lately

Wringing out jeans to dry

The Sunset over the Oka River

Andrew- need I say more?

Kate, or Katya.

She's super fun, and I love her.

A window at the abandoned water place.

mark your calendars!

Just a reminder that my 21st birthday is coming up this Saturday, the 27th!

just call me anastasia

My life has taken on a dramatic change in the last few days. I moved in with a Russian family.

I live in a building 30 minutes (with no traffic) from the university, which makes me wonder just how big this city really is and how much I’m going to miss. My family’s apartment has two bedrooms, one the size of a normal child’s room in the U.S. and the other the size of a comfortable office (which is shared by my mom, Tzveta, and my sister, Yula), a living room, a kitchen, and the typical ‘bathroom’, which is actually a sink/shower room (with it’s own door on the hall) and a toilet room (again with it’s own door to the hall).

I have three keys to get inside- one circle that looks like a magnet, one 5-inch long gold ‘clootch’ with a square inch of teeth at the end, and a third, identical in shape to the second but much shorter, only about three or so inches. Shoes are never worn into the apartment (btw, most Russians live in apartments if they live in a city, not in houses). You take them off in the entryway.

My mom, Tzveta, is going to help me gain a ‘winter layer’, otherwise known as 20 lbs. So far dinner is soup, salad, meat and potatoes. Which might sound like it’s not much, but it is. Dinner is served as a three course meal (this is typical of Russian meals), and there is always chai and/or coffee with crackers, cookies, chocolate and bread with cheese and meat. It’s typical to eat dessert with breakfast. This might be a useful practice to adopt in the U.S.

My bedroom is twice the size of the room that my family sleeps in. However, I suspect that my bed is twice as hard. It is a couch. Which is great, it’s just really, really hard. So I kind of feel like I’m sleeping on a park bench, complete with morning dew (because no matter what I always sweat at night in Russian beds). But considering that my family (which is really made up of three people, not just two, because Yula’s best friend Leila is practically part of the family) is so kind and welcoming, and waits on me hand and foot, I can’t really complain. I found a way to feel less awkward about my mom and sister making me meals and washing my dishes- I can wash all the breakfast dishes! Yula leaves for school right after breakfast, and Tzveta uses that time to get ready herself, and I still have 30 minutes before I need to meet my bus. Perfect! When Tzveta discovered me washing dishes this morning, she kissed me, so I know it’s okay.

On my first day of moving in, and waking up, I feared that I’d be really lonely since I need to head home when it gets dark, because a) I’m female and it’s not safe for me to be out on my own at night and b) the buses are really unreliable after 9 PM. And, being winter and Russia, it’s dark early, and the sun gets up late (it doesn’t have to be at school on time), so I’m going to spend tons of time at home. I thought this might translate into getting a lot of homework done (which might be true), but one of my friends, Leah, lives in my building and Andrew lives in the next building, so I’m not stranded on the east side of the city, hours away from everyone, like I thought I was! Hurray! Not only that, but I get to ride the bus with Andrew to school every morning, and you can’t beat that, can you? Nope.

It’s really nice having a readily accessible toilet seat, a private shower and a mom and a sister. I miss my family! The food at home is delicious, the cat is fun, so I can’t complain. My family and their friends are helping me with my Russian (and are a huge motivation to learn the language).

Other recent stories include discovering a litter of puppies behind the university and going to visit them in the afternoons with Andrew, climbing all over an abandoned water-tunnel place with Russian friends, hiking up the Kremlin hill with my Russian sisters and Andrew because we took the wring bus and couldn't figure out how to get to the top of the hill the right way, and visiting Maxim Gorky's preserved (-ish) house. Life is interesting and busy!

For whatever reason I’ve been exhausted all the time lately, and even now don’t want to muster the energy to get out of my blogging inertia. Until later, poka (bye)!

small wooden houses

I find myself reluctant to take the mental effort to write up another blog. I’d rather wander through everyone else’s, enjoying their stories and leaving, if only for a moment, this world that feels so small sometimes.
It feels small because, honestly, it’s only as big as the 20 Americans I came with and the Russian students we’ve met here. The way our schedule is, with the studying we have to do, keeps us on-campus pretty much all week long. I guess I could take the initiative and go exploring (I procured a map for this very purpose) but so far, it hasn’t happened.

