Hey guys! So, due to a lack of technical prowess on my part, I'm posting links to my photos for your enjoyment rather than the video documentaries I filmed for your (okay, my) viewing pleasure.
Nizhnii Novgorod
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Friends In Moscow
Moscow
Kazan
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Friday, December 14, 2007
November 28, 2007
Live from Russia. This morning I went into my kitchen for breakfast. We haven’t had any cok (read: juice) in the fridge for a while now, and I think my mom doesn’t often buy it because she makes her own, and she has tons in glass jars in the entryway closet/pantry/laundry room. So last night I got really excited because I saw her bring one of her big jars into the kitchen. Yes! Juice! So this morning I went into the kitchen and poured some cok into my cup. For some reason the jar and lid were really sticky, and the lid was more fool-proof than others I’ve seen. I realized after I had a good centimeter or more of cok in my cup that actually…it was honey. Oops! This is not the first time I’ve mistaken honey for another breakfast beverage. A while ago it was in an old instant coffee container, and my mom’s boyfriend really wanted me to understand that it was honey, and not coffee, and I couldn’t figure out why he was talking about bees. I just want to know how to make coffee with this new liquid stuff! Eventually I realized that I wasn’t holding coffee, and I felt pretty stupid. But come on- first thing in the morning you spring honey on a girl in the guise of a coffee jar? Not fair. So what did I do with my cup of honey? I poured super hot water on it, and seeped last nights herbal tea bag in it, and am now drinking very sweet tea at 8:30 in the morning. There are worse ways to start your day. Like, for instance, writing the paper that I must write, or studying for my final. For now, I love honey in big jars.
Even though I was more than ready to go home last week and the week before, now that I have four or five days- days- left in Nizhnii, I really don’t want to leave. I don’t want to say good-bye to everyone and everything that I’ve come to love here.
Even though I was more than ready to go home last week and the week before, now that I have four or five days- days- left in Nizhnii, I really don’t want to leave. I don’t want to say good-bye to everyone and everything that I’ve come to love here.
December 11, 2007
I’m ready to not be a tourist. To not be a foreigner. A couple days ago I had a foreigner experience that made me so ready to jump on that plane to Frankfurt (from where I’ll catch another to New York). I had gone to the bazaar with two friends, Jenny and Danny, and spent some time regrouping myself in the hotel after making my final purchases. I declined a lunch invitation to nap. I’m a terrible napper- I ended up just looking at pictures and getting really bored and starving. So I took myself over to the “mall” (it’s a mall, it’s just a really small one so it almost doesn’t count) across the street and headed straight for the food court.
There’s this fast-food place in Russia called Teremoke, and I wish we had them in the states. Well, almost. They make bleeni, which essentially is the Russian crepe, very delicious. My first introduction to bleeni was in St. Petersburg and, rather than risking raw meat or scary fish scales, I decided to go the safe route of mixed berry bleeni. YUM. But ever since then I’ve never wanted to try anything else. So when I went a couple days ago I decided to branch out of my mixed berry bleeni world and try something different- strawberry. I know, really rocking the boat with that one. And I really only picked it because there was a picture of it, so I didn’t really have to do any translation in my head to figure out what to order. So easy!
But when the cashier rung me up the price was three times that of mixed berry- instead of the traditional $2 or $3, it was over $6. Huh. Are strawberries rare in Moscow this time of year? Weird. So I paid, just because I was too tired to say, “Forget it, excuse me, I’d like mixed berry instead.”
I’m not sure what compelled me to do what I did next, but I walked down to look again at the picture of the strawberry bleeni I had ordered. But I’m glad I did. That’s when I realized I had actually ordered caviar.
So now I understand why I paid so much for my lunch, but I desperately wanted them to say, “Wait a minute, we’re all out of fish eggs!” But by the time I looked at the cook, contemplating a desperate yell of, “Stop! No caviar! Please, mixed berry! I didn’t know!” I saw that he had already folded the bleeni over, which an astute observer would know means the caviar is already in there. Too late now. And as I continued my mental effort to find a way out of the fish treat and get a fruit one instead, I saw the cook spoon caviar out of a little tuna-like can and plop it onto the pure bleeni. NO!!! I hadn’t been too late. But now I knew for sure that the caviar was definitely in the food.
When they gave me what I had mistakenly paid for, I took it out with me as I returned to my hotel, dejected and alone. I thought I’d heard before that someone in my group liked caviar, so I figured I’d find them and offer them my food. But I saw a big dog on the way back. I held out my food to him; he didn’t budge. What?! Not even a homeless dog will eat this? He had a change of heart as I walked away, but returned to his previous good sense when I set it on the ground for him; he sniffed and walked away. Okay, well, I definitely can’t offer this to any people now that a street dog has touched it. In the end I left it on the ground next to a trash can in the hope that some truly desperate soul, whether person or animal, would be able to, if not enjoy it, then at least scarf it down, maybe following it swiftly with a shot or two of vodka.
