Thursday, November 27, 2008
And in other, non-Thanksgiving news....
Wellesley women are slowly taking control of the government.
Things Russia Has Made Me Thankful For:
A THANKSGIVING REFLECTION:
53 things either I've learned to appreciate from their absence
or learned to love from their abundance....
Hopefully this won't sound too depressingly negative.
1. personal space.
2. when people are helpful in stores.
3. leafy greens.
4. salad without mayonnaise.
5. fresh snow daily.
6. thick walls and privacy.
7. good pizza (that is NOT from Sbarro).
8. my real, English-speaking family.
9. my long-time friends who know me better than I know myself.
10. being fluent in at least one language.
11. when I can ask questions in English.
12. yogurt and творог in the mornings.
13. the metro not at rush hour.
14. deicer and salt and plows.
15. when books are in English.
16. чай! чай! чай!
17. canals and parks.
18. Stolle cafés for eating and sitting.
19. food that is made without meat or excessive grease.
20. thick, woolly socks.
21. good mattresses.
22. water pressure.
23. water-proof footwear.
24. polar fleece and turtle fur.
25. having access to the internet.
26. wrought iron fences.
27. street lights, christmas lights, lights at night.
28. making the last metro train home.
29. when bridges don't go up.
30. weird themed Wellesley parties.
31. activities like WZLY and Counterpoint.
32. skype, webcams, and hospitals with high-speed internet.
33. black & white film and that Яркий Мир can develop it. and darkrooms.
34. photos of my new niece.
35. when there's toilet paper in the bathrooms.
36. free WiFi that actually works.
37. complimentary water and bread with meals.
38. clean air and clean streets.
39. cobblestones.
40. old, oddly-shaped Russian apartments.
41. moisture cream.
42. the act of flossing.
43. successfully finding something you need.
44. all knitted items and things made from felt.
45. when incoming SMS's are free.
46. any and all Soviet junk.
47. water heaters & water boilers.
48. the days Olga makes перог.
49. the art of printmaking.
50. subtitles over dubbing.
51. produktis where you can actually touch the produce.
52. the warmth of fur.
53. intimate black and white portraits of domestic animals from the 70s.
HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!
53 things either I've learned to appreciate from their absence
or learned to love from their abundance....
Hopefully this won't sound too depressingly negative.
1. personal space.
2. when people are helpful in stores.
3. leafy greens.
4. salad without mayonnaise.
5. fresh snow daily.
6. thick walls and privacy.
7. good pizza (that is NOT from Sbarro).
8. my real, English-speaking family.
9. my long-time friends who know me better than I know myself.
10. being fluent in at least one language.
11. when I can ask questions in English.
12. yogurt and творог in the mornings.
13. the metro not at rush hour.
14. deicer and salt and plows.
15. when books are in English.
16. чай! чай! чай!
17. canals and parks.
18. Stolle cafés for eating and sitting.
19. food that is made without meat or excessive grease.
20. thick, woolly socks.
21. good mattresses.
22. water pressure.
23. water-proof footwear.
24. polar fleece and turtle fur.
25. having access to the internet.
26. wrought iron fences.
27. street lights, christmas lights, lights at night.
28. making the last metro train home.
29. when bridges don't go up.
30. weird themed Wellesley parties.
31. activities like WZLY and Counterpoint.
32. skype, webcams, and hospitals with high-speed internet.
33. black & white film and that Яркий Мир can develop it. and darkrooms.
34. photos of my new niece.
35. when there's toilet paper in the bathrooms.
36. free WiFi that actually works.
37. complimentary water and bread with meals.
38. clean air and clean streets.
39. cobblestones.
40. old, oddly-shaped Russian apartments.
41. moisture cream.
42. the act of flossing.
43. successfully finding something you need.
44. all knitted items and things made from felt.
45. when incoming SMS's are free.
46. any and all Soviet junk.
47. water heaters & water boilers.
48. the days Olga makes перог.
49. the art of printmaking.
50. subtitles over dubbing.
51. produktis where you can actually touch the produce.
52. the warmth of fur.
53. intimate black and white portraits of domestic animals from the 70s.
HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!
Thanksgiving Eve....
It's snowing really beautifully outside right now. I took some pictures of it while walking home just now after helping to prepare pie crusts, vegetarian stuffing and cranberry sauce from scratch (THANK YOU VERY MUCH, I am not completely hopeless in the kitchen after all, so there). It's the big sticky flakes that are falling very slowly but clinging like hell to everything. They got all over my coat and eyelashes when I stopped to take pictures.
I didn't go to class today. Maybe I shouldn't be publicizing this in my blog, especially as apparently four out of eight of us didn't go to СМИ today and Elena Nikolaivna, who, by the way, had a heart attack this morning (THOUGH NOT BECAUSE OF US), called to raise hell about this later.... while in the hospital I presume?? But, I just really couldn't go. I needed a personal day. I never skip class. Usually. And it was just too beautiful. There was sun for the first time in a week, and sun and snow might be one of the most beautiful photographic combinations in the world. So I walked around instead. I walked around Юсуповский сад (the park where Emma, Grace & I sat that one day after we got so horribly lost), where, apparently, every Russian child under the age of five, bundled in a snowsuit so adorable I felt my teeth rot from the sweetness of it all, was sledding like mad. I even had a little Russian language conversation practice when an elderly man tried to get me to take pictures of his 86 year old wife (she did not look pleased when he told me her age) who was feeding pigeons from her hand. He talked to me for a while, I understood about 10% of what he said because men mumble like hell in this country, plus I think he was speaking nearly entirely in idioms, and he criticized my pronunciation of the soft "L" and told me I say "ny" and "ahh" too much when I speak and that next I should learn Chinese and then I can go into business.
I walked more. It got overcast. I drank coffee and warmed up. I did homework. I went home and napped. I attempted to be domestic and cook things. And tomorrow is Thanksgiving.
It really doesn't feel like Thanksgiving as a) we have no break from school, b) I am in Russia and no one else is celebrating, and c) I'm not with my family. It's just kind of surreal.... like we are celebrating Christmas in July kind of thing.... this isn't the actual holiday, we are just pretending. But then you see how everyone else's Facebook statuses are things like "... is helping Mom prepare pies!" or "... is so glad to be home for the week!" or "... is already sick of her family!" and then it seems more real. Just far removed.
Anyway, now it's almost 1am, so I guess it's technically Thanksgiving.
So. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone, all the way from Russia.
I didn't go to class today. Maybe I shouldn't be publicizing this in my blog, especially as apparently four out of eight of us didn't go to СМИ today and Elena Nikolaivna, who, by the way, had a heart attack this morning (THOUGH NOT BECAUSE OF US), called to raise hell about this later.... while in the hospital I presume?? But, I just really couldn't go. I needed a personal day. I never skip class. Usually. And it was just too beautiful. There was sun for the first time in a week, and sun and snow might be one of the most beautiful photographic combinations in the world. So I walked around instead. I walked around Юсуповский сад (the park where Emma, Grace & I sat that one day after we got so horribly lost), where, apparently, every Russian child under the age of five, bundled in a snowsuit so adorable I felt my teeth rot from the sweetness of it all, was sledding like mad. I even had a little Russian language conversation practice when an elderly man tried to get me to take pictures of his 86 year old wife (she did not look pleased when he told me her age) who was feeding pigeons from her hand. He talked to me for a while, I understood about 10% of what he said because men mumble like hell in this country, plus I think he was speaking nearly entirely in idioms, and he criticized my pronunciation of the soft "L" and told me I say "ny" and "ahh" too much when I speak and that next I should learn Chinese and then I can go into business.
I walked more. It got overcast. I drank coffee and warmed up. I did homework. I went home and napped. I attempted to be domestic and cook things. And tomorrow is Thanksgiving.
