Of Quiet Days and Adaptors

Today was in all honesty, pretty quiet.  We had Граматика, which was slightly more incomprehensible than usual, and then we went back to the dorm.  We didn’t have any excursions planned, which was nice, and we pretty much just relaxed.  We did go out to Москафе, a nearby café that has wireless internet.  It’s a bit over priced, but if you get one of the more reasonable items on the menu (I paid something like $7.17 for a large milkshake-like thing.  A little on the expensive side, I’ll grant you, but more reasonable than most) and sit there for an hour and a half to two hours solely to use their internet connection, it all evens out.  Thus, Carley and I each got one item off the menu, and went for the internet..... before we proceeded to realize when Carley’s computer started to die that while we had both brought chargers, we had both forgotten a very important little piece of equipment called an ‘electrical adaptor’.  Boys and girls, let it be a lesson to you: If you want to use your computer for an extended period of time in a foreign internet café, you’d best be sure to pack an adapter for your charger, because if you don’t, you’re not going to be going anywhere on the internet after an hour and a half or so.  Trust me, we know.  We tried.  
After this... less than pleasant revelation, we returned to the dorm, and have lurked here ever since.  As I said, a less than fascinating day.

Of First Glances at the Red Square

So, other than the typical apologies for not posting, because I never get around to writing the blog, let’s get this show on the road. 


Monday, May 21, we went to class for the first time.  We had three hours worth of Граматика and one of Видео with Владимир Алексеевич, our grammar instructor.  Yes, his name is Vladimir.  No, no one makes any comments about Dracula.  It’s not exactly an uncommon name around here.   Back to the point.  
Граматика is, while grueling at times, usually fairly comprehensible.  It’s taught primarily in Russian, with the occasional insertion of an English word or phrase, because although Владимир Алексеевич’s English is decent, it’s far from sufficient to explain things like the use of certain pronouns in Russian speech.  Thus, it’s mostly in Russian.  I can usually follow enough to stumble along.  That doesn’t mean that I understand everything, mind you, but most of my lack of comprehension can be traced back to one truly evil grammatical form called the verb.  Russian verb structures are tricky, and we have just barely scratched the surface in my Russian class at Ole Miss.  Unfortunately, when one is trying to figure out which preposition to use, or which verb form to use in relation to a preposition, not really getting verb structures at all can be fairly problematic.  Oh well.  Perhaps I will understand them better by the end of this month.  I rather doubt it, but it’s worth a hope.
Видео is basically the study of Russian film.  We watch short films with fairly basic vocabulary, and go over a transcript of the dialogue.  This way, we improve our vocabulary, and get to hear people speaking Russian.  As an added bonus, we get a bit of Russian culture.  On Monday, we watched the first of the Чебурагшка short films.  Чебурагшка (that’s Chiburashka for those of you who can’t be bothered to learn Cyrillic) is a Russian cultural icon.  He’s a.... well, he’s a Chiburashka.  No one, not even he himself, knows what he is.  Most accurately, he’s probably the Soviet answer to Mickey Mouse, and is a sort of bear-mouse hybrid thing. All the same, he’s fuzzy, and rather adorable, so we forgive him for being of no determinate species. 
After classes, We went with Sean, Isaac, and Valentina Borisovna to the Красная Плошадь, better known to English speakers as the Red Square.  It was certainly very impressive.  St. Basil’s Cathedral is stunning, and the Kremlin is nothing if not impressive.  We just did a look around, not so much a tour of anything.  Still, there was plenty to look at.  St. Basil’s Cathedral is after all, incredibly colorful and pretty.  I can almost see why Ivan the Terrible wanted to keep the architects responsible for it from creating anything else equally wonderful.  Still, I am more than happy to acknowledge that putting their eyes out for doing their jobs was more than a little extreme.
On our way back to the metro, we went to Гум, a seriously famous Russian mall.  Now, for those of you who aren’t exactly sure on what Гум is, think the Champs-Elysées.  Put it under a glass roof, and give it very pretty architecture.  Then take out any store that was actually in the price range of most middle class citizens.  That is Гум.  We got something to drink in one of the cafés (my bottle of water was nearly twice as expensive as usual), and sat at a table on a walkway over looking the three floors of designer stores below us.  I was traumatized.  Sitting that close to an edge overlooking a two story drop with a snowed glass looking floor?  No.  No thank you.  That’s even worse than the escalator to get to the metro!

