at which point I took to anxiously staring out my window, which led to my noticing the fact that duct tape (YES, duct tape) was holding some parts of the wing together (I understand now why people drink before they fly, on Aeroflot at least). Altogether, I was thankful that I survived that last leg of the trip; when I finally pulled myself from the metro car and carefully rolled my way to the escalator, I made it on to the moving stairway, but my bag got snagged, so I went flying backwards with it. No harm done, but when I survived that death trap, I made it out of the station into a blizzard. That’s the only word I could think of as snow whipped around at previously unseen speeds. Ah Russia, thank you for such a warm welcome home.

Now, alack! Where has the time gone? I now (it’s officially the 24th) have less than nine weeks left here. Oh dear. The future does seem to be rushing to greet me. I don’t suppose there is a repellant to keep her away.

I think I need to go update my resume.

Hooray for the Coming Spring Break!

7 March 2009
So, I’ve found about 6 new bruises, and I’m not sure where they came from. And judging by the fact that I posted a poem, about peanut butter nonetheless, I am lead to assume I tripped and smacked my head and lost all reasoning for a while.

This week has been too much fun. For the last couple of weeks, I have been going to this club for Russian students who want to learn English. I don’t teach or anything, but what we do is watch movies in English, and we pick out all the idioms or unclear sayings and at the end of the movie, we talk about the ideas behind the movie and all the funny sayings. It’s really a wonderful time. This week we watched Le Miserables. And I really like that movie. So it was a nice way to round out the week.

Presently, I am working my translations, but I had to take a breather. Although its compelling work, I am looking up nearly every other word, and not because I don’t understand the meaning; half of them aren’t even in the dictionary. The work I’m doing involves a lot of military slang and such and so I’ve picked up a lot of really screwy phrases, and a lot of good terminology (which is definitely going on my resume, if I can find some legitimate way of including that). Today, I came across a place that I think has to do with guns, because it carries after the word ‘self-propelled gun,’ so the image my mind produce is a room with machine guns flying around like blimps, shooting things that move. The next phrase is some part of the extreme hazing process, I think; it’s called ‘drying the crocodile,’ and then playing ‘baby elephant.’ Or something like that. So I spend a lot of time scratching my head and hypothesizing what’s going on.

Suddenly the Russian language has taken on so many more amusing aspects; and horrifying, naturally, because this story has something to do with torture/harassment/violation of human rights.

Otherwise, my vocabulary is skyrocketing. Not fast enough, but I think I’ll just keep reading more books, and maybe buy a dictionary or two. I can’t believe how fast time is going! It’s coming to the time that I amount to send my (big) box of books home so it gets there the same time I do. I’m a little blue about how soon this adventure will be ending, but I’m sure all I need to do is ride the metro at ‘chas pik’ (‘rush hour,’ I can’t really speak English or Russian anymore, but an awkward combination of the two, so the only people that understand me are fellow study abroad students.) and I will get my foul mood back.

But, for all my sadness about that, I am riding a natural high. Winter is ending, but it is the most grudging of endings, and the season seems to be unwilling to relinquish its hold over the city. The temperature is easing up and hovering just above freezing during the day, which is practically balmy. And the birds have come back, so now I fear being attacked by crigeons as well as all the smaller birds which could conceivably get caught in my hair. Which opens up a worm can of horrific possibilities.

10 March 2009

Well today I prospal. That means I slept in really, really late. But it’s okay, because this weekend was the longest in the history of weekends. Well, perhaps not, but we did get Monday off, as it was Woman’s Day (two weeks ago it was men’s day, in some respects Russians are very gender-equal), so now it’s Tuesday and I haven’t been to school in several days, and this week (duh-duh-duuunnn) we have classes only on Wednesday and Thursday, because on Thursday night we are taking the midnight train to Moscow! Of course, the professors like to make up for this by scheduling all of our midterms in this period of time (my translation midterm only covers two topics: how to translate the word ‘it’ and ‘for’ in context. Laugh if you may, but there are no less than 18 different general uses for the word ‘for’ and even more idioms. English really is a ghastly language).