It really doesn't feel like Thanksgiving as a) we have no break from school, b) I am in Russia and no one else is celebrating, and c) I'm not with my family. It's just kind of surreal.... like we are celebrating Christmas in July kind of thing.... this isn't the actual holiday, we are just pretending. But then you see how everyone else's Facebook statuses are things like "... is helping Mom prepare pies!" or "... is so glad to be home for the week!" or "... is already sick of her family!" and then it seems more real. Just far removed.
Anyway, now it's almost 1am, so I guess it's technically Thanksgiving.
So. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone, all the way from Russia.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
How could I forget Tuesday's grammar quotes?
Some gems from грамматика that I forgot to mention yesterday:
Upon seeing me yawn, "Oh, I understand, Liza, I understand. Every morning I wake up and I ask myself: for what do we study?"
Upon being very adamant about making sure we get our grammar correct, "Today I'm a dictator! Like Mussolini! No, better Hitler. I never really liked Mussolini."
Upon asking me to finish the sentence "The monarch asked that...." and me, being tired, unable to think of anything, "Well, of course it's hard for you to think of what a monarch wants. You don't have a monarchy in your country. But we do!"
Upon seeing me yawn, "Oh, I understand, Liza, I understand. Every morning I wake up and I ask myself: for what do we study?"
Upon being very adamant about making sure we get our grammar correct, "Today I'm a dictator! Like Mussolini! No, better Hitler. I never really liked Mussolini."
Upon asking me to finish the sentence "The monarch asked that...." and me, being tired, unable to think of anything, "Well, of course it's hard for you to think of what a monarch wants. You don't have a monarchy in your country. But we do!"
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Fake eyelashes.
When walking back to my house tonight from the metro, I noticed that someone had drawn in the snow of all the windshields that had not been dusted off -- two Us next to each other with lines poking out of them -- as if all these snowy cars were sleeping with their eyes closed and luxurious long lashes demurely down.
Unfortunately, though, my hands were full of a cardboard portfolio from the art store for my printmaking prints and my camera was at the bottom of my bag and I was cold and tired, so, no photos were taken. Use your imagination brush instead.
Unfortunately, though, my hands were full of a cardboard portfolio from the art store for my printmaking prints and my camera was at the bottom of my bag and I was cold and tired, so, no photos were taken. Use your imagination brush instead.
Monday, November 24, 2008
Things apparently happening in this large country where I reside:
Once again, courtesy of Mike "always in the know about weird shit" Broderick. I have highlighted my favorite tidbits in red:
THE GIRL WITH X-RAY EYES
This could very well be a scam, as the Russians are quite good at that kind of thing, but it's still an interesting article nonetheless. Thanks, Mike.
Also, the most exciting part of my day I think was in разговор (conversation class) when Emily told me that Hillary Clinton is going to be Obama's secretary of state. I'm quite pleased with this news, and kind of think it's funny that half of the past four secretaries of state would have been Wellesley graduates then (Madeline Albright = Wellesley class of 1959).... but once again, of course, men always get to be the president -- now, apparently, no matter what their race -- and women are still stuck working as secretaries. Ho, hum.
THE GIRL WITH X-RAY EYES
Natasha Demkina has an extraordinary gift that means she can quite literally see right through people. Her story sounds like it has come straight from the pages of a science fiction comic book, but doctors have yet to disprove her amazing abilities. Natasha is able to look into people’s bodies and correctly diagnose their medical problems, without any help from ultra-sound or x-ray equipment.
Natasha’s mother, Tatyana Vladimovna, says that her daughter appeared to be like any other child as she grew up, although she was mature for her age. Natasha learned to do things more quickly than other children; she was able to talk at just six months and by the time she was a year old she could recite Pushkin. At three she had learned the alphabet and mastered how to operate a snow mobile.
When she was ten Natasha went into hospital to have her appendix removed. There were complications and it was discovered that cotton swabs had been left in her abdomen. Natasha had a second operation to remove the swabs and one month later she began to remark on the fact she could see inside people. She told her mother she saw what looked like a vacuum cleaner hose, two beans and a tomato inside her. Tatyana believed that, although Natasha didn’t know the correct words, her daughter was describing her intestines, kidneys and heart.
At the children’s hospital in her hometown of Saransk, Western Russia, doctors ran a battery of tests to find out if the little girl really did have x-ray vision. In one case Natasha drew a picture of what she saw inside a doctor’s stomach, marking a dark spot exactly where he had an ulcer. She also disagreed with the diagnosis of a cancer patient, saying all she could see was a small cyst. Further tests on the woman proved that Natasha was correct.
Natasha was brought to England by a national newspaper and she successfully spotted all of the fractures and metal pins in a woman who had recently been in a car crash. The woman was fully clothed and had no visible signs of how or where she had been injured.
Natasha is an icon in Russia. She receives dozens of phone calls each day and people queue outside her parents tiny flat to wait for consultations. Natasha wants to go to medical school in Moscow, so she can continue helping people. But the only way her family could afford to send her to university was to charge 400 roubles (£8) for each consultation she gave. Natasha often has headaches after these sessions and finds it emotionally exhausting because of the illnesses she diagnoses.
This could very well be a scam, as the Russians are quite good at that kind of thing, but it's still an interesting article nonetheless. Thanks, Mike.
Also, the most exciting part of my day I think was in разговор (conversation class) when Emily told me that Hillary Clinton is going to be Obama's secretary of state. I'm quite pleased with this news, and kind of think it's funny that half of the past four secretaries of state would have been Wellesley graduates then (Madeline Albright = Wellesley class of 1959).... but once again, of course, men always get to be the president -- now, apparently, no matter what their race -- and women are still stuck working as secretaries. Ho, hum.
Now for more of a real update.
The snow got me a little overwhelmed there briefly. Anyhoo.
I got to see Joan this weekend! Not as much as I'd have liked, but we had a good time Friday night. We had dinner with Emma & Eric and Joan's friends from her program who were visiting with her. We ate not-atrocious Italian food and Emma accidentally ordered the world's largest bucket of beer. We also ate ice cream in the ice cream parlor not far from Church of Spilled Blood that Eric and I are convinced is a mafia front, but the ice cream is so good. Especially when you opt for it in a "waffle horn" over a cup. We hung out at The Other Side for a bit too -- the expat bar run by Doug, who I record with at Cool! English -- and ate things like hummus (!) with fresh vegetables (!!) and potato wedges (!!!) with bleu cheese dressing (!!!!). Doug was even there that night and we chatted and he offered me a beer on the house..... but not just any beer..... a Newcastle beer. Holy shit. It was like being at the Pub at Wellesley again. Insanity. In. San. Ity.
Printmaking this weekend was also really good. We didn't make any new prints but instead just worked on preparing our metal plates to make etching prints next week. I drew the kitchen in my apartment because Yuri told us the style is good for lots of crazy and chaotic little details with writing and nonsense even because you can make very fine marks. So he suggested we draw something detailed. Like a kitchen. For example. Just a suggestion. But anyway, we'll see how that turns out next week.... I'm already feeling like this might be my favorite technique we've done so far....
And then, you know, a shitload of SNOW. Yeah, check that shit out. Uh huh.
So this week promises to be good. I hope. While everyone at home gets a nice little vacation right about now, I'm plowing through with class all week, but we're still celebrating Thanksgiving. Bryan was nice enough to invite everyone from the program over to his house for dinner on Thursday night, as long as no one shows up empty-handed. As I can't really cook things that aren't Annie's instant mac & cheese in a mug (though I'm going to have to learn next semester.... did I mention there was a change and now I'm living in an apartment again? right. anyhoo.), I offered to bring the plasticware/napkins/boring shit, but I'm also following in my grandmother's footsteps and organizing centerpieces and, in Nunni's style, making little place cards with everyone's names. Don't worry, Nunni, I'll take lots of pictures for you to see how well you've taught me.
So that's it. Apparently I come home in seven weeks. That's according to Mom, so I assume it is fairly accurate. You know, to-the-minute kind of accurate.
