My Back Pages

9.6

It’s been a long day’s journey into a hard day’s night, but I finally made it to Ekaterinburg.  The train ride wasn’t nearly as bad as I psyched myself up for.  First things first, I convinced a darling babushka to switch her top bunk for my bottom bunk.  She was only too happy to oblige me, and I was only to happy to retire around 6 pm on a 4 pm train.  I was asleep by 10:30, and didn’t fully wake up until 11:30 the next morning.  Well done!  I passed the time pleasantly, alternately sleeping, eating, reading Don Quixote and listening to my Phil Spector audiobook, Tearing Down the Wall of Sound.  I actually passed out listening to it until one of my kupe mates woke me, saying we were soon to arrive.

After being helped with my ridiculously big luggage by kind strangers, I was met at the station by three women who work at the institute.  They were very sweet and unbelievably helpful, dragging my two huge suitcases to the far away car.  When I said the biggest one “works badly,” one deadpanned “Ura” (“hooray”).  The car was parked outside a supermarket where I bought some neccessities and was shocked to hear two young women speaking English in American accents.  They told me they are here doing Hearing Impairment Aid and that there are “Tons of us here.”  I hope I run into them or the others again.  From there they brought me to my temporary housing, a building where the lower floors are dormitories and the uppers are used as a hotel for visiting professors.  I’ll stay here until I find an apartment.  

The “hotel” is nice enough, has all the comforts of home except hot water and internet.  So unfortunately I won’t be able to email home until I find an internet cafe, which makes me as nervous as I’m sure my mom is.  But I’m sending her ESP messages to let her know I’m ok.  There is an elevator here, but it’s broken, so the cute young Asian security guard put my huge suitcase on his back and carried it up to my room on the seventh floor.  I also discovered that the tea I bought to assimilate is loose, not bagged, so I made a rather crunchy cup.  Better than nothing I suppose.  Tomorrow someone else from the Institute is taking me on a tour of Ekaterinburg, so maybe she’ll help me contact home.  I feel much better being here, and I’ll feel better still when I find my apartment and am able to unpack completely and start feeling at home.  I’m very nervous that my Russian isn’t up to par, but it’s good enough that, combined with impromptu sign language and the kindness of strangers, I’m able to get what I need.

So now I’ll try to relax with a movie and some food.  I’ve had enough cheese, crackers and salami to last a life time, but I’m sure I’ll eat more of it tomorrow.  Until then, death or glory (just another story).

9.7

A lovely first day in Ekaterinburg.  I spent a rough night because the bed is horribly uncomfortable, like metal bar in the middle of your back uncomfortable.  At around 1:30 a.m. I popped a sleeping pill and passed out on the couch.  I awoke around noon, breakfasted on grapefruit, bread with jam and instant coffee.  Watched some Arrested Development until 3, when I met Natasha for a tour of the city.  She is a very sweet young English teacher, in fact a recent graduate of this same institute.  With her (boy)friend Kiril we took the metro to the center of the city.  The metro only has one line, so it won’t be easy to get lost.  Natasha and Kiril are both natives of Ekat and expert English speakers, thus wonderful tour-guides.  They showed me all the major monuments, churches, buildings, shopping districts and theaters.  It being Sunday, we were denied entrance to most places, like the American consulate and the main library, but the monuments are the best part of the city.  Outside the library, for example, are two bronze footprints, “the world’s first monument to the invisible man.”  Natasha and Kiril also told me about plans to build a monument to the Beatles!  I know these two will be great resources and friends, Natasha because she is in my department and Kiril because he is a total rocker!

We worked up a good appetite walking around the city, so we stopped for a bite in a cafe.  I had a yummy salad, even if it wasn’t the one I meant to order, with fresh veggies, grilled chicken and, wonder of wonders, no mayonnaise!  Natasha had some chocolate cake, her weakness, and I promised once I have my own apartment to have them over for dinner and the chocolatiest cake I can make.  On the apartment front, we’ll try to get that ball rolling tomorrow.  The best course of action seems to be going through an agency.  They listen to your criteria and price range, then send you out to a variety of available flats.  On the downside, they do take a considerable commission, but it’s still less than I paid Gary DiMauro!  I’ll also start the process of getting registered, which I have to do by Wednesday.  Unfortunately, without knowing where I’ll be living, I’ll have to be registered at the dorm, but I guess that’s pretty standard.

You might be wondering when I’m going to start teaching.  As am I.  Actually, I’d rather observe for a couple days anyway.  Baby steps.