One of my favorite things about Nizhni is the presence of 300 year old buildings that residents used to live in. Actually, some of them still function as homes, but many of them appear abandoned. They usually are brown, though sometimes it appears that they were at one time painted red or perhaps green, and are made of wood. The windows are framed by elaborate wooden boards, as are the doors and the eaves of the roofs. Many of them are leaning, or appear to be sinking. The city wants to tear them down because they are a fire hazard. This saddens me, because these buildings are so lovely and give the city a distinct feeling of age which the newer and older-but-kept-up buildings lack.

These little wooden homes force you to admit that this place is old, that it was around before Moscow was the capital, that battles were fought and barges floated down the river with humbly clothed peasants pulling them along with ropes around their worm shoulders, that Maxim Gorky was born here or at least lived here as a child. I’ve seen, just today in fact, the charred remains of the buildings that were not just a fire hazard but a blazing reality, so I know that the city probably is acting wisely in taking them down. They’ll preserve some, like the one Gorky lived in, but the city will lose neighborhoods of history that explain a bit of who Russians are without even trying.

America is so young. Russia and her people go so much further back than the three hundred years I’m mourning the loss of.

In a recent lecture a guest professor spoiled the endings of both War and Peace and Anna Karenina, the two novels I’m in the middle of. Super. Another guest speaker works in the language department and, though fully Russian, speaks American English fluently, with a touch of a Louisiana accent. Weird. This is our last week staying in the profilectorium, because this Saturday we’re moving in with our host families. Bitter sweet. I will miss the closeness of my American counterparts and, especially, my roommate Meredith. The first information packet that I received about this program said, in all caps, “FALL IN LOVE”, and I think I may be doing just that. Maybe.

Caryn: "Another day, another ruble."

Things my Russians say that make me smile:
Ira: "Your hometasks" (homework)
"I imagine Tereza in a nightclub. She is beautiful, active and energetic."
Me (in Russian): "On Saturdays I study the Russian language."
Ira: "Tereza. You expect me to believe?"

Me (in Russian): "I want coffee, but the coffee machine is not working."
Yelena (in Russian): "This is Russia." A popular and hilarious phrase.

Kyrill: "You are hot woman."
To one of the guys: "Your man power is going to the left." He meant 'is leaving'.

Roma: "undescribable", "cat's pajamas"

Andrew's host brother, upon meeting me: "What is wrong with you?"

meals

Breakfast
Lunch

Dinner

(there's rhubarb inside the bread roll- yum!)

One of the babushka's who works in the kitchen.

She's always trying to teach me the names of the food.

I never learn.

runny noses

Okay, so I don't have tons of time at the moment (lunch is in 5 minutes), but I thought I should pop by and say hello, let you know what's new and exciting.

This morning was the best yet in Nizhni. I went to a baby house. We have these 'service days' on Fridays, and today was our first one. I get to go to a house with babies- which is sad, because they are babies that no one wants. Most of them have some kind of mental development issue, like down syndrome or autism. THEY ARE THE MOST PRECIOUS CHILDREN I HAVE EVER SEEN. They just ran at us (okay, toddled, because for one thing they're pretty little and don't really know how to run without falling down and for another they are bundled up so that they are basically like snowmen with boogers running down and all over their faces)- anyway, they ran at us with arms flung wide open, faces split open with smiles, all laughter. Wanting to be picked up, thrown round, bounced, just touched. I can't remember all their names, or the names of the women in charge, but I think two of them are Nastya and one is Vanya, but they ALL have boogers EVERYWHERE. Which makes it kind of hard to play with them without geting yourself covered in boogs, but whatever. This is Russia.
The woman in charge of the three of us (me, Leah, and Ashleigh, the two other girls who went) decided immediately that I was the best Russian speaker of us and kept talking to me whenever she wanted us to do something or go somewhere. That was fun for me (not so much for hte other two girls) but next week Ruth will be with Ashleigh and I instead of Leah, and she's one ofthe strongest Russian speakers in our group, so it's pretty much hopeless that anyone at the baby house will try to talk to me again. Oh well. I had one good day! We'd been told that the babushka's don't really like it when you pick up the babies (they don't, but I think it's mainly for their safety) and so, thinking that we'd just be holding infants, I was worried that it'd be extremely awkward, showing up at a place you're not wanted. But the women at the house smiled and seemed to enjoy that the children were enjoying us. So. It was good. And it made my heart extremely happy, just to touch the children and make them laugh, because people need that kind of thing.

I must dash to lunch! Oh! I've started taking my camera to meals so I can show you what we eat. I'll post soon! Paka!