Of a Saturday's Outing

A second Real Time entry for your reading pleasure.  Enjoy!

Today, we visited... a convent.  It was a really pretty convent, yes, and I did enjoy it, but at the same time, it was the type of place that I want to go investigate on my own, maybe with an English guide book, or after having looked it up on the internet.  The Novodevichy Convent was built by Ivan the Terrible, and one of Peter I sister’s was locked up there after she was involved in some sort of attempted over throw.  Sad, really, but I guess there are worse places to locked up.  At any rate, the convent was pretty, and I wish that I could have wandered around there at my own pace, or gone inside (the convent’s interior is closed to the public on weekends).
After the convent, we visited the neighboring cemetery of the same name.  It’s where a lot of really famous people are buried, from Tchaikovsky’s brother (Tchaikovsky himself is buried in St. Petersburg) to a man named Boris Yeltsin.  You might have heard of him.  He was the first president of Russia, or something equally important.  At any rate, under the guidance of Vladimir Alexeevitch, we wandered around the place, taking in the graves of various and sundry important people, and their rather impressive grave markers.  Still, while I am willing to admit that it was rather nifty to see Chekov’s grave, I wish we had spent significantly less time there, especially after my camera card decided to have full memory.  It was worth seeing, though.
Other than that, Carley and I wound up taking a long walk around the nearby pond, and got to see a statue of a mother duck and her ducklings commissioned by Nancy Reagan.  It was rather cute, and I’m glad I got to see it, but by the time we got there, I was tired and kind of cranky.  Therefore, I was not in the best spirits.  Nope.  Not at all.  I was definitely glad to be going back to the dorm.  Before we got on the metro, we stopped and got some 35 ruble (that’s about.... $1.17) ice cream that was really good.  Russian ice cream, like all European ice cream, is significantly better than it’s American counterpart.  Why Americans feel the need to make their ice cream incredibly heavy when it’s obvious that the lighter European version is so much better, I shall never know.  
At any rate, we eventually made it back to the dorm, and other than an attempt to finish off various perishable goods now that we no longer have ready access to a refrigerator.  In other words, a dinner that was more enjoyable due to company than actual content.  So Carley and I are cheap.  Deal with it.  After dinner, we settled down to enjoy Russian homework and relaxing.  Carley attempted to get an episode of Game of Thrones, which.... didn’t really work out.  Slow internet, you see.  She did manage to get ten minutes of it before concluding that the internet was much too slow to be any good for downloading huge long episodes.  Shame, that.  Oh well.
And... that’s all, really.  Just a typical Saturday.  

Of the First Sunday in Moscow, Part the Second

After our little store adventure, we headed back to the dorms to munch on our new food products, Valentina Borisovna came to fetch us for the afternoon’s excursion: Arbot Street.  This is a long pedestrian avenue in Moscow.  It’s one of the city’s oldest streets and there is absolutely no traffic there.  None.  Cars aren’t allowed there.  So, the only killer drivers you have to watch out for are the bicyclists, who are deadly enough in their own way (I swear, they don’t really try to dodge you.  No, they don’t!).  It’s also where a lot of painters set up shop to sell to the tourists and other people.  Some of their artwork was really beautiful, and it’s rather a shame that I couldn’t take pictures or buy them- the canvases and their frames would have been way too heavy for Delta’s free baggage check weight limit!  I did buy one smaller piece, though.  Now all I have to do is decide whether I’m going to give it to someone else, or if I’m going to keep it for myself.  We shall see.