I think if/when I do the whole living in Russia again I would like to make my stead in Moscow. There is so much more to do there and it’s more centrally located; not in Siberia, although I doubt I could do Siberia for real. I do have a friend though, Elli, who wants to retire to the Lake Baikal region (she is really into the snowboarding and skiing shtick; I am not nearly so coordinated).

And now, it is past noon, and although I am showered and about half way ready to go somewhere (I haven’t decided where yet), I realize I have absolutely no desire to stir from my current position.

Russia has turned me into a lazy bum. Perhaps I just require a red bull.

Irregardless to my new and slovenly ways, I have been rather active as of late. A small group of us made our way out to Kronshtadt, which, in its heyday, well, before the fall of the Soviet Union, was a closed city because of all the military/naval servicemen who were station there, and I suppose, all the submarines which were in the surrounding waters. However, nowadays, it is an open city, and although the Naval Cathedral is quite beautiful, you can only get into the outer-outermost vestibules, as the Church is under reconstruction of some kind. Otherwise, having spend so much of its life as a closed city, there wasn’t much else to do, so we took the bus back home, and overall, it was the cheapest field trip I’ve ever taken in my life (it cost $1; for the bus fare).

I read Jane Eyre and enjoyed it a lot, although the last third of the book was a little strange, overall, it has left a pleasant aftertaste in my imagination. I’m still reading Emma, and I think understand what Austen was saying when she said that she thought no one would like this character but her. So far, I find her to be quite an interfering sort of person, although, I am only about half way through the book, so perhaps her character grows with the storyline. I’ve read quite a lot lately, not for lack of homework or extra curricular activities, I just find that all things are said and done rather quickly. Which leaves lots of time for books and the growing of one’s imagination. Fantastic.

Well, now it is time to hunt down the illusive specter, that addictive folly, that superfluous consumer of my time and energy: internet, and I suppose red bull could occupy that same sort of description. As I am leaving for Berlin on Sunday (YAY!), I need to make some last minute plans and communications!

Hooray!

The Post wherein winter ‘ends’ and peanut butter is eulogized

22 February 2009
It has recently occurred to me that I’ve never told you about my upstairs neighbors. They moved in over break, and for better or for worse, they have added quite a bit to my Russian experience over the last two months.

It’s commonly conceded that none of the students live with ‘normal’ Russian families, inasmuch that we foreigners live with them, but I feel like I get little bits and pieces of what it is to be an idealistically normal Russian. This is what the upstairs neighbors (for everything I hear through my ceiling) seem to be. One of them plays the piano, and really well. Beethoven is her favorite (I assume it’s the girl that plays), but now she is doing something a little more up beat than a requiem. Her male counterpart deals with the ever popular remont, which sounds like drilling or sand blasting or leaf blowing; something to that effect.

While listening to a Russian comedian, I picked up a new idiosyncrasy of the language: Only in Russian do the word for god and the word for rich descend from the same root (бог bawg and богатый bawgati).

28 February 2009
Today is the last official day of winter. Of course, as I look out my window, snow isn’t just falling, it’s racing down as though it has somewhere it really needs to be.

I see more people with rifles on the subway now. I’m not sure if they are hunting or, well, something.

Lately, I have learned such a wealth of new things, dear reader! I write most of them down with the hope that I will be able to share some with you.

Did you know that in Russian, the word ‘lie’ (as in fib, prevarication) has no plural? I cackled at this, actually cackled right in the middle of class as I pondered the implication. It’s as though it doesn’t matter if people tell many lies, the fact that one has been told is enough information. Or perhaps, the delusion that people can’t lie repeatedly. And by people, I principally was thinking of the government. One of my quotes this week was out of the newspaper I read: “As everyone knows, Russia is a free democratic country, and therefore nobody is thrown in prison because of his political views.”

And although it wasn’t related to this story, I wonder if you have heard that the trial against Politovskaya’s killers has ended with a ‘not guilty’ verdict. It wasn’t really that clean of a trial, and they are saying now that the real killer is the cousin (or perhaps it was the uncle) of the two men on trial that pulled the trigger, and it was masterminded by someone within the government (who is naturally an enemy of the Kremlin) or by some foreign power to undermine the Kremlin (interestingly enough, this is what Stalin always said, and that type of information that was always sent to him during World War Two and in those times. The man was seriously paranoid, and reports generally had to be crazier to be believed by him.)