I got to see Joan this weekend! Not as much as I'd have liked, but we had a good time Friday night. We had dinner with Emma & Eric and Joan's friends from her program who were visiting with her. We ate not-atrocious Italian food and Emma accidentally ordered the world's largest bucket of beer. We also ate ice cream in the ice cream parlor not far from Church of Spilled Blood that Eric and I are convinced is a mafia front, but the ice cream is so good. Especially when you opt for it in a "waffle horn" over a cup. We hung out at The Other Side for a bit too -- the expat bar run by Doug, who I record with at Cool! English -- and ate things like hummus (!) with fresh vegetables (!!) and potato wedges (!!!) with bleu cheese dressing (!!!!). Doug was even there that night and we chatted and he offered me a beer on the house..... but not just any beer..... a Newcastle beer. Holy shit. It was like being at the Pub at Wellesley again. Insanity. In. San. Ity.
Printmaking this weekend was also really good. We didn't make any new prints but instead just worked on preparing our metal plates to make etching prints next week. I drew the kitchen in my apartment because Yuri told us the style is good for lots of crazy and chaotic little details with writing and nonsense even because you can make very fine marks. So he suggested we draw something detailed. Like a kitchen. For example. Just a suggestion. But anyway, we'll see how that turns out next week.... I'm already feeling like this might be my favorite technique we've done so far....
And then, you know, a shitload of SNOW. Yeah, check that shit out. Uh huh.
So this week promises to be good. I hope. While everyone at home gets a nice little vacation right about now, I'm plowing through with class all week, but we're still celebrating Thanksgiving. Bryan was nice enough to invite everyone from the program over to his house for dinner on Thursday night, as long as no one shows up empty-handed. As I can't really cook things that aren't Annie's instant mac & cheese in a mug (though I'm going to have to learn next semester.... did I mention there was a change and now I'm living in an apartment again? right. anyhoo.), I offered to bring the plasticware/napkins/boring shit, but I'm also following in my grandmother's footsteps and organizing centerpieces and, in Nunni's style, making little place cards with everyone's names. Don't worry, Nunni, I'll take lots of pictures for you to see how well you've taught me.
So that's it. Apparently I come home in seven weeks. That's according to Mom, so I assume it is fairly accurate. You know, to-the-minute kind of accurate.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Blizarrd blizarrd blizarrd!!!!
Well, almost! There is a shit ton of snow outside. This is amazing. While talking to Olga this morning about it she said, "Everyone thinks you're in Russia so there must be a lot of snow. Now there actually is!" DAMN.
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Thursday, typical.
Once again I made up errands for myself to do so I would have an excuse to spend four hours walking from my house to school. I also shot some film of the new snow, not completely disgusting-looking yet, but pretty close. A lot of it was just melty, but there was some accumulation.... my favorite example of it was the small, perfectly circular, flat little lump of snow that had built up on the top of the head of the statue of Dostoevsky near the Vladimirskaya metro station -- exactly the size and shape of a yarmulke, nonchalantly crowning the head of perhaps Russia's most Christian writer. Ha.
On my walk I also stopped briefly to have a small burning cup of tea and a perozhok and look at my favorite view of the Hermitage from Peter & Paul's fortress and there was, of course, as usual, a Russian wedding photo shoot going on. I thought that the wedding photo thing would die down with the shittier weather or that people would be less enthusiastic about it, but I think that the winter weddings actually have more fun. The one today had the bride wearing a huge fur coat over her dress and the photographer was making the whole wedding party run through piles of snowing screaming and silly stuff like that. Or maybe they just drink more to keep warm so they look like they are having more fun.
And tonight, in film class, we watched a Czech film called Closely Watched Trains. I really liked it and recommend it if you can find it. The beginning part reminded me of Amelie with the voice over against the stills of old photographs.
Tomorrow is Friday, which is nice, especially as Bakhtin is canceled this week, but Joan is visiting this weekend so things promise to still be busy/fun/crazy/nonsensical.
On my walk I also stopped briefly to have a small burning cup of tea and a perozhok and look at my favorite view of the Hermitage from Peter & Paul's fortress and there was, of course, as usual, a Russian wedding photo shoot going on. I thought that the wedding photo thing would die down with the shittier weather or that people would be less enthusiastic about it, but I think that the winter weddings actually have more fun. The one today had the bride wearing a huge fur coat over her dress and the photographer was making the whole wedding party run through piles of snowing screaming and silly stuff like that. Or maybe they just drink more to keep warm so they look like they are having more fun.
And tonight, in film class, we watched a Czech film called Closely Watched Trains. I really liked it and recommend it if you can find it. The beginning part reminded me of Amelie with the voice over against the stills of old photographs.
Tomorrow is Friday, which is nice, especially as Bakhtin is canceled this week, but Joan is visiting this weekend so things promise to still be busy/fun/crazy/nonsensical.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Грамматика today.
LP: "And so when forming the passive perfective gerundive you.... Liza, what is on your necklace? The keys to your house?"
EB: "No, some old keys I found at a market."
LP: "Oh, I see, because we have such strange keys here! And strange doors! Strange, old doors. I have a key that is long like huh and strange and impossible to get the door open, like this..."
And then we had show-and-tell of the different kinds of keys we all had for about ten minutes, followed by a ten-minute rant about how stupid it is that all the apartments in Petersburg have double doors because the middle class is so scared of intruders but, "what of value do we keep in our apartments anyway? Furniture? Who cares!"
Grammar class. Always a good time.
Debbie Downer Abman was right. The snow didn't stick in the least, but the puddles were frozen this morning and there was black ice around which Bryan sent all of us a frantic warning email about. There was even some frozen urine in my courtyard for a change. Ah, I love winter.
I also showed my art to the class today in my audit with Emily Newman which was not that frightening as.... only Emily was there for the first half. Apparently as most people in the class are auditing, very few people have been showing up recently. For example, this was the first time I'd been there in three weeks. Oops. And then the nicest, quietest Russian student showed up for the second half. And we got on a long tangent about students studying abroad and their intentions. Ha. But it was a good one-on-one crit session and she gave me some good ideas and advice about how to tie up my final projects and even suggested I have a photo show in the little Smolny gallery on the way to the library. I might show my self portrait project series on December 14th, the six month anniversary of the project. Speaking of which, small photo update (self portraits & indian food & prints of apples).
Damn. Six months. That's insane.
... and I am still pretty ужасно at speaking Russian.
EB: "No, some old keys I found at a market."
LP: "Oh, I see, because we have such strange keys here! And strange doors! Strange, old doors. I have a key that is long like huh and strange and impossible to get the door open, like this..."
And then we had show-and-tell of the different kinds of keys we all had for about ten minutes, followed by a ten-minute rant about how stupid it is that all the apartments in Petersburg have double doors because the middle class is so scared of intruders but, "what of value do we keep in our apartments anyway? Furniture? Who cares!"
Grammar class. Always a good time.
Debbie Downer Abman was right. The snow didn't stick in the least, but the puddles were frozen this morning and there was black ice around which Bryan sent all of us a frantic warning email about. There was even some frozen urine in my courtyard for a change. Ah, I love winter.
I also showed my art to the class today in my audit with Emily Newman which was not that frightening as.... only Emily was there for the first half. Apparently as most people in the class are auditing, very few people have been showing up recently. For example, this was the first time I'd been there in three weeks. Oops. And then the nicest, quietest Russian student showed up for the second half. And we got on a long tangent about students studying abroad and their intentions. Ha. But it was a good one-on-one crit session and she gave me some good ideas and advice about how to tie up my final projects and even suggested I have a photo show in the little Smolny gallery on the way to the library. I might show my self portrait project series on December 14th, the six month anniversary of the project. Speaking of which, small photo update (self portraits & indian food & prints of apples).
Damn. Six months. That's insane.
... and I am still pretty ужасно at speaking Russian.
