Aufwiedersehen, Bremen! Hallo, Berlin!

Tomorrow I'm moving to Berlin. The day I've been waiting for for the past three months is finally here. Right now I'm just worried about moving all of my shit halfway across Germany by train without it getting lost/stolen. We'll see what happens.

(photo: a graffiti wall in Amsterdam)

Last weekend I went to Amsterdam with my friend Margaret, which was incredible, it's such a beautiful city and they just know how to live the right way. There are millions of bicycles because it's not worth it to own a car (unless you have to commute to Germany or another city to work everyday). And everyone, even the bus drivers, have a sense of humor though trying to understand Dutch is a total mind-fuck for someone who knows English and German because it's the in-between step linguistically but still remains totally incomprehensible. Needless to say, we got lost one night for three hours in the outskirts of the city and getting back to the apartment was not an easy feat.

We had our last day of language class on Wednesday and we all went out to the Lagerhouse until two in the morning, which was great, but now I'm terribly sick.

Amsterdam at night. Canals run throughout the entire city.

They call it "the Venice of the North."

My caramel cappuccino.

Bremen, the city I've been living in for the past month. This is the center of town, Domsheide.

Above: Maselnitsa festivities; Below: Sled ride (caution: scary)
Our very international Saturday-night party; countries represented: US, Russia, Japan, China, Korea, Holland, Canada, Belgium, Denmark, England, Poland, France, Taiwan, South Africa and the Congo (maybe we should get together and solve the world's problems, no?)

Blini, long hikes in the Siberian wilderness, and sore muscles

So where did I leave off? I feel like so much has happened in the past week, but I’ll try to give everyone the Readers’ Digest version. As I mentioned in my last post, I agreed to go to a Maselnitsa celebration with a few people from GBT on Sunday. After carefully locating our proposed meeting spot on a map, I was fairly confident that I knew how to get there. But after I got on the bus, I got a little disoriented and, given that I couldn’t see out the windows because they were frozen with condensation, got off at the wrong stop. By the time I figured out where I was (which is difficult, mainly because there are no street signs), I was supposed to have met my friends ten minutes ago. I asked a very nice woman on the street how to get to Kykolnii Theatre (the place where I was supposed to be), and headed off in the right direction by foot. While nearly running down the street I called my friends on the phone and told them I would be about 10 minutes (in Russian, by the way, which is not the easiest thing to do over the phone while running). They waited for me for 20 minutes with a bus full of people, which was incredibly kind and considerate of them. I’m really glad they didn’t end up leaving without me because I had a blast. Tal’si is basically an ethnological museum that is a model of what a typical Russian peasant village would look like. There were a ton of things going on there, including sledding (see picture), burning a symbolic doll representing the end of winter, and eating lots of blini. Between my semi-decent Russian, the few words they knew in English, and the common language of laughter, we had little difficulty communicating with each other. I came home feeling incredibly excited to be here and on my way to making some real Russian friends.

The school week went by slowly and was incredibly stressful as usual. I got lost midweek when my Grammar teacher started talking about the verbs “to be blue,” “to be green,” etc. It turns out that every word in Russian can be a noun, an adjective, and a verb depending on its form and the way you conjugate it. By the time Thursday rolled around, I was feeling pretty discouraged. I headed off to the weekly GBT meeting and again had a few failed conversations that pretty much involved me pretending to know what was going on when in actuality I was very confused. Right before I left the meeting, a guy named “Dima” came up to me and asked me what I was doing that Sunday. I told him I didn’t have any plans, and then agreed to go on a “trip” with him and few other people from the group. I asked him 3 times where we were going and left the meeting still not quite understanding what I had gotten myself into. All I gathered from the conversation was that we were meeting at the main train station on Sunday morning at 10 am, I was supposed to bring a lunch, and something about wearing better shoes (I had been wearing my black high-heeled boots at the time). To make matters worse, I got on the wrong bus on the way home and after asking the bus driver how to get home, he laughed and said “I don’t know.” At this point no one else was left on the bus, it was nearly 9:30 at night, and we were somewhere outside of the city almost in the woods. Luckily he was really nice and drove around until he saw a mashrootka I could take. It took me nearly an hour to get home from where I was, which means I had gone way, WAY out of the way. I got home feeling frustrated with the impossible transportation system, confused about what I had committed to on Sunday, and generally discouraged with my language skills. I was so glad that the school week was almost over and that I had a 4-day weekend coming up.