I’m afraid I don’t like caviar.
There’s this fast-food place in Russia called Teremoke, and I wish we had them in the states. Well, almost. They make bleeni, which essentially is the Russian crepe, very delicious. My first introduction to bleeni was in St. Petersburg and, rather than risking raw meat or scary fish scales, I decided to go the safe route of mixed berry bleeni. YUM. But ever since then I’ve never wanted to try anything else. So when I went a couple days ago I decided to branch out of my mixed berry bleeni world and try something different- strawberry. I know, really rocking the boat with that one. And I really only picked it because there was a picture of it, so I didn’t really have to do any translation in my head to figure out what to order. So easy!
But when the cashier rung me up the price was three times that of mixed berry- instead of the traditional $2 or $3, it was over $6. Huh. Are strawberries rare in Moscow this time of year? Weird. So I paid, just because I was too tired to say, “Forget it, excuse me, I’d like mixed berry instead.”
I’m not sure what compelled me to do what I did next, but I walked down to look again at the picture of the strawberry bleeni I had ordered. But I’m glad I did. That’s when I realized I had actually ordered caviar.
So now I understand why I paid so much for my lunch, but I desperately wanted them to say, “Wait a minute, we’re all out of fish eggs!” But by the time I looked at the cook, contemplating a desperate yell of, “Stop! No caviar! Please, mixed berry! I didn’t know!” I saw that he had already folded the bleeni over, which an astute observer would know means the caviar is already in there. Too late now. And as I continued my mental effort to find a way out of the fish treat and get a fruit one instead, I saw the cook spoon caviar out of a little tuna-like can and plop it onto the pure bleeni. NO!!! I hadn’t been too late. But now I knew for sure that the caviar was definitely in the food.
When they gave me what I had mistakenly paid for, I took it out with me as I returned to my hotel, dejected and alone. I thought I’d heard before that someone in my group liked caviar, so I figured I’d find them and offer them my food. But I saw a big dog on the way back. I held out my food to him; he didn’t budge. What?! Not even a homeless dog will eat this? He had a change of heart as I walked away, but returned to his previous good sense when I set it on the ground for him; he sniffed and walked away. Okay, well, I definitely can’t offer this to any people now that a street dog has touched it. In the end I left it on the ground next to a trash can in the hope that some truly desperate soul, whether person or animal, would be able to, if not enjoy it, then at least scarf it down, maybe following it swiftly with a shot or two of vodka.
I’m afraid I don’t like caviar.
December 1st, 2007
I’m disappointed that I’m leaving Nizhnii Novgorod without ever visiting the women’s monastery. Which I don’t think is actually called a monastery. It must be a convent. Anyway, its domes look like candy, and I’m sure it’s beautiful, because maybe it wasn’t closed down during the Soviet period, and if it wasn’t then that means that it still has beautiful mosaics everywhere inside, and I really want to see if this is the case. I also want to explore the men’s monastery more, because I still haven’t been through the gates. But I don’t think I have time for that today.
All the time that I’ve been here in Nizhnii I’ve wanted to take a day and visit all the churches. But I think that even if I had another day in this place it would be impossible. There are so many churches here! Literally from anywhere you are in the city you can see church domes. And it’s unusual that you can only see the domes of one church. The only place I can think of where I remember not being able to see a church is in this one district that is unusual anyway. Let me give you an interesting tid-bit of history.
When the depression hit the U.S. back in the 1920’s, Henry Ford had to look for new markets for his automobile industry. And guess where he took 600 American workers to build and run a new car factory? Nizhni Novgorod. Yep. How random is that? Henry Ford went to Russia and started a car industry here. I don’t think I ever learned that when I learned that he is responsible for the development of the assembly line. Anyway, there’s this huge building, miles long, called the Gorky Automobile Factory (but really it’s the Gorkovo Avtomachine Plant) and it’s Russian initials are GAZ, so my classmates and I refer to is as ‘the gas district’ or something similar. When you’re there, the only thing you can see is this monstrosity of a building; hence, no church domes. Somewhere over there stands The American House, where all of Fords imported workers lived back in the day. I think Russians live there now. Maybe that’s why we didn’t visit it.