Monday, November 17, 2008
Sunday, November 16, 2008
So, today is November 16th.
It's kind of odd to me that it is finally November here, and I'm actually planning things like when I'm going home and all that stuff that six months ago I was like "Oh, sometime in November I'll figure that out..." It's also November 16th, which means I am now in my last month of being 20 years old. That also kind of freaks me out. How old am I? And this month is going by so quickly. And there are only less than two months left now in this semester before I go home for a visit and I am half-way through my year in Russia. That one really blows my mind.
I wasn't planning on doing anything on Friday night, but I ended up sitting in a café for a good long while talking to Emma and Ilana and drinking locally brewed beer and finally fell asleep at Emma's house. The best part of our night though was the waitress who served us. There was one pretty drunk guy who was one of the four other people in the café and he kept wandering over to our table and asking Ilana to dance and telling us we were pretty and at one pointed he petted Emma on the head. He was totally harmless, even kind of cute, just really drunk and annoying. But at the moment of the head-petting our waitress appeared out of nowhere and was suddenly standing in front of Emma asking the young man to leave us alone. When he persisted she simply folded her arms and her generic celtic-weave design tattoo popped out on her upper arm from under her white t-shirt and she just glared. And he left. And we enjoyed the rest of our night untouched. We were so impressed with this waitress that we left her a 30% tip (which is big when in Russia a tip, if given at all, is 10% absolute max) and a note on a piece of paper torn out of my journal written by Ilana: "Dear waitress, thank you for the protection from the drunk young hooligan. We love you!" and we signed our names. So we'll be going back to that establishment.
I had printmaking yesterday. We did more engraving prints, made from boards we prepared last week.... Cathy and I etched drawings we did into plywood type board and then put glue on certain parts that we wanted to be bright white and let them dry for.... two weeks. But, yeah, we made prints from them. And they look really cool. The technique makes everything look murky and dark and mysterious so even two apples on a table looks interesting. I liked the technique a lot, just not the part when you have to rub all the ink off the plate with newspapers before you make a print. My arms were actually tired after that.
We also celebrated Maneka's birthday a little last night. A decision was made to go to one of the three Indian restaurants in St. Petersburg and we ate things that had actual spices (more than just salt) involved and were going to do something afterwards to celebrate further but then everyone got lame and wanted to go home. So we did. And I slept a lot.... the first time I slept without an alarm set for.... years? Who knows. Anyway, now it's Sunday. I'm going to go meet Emma for a little bit to do some coffee-drinking.
I wasn't planning on doing anything on Friday night, but I ended up sitting in a café for a good long while talking to Emma and Ilana and drinking locally brewed beer and finally fell asleep at Emma's house. The best part of our night though was the waitress who served us. There was one pretty drunk guy who was one of the four other people in the café and he kept wandering over to our table and asking Ilana to dance and telling us we were pretty and at one pointed he petted Emma on the head. He was totally harmless, even kind of cute, just really drunk and annoying. But at the moment of the head-petting our waitress appeared out of nowhere and was suddenly standing in front of Emma asking the young man to leave us alone. When he persisted she simply folded her arms and her generic celtic-weave design tattoo popped out on her upper arm from under her white t-shirt and she just glared. And he left. And we enjoyed the rest of our night untouched. We were so impressed with this waitress that we left her a 30% tip (which is big when in Russia a tip, if given at all, is 10% absolute max) and a note on a piece of paper torn out of my journal written by Ilana: "Dear waitress, thank you for the protection from the drunk young hooligan. We love you!" and we signed our names. So we'll be going back to that establishment.
I had printmaking yesterday. We did more engraving prints, made from boards we prepared last week.... Cathy and I etched drawings we did into plywood type board and then put glue on certain parts that we wanted to be bright white and let them dry for.... two weeks. But, yeah, we made prints from them. And they look really cool. The technique makes everything look murky and dark and mysterious so even two apples on a table looks interesting. I liked the technique a lot, just not the part when you have to rub all the ink off the plate with newspapers before you make a print. My arms were actually tired after that.
We also celebrated Maneka's birthday a little last night. A decision was made to go to one of the three Indian restaurants in St. Petersburg and we ate things that had actual spices (more than just salt) involved and were going to do something afterwards to celebrate further but then everyone got lame and wanted to go home. So we did. And I slept a lot.... the first time I slept without an alarm set for.... years? Who knows. Anyway, now it's Sunday. I'm going to go meet Emma for a little bit to do some coffee-drinking.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Lil' update.
Today was an errand day. Followed by getting on the wrong bus before class (okay, the ones and the sevens look exactly the same when you're running late), followed by being a little late for class, followed by getting out of class early because we had technical difficulties and couldn't watch Ashes and Diamonds as planned, followed by experiencing Russian Pizza Hut (pretty damn classy here, a real sit-down establishment). So, basically, a grand day.
Some photos for you. You can see the charred and sinking hydrofoil, the stuff that we thought was snow, the ladybug cake from Maneka's birthday, and some new self-portraits, if you've forgotten what I look like (I'm up to 153 self-portraits... I guess that's how many days are in approximately five months), though I prefer this picture Eric took of me eating ice cream outside in the cold before the opera on Sunday night.
Some photos for you. You can see the charred and sinking hydrofoil, the stuff that we thought was snow, the ladybug cake from Maneka's birthday, and some new self-portraits, if you've forgotten what I look like (I'm up to 153 self-portraits... I guess that's how many days are in approximately five months), though I prefer this picture Eric took of me eating ice cream outside in the cold before the opera on Sunday night.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Mike Broderick, you should be in my film class.
I was just looking at my syllabus for my film class and at the end he has a section with some further resources and stuff. Under the section "Useful Internet Resources" all my professor listed was:
www.imdb.com
This class is so good. Ahhhhhhh!
www.imdb.com
This class is so good. Ahhhhhhh!
Plus, I forgot:
At the opera the woman behind us took no less than fifteen minutes to unwrap one of her candies. Yulia, who works in the Smolny office, was sitting next to me and at one point turned all the way around in her chair and just stared at the woman. Meanwhile the woman's friend was trying to tell her to forget about the damn candy in a hushed voice that only made things worse. That definitely added to the general aesthetic of the experience.
Today was my friend Maneka's birthday, also Caroline Holland's birthday. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, LADIES. What an exciting day. We ate a not very good cake that looked like a very good lady bug and hung out in the Smolny café.
In СМИ class today we talked about "Бизнес По-Русски" (Business - Russian style) which meant we covered all the vocabulary for bribes and unofficial pay. Surprise, surprise.
Today was my friend Maneka's birthday, also Caroline Holland's birthday. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, LADIES. What an exciting day. We ate a not very good cake that looked like a very good lady bug and hung out in the Smolny café.
In СМИ class today we talked about "Бизнес По-Русски" (Business - Russian style) which meant we covered all the vocabulary for bribes and unofficial pay. Surprise, surprise.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Oh, and something important I learned today:
The finale of "The Golden Girls" garnered 27.2 million viewers (38 percent of all Americans watching television at the time).
Some things I've been up to...
... besides writing my mid-term paper for my film class.
I went to the opera on Sunday night as part of a group excursion. We saw the opera adaptation of Pushkin's story The Queen of Spades (по-русски: Пиковая Дама). I was super excited about this initially as "The Queen of Spades" was one of my favorite things that I read last fall in Hodge's literature class and the work that I wrote my long midterm paper on. I spent hours going over that story and reading it to death and I was like, hey, an opera adaptation should be pretty cool.