9.8

Today was my less than perfect first day at UrSPU.  It was compromised through my own fault.  I was supposed to meet Zhenya at 10:45, but I set my alarm for that time instead of an hour earlier.  So I woke up thinking I had all this time to eat a good breakfast and put together a nice outfit.  Then the phone rang and I instantly figured out what I had done.  I rushed downstairs where she had already been waiting quite a few minutes.  She was very patient and understanding, but I’m sure it didn’t make a good impression on my first day.  

Really though, everything else was fine.  I met the head of the department and she helped me to get registered.  They asked me to give my first lecture this Friday, on anything I like but preferably something dealing with cross-cultural communication.  I think I’ll do what Jen Day did on my first day of Russian, which David Fe reiterated in our ETA training: American perceptions of Russians and vice-versa.  This is a good general topic, but I need to find out A) what level the audience will be and B) if I will have a blackboard or something else for writing.  Also my block of time is an hour and a half, so I have to make sure I’ll have enough to say on this topic.  Maybe I’ll also address differences, imagined and real, between the Russian and English languages, with the underlying thesis that language-learning is always difficult, but worthwhile.

After the school day, Zhenya enlisted some of her students to bring me to the nearby grocery store.  They are very sweet and friendly, but I hate having to depend on other people to get what I need.  I got some nasty Russian ramen-type noodles for dinner, but it was pretty much all I’ve had today so I wolfed it down.  It was gross, but there is ice cream waiting in my freezer...  Those students are also living in the same dorm as me.  They invited me for tea, but even though I would like some company, I feel like I shouldn’t fraternize with the students just yet.  I may not be much older than them, but I am trying to command some respect, if not authority.

 

Tomorrow I’m supposed to go out with Natasha and start looking at apartments.  Hopefully I’ll find something fast because the uncomfortable bed and non-functioning tv in the dorm are costing me 1,000 rubles (about $40) a day.  I would also like to stop living out of my suitcases and to have a proper kitchen.  If the housing agencies don’t come up with anything, maybe she’ll take me shopping for a winter coat.  Either way, I gotta shake some action.

A note on the dates of these entries: I don’t have internet access yet, but I wanted to keep up with journalling, if not actually posting on my blog.  Hence I will publish a flurry of these all at once, but I am writing everything as it happens.  Hopefully I’ll have reliable internet access in my flat.  Hey, a girl can dream can’t she?

9.9

Well, my faithful comrades, I was getting ready to write a sad entry about how lonely and out of place I felt here when I made a remarkable discovery.  We got hot water!  This enabled me to work through my unhappy feelings a run, secure in the knowledge that a hot shower would be my reward.  Sure, I got some strange looks, especially as I didn’t feel comfortable going far, and so just circled the same little park over and over, but in a strange way, that empowered me.  And boy, I needed it.

Natasha and I started our apartment hunt this morning.  After contacting many housing agencies, we came up with only one place we could see today.  It has its benefits: it’s beautiful, with most everything new and in working order, including a huge, comfortable bed.  But there are many more disadvantages: it’s far from school, and by the trams rather than the metro.  To say it’s sparsely furnished is putting it politely, it wants a proper table, chairs and a couch.  Finally, it’s 20,000 rubles a month, or about $830.  Clearly that’s out of my price range, but so far it’s my only option.  The landlord wants an answer by Thursday, so hopefully something else will turn up.  Meanwhile, everywhere I look I see ads for rooms or apartments to rent, but they seem much sketchier than these agencies.  And yet, so far, the agencies aren’t really working out either.

Then, after we had some tea, I sat in on Natasha’s phonetics class, which I found very interesting.  Her students are in their first year of university English, and they are learning linguistics.  I couldn’t do a phonetic dictation if my life depended on it, but these kids do it every day.  Amazing.  I have already seen evidence of what I was warned is a major cultural difference: they think nothing of what in America is considered cheating.  For example, one kid did the homework assignment and made copies for the rest of the class.  Natasha told them not to do it again, but clearly they didn’t take this seriously.  I guess in my classes I’ll try to give assignments that are impossible to copy, more personalized writings, but that’s difficult to do when teaching basic grammar.  Anyway, Natasha is a great teacher.  The kids clearly respect her and enjoy their time in her class.