Lots of other nifty things are on Arbot street.  There’s a monument to Pushkin, for example, because he lived in a house there.  The house is a museum about him now, in case you were curious.  Let’s see.... There’s the statue for the famous singer whose name escapes me.  One of his songs was about Arbot street, so I suppose it’s rather fitting.  While we were there, Pushkin’s opposition was making speeches by it.  We didn’t stick around (Lots of police officers were there, and worrying about them asking for papers?  No thank you.) but there were a lot of people who did.  Ah, the joys of politics.  We wound up eating at this little cafeteria style restaurant called MуМу.  The food there was good, identifiable (Well, mostly.  With a bit of help from Valentina Borisovna, at any rate.) and best of all, it wasn’t too horribly expensive!  After МуМу, we pretty much went back to the dorms and crashed for the night.

Now, МуМу was not the only place we explored on Sunday.  No, we were also introduced to one of Russia’s traditional foods, which is absolutely amazing: блины.  Блины is wonderful.  It’s incredibly yummy, provided you get a good interior, it’s filling, and it’s cheap.  We have discovered a lovely little блины store in our neighborhood, and I have plans to try every variety of блины that they offer, provided that it doesn’t sound too disgusting.  And by the time I leave, I will try блины с икрой.  This is not an option!  It’s like, the most traditionally Russian food I can think of (Ok, so borsch is the most traditionally Russian food I can think of, but блины с икрой makes a close second) and it must be tried.  Besides, I like that sort of thing.  Given my feelings about sea food, fish eggs should be right up my alley.  (For those of you who haven’t shoved my random Cyrillic into Google Translate just yet, блины с икрой is blini with caviar.)  

Let’s see..... that’s about it for our first Sunday.  Nothing too horribly earth shattering, but fun all the same.  At least, until our feet got tired.  We did get to take the metro, though, and I always support the metro, because it is public transport.  Not to mention that I just like metros.  I blame Paris for this.  Metro stops in Moscow, by the by, are not like metro stops in Paris.  They made a conscious effort to make each one individual and pretty.  I’m still debating whether I approve of this or not.  I’m leaning towards the not; having lots of statues or painting or marble in your metro stations just seems a tad bit ostentatious and out of place to me.  Better to spend the money on something worthwhile and keep it simple and uniform.  What I most certainly do not approve of is incredibly long, high escalators to reach the metro platforms.  No.  I do not approve of this at all.  Nope.  Not in the least.  They’re terrifying.  I have to keep my eyes shut the entire time on the way down, or I get close to hyperventilating.  Those escalators are not nice to people with a fear of heights.  They really aren’t.

Of Коло́менское and the Church of the Ascension

So, this is the first Real Time blog entry.  As in, these events happened today, May 25.   Enjoy!