Mm.... not quite. Well. Hm. Let's say they weren't exactly faithful to the story. Mainly all of scene three involved a too-long ball scene which was just an excuse for them to have a lot of dancers and an extra long song. Not only that but the dancers had to dance with these half-circle ropes of flowers but it seemed like the director had just given them to practice with maybe last week because they kept dropping the ends of the ropes or hitting each other with them while dancing. Oh, and then they had a short dance involving men in black face (black ski masks with black gloves..... um....) that was just a tad uncomfortable. And then the main guy who played Hermann who is supposed to be this young, handsome russified German was played by a short, squat old guy who sang off key. Kind of ruined my image. It got to the point though where Maneka and I just found everything funny though, so it was enjoyable in that sense. I also really liked watching the woman sitting in front of us who couldn't even be bothered to watch the opera anymore; she used her opera glasses to observe people in the balconies above us.
As for yesterday, yesterday involved me and Emma being dumb together in various ways. The most memorable incident was when we saw what we thought was snow on the grass by the Neva and were really confused, wondering if it had snowed during the night and the rest melted but it was a large big chunk, the kind that hangs around melting for months after it's already spring. We were really excited and I photographed Emma pointing to it and then in a fit of excitement I stepped in it and.... it was soap. Oops. We also saw a hydrofoil that looked like it had caught on fire sinking in the Neva across from St. Isaac's.
I went to the opera on Sunday night as part of a group excursion. We saw the opera adaptation of Pushkin's story The Queen of Spades (по-русски: Пиковая Дама). I was super excited about this initially as "The Queen of Spades" was one of my favorite things that I read last fall in Hodge's literature class and the work that I wrote my long midterm paper on. I spent hours going over that story and reading it to death and I was like, hey, an opera adaptation should be pretty cool.
Mm.... not quite. Well. Hm. Let's say they weren't exactly faithful to the story. Mainly all of scene three involved a too-long ball scene which was just an excuse for them to have a lot of dancers and an extra long song. Not only that but the dancers had to dance with these half-circle ropes of flowers but it seemed like the director had just given them to practice with maybe last week because they kept dropping the ends of the ropes or hitting each other with them while dancing. Oh, and then they had a short dance involving men in black face (black ski masks with black gloves..... um....) that was just a tad uncomfortable. And then the main guy who played Hermann who is supposed to be this young, handsome russified German was played by a short, squat old guy who sang off key. Kind of ruined my image. It got to the point though where Maneka and I just found everything funny though, so it was enjoyable in that sense. I also really liked watching the woman sitting in front of us who couldn't even be bothered to watch the opera anymore; she used her opera glasses to observe people in the balconies above us.
As for yesterday, yesterday involved me and Emma being dumb together in various ways. The most memorable incident was when we saw what we thought was snow on the grass by the Neva and were really confused, wondering if it had snowed during the night and the rest melted but it was a large big chunk, the kind that hangs around melting for months after it's already spring. We were really excited and I photographed Emma pointing to it and then in a fit of excitement I stepped in it and.... it was soap. Oops. We also saw a hydrofoil that looked like it had caught on fire sinking in the Neva across from St. Isaac's.
Sunday, November 9, 2008
Photo update #8471238182.
I'm all caught up on piiiiiiiiicccc-tuuuuuuuuuuuures.
Ha, HA.
Starting on page four of the fall digital photo gallery you can see the photos from Ami's time in Russia, our Halloween festivities and Moscowwwwww. There you go.
Also, for further reading....
This is the circus we went to on Monday night, where the actor -- Yuri Nikulin -- from the Russian film Diamond Arm, which we watched last semester in Russian 202 with Alla L'vovna -- became famous by working as a clown.
This is the monastery we visited, including the cemetery where Emma and I walked around, where actually Yuri Nikulin is apparently also buried, amongst other famous people.
Here's more about the Kremlin, St. Basil's Cathedral, Red Square in general, Lenin in general, his mausoleum in particular, and the Tretyakovskaya Gallery.
Ha, HA.
Starting on page four of the fall digital photo gallery you can see the photos from Ami's time in Russia, our Halloween festivities and Moscowwwwww. There you go.
Also, for further reading....
This is the circus we went to on Monday night, where the actor -- Yuri Nikulin -- from the Russian film Diamond Arm, which we watched last semester in Russian 202 with Alla L'vovna -- became famous by working as a clown.
This is the monastery we visited, including the cemetery where Emma and I walked around, where actually Yuri Nikulin is apparently also buried, amongst other famous people.
Here's more about the Kremlin, St. Basil's Cathedral, Red Square in general, Lenin in general, his mausoleum in particular, and the Tretyakovskaya Gallery.
Saturday, November 8, 2008
Back to the routine. Sort of. Hi.
Of course when all the most exciting things happen that you all would be most interested in reading about.... I have no time to write about them. And so that is.
But things have calmed down again, after Ami's visit, after Halloween, after Moscow, and after some of my big midterms are now out of the way (and it was only a three day school week, what the hell).
So, you already heard about Ami and my shenanigans. You can read her version of them on her blog, and look forward to a co-written Counterpoint article in the December issue about our time in Petersburg together.
And you alrady heard about Halloween. I was Amelia Earhart. Bryan was a bat. Ilana was Yuri Gagarin. Laura Hauer was a tree. We were the only people who dressed up, but we ate too much candy at school, typical college party in the dorm, etc.
But what you haven't heard about yet was my little jaunt to Moscow.
So. Moscow.
Oh, Moscow.
Moscow.
Okay.
Well, if you have limited knowledge about the world of Slavophiles and Russianists, you may not know that people who study Russian generally fall into categories: you're either a Petersburg/Dostoevsky person or a Moscow/Tolstoy person. In the Wellesley College Russian Department, this also means you're either a Professor Hodge (Moscow/Tolstoy) person or a Professor Weiner (Petersburg/Dostoevsky) person. My good old friend from Russian 101 back in the day, Joan, who is currently studying in Moscow, and I basically each represent each of these said categories. I'm a Petersburg/Weiner person, while she is a Moscow/Hodge person.... though we both love Tolstoy and are luke-warm about Dostoevsky, which presents a slight problem. But maybe I just haven't given Dostoevsky enough of a chance. Anyway, this distinction has always been a big deal, and always will be, in my opinion. Remember the joke the tourist information lady told Emma and I in Jurmala? "There are three countries over there: Petersburg, Moscow and Russia." This is so true. Now having been to all three -- Petersburg, general Russia (Siberia last summer) and now Moscow -- I can definitely agree with this statement.
Another thing that is often said is that Petersburg is more like Boston while Moscow is more like New York. This also appears to be true, as I -- a Boston native -- am very content in St. Petersburg, while Joan -- a New Yorker at heart even though now her family lives in... Arizona?? -- thrives in Moscow. When we met up and chatted about our experiences in our respective cities, we decided that we definitely chose the right places for each of us.
I would argue that Moscow is not like New York though. Maybe.... New York on steroids. I can't even explain it. It's the 6th largest city in the world and it's just.... insane. INSANE. The Petersburg metro has four lines (red, green, blue, yellow) and I have most of the stops memorized and have been to most of them at least once. The Moscow metro has.... eleven?? lines (light blue, dark blue, medium blue, dark green, light green, gray, orange, red, yellow, purple and the brown circle line) and there is no way even someone who has lived in the city their whole life has all the stops memorized.
I was in Moscow for a full three days and I was busy the entire time, and I feel like I did and saw nothing. Okay, not nothing, but barely anything. There is just that much to do. Moscow is the kind of city that it almost seems a waste of time to visit, you have to live there to actually see anything. It's just SO BIG. I don't think you can fully comprehend how enormous and sprawling the city is until you finally go there. Everyone had always told me Moscow was big and crazy, etc, etc, and I was like yeah, whatever, I've been to New York..... no, you just don't get it until you see it.