Now’s when my day gets a little depressing.  I went to the grocery store again, where you would think I’d feel comfortable, but instead I just felt like a total fish out of water.  I don’t know what are good brands or prices, I don’t even know what half the products are.  A store security guard came up to me when I wasn’t even speaking or anything and asked me if I’ve been in Russia long.  Obviously not, thanks buddy.  I had about 120 rubles with me, which I figured would be enough for a substantial amount of food.  But after coming up humiliatingly short at the fruit stand, I did the math and realized 120 rubles is only about five dollars.  So now I’m out of cash (I don’t want to take out any more until I find my apartment, because that first payment will be considerable), but I also didn’t get any meat or, more important, chocolate.  Looks like I’ll be having cheese and bread for a couple days.  Feels like the French Revolution, except without any wine.  I am feeling a little bit lonely, because I have no one to hang out with at night.  It’s a good thing I burned all these movies, and brought all these books.  Who needs friends when I have Bill Murray and Cervantes?

But it’s not all that bad.  I went for a run, took a shower, and now I’m settling in with, you guessed it, bread, cheese and a movie.  I know I’ll be happier when I have an apartment, but I’m trying not to think of that as a panacea.  A home is only as good as the times you have in it.  Man, talk about cheese...

9.11

Last night I was overjoyed, I mean dancing to “And Then He Kissed Me” happy, because I found a suitable apartment.  Not too far, furnished, everything new, it was great, except for the suspicious and tyrannical landlord.  Then I had a weird dream about going with Lucia to a 1990s pop concert, featuring such stellar acts as the Spice Girls and some ultra-sexy r&b group, at Playhouse Square.  The members of Gunfight were also there, though not performing. Well, it turns out that said landlord decided, in spite of what he said the night before, not to accept me as a tenant.  He’s definitely a xenophobe and probably an anti-semite, not that he had the wits to read into my name.  So last night I put all my things back into my suitcases, and now here I am, all packed up and no place to go.  

I’m back now to square one.  There’s another place I can look at tomorrow, and I have a couple more numbers to call.  One problem that presents itself is the limit placed on my cash withdrawals.  Landlords require at least one month’s rent in cash, but it seems I can’t take out more than 7,000 rubles at once.  Yikes.  I might have to borrow some bread from the school or something, I really don’t know.  I’ll go in tomorrow morning and try to figure it out.  Natasha and I looked at another place today which is in a nice district and brand-ass-spanking new, so new, in fact, that it won’t be ready until October.  This basically sucks.  To console myself, I went bullshit at the grocery store, insofar as I’m able without a proper kitchen.  I ate half a delicious pre-cooked chicken for dinner, and a pint of Kit Kat ice cream awaits me.  Of course, that chicken was all the dinner food I got, and since I ate it all, tomorrow my dinner might be another cheese sandwich.  But tomorrow won’t come until today is done.  That’s good.  I should copyright it.  Natasha also took me to a mall which was frankly thrilling.  I’m not a mall-shopper by nature, but Russia is bringing out the best in me.

Most importantly I suppose, tomorrow I teach my first lesson.  Hopefully it will be well-attended and interesting.  Actually, I’m dying to have a full schedule, because these days I have nothing to do but stress out.  This semester English classes go from 1:30 to 7, so I get to sleep in, at least as long as I’m living in the obshchag (the kids’ word for a dorm, short for obshchezhitzya).

If I can say nothing else good about this dorm, those seven flights of stairs are giving my popka quite a workout.

Here are some things about Russian culture they don’t teach you in class:
At grocery stores, you have to weigh your produce before you get to the cash register.  They just don’t have the technology.

Milk is never any less than 2.5% fat.

You pay in advance for cell phone usage.  Maybe this is true throughout Europe, but I had never heard of SIM cards.

In universities, students take all their classes in “groups.”  Groups share a schedule through the five years of their education.

It is not impolite to ask someone’s salary, even if you’ve just met.

Late at night, MTV has exciting sex-ed programming.

9.12

I’m dead tired, but I have to write my first entry in, believe it or not, my new apartment.  Thank goodness I didn’t take the place with that old anti-Semitic jerk.  Today Natasha and I visited this place and it is PERFECT!  It’s completely furnished, including cooking equipment and utensils.  To walk here from campus takes maybe ten minutes, and just as long to take the metro downtown.  It’s right on top of a grocery store and around the corner from a good super market and farmer’s market.  And if that’s not enough, it actually costs less than the other places I saw.  But the best part is that I’m renting it from the sweetest old couple you could ever wish to meet.  Liudmila and Uri are such darlings and have the most endearing habit where, whenever they are apart, the one is asking or telling me something and the other rushes in and says, “Why don’t you talk about” that very thing.  It’s even cuter than finishing each other’s sentences, because they do it as if in a quarrel.  I just wish I had the Russian vocabulary to express how grateful I am.  My one distressing moment was after everyone left, I went by myself to the grocery store, but coming back I couldn’t figure out the funky Soviet key to my door.  I asked the lady next door for help and at first she was very curt, saying she didn’t know me or have anything to do with this apartment.  But after a while she figured out I wasn’t trying to rob the place and was really just a clueless foreigner.  She suggested I call the landlords, and meanwhile invited me in to her flat to wait, during which time, of course, her husband opened the door in one second.  Uri and Liudmila naturally got there that very second.  They gave me another tutorial with the lock, but then just rigged the door so that I don’t have to deal with it, at least not for a couple days.  I think tomorrow I’ll buy some chocolates for my neighbors to say thank you.  