Back to other educational things:

In Russia, beer is not considered alcohol. Which is why it is acceptable to drink it in the morning on the metro. Apparently.

Gender roles, as I have said before, are much more defined than they are in American culture. Linguistically, this came up again this past week: there are four separate terms for the word brother-in-law, while there are three for sister-in-law. There are separate words for boy cousins and girl cousins, and no word for ‘siblings,’ just brothers and sisters. While on that subject, there aren’t any words, not really, for step-anything or for half-anything; you have to do this slightly more archaic sounding ‘daughter of my father’ or ‘son of my mother’s husband;’ it makes me feel like I am trapped in Lord of the Rings.

Otherwise, I have stumbled upon a treasure-trove of grammatical constructions lately. Namely, an idea that heralds back to my high school days (so long past) (just kidding). In Russian, there are different ways to refer to things. Hm, this is a little confusing; I will stick with the imagery that is so ingrained in my heart. Imagine like you are looking at a window with four panes. One pane represents things that both you and another person know, going counter-clockwise is a pane that represents things that only they know and you don’t, the next is things that neither of you know, and the last is things that you know and the other person doesn’t. In Saxon, we called these Johara’s Windows. Anyways, each of these panes in Russian grammar has a different pronoun (or marker, I don’t know the right word for it).

As the semester reaches its half way point, we are leaving for Moscow in less than 2 weeks and that means that in 2 weeks and a day from now I will be in Germany! Western Europe! I can’t believe it, I’m so excited.

I have many things planned so far, including bookstores and museums. I won’t tell you about my plans, because it would be so deceptive of me to tell you about something that I hope to do and then disappoint. I will tell you about a spat of bad, horrible, no-good luck I’ve had on this end though. I love archaeology. I love ancient Egypt. Ergo, I really love Egyptology. And Germans were prolific Egyptologists, and they have so many fantastic treasures, many of which live in Berlin. So it was my plan to visit the principal collection of antiquities, but as it would happen, they closed the entire Ancient Egyptian Antiquities wing on the 22nd of February as they move to a new building, and they will open it up again in October! Thankfully, there are a few certain artifacts, most well-known ones, which are still on display. But I will only tell you about them if I actually end up seeing them.

Ah, this reminds of another observation I’ve made recently. While wandering in the Hermitage, in the new exhibition on the Cave of a Thousand Buddha, many of the items were labeled as having been in Germany until 1945, at which time they were ‘acquired’ by the Russians. I suppose that all is fair in war.

Well, back to work.

1 March 2009

Oh, peanut butter. Thy creaminess astounds me.
Although I was once a healthy creature,
Thy nutted aroma is enough to forget any resolutions.
Peanut-butter by sandwiches, fingers, or simply the spoon,
I think I could eat you in any way.
In this land of clouds and abominable snowmen,
I’ve seen your fleeting glimpse, but it’s not quite the same.
Oh peanut butter.
On that fated day of my return, right after my coconut ice cream sundae,
I’m afraid that will be your end.

The fire is shooting at us!

17 February 2009

Now in the middle of February, I have become intimate with one of the most inconvenient aspects of St. Petersburg winters (although I am sure that this occurs elsewhere, understand that I met this fiend here, and so it gets the credit): ice sheets. The kind that are invisible until you’ve already gone flying on it.

So, that one time I noted I’d fallen forward on the ice produced a series of the most deliciously disgusting bruises, one on my knee in particular that went through every color of the rainbow. Now, I won’t bore you with the multitude of times I’ve fallen, except to say I’ve become accustomed to losing my footing. It’s more like ‘oh dear, watch out for laura she’s about to….oop, well, can someone please help her up again.’ But this past Saturday was a new low.