Moscow was also interesting because everyone tells you that it is a more "Russian" city than Petersburg. I guess you can see that in the sense it is definitely more Soviet..... the metro stops have idealistic sculptures of workers with flags and hammers and sickles and there are many, many more Soviet-style buildings and architecture. Petersburg clearly is from a different time, the time when Russia wanted so badly to be European, and in a way it seems like the Soviet era affected Petersburg less.... it kind of got stuck in time and stayed that way, or just immediately reverted back to how it used to be after the fall of the Bolsheviks. So, Moscow is definitely more Soviet in appearance, and in that sense people seem to feel it is more Russian, but I didn't get that vibe. As Petersburg is so much smaller and more "provincial" (as Bryan puts it) and fewer people speak English, it definitely feels more Russian to me, while Moscow being huge and metropolitan now feels more just like any other enormous Western city. They have a Starbucks in Moscow. Seriously. That's not very Russian in my opinion.... there are also just more little funky, hipster cafés and dives and stuff that I greatly enjoy but that could be anywhere.... London, Cambridge, Budapest.....
Just being in Moscow was an experience enough, but I did actually manage to see some cool stuff you know, in the twenty four hours each day I was busy.
On our first day there we got to check out Red Square and the big famous things there such as Lenin's masoleum and St. Basil's Cathedral. Lenin's masoleum was perhaps one of thse strangest places I have ever been to in my life. First of all, you're looking at the body of a man who died eighty-something years ago. Second of all it is lying in a glass case accented by red (???) lights that give the whole thing a haunted house feeling as the case is in the middle of a dark, dark room with black walls and the whole place smells vaguely of chlorine and reminded me of an aquarium. I was imagining something more, I don't know, stately? Majestic? Not something reminiscent of a haunted house at Disney World. And third of all, it's just so weird that he's just lying there, looking like he's only asleep in this glass case like Cinderella or something..... but our phonetics teacher told us yesterday we were lucky to see him while we could because they want to bury him in the ground soon and finally move on.
St. Basil's is the cathedral that Church of Spilled Blood in Petersburg is modeled on. You can definitely see the similarities -- mostly just on the outside appearance. The inside is crazy winding little alleys and mazes of tiny rooms. I couldn't figure out what places I had already seen and what I had yet to visit, but it's full of beautiful and ornate medevial painting and seems much more, I don't know, I guess Russian but has this Oriental/Middle Eastern feel too.... while Spilled Blood seems much more like an awkward attempt at a European cathedral on the inside with all the mosaics. I liked it though for the reason that Emma pointed out -- you can still imagine monks wanderng around in there and it working as an operating church instead of just a tourist trap.
On our first day we also went out to the former edge of the city (now just a little bit out of the center) where that famous monastery whose name I forget is located. The monsatery itself was rainy and quiet, and I liked the little museum in it a lot that had a collection of frescos and tempra paintings salvaged from various churches. Once again I really actually enjoyed looking at these thanks to my painting techniques class (thanks, Elaine Spatz-Rabinowitz!) and felt like I understood and appreciated them more than before. God, everyone should take that class. It's so good. Emma and I also were rebellious and ditched the tour and wandered in the big cemetary behind the monastery where a lot of famous people are buried.... though we found none of them. Ha. Oh, well. An excuse to go back to Moscow again, I really want to see Bulgakov's grave.
We also got to wander around inside of the Kremlin. There was an organized tour but Ilana and I stopped paying attention to that pretty quickly and took photos where we pretended to be Russian girls. The two of us then wandered a little bit ourselves, but when we stepped off the marked path onto some ordinary cobblestones, three different soldiers blew their whistles at us and motioned for us to get back on the path. It wasn't a big deal, there was just something disconcerting about it and the whole place was so clean and ordered and intensely monitored that we didn't feel comfortable.... It's hard to explain.... last summer I was basically in one of the farthest removed parts of Russia, as far away from the government as you could get, and the only contact we had with government empoloyees was with those 18 year old soldiers on the railroad. Otherwise, in Bolshie Koty you could, I don't know, kill a man or something and no one would ever find out. St. Petersburg, of course, has more government control in it than Siberia. I see soliders all the time on the street here and keep my head low when I walk past police officers. But in Moscow, just on the street in general I saw more policemen and women and then in the Kremlin itself... suddenly you could feel the govermental prescense so strongly it was sort of suffocating and oppressive. It was just unsettling. So Ilana and I went to lunch early instead.
Ilana, being an expert already after spending about five days in Moscow this summer with her mom inbetween the programs, showed us all this really great market on the outskirts of the city, kind of like Moscow's version of Udelnaya.... except Udelnaya on crack. Ridiculous. RIDICULOUS. So enormous. And the people are much more aggressive about selling their shit. The market is around and in a stadium and just goes on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and according to Ilana we saw only maybe a quarter of it. I did finally bite the bullet and start buying some souvenirs for people and Christmas presents as I am now actually going to be home in January (oops, that was a mistake). So, some of you lucky folks have presents from Moscow. Get excited.
What else.....
Oh, we went to the circus. Oh man, the circus rocked. They had all these trained animals and crap and there was a show of TRAINED CATS that not everyone really appreciated, though I thoroughly enjoyed, though perhaps not as much as Vicky. Actually, trained cats are kind of terrible because just because they are trained doesn't mean they care. There was only little gray kitten who was clearly new to the circus and we sat and waited for it to do its trick for about eight minutes as the crazy cat lady coached him on..... There were also trained dogs who were beautiful and flawless and a jack russel terrier in a camel outfit?? (Would have made a much better Halloween costume for Gwen than the pilgrim hat, no offense, Mom.) There were also some pretty impressive acrobats and I took some pictures on the sly since technically I wasn't allowed to do so.
I also walked around the old Soviet world fair grounds at VDNKh and looked at the architecture and how the whole area has now been turned into a weird fair grounds of sort. It's really odd the whole thing.
A couple of us wanted to see Red Square at night and take pictures, but we chose to go on Monday night when Red Square was baricaded off because of the holiday on Tuesday. Apparently they were cleaning the whole square to prepare for the march of the Russian youth group, Nashi, that would take place during the holiday. But at the time we didn't know these details, so Ilana just did cartwheels outside of the gates and I took photos of that.
And and and and and AND I got to the Tretrakovskaya Gallery. This is basically the Hermitage of Moscow and is chock full of all the most famous paintings that you've seen on the covers of your Penguin Classic editions of Russian literature. I got to see that famous portrait of Dostoevsky... that famous portrait of Tolstoy.... that famous portrait of Chekov.... that portrait of a girl in a pink dress that is on the cover of my book of Chekov's short stories.... I got to see all of the most famous icons that I have studied now in a billion different classes -- Rublev's Holy Trinity, Our Lady of Vladimir, etc..... and I really enjoyed a lot of the modern stuff that they have and want to go back to a) go through the Tretakovka again (because it is just too big, I hit museum-over-saturation mode really quickly) and b) go to the new Tretkovskaya Gallery that has all the even more modern stuff that I would really freak out about. But it was really good to at least get a beginning of taste. Motiviation to go back and visit.
Plus, I got to see Joan! I'm not really sure how because I was so damn busy with all the excursions and crap, but it was so good to see her. It was nice having another Wellesley Russian department face in Russia.
So, this week, after getting back from Moscow, I've just been recovering. You know, sleeping and catching up on homework and crap.... trying to avoid the cold that almost everyone from my program now has after being together in close quarters for four nights and three days. Last night though I did meet up with Ilana, Zach and Pinski at this music café place near the Cherniskevskaya metro stop, which was fun, and it was fun to catch up with Bev Mbu and meet Stephanie Brown from Wellesley too.