Today we went to  Коломенское, the sight of the Moscow summer palace of the Tsars before Peter the Great.  It took nearly fifty minutes on the metro, but it was totally worth it.  The palace was torn down in the....1700s, I think, but it’s been converted into a park of sorts, with a couple nifty things like a house where Peter the Great lived, and the like.  But the best part is the Church of the Ascension.  It’s a small church, more like a chapel, really, built by Ivan the Terrible.  It’s incredibly beautiful, and has a rather amazing icon that takes up an entire wall.  It’s been completely restored, and it’s just awesome.  Even better are the chapel’s acoustics.  They’re... well, I don’t know the details, but I can tell you that they are very, very, very good.
You see, one of my classmates, Isabelle (a French woman who has joined our little Ole Miss group) plays the piano, and had heard something about the acoustics of the chapel.  She managed to ask the person supervising the chapel about the acoustics of the building (I think our teacher helped).  I wasn’t really paying attention, as I was focusing on the icon, then I suddenly heard her call my name.
“Huh?”
“Женя, you sing, don’t you?”
“Yeeeeaaah..... why?”
“Great.  Stand there, and sing.”
“What?”
“Stand there.”  I moved to where she pointed, roughly in the center of the icon, about three feet away from it, facing out.  “Back a little.”  I backed up.  “Other way.”  I turned to face the icon.  “There.  Now, sing.”
So, after a moment or two of hesitation and mental song selection, I did.  I can now say with complete honesty that I have sung a solo in front of a small audience in the Church of the Ascension.  It was.... it’s a little hard to describe.  There’s always something special about singing a song to God, for God in a house of worship, especially when it’s one of the old, impressive European cathedrals or chapels, and the Church of the Ascension is no exception.  What’s more, that chapel has some seriously good acoustics.  It didn’t sound like it was just me singing, there were echoes and a certain richness of sound that’s hard to match.  It was incredibly eerie and haunting.  Susan has the last three seconds or so of my singing on video, and I’ve got to say, even through the recording, it sounds so... different from the way I normally sound, and definitely in a good way.  It was something that I will remember for the rest of my life, and will probably gush about to anyone who will listen.  
I have just experienced the high point of my singing career, and very possibly of my spiritual life as well.  Singing solo at the acoustic center of a UNESCO World Heritage Site that is also a church of your religion, even if it was just the first verse of “It Is Well With My Soul” for a small handful of people visiting the chapel, isn’t something that you get to do every day.  Am I gushing?  I don’t care.  It was a gush worthy moment.

Of The First Days

So, this is the first post in the blog, aaaaand.... I've been here for almost a week.  Oops?  In my defense, there isn't internet in the dorm.  None.  I've been using my Kindle to get the occasional quick email home, but a blog or long newsy email?  Nope.  SO not happening.  Thus, I started typing up what was going on..... until I got distracted by other things.  To make a very long story short, I'm going to be posting something like this:
Post 1 for the day:  Catch up.  This'll be stuff that happened in the first week that I just hadn't gotten around to typing up properly until a later date.


Post 2 for the day:  Real time blog!  This'll be what actually happened the day of the posting.  


This process will continue until I catch up with everything, at which point I will just post what happened that day.  I'm going to try to be very good and post everyday.  I do not promise that this will actually happen, mind you, I just figure that since I'm only here for a month, I may as well do my best to get something up every day.


Thus, I offer you the first post, which contains the first day and a half or so of my month here in Moscow.