On Saturday Dima text messaged me and gave me more details about our “trip.” It turns out the word he said was “nohote,” which means “hike;” I had thought he said “noezd,” which means trip. Although I was a little nervous about hiking in the Siberian wilderness, I still agreed to go and when we set out on Sunday, I was really glad I did. It was a beautiful day and we took the electronic train to an area about an hour outside of the city. The views were absolutely breathtaking, and it felt good to actually get some exercise. And oh did I get some exercise. We hiked uphill in the snow for two and a half hours and then stopped for a short lunch. It was tough, but I was having a great time and I assumed at this point that we were going to make our way back downhill after lunch. It turns out we hiked until 7:00 pm, involving a lot more uphill treks and some climbing. By the end I was dead tired and really cold because the sun had gone down around six. When I had agreed to go hiking, I kind of imagined something like the hiking trails at Rickett’s Glen in northern PA. I guess I forgot that I was in the middle of Siberia, and that Siberians are a lot tougher than your average hiker. I went straight to bed when I got back and could barely move the next day, which was unfortunate because I had a planned excursion to Listviaka with my program. The excursion to Listvianka, which is the closest location on Lake Baikal from Irkutsk, was a lot of fun, but all day I was looking forward to getting back so that I could take a hot bath. Luckily I have all day today (Tuesday) to recover. So that’s my crazy week in a nutshell! I’m still missing everyone at home, which is the main reason why I’ve been trying to keep busy. Hopefully there will be more adventures to come!

Sorry it took so long, but here's my novel...

Hi lovely friends,
I figure it's about time to write, because I'm getting homesick, and the scab from the last laydown game has finally disappeared completely, so I'm taking that as some sort of indication that it's time to write home...

I am doing really really well. My life here is relaxed, but not boring, and has a very nice balance of leisure time and work time. My courses take much less time than at school. They only meet once a week, but they're all really really interesting nonetheless. Economy of Sex, which is about prostitution and sex-trafficking in the 19th and 20th centuries, Contemporary Theater, which is taught by one of the most wonderful people ever, probably has one of the best teaching attitudes I've ever encountered, jokes with us, teases us but never in a mean way, and absolutely loooves theater, and philosophy, and goes off on these random tangents all the time... He was also the president at College de Philosophie, which is a pretty well known university in Paris...Then I have a course about religion and politics, which is a big deal here now because of the whole "affair de la voile" legislation etc., so that's going to be interesting...only problem is, the professor has a rather pronounced lisp, so while we're all struggling to understand French anyhow, the added lisp makes it sometimes near impossible. Then a class about immigrants in Paris, which is a lot of work, the only class I have now that nears the workload of a Wesleyan class, but that is still enjoyable and also really relevant because of the "crise de l'identité nationalle"...(So many crises, ah so French!)

In addition, I'm in a choir at the Sorbonne, which is nice. It's not a super good choir, but it's nice to get to sing a little bit, and I'm hoping with time I may make some French friends, so we'll see.