Oh, I'm sorry, what? Yes, Bev and Stephanie from WELLESLEY. Who are NOT currently studying in Russia, no, no, not at all, who are currently abroad on Wellesley's program in France who just decided to go to Russia for a few days, who had checked the list of students abroad in Russia and Bev thought "Oh, I know EB! She's in Petersburg!" but then never had time to contact me, who I RAN INTO BY TOTAL ACCIDENT when I just happened to decide to leave for the jazz club on the Vasileostovskaya metro station...... yes?!? I am serious!!! LOOK, PHOTOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE:
It just blew my mind. It was kind of a hilarious situation after being in Moscow -- just speaks to how small Petersburg is in comparison, and how small the world is in general. There I was, just standing on the escalator, and I noticed a girl ahead of me in a bright yellow coat and I was like, "Oh, wow, a black person. That's the second black person I've seen in about three weeks. Oh, she looks like Bev from Wellesley. No, that can't be Bev, that makes no sense, Russia is just making you racist, E.B. -- you think all black people look alike now, that's terrible, you need to get out of this country, wait, no, that IS Bev.... wtf.....?????" And I grabbed her arm and we talked and couldn't believe it and they came to the jazz club with me for a bit, and it was just..... really insane and bizarre and then we were all sitting in this club listening to one dude on guitar play everything from Jesus Christ Superstar to I Will Survive to the theme from the Godfather and I couldn't get over how oddly the world works.
And, of course, if you know me at all, you know all too well that I have way too many photographs from all these past events so needless to say I am a wee bit behind on uploading and editing and such.... I've got the self-portrait bit up to date. And you can see my polaroid project of Ami Li with various sites around the city (think: E.B. in D.C.), and my most recent stuff from printmaking class. As for everything else, you'll need a little patience....
So. Yeah. Oh, and one last important thing. Yesterday was the 20th birthday of one of my favorite people ever. HEY, ERIN GREENE. HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
But things have calmed down again, after Ami's visit, after Halloween, after Moscow, and after some of my big midterms are now out of the way (and it was only a three day school week, what the hell).
So, you already heard about Ami and my shenanigans. You can read her version of them on her blog, and look forward to a co-written Counterpoint article in the December issue about our time in Petersburg together.
And you alrady heard about Halloween. I was Amelia Earhart. Bryan was a bat. Ilana was Yuri Gagarin. Laura Hauer was a tree. We were the only people who dressed up, but we ate too much candy at school, typical college party in the dorm, etc.
But what you haven't heard about yet was my little jaunt to Moscow.
So. Moscow.
Oh, Moscow.
Moscow.
Okay.
Well, if you have limited knowledge about the world of Slavophiles and Russianists, you may not know that people who study Russian generally fall into categories: you're either a Petersburg/Dostoevsky person or a Moscow/Tolstoy person. In the Wellesley College Russian Department, this also means you're either a Professor Hodge (Moscow/Tolstoy) person or a Professor Weiner (Petersburg/Dostoevsky) person. My good old friend from Russian 101 back in the day, Joan, who is currently studying in Moscow, and I basically each represent each of these said categories. I'm a Petersburg/Weiner person, while she is a Moscow/Hodge person.... though we both love Tolstoy and are luke-warm about Dostoevsky, which presents a slight problem. But maybe I just haven't given Dostoevsky enough of a chance. Anyway, this distinction has always been a big deal, and always will be, in my opinion. Remember the joke the tourist information lady told Emma and I in Jurmala? "There are three countries over there: Petersburg, Moscow and Russia." This is so true. Now having been to all three -- Petersburg, general Russia (Siberia last summer) and now Moscow -- I can definitely agree with this statement.
Another thing that is often said is that Petersburg is more like Boston while Moscow is more like New York. This also appears to be true, as I -- a Boston native -- am very content in St. Petersburg, while Joan -- a New Yorker at heart even though now her family lives in... Arizona?? -- thrives in Moscow. When we met up and chatted about our experiences in our respective cities, we decided that we definitely chose the right places for each of us.
I would argue that Moscow is not like New York though. Maybe.... New York on steroids. I can't even explain it. It's the 6th largest city in the world and it's just.... insane. INSANE. The Petersburg metro has four lines (red, green, blue, yellow) and I have most of the stops memorized and have been to most of them at least once. The Moscow metro has.... eleven?? lines (light blue, dark blue, medium blue, dark green, light green, gray, orange, red, yellow, purple and the brown circle line) and there is no way even someone who has lived in the city their whole life has all the stops memorized.
I was in Moscow for a full three days and I was busy the entire time, and I feel like I did and saw nothing. Okay, not nothing, but barely anything. There is just that much to do. Moscow is the kind of city that it almost seems a waste of time to visit, you have to live there to actually see anything. It's just SO BIG. I don't think you can fully comprehend how enormous and sprawling the city is until you finally go there. Everyone had always told me Moscow was big and crazy, etc, etc, and I was like yeah, whatever, I've been to New York..... no, you just don't get it until you see it.
Moscow was also interesting because everyone tells you that it is a more "Russian" city than Petersburg. I guess you can see that in the sense it is definitely more Soviet..... the metro stops have idealistic sculptures of workers with flags and hammers and sickles and there are many, many more Soviet-style buildings and architecture. Petersburg clearly is from a different time, the time when Russia wanted so badly to be European, and in a way it seems like the Soviet era affected Petersburg less.... it kind of got stuck in time and stayed that way, or just immediately reverted back to how it used to be after the fall of the Bolsheviks. So, Moscow is definitely more Soviet in appearance, and in that sense people seem to feel it is more Russian, but I didn't get that vibe. As Petersburg is so much smaller and more "provincial" (as Bryan puts it) and fewer people speak English, it definitely feels more Russian to me, while Moscow being huge and metropolitan now feels more just like any other enormous Western city. They have a Starbucks in Moscow. Seriously. That's not very Russian in my opinion.... there are also just more little funky, hipster cafés and dives and stuff that I greatly enjoy but that could be anywhere.... London, Cambridge, Budapest.....
Just being in Moscow was an experience enough, but I did actually manage to see some cool stuff you know, in the twenty four hours each day I was busy.
On our first day there we got to check out Red Square and the big famous things there such as Lenin's masoleum and St. Basil's Cathedral. Lenin's masoleum was perhaps one of thse strangest places I have ever been to in my life. First of all, you're looking at the body of a man who died eighty-something years ago. Second of all it is lying in a glass case accented by red (???) lights that give the whole thing a haunted house feeling as the case is in the middle of a dark, dark room with black walls and the whole place smells vaguely of chlorine and reminded me of an aquarium. I was imagining something more, I don't know, stately? Majestic? Not something reminiscent of a haunted house at Disney World. And third of all, it's just so weird that he's just lying there, looking like he's only asleep in this glass case like Cinderella or something..... but our phonetics teacher told us yesterday we were lucky to see him while we could because they want to bury him in the ground soon and finally move on.
St. Basil's is the cathedral that Church of Spilled Blood in Petersburg is modeled on. You can definitely see the similarities -- mostly just on the outside appearance. The inside is crazy winding little alleys and mazes of tiny rooms. I couldn't figure out what places I had already seen and what I had yet to visit, but it's full of beautiful and ornate medevial painting and seems much more, I don't know, I guess Russian but has this Oriental/Middle Eastern feel too.... while Spilled Blood seems much more like an awkward attempt at a European cathedral on the inside with all the mosaics. I liked it though for the reason that Emma pointed out -- you can still imagine monks wanderng around in there and it working as an operating church instead of just a tourist trap.
On our first day we also went out to the former edge of the city (now just a little bit out of the center) where that famous monastery whose name I forget is located. The monsatery itself was rainy and quiet, and I liked the little museum in it a lot that had a collection of frescos and tempra paintings salvaged from various churches. Once again I really actually enjoyed looking at these thanks to my painting techniques class (thanks, Elaine Spatz-Rabinowitz!) and felt like I understood and appreciated them more than before. God, everyone should take that class. It's so good. Emma and I also were rebellious and ditched the tour and wandered in the big cemetary behind the monastery where a lot of famous people are buried.... though we found none of them. Ha. Oh, well. An excuse to go back to Moscow again, I really want to see Bulgakov's grave.