At the same time though, I can’t wait to leave Nizhnii. Living with another family is stressful, no matter how kind they are. And when you don’t speak the same language, you can’t just say things like, “Hey, I’d like to do this, what’s the best way for that to happen? I don’t want to get in your way.” Or, like what happened (or didn’t happen, really) a few weeks ago, “I brought two friends home with me. But because I didn’t ask you in advance if they could come over, we bought our own lunch at the store. Can they come in and eat before we have to go to the museum this afternoon?” Because I didn’t know how to say all this to my host mom, my friends ended up eating their lunch in our super super dirty stairway, because all I said was, “Can my friends eat with us?” and my mom said no because she only cooked for three- herself, my sister and me. As a side-note to this story, you should know that Russians don’t let people come over to their house if they don’t know them already. Makes sense, I guess. So host families have to be really flexible when they let American students have American friends over. But American students can’t have Russian friends come over, because their host parents don’t know them. This just seems weird to me, but I guess I see where they’re coming from. Also, you should know that when, after lunch, my host mom discovered that my friends were in the stairway and were eating food, she was incredulous. “Tereza! You should have said, ‘(things I don’t know how to say, even now)’.” But to her credit she would have let them eat with us had she known the situation.
All the time that I’ve been here in Nizhnii I’ve wanted to take a day and visit all the churches. But I think that even if I had another day in this place it would be impossible. There are so many churches here! Literally from anywhere you are in the city you can see church domes. And it’s unusual that you can only see the domes of one church. The only place I can think of where I remember not being able to see a church is in this one district that is unusual anyway. Let me give you an interesting tid-bit of history.
When the depression hit the U.S. back in the 1920’s, Henry Ford had to look for new markets for his automobile industry. And guess where he took 600 American workers to build and run a new car factory? Nizhni Novgorod. Yep. How random is that? Henry Ford went to Russia and started a car industry here. I don’t think I ever learned that when I learned that he is responsible for the development of the assembly line. Anyway, there’s this huge building, miles long, called the Gorky Automobile Factory (but really it’s the Gorkovo Avtomachine Plant) and it’s Russian initials are GAZ, so my classmates and I refer to is as ‘the gas district’ or something similar. When you’re there, the only thing you can see is this monstrosity of a building; hence, no church domes. Somewhere over there stands The American House, where all of Fords imported workers lived back in the day. I think Russians live there now. Maybe that’s why we didn’t visit it.
At the same time though, I can’t wait to leave Nizhnii. Living with another family is stressful, no matter how kind they are. And when you don’t speak the same language, you can’t just say things like, “Hey, I’d like to do this, what’s the best way for that to happen? I don’t want to get in your way.” Or, like what happened (or didn’t happen, really) a few weeks ago, “I brought two friends home with me. But because I didn’t ask you in advance if they could come over, we bought our own lunch at the store. Can they come in and eat before we have to go to the museum this afternoon?” Because I didn’t know how to say all this to my host mom, my friends ended up eating their lunch in our super super dirty stairway, because all I said was, “Can my friends eat with us?” and my mom said no because she only cooked for three- herself, my sister and me. As a side-note to this story, you should know that Russians don’t let people come over to their house if they don’t know them already. Makes sense, I guess. So host families have to be really flexible when they let American students have American friends over. But American students can’t have Russian friends come over, because their host parents don’t know them. This just seems weird to me, but I guess I see where they’re coming from. Also, you should know that when, after lunch, my host mom discovered that my friends were in the stairway and were eating food, she was incredulous. “Tereza! You should have said, ‘(things I don’t know how to say, even now)’.” But to her credit she would have let them eat with us had she known the situation.
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
leaving on a jet plane
Hey everyone!
Sorry I haven't updated in a while; internet access has been scare. I'll be back in the states soon- from there I'm going to post all the updates I've written but not gotten online, so you'll have lots of stories to read in the next week or so, I should think. I'll also post tons of pictures for you to look at.
I leave my Moscow hotel tomorrow morning at 4 a.m. and board a flight to Frankfurt, Germany. From there I'll fly to New York, and after that to Sasn Francisco. I'll finally be in The Golden State around 7 p.m. Pacific Time (I think). I'm going to chase the sun all day long. Whoo-hoo!
I'd love to hear from you once I get back to my home soil! So long for now!
Sorry I haven't updated in a while; internet access has been scare. I'll be back in the states soon- from there I'm going to post all the updates I've written but not gotten online, so you'll have lots of stories to read in the next week or so, I should think. I'll also post tons of pictures for you to look at.
I leave my Moscow hotel tomorrow morning at 4 a.m. and board a flight to Frankfurt, Germany. From there I'll fly to New York, and after that to Sasn Francisco. I'll finally be in The Golden State around 7 p.m. Pacific Time (I think). I'm going to chase the sun all day long. Whoo-hoo!