My host family is good. It's still a little awkward at times, as I'm still not totally comfortable just hanging around the house, and I still feel sometimes like I'm taking up their space, but things are in general really really good. The woman is an ex-actress, is very warm-hearted, sings the French language beautifully, and adores animals maybe more than humans. This has resulted in the four cats (Dou-dou, Freemouse, Rocco, and Ninochka) who run around the apartment like they own the place, jump all over the bookcases, lounge on top of the warm TV, and snuggle in bed with me if I leave my door open at night. I stopped doing that when I woke up to Freemousse's nose in my mouth, and then again several minutes later when she decided to give me an affectionate love bite. Nonetheless, it's adorable to see how much Genevieve loves them. They are her babies. Phillipe (I love that name) is her husband, and I was kind of scared of him at first, because he is very French, and was rather gruff at first, and I can't really understand him most of the time because he talks so fast...but now he's loosened up a bit, and is quiet most of the time but is very goofy and funny when he talks...He is an architect/works on the sets of movies making sets/used to be a body guard in London which is AWESOME. I've also met Genevieve's son and his wife, who come over every week with their 10 year old daughter. One of the most French moments so far was when we were all eating dinner around the table, and Dou-dou, the cat, jumped from the loft part of the apartment to the bookcase, quite a feat, and almost knocked something over, and all of a sudden I was surrounded by a chorus of "Ohhhlala.." "OHH lolo..." Oh la.." "OhLALA..." I just started laughing.

I've begun to pick up some of the French mannerisms, of which I am quite proud. The funny little puffy thing they do with their lips when they don't know the answer to something...Pfff...The "euuu" sound that takes the place of American "uhhh," the dropped words here and there, the way they're gruff and unobliging until the last minute when they do something really nice...(Today I was really fed up with this guy at a restaurant who wouldn't take the bill my friend offered him, and asked me if I couldn't pay for her...ok....fine....and then he gave me free candy.) One of the best moments so far was the other morning, when I said one of the most common phrases "Oui, d'accord" and Genevieve stopped and said, "you just said that without an accent just now. You said it just like a Parisian." I was happy for the rest of the day.

Unfortunately, the perfect Parisian accent doesn't extend to the rest of my speaking ability. I had this idea that I would get here, and just by being surrounded by French things all the time would somehow lose my accent...It's not that easy. Being here has made me much more aware of how non-authentic my accent is, and how unlikely it is that it will ever go away completely. Another frustrating thing is that while my comprehension has skyrocketed since I got here, speaking and writing take a much longer time to develop. I find myself understanding everything that goes on in a conversation, or in a lecture, and unable to respond without stumbling over my words, or having to take awkwardly long pauses to find the right words to express what I want to say. It's frustrating. But I'm learning, and I know I've made progress.

Although the budged Paris life consists mostly of crepes and baguette sandwiches, I do splurge on little things from time to time...yesterday, some friends and I went to Pierre Hermé, arguably the best macaroons in Paris, and certainly those with the most original flavors. I got two, fragola balsamique, and fragola wasabi, and gobbled them up. Then to La Durée, where we ordered the cheapest thing on the menu just to get to sit in the beautiful tea room with japanese tea garden themed murals on the walls, and dark cherry wood furniture, and shiny silver spoons. Then, on the way home, I decided to get a few macaroons for Phillipe because it was his birthday a couple days ago. So I get the smallest box and try to pay for it with my credit card. But there's a 15 E limit, and I'm three short....oh well, I guess three more macaroons won't hurt, so here come three more, milk chocolate passion fruit, rose (the most amazing rose flavor I've ever had in a macaroon, perfect), and rich salted caramel. You can't offer someone a box of macaroons for their birthday, and then take out the three you got for yourself and eat them right there, so obviously I had to eat them before hand. Then after dinner, chocolate cassis flavor. So basically I don't want to think about how many macaroons I ate yesterday.

Alright, I'm realizing this email is bordering on a novel. I'm going to try to write more often, and in smaller snippets.

I love you all to pieces. Really I do. I'll write again soon!

