10.9.2007

So I think life is going to begin settling down into something like a pace. We are here at our host university in Nizhni Novgorod. I haven’t seen much of the city yet, because the day set up for our walk-about was crazy raining. I definitely hadn’t been dressed for the weather or I would have been up for exploring even in the downpour- us Seattle-ites aren’t afraid of a little water.
We live in a profilectorium, which I’m not sure how to spell. It’s the hospital/dorm on campus, where Russian students come for up to 3 weeks to rest and recuperate. The thing is, with enough money paid to the right people, healthy students can stay here too, and we’ve been told that these students come here to party. The Russians move in tomorrow (but there are some already here, I have no idea how this really works), so we’ll get to see the weird mix of people who really are trying to sleep and people with sleep as the furthest thing from their minds. Weird, right?

The women’s bathroom was pretty much out of commission since we got here. Somehow the toilets (which, by the way, do NOT have toilet seats) were clogged and running-over…so…there was poopy, watery pee, basically, flooding our bathroom all weekend. We have another bathroom, kind of. See, we have to wash our clothes by hand, so we have a ‘traditional’ bathroom (the one with toilets) and a ‘sinkroom’, which, you guessed it, has sinks in it. Sinks for hands, sinks for clothes, sinks for…I’m not sure, but not for going to the bathroom in, if you know what I mean. Unfortunately, due to the lack of sufficient communication, the last category of sinks were used for a purpose they weren’t supposed to be used for, so we had not just one but TWO poopy overflowing bathrooms. Now I’m not a person to charge ahead and plow over other people to get what I want in everyday situations (I hope), but when it comes to going to the bathroom, I’m sorry, but the women’s situation was just not going to cut it. So I took myself to the men’s bathroom, I don’t even care what the Russian guys here thought. Yes, sometimes I was in the men’s at the same time as men…but as far as I know they never saw me. Eventually the ‘management’ told us to use the babushka’s bathroom downstairs- big deal- but now the ones upstairs are back in working, non-smelly, non-wet order.

We have Russian language class for three hours in the morning. Our big group of 20 was split in two, and my class has this cute professor that I really love already. She laughs at us when we try to pronounce words, and makes us make sounds over and over and over again until we get it right. I think her name is Irina, and she wants us to call her Ira. Little sidenote: the Russians have the best tradition of names. People have a first and last name, but also a patronymic, which is like a last name, kind of, except you use the fathers name and add either a masculine or feminine ending. But that’s not the part I like. They have little nick names, I don’t know where they come from, but they’re super cute and people use them when they’re feeling really affectionate. I know we have nick names in the U.S., but these are just amazing. I love them, and I wish I had one.

So part way through our language class we have a tea break in the International Office, and today there were Russian students in there who wanted to hang out and talk with us. I’m beginning to like tea. Our cafeteria babushkas serve us tea (the Russian word for tea is chai, by the way) with every meal.
We have lunch during an hour and a half break between language and lecture. Lecture is in the afternoon with our director, Harley, who had a birthday this last Sunday.

Our meals basically consist of meat and potatoes. When they told me that this was what we’d be having, I was like, ‘Okay, but what are we eating?’ They weren’t lying. We have some kind of unidentifiable meat- usually actually quite delicious- and potatoes in some form. Once we had what’s been called ‘square’- well, the Russian word for square, but I don’t know how to spell that- and it was basically mashed potatoes, in a cube, with a layer of meat in the middle. It was kind of like Thanksgiving lasagna. Or we have fried potatoes. And there’s always some kind of mayo-salad, which I have yet to eat. Also, we get chocolate cookies with breakfast. I love this part of Russia. The food is good. What has to happen after the food (the bathroom) is not as fun, at all, but we put on our Soviet faces and deal with it. It’s kind of like the ‘grin and bear it’ mentality, only in Russian you don’t grin. Oh, Russians think it’s okay to be sad. If you can tell that someone is feeling down, no one expects you to try to cheer them up, and they might even be offended if you tried.