I'd love to hear from you once I get back to my home soil! So long for now!
Thursday, November 29, 2007
It's called "Noticeably Crowding the Men"
And it's an essay I don't want to write.
Well. It's the last day of classes here in Nizhini. I just turned in a final with half the questions left blank. I wrote an essay on sufferring that even I think has no place in anyone's reading material. And now...I'm blogging instead of finishing the 15 page paper that was due two hours ago. Because I just don't really care about it. I think I'm done. The only thing is...papers are 50% of our grade, and this is the most significant paper of the semester, and I should probably at least give it an hour more of my time, if not as much time as it takes to make it the minimum of 12 papges. Right? I don't want to.
Well. It's the last day of classes here in Nizhini. I just turned in a final with half the questions left blank. I wrote an essay on sufferring that even I think has no place in anyone's reading material. And now...I'm blogging instead of finishing the 15 page paper that was due two hours ago. Because I just don't really care about it. I think I'm done. The only thing is...papers are 50% of our grade, and this is the most significant paper of the semester, and I should probably at least give it an hour more of my time, if not as much time as it takes to make it the minimum of 12 papges. Right? I don't want to.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
i'm leaving my heart in nizhnii- sorry, san francisco
It's snowing outside. Again! Big bolshoui flakes. Today I made my first real snowman! It's so beautiful outside! Unfortunately, I have to write a paper tonight- 12 to 15 pages- and then study for a final tomorrow. I don't really know what this paper is going to be about, but I guess we'll see! We only have five more days in Nizhnii Nov. with our families, and then we're taking the night train to Moscow. Then, 10 days of museums, outdoor bazaars and boom! we're off to the states. So what can I tell you?
Well, the Oka and Volga Rivers are FREEZING OVER, something I never expected to see. Absolute craziness, let me tell you. And there are little mini-icebergs, these baby islands made of ice floating along the river, with birds catching a free ride south. Today I saw four puppies hanging out in the snow at one of the bus stops, and I tell you what, it's a good thing I don't live here, because in no time I know I'd be a 'dog lady' from adopting all the homeless puppies. I don't know what this means for when I go back to the states. I've always felt really sad for dogs who don't have families to love them, but it's so common here for dogs to be animals, and not pets, that it's kind of changing my view of them. And I'm starting to love cats. Weird. I think I'm actually going to miss my cat most out of the three people (counting my cat) in my Russian family. How silly is that? But last night he slept on my bed without trying to attack my hands and feet, like he did the night before! He can be a little devil at times, but I love him. He was so peaceful last night!
Today I finally bought some mittens to replace the ones I lost on the autobus. It's a good thing, because by the time I got home from the market my hands were blue, purple and pink! Not normal skin color.
Did I tell you that I'm going to drink tea constantly when I get home? Because I am. And I'm so thrilled about the teapot/chainik I painted at Color Me Mine with my girls just before the end of the summer, because it's going to be perfect for black tea leaves! Yay!
When I tried to go running this morning I thought I was going to die, because it rained yesterday and then the snow and everything froze into super scary ice, and I was running on it! I only ran for two seconds, and then played in the snow. It was way funner.
I think I'm going to miss this place.
Well, the Oka and Volga Rivers are FREEZING OVER, something I never expected to see. Absolute craziness, let me tell you. And there are little mini-icebergs, these baby islands made of ice floating along the river, with birds catching a free ride south. Today I saw four puppies hanging out in the snow at one of the bus stops, and I tell you what, it's a good thing I don't live here, because in no time I know I'd be a 'dog lady' from adopting all the homeless puppies. I don't know what this means for when I go back to the states. I've always felt really sad for dogs who don't have families to love them, but it's so common here for dogs to be animals, and not pets, that it's kind of changing my view of them. And I'm starting to love cats. Weird. I think I'm actually going to miss my cat most out of the three people (counting my cat) in my Russian family. How silly is that? But last night he slept on my bed without trying to attack my hands and feet, like he did the night before! He can be a little devil at times, but I love him. He was so peaceful last night!
Today I finally bought some mittens to replace the ones I lost on the autobus. It's a good thing, because by the time I got home from the market my hands were blue, purple and pink! Not normal skin color.
Did I tell you that I'm going to drink tea constantly when I get home? Because I am. And I'm so thrilled about the teapot/chainik I painted at Color Me Mine with my girls just before the end of the summer, because it's going to be perfect for black tea leaves! Yay!
When I tried to go running this morning I thought I was going to die, because it rained yesterday and then the snow and everything froze into super scary ice, and I was running on it! I only ran for two seconds, and then played in the snow. It was way funner.
I think I'm going to miss this place.
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