Oh yeah, and I had my first class.  It was actually great.  The students were in their fourth year, so I worried that my lesson would be beneath them, but they got really into it.  When I finished my lecture, there was more than half an hour left, so we played “I’m Going on a Picnic.”  They loved it, and clapped when it was over!  After class, a few of the girls even asked for my number and invited me to hang out on the weekend.  

Ok gotta sleep.  It’s after midnight and I’m awake for the first time since I got to Russia!  Tomorrow, wake up early, clean more, then go to the American Center and maybe shopping.  Good night and good luck!

9.13

I found the best thing ever--Russian Animal Planet!  It’s the exact same programming, only narrated in Russian.  Beautiful, informative and hilarious.

So I passed my first night in the apartment very happily, if a little cold (the bedroom did not come with a warm enough blanket, or a proper mattress...).  Anyway, after cleaning and unpacking, I tired myself out so much that, for the first time since I got to Ekat, I didn’t take any Tylenol PM.  Here’s to a drug-free life!  It was also the first night I didn’t watch a movie, only a few episodes of Strangers with Candy.  I turned the commentary on to “The Goodbye Guy,” the episode where Jerri’s dad dies.  Apparently, when Stephen Colbert’s character said, “My daddy will never die!  Do you hear me, G-d?  Never!” his real-life mom tuned out and never watched it again.  So I guess we’ll never know... 

This morning started out a little rockily when the toilet’s flushing mechanism came right off in my hand.  I decided not to deal with it, but went to meet Alyona to go to the American Center.  She is a very sweet second-year student who graciously offered to meet me on this horribly rainy day.  To my great embarassment, the Center turned out to be closed every Saturday, the kind of thing I might have found out if I had internet access.  I suggested we warm up in a cafe and guess where we went.  Subway!  It was exactly like ours, right down to the New York subway wallpaper, the only thing it was missing was Josh...

After a while we went shopping in the city center.  I wanted bedding and drapes, Alyona wanted purple pants.  Guess whose objet desir was easier to find.  When, after hours of searching, we finally located a store that sold blankets and sheets, I was so overjoyed that I also made a partial impulse buy of a warm bathrobe (for after the shower, not  like a down one Mom).  Then, they wouldn’t take a credit card.  Imagine, ringing up an order of more than 3,000 rubles (about $150), and then not having the technology for credit cards.  Unbelievable.  This fuckin’ country.  But an ATM, or bankomat, was not hard to find, and then everything came up Abbie.  Alyona was so dear to take my ass around the city this whole dreadful day.  I must think of something nice to do for her.  If only for the great idiom she taught me: when a guy is drowning a girl in compliments, he is “hanging noodles on her ears.”  Wonderful.

I came home and, even though I was so tired, I called up Uri and Liudmila’s daughter Olga who used to have this apartment.  She sent her husband over to fix my toilet, which he did no problem.  He asked if I’d be interested in giving private English lessons, which I didn’t understand, so said no.  He said what if I were paid, which I understood, so said yes.  Then I figured out what he was talking about, and said I would be happy to have dual-language meetings with him, on the house.

Tonight, it’s nasty outside.  I couldn’t be happier to stay in by myself and watch an old movie.  I’m thinking The Ladykillers, because Alec Guinness, when he was young, quite resembled my dad, which I find comforting.  Of course in this movie he’s old and gross, but still “genuine class.”  I also got some chocolate ice cream and what I think might be peanut butter.  All in all, a great night.  Tomorrow, if it’s not still raining, I’ll go to the market and get as much fresh produce as I can carry/afford.  In the evening, I’ve invited Zhenya, Natasha and Kiril for a housewarming dinner.  I’m not sure what I’ll make, but probably it will be something that says “I Like You.”  Like “meatbaaalls.”