It was that disgusting holiday to which I am morally opposed, so a friend and I had banded together to go see a movie and get dinner. I was testing out a new outfit whose chief notoriety was brought in it that a skirt was involved. Falling on the ice into such a compromising position is embarrassing enough; doing so in a skirt is enough to convince a girl to stick to pants until the ice melts (April).

Ah well. What have I learned lately about Russia: there are a multitude of words for foreigner and all such related things. I’ve told about the word for German meaning ‘dumb,’ but another word for foreigner, the one used to denote genres of books, has the root verb of ‘to hack; to slash into pieces.’ Yet another word I have recently discovered carries the meaning of ‘to avoid, shun, keep away from.’ Such a cheery language.

Otherwise, I have also come to notice a trend in St. Petersburg, hats. Not baseball caps or even cowboy hats; fur monstrosities that look like they have either died on the woman’s head or have eaten it. Some of them are quite practical, like you’ve seen perhaps in movies, just fuzzy looking. Ah, and then there are those with tufts of fur that stick out in odd places at odd angles. Others look like an animal has just been skinned and then draped over the head.

Thankfully I have so much hair that I can’t fit it into hats, so I feel absolutely no compulsion to bother looking for one, and my housemother gave up trying to guilt trip me into buying one.

The ruble has finally hit rock bottom according to the finance ministry, around 34.56 rubles to a dollar. Of course, they said this last Friday, and now we’re a few kopeks higher already. Either way, to put it in perspective, a red bull costs about 47 rubles, so I’m a happy little kid.

In other national news, Tom Cruise visited Moscow. Yes, this was national news. And he got a cold.

There have been protests put down and ultra-nationalists encouraged. We exist now in happy expectation of spring. Although winter seems as though it will never end, and while watching the weather forecast for St. Petersburg, I see Rome’s forecast at +11 to +13 (Celsius) and can’t help but feel a twinge of envy. Even though it’s absolutely ridiculous, because I remember trees being green here and all that, it feels incredibly as though it’s always been winter and it always will be. Ugh.

Otherwise, I am well, and I hope you are too.

I: saw Slumdog Millionaire, and loved it; discovered a new musician named Anna Ternheim and love her too; finished the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes; started Jane Austen's Emma; found more horrifying words related to torture than I ever cared to learn; and am watching the Office (the fire is shooting at us!!!) Genius.

And on the other hand....there are five fingers.

8 February 2009

Not much has happened lately. Although, I am sick again; I think it may have something to do with all the new kids and their western germs to which my body is now unaccustomed.

I plan, as ever, for my trip to Berlin (which is coming wonderfully soon) and my blitz across Europe (which is less than 100 days off).

In idling my time away, I have finally read Pride and Prejudice. And now besides transcribing about half the book’s quotes into my journal, I find myself in love with yet another fictional character; several, in fact. Although this book was in English, I do not frown on this indulgence, as most of the rest of my free time is spent translating true and horrific stories of torture and death in the Russian army.

We have only just returned from our trip to Novgorod, which was slightly repetitious, but also exciting, as on the repeat tours that we had, I understood everything that the guide was saying, and on the new tour that the year-long students were treated to (the dacha of Dostoevsky and a spa sort of area in a town called Staraya Rusa, which has the similar salty properties of the Dead Sea), I was delighted in that I understood nearly everything.

Being now otherwise drugged on cold medicine, I find it best to cease my ramblings. I hope that you are doing well.

9 February 2009

As it happens, The Hobbit is a perfectly enjoyable book, irregardless to the amount of cold medicine one has taken or how blurry the words may be. Suffering currently from both aforementioned symptoms, I hope this may one day be of value to you.

Interestingly enough, I have made another discovery on my journey to understanding the Russian psyche. Well, more like I have fallen into another pothole. There is no such concept as a comfort movie, or book, or what have you. You are grammatically forbidden from using dictionary-prescribed terms in such an unctuous manner. You have to say that ‘such-and-such thing is comfortable to my soul,’ which works, but is rather bulky to get around saying. So, The Hobbit was the object by which, today, my soul was comforted. Along with Harry Potter movies, and a conspicuous amount of chocolate, which quite happily, in both the world of Harry Potter and Russia, may be used for ameliorative purposes.