First day in Moscow!  Or, well, second day, really. So far everything’s been going pretty well.  There have been a few mishaps here and there, but nothing too horrible.  Still, it’s a relief to be here after all the fun glitches with getting my visa on time (and I wasn’t the only one who had them).  In all honesty, other than the fact that all the writing is in Cyrillic instead of using the Roman alphabet, Moscow reminds a lot of Bratislava.  The Soviet era architecture, the Slavic language, just the general way people behave, it’s a lot like Slovakia.  So, all in all, it feels a little bit like coming home.  So far, I really like it here.
We’re staying in the dorms of the International University at Moscow.  The dorms are pretty standard, two people per person.  They each have their own ваная and туалет (please don’t hold me to that spelling) so we at least don’t have to use community bathrooms.  I mean, they’re really, really small, but still, better than having to try to deal with Russian small talk at this point.  In other news, like most European places, there isn’t any air conditioning in the dorms.  It’s cool enough that we can just use the windows, though.  We just leave them open all the time, and the air circulates.  It works, and we don’t really have to worry about leaving the window wide open due to the fact that we’re on the seventh floor.  If we were on one of the first couple floors, I’d probably be more worried about having the doors open.
The first day, we mostly ran around doing the necessary little things.  We arrived at the air port, got picked up by Nadia, the director of our program, went to the dorms, and filled out the necessary paperwork there.  Then we met up with Isaac and Sean, two older students from the Ole Miss Russian program.  They’re here finishing up a semester-long study abroad.  It’s been great having them here, because they know all the things like where the cheapest food is, where the reliable ATM machine is, where the reliable money converters are, etc.  Plus, they’re both really nice, funny guys.  At any rate, we then proceeded onward to exchange dollars (or in my case, euro) into rubles.  Right now, the rate’s pretty good: 30 rubles to the dollar.  After we had some rubles, we went out to lunch.
Lunch was.... interesting to say the least.  We went to a little café called Пальмира that wasn’t too far from the dorms.  Valentina Borisovna was at first adamant that we use the Russian menus, before realizing that Carly, Katie, and I were staring at the items in stunned horror due to total and complete lack of comprehension.  Isaac very quietly started helping me translate the menu.  Eventually, I would up getting something called грибы кокот, which was this incredibly yummy melted cheese and mushroom thing, for something like 120 rubles.  On the downside?  Isaac and I forgot to look at the amount in grams, and it turned out to pretty much be an appetizer that wasn’t quite enough to constitute a meal.  Still, it was quite good, and I wasn’t all that hungry, so I was ok with that.  Meanwhile, Carly, Isaac, and Sean ordered a sea food omelette that looked pretty good to me... but not to Isaac, who had apparently just ordered what Sean ordered without bothering to check.  His look of disgust when he unearthed a squid tentacle was priceless.
On a side note, Russia has been quite willing to cater to my pescatarian ideals.  They’re quite fond of sea food, so I’ve been able to have that whenever I need to get meat, or get something involving mushrooms.  I may cave and try пелмены, though.  I’ve been told they’re really good, for all you never want to tell an American what’s in them until they actually eat them.  That usually means that they include some form of meat that would be considered totally disgusting by American terms.  The last time I tried something like that, I ate tartare, one of the few foods for which I would seriously consider giving up the pescatarian thing.  It really must be done.
Back to the story.  After lunch, we went electronics shopping.  Valentina Borisovna needed to get a Russian SIM card for her Moldovan phone, and at least one of us needed to get a cell phone that would work in Russia.  As I had the sole unintelligent American phone of the group, I was nominated to try and see if a Russian SIM card would work with my phone.  They didn’t.  As such, I wound up purchasing a very cheap, this-phone-will-operate-on-the-most-basic-level-and-you-will-be-content-with-such type phone along with a SIM card for about 990 rubles.  Basically, I bought a phone and a month’s worth of calls and text for about $33.  Better still, the phone should work with a French SIM card, so when I go over to France for three months, and really DO need a phone, I’ll only need the card.  Reuse is a very good thing!
After that, we headed back to the dorms, got settled in a little more, then headed down to the dormitory’s snack bar.  There, you can buy snack food, drinks, or a very light dinner for a decent price.  I wound up buying the Russian equivalent of instant mashed potatoes and a bottle of Nestea and ate there.  Afterwards, I headed back upstairs, and tried to read for a little while before collapsing in an achy, exhausted heap on my bed at around 6:30 pm.
You have, of course, anticipated the punch line.  I woke up at around 5:35 the next morning, and my body refused to go back to sleep.  Thus, I spent a quiet, rather uneventful morning reading on the windowsill, and looking out at a really rather beautiful sunset.  Carley (my roommate) woke up and went back to sleep sporadically throughout the morning, before deciding to stay awake around 9:00 am.  At 10:10 or so, we went down to the snack bar to get a breakfast of сочник и чай.  Around 11:30, Sean and Isaac took us to show us the ATM with the lowest withdrawal fee and a little grocery store in the general vicinity.  It was a very nice little grocery store, although the experience of purchasing things in a language you can barely speak is always a little harrowing.  This is where knowing how to count really comes in handy: If you know the numbers, you can understand how many rubles they want you to hand over!


So, that was the first day and a half or so.   Maybe it doesn't seem like much, but it was certainly enough for me!