We also got to wander around inside of the Kremlin. There was an organized tour but Ilana and I stopped paying attention to that pretty quickly and took photos where we pretended to be Russian girls. The two of us then wandered a little bit ourselves, but when we stepped off the marked path onto some ordinary cobblestones, three different soldiers blew their whistles at us and motioned for us to get back on the path. It wasn't a big deal, there was just something disconcerting about it and the whole place was so clean and ordered and intensely monitored that we didn't feel comfortable.... It's hard to explain.... last summer I was basically in one of the farthest removed parts of Russia, as far away from the government as you could get, and the only contact we had with government empoloyees was with those 18 year old soldiers on the railroad. Otherwise, in Bolshie Koty you could, I don't know, kill a man or something and no one would ever find out. St. Petersburg, of course, has more government control in it than Siberia. I see soliders all the time on the street here and keep my head low when I walk past police officers. But in Moscow, just on the street in general I saw more policemen and women and then in the Kremlin itself... suddenly you could feel the govermental prescense so strongly it was sort of suffocating and oppressive. It was just unsettling. So Ilana and I went to lunch early instead.
Ilana, being an expert already after spending about five days in Moscow this summer with her mom inbetween the programs, showed us all this really great market on the outskirts of the city, kind of like Moscow's version of Udelnaya.... except Udelnaya on crack. Ridiculous. RIDICULOUS. So enormous. And the people are much more aggressive about selling their shit. The market is around and in a stadium and just goes on, and on, and on, and on, and on, and according to Ilana we saw only maybe a quarter of it. I did finally bite the bullet and start buying some souvenirs for people and Christmas presents as I am now actually going to be home in January (oops, that was a mistake). So, some of you lucky folks have presents from Moscow. Get excited.
What else.....
Oh, we went to the circus. Oh man, the circus rocked. They had all these trained animals and crap and there was a show of TRAINED CATS that not everyone really appreciated, though I thoroughly enjoyed, though perhaps not as much as Vicky. Actually, trained cats are kind of terrible because just because they are trained doesn't mean they care. There was only little gray kitten who was clearly new to the circus and we sat and waited for it to do its trick for about eight minutes as the crazy cat lady coached him on..... There were also trained dogs who were beautiful and flawless and a jack russel terrier in a camel outfit?? (Would have made a much better Halloween costume for Gwen than the pilgrim hat, no offense, Mom.) There were also some pretty impressive acrobats and I took some pictures on the sly since technically I wasn't allowed to do so.
I also walked around the old Soviet world fair grounds at VDNKh and looked at the architecture and how the whole area has now been turned into a weird fair grounds of sort. It's really odd the whole thing.
A couple of us wanted to see Red Square at night and take pictures, but we chose to go on Monday night when Red Square was baricaded off because of the holiday on Tuesday. Apparently they were cleaning the whole square to prepare for the march of the Russian youth group, Nashi, that would take place during the holiday. But at the time we didn't know these details, so Ilana just did cartwheels outside of the gates and I took photos of that.
And and and and and AND I got to the Tretrakovskaya Gallery. This is basically the Hermitage of Moscow and is chock full of all the most famous paintings that you've seen on the covers of your Penguin Classic editions of Russian literature. I got to see that famous portrait of Dostoevsky... that famous portrait of Tolstoy.... that famous portrait of Chekov.... that portrait of a girl in a pink dress that is on the cover of my book of Chekov's short stories.... I got to see all of the most famous icons that I have studied now in a billion different classes -- Rublev's Holy Trinity, Our Lady of Vladimir, etc..... and I really enjoyed a lot of the modern stuff that they have and want to go back to a) go through the Tretakovka again (because it is just too big, I hit museum-over-saturation mode really quickly) and b) go to the new Tretkovskaya Gallery that has all the even more modern stuff that I would really freak out about. But it was really good to at least get a beginning of taste. Motiviation to go back and visit.
Plus, I got to see Joan! I'm not really sure how because I was so damn busy with all the excursions and crap, but it was so good to see her. It was nice having another Wellesley Russian department face in Russia.
So, this week, after getting back from Moscow, I've just been recovering. You know, sleeping and catching up on homework and crap.... trying to avoid the cold that almost everyone from my program now has after being together in close quarters for four nights and three days. Last night though I did meet up with Ilana, Zach and Pinski at this music café place near the Cherniskevskaya metro stop, which was fun, and it was fun to catch up with Bev Mbu and meet Stephanie Brown from Wellesley too.
Oh, I'm sorry, what? Yes, Bev and Stephanie from WELLESLEY. Who are NOT currently studying in Russia, no, no, not at all, who are currently abroad on Wellesley's program in France who just decided to go to Russia for a few days, who had checked the list of students abroad in Russia and Bev thought "Oh, I know EB! She's in Petersburg!" but then never had time to contact me, who I RAN INTO BY TOTAL ACCIDENT when I just happened to decide to leave for the jazz club on the Vasileostovskaya metro station...... yes?!? I am serious!!! LOOK, PHOTOGRAPHIC EVIDENCE:
It just blew my mind. It was kind of a hilarious situation after being in Moscow -- just speaks to how small Petersburg is in comparison, and how small the world is in general. There I was, just standing on the escalator, and I noticed a girl ahead of me in a bright yellow coat and I was like, "Oh, wow, a black person. That's the second black person I've seen in about three weeks. Oh, she looks like Bev from Wellesley. No, that can't be Bev, that makes no sense, Russia is just making you racist, E.B. -- you think all black people look alike now, that's terrible, you need to get out of this country, wait, no, that IS Bev.... wtf.....?????" And I grabbed her arm and we talked and couldn't believe it and they came to the jazz club with me for a bit, and it was just..... really insane and bizarre and then we were all sitting in this club listening to one dude on guitar play everything from Jesus Christ Superstar to I Will Survive to the theme from the Godfather and I couldn't get over how oddly the world works.
And, of course, if you know me at all, you know all too well that I have way too many photographs from all these past events so needless to say I am a wee bit behind on uploading and editing and such.... I've got the self-portrait bit up to date. And you can see my polaroid project of Ami Li with various sites around the city (think: E.B. in D.C.), and my most recent stuff from printmaking class. As for everything else, you'll need a little patience....
So. Yeah. Oh, and one last important thing. Yesterday was the 20th birthday of one of my favorite people ever. HEY, ERIN GREENE. HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Back in St. Petersburg.
You'll get a full run down of my impressions of Moscow later, but for now know that I am safely back in St. Petersburg, a little exhausted, and, yes, I have already heard that Barack Obama is our new president. News travels fast.
Saturday, November 1, 2008
HAPPYNOVEMBERORSOMETHING.
HEY!
I was just out of the house for over thirty four hours!
Ahhhh!!
That's what happens when you have a three-class Friday plus a Halloween party at the dorms plus printmaking plus decide to visit your sick friend and watch the new Coen brothers movie and drink tea.
And I'm leaving for Moscow in..... three hours or something??? AHHH TOO MUCH TO DO.
But just for some contrast....
HOW HALLOWEEN WAS SPENT IN RUSSIA:
(left to right we've got a Ghostbuster and/or Yuri Gagarin, a bat, and Amelia Earhart.)
HOW HALLOWEEN WAS SPENT IN MASSACHUSETTS:
(left to right we've got a witch/pilgrim and a pumpkin, both who clearly don't give a shit about this photo being taken.)
You'll hear from me again on Wednesday or so. FAREWELL.
I was just out of the house for over thirty four hours!
Ahhhh!!
That's what happens when you have a three-class Friday plus a Halloween party at the dorms plus printmaking plus decide to visit your sick friend and watch the new Coen brothers movie and drink tea.
And I'm leaving for Moscow in..... three hours or something??? AHHH TOO MUCH TO DO.
But just for some contrast....
HOW HALLOWEEN WAS SPENT IN RUSSIA:
(left to right we've got a Ghostbuster and/or Yuri Gagarin, a bat, and Amelia Earhart.)HOW HALLOWEEN WAS SPENT IN MASSACHUSETTS:
(left to right we've got a witch/pilgrim and a pumpkin, both who clearly don't give a shit about this photo being taken.)You'll hear from me again on Wednesday or so. FAREWELL.
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