>

Russian hippies, shameless homophobia, and first signs of homesickness

On Thursday night I went to my first meeting at Great Baikal Trail (GBT), where I will be doing my internship. After a longish mashrootka ride and a lot of uncertainty over whether or not I was even going in the right direction, a girl from the organization named Natasha met me at the bus station near the GBT office. Luckily she spoke English really well and explained to me what the organization is about and what I will be doing there. Basically, GBT is an environmental organization dedicated to preserving Lake Baikal and advocating for responsible use of its natural resources. The lake is a spot of immense ecological interest, and GBT is just one of the many organizations that spreads awareness about pollution in and around the lake. They are also working on constructing a hiking trail (hense the name “Great Baikal Trail”) in the areas surrounding the lake. From what I understood, I will be helping them translate publications into English and also doing some “on site” work, which might include going on expeditions and teaching children about the lake. I also think that I might be teaching English to club members, but the details about that are still a little fuzzy…

After I was introduced to everyone I realized that I was in a room full of Siberian Wesleyanites: casually-dressed, environmentally conscious, open-minded hippies. These are exactly the type of people that I would love to become friends with during my time here. The only problem is, my conversational Russian is horrible, and its very difficult for me to understand colloquial language and have any sort of meaningful conversation that goes beyond the basic “Where are you from/what do you do” drill. I want so badly to make Russian friends, but not being able to communicate puts a serious dent in those possibilities. Nonetheless, I signed up to join them tomorrow on a trip to Tal’si for the “Maselnitsa” celebration, which is basically the Russian version of Marti Gras with pancakes.

Yesterday I went to another non-profit organization that coordinates opportunities for young people to gain access to education and get involved in charitable work. The intention was for a group of us to go and talk about differences between life in America and life in Russia. As it turned out, Sara, the girl who had organized this whole exchange wasn’t able to go because they changed the time at the very last minute. Other people that were supposed to go also dropped out, and as it turned out Alison and I were the only two who were going to be able to go. The plan was that Sara (who speaks fluent Russian) was going to walk us there and introduce us before leaving to go to her class. At the last minute Alison couldn't go and it turned out that I was the only one who could go. I really didn’t want to do it by myself, but I felt bad because Sara had made the commitment and someone had to go to fulfill the obligation. Besides, as Sara explained to me on the way there, the people who were going to be at the meeting would most likely be students that could speak English. As it turned out, no one knew a word of English, and Sara left before I had a chance to back out. So here I am, sitting at a roundtable with about ten Russian students who want to hear about life in America, in Russian. And they have questions, detailed questions that were both difficult to understand and difficult to explain, even in English. The “meeting” basically consisted of me half explaining something in broken Russian and then giving up halfway through because I didn’t have the vocabulary to fully articulate my idea. Between questions, there were awkward silences that were almost unbearable as the students just sat there and stared at me. During this whole time I wanted to kill Sara, how could she do this to me? At least if she had told me that they couldn’t speak English, she could have let me know so that I could prepare something ahead of time. Or, after realizing that they didn’t speak English when she dropped me off she could have either skipped her class or told them that we would have to do it another day. But no, she just left me there, with little else to do other than nervously laugh in between phrases. After the “official” part of the meeting was over, I had a more casusal discussion with a few people that seemed to be going well. That is, until they wanted me to explain the differences between Republicans and Democrats in the United States. After trying to explain the healthcare bill (something that I barely understand in English), I made the huge mistake of bringing up same-sex marriages. It kind of just slipped out, mainly because at Wesleyan it is a completely acceptable topic of conversation and because I knew the verb “to marry” and I was scrabbling for things to say. As soon as I mentioned the phrase “gay rights” the students I was talking to burst into laughter like elementary school children. At first, I wasn’t sure if they were laughing at my Russian or at the topic at hand, but pretty soon it was clear that the idea of gay rights was incredibly funny to them. I hadn’t even indicated that I am in favor of gay rights; I was simply explaining to them that same-sex marriage is legal in some states and illegal in others. After they continued to laugh, even as I was talking to them, I got pretty pissed off. The least that they could do is appreciate the fact that I was trying to articulate a very difficult topic in a language that I can’t speak very well. After sternly asking them why what I was saying was so funny, they sort of stopped laughing but continued to giggle. I understand that Russians are very homophobic and that it’s simply a cultural norm to be against gay rights; I accept that, and I even respect that. But the fact that they were acting incredibly immature and were rudely laughing instead of trying to listen to was I was saying really made me angry. I left pretty soon after the whole debacle, and I was so flustered that I almost started crying on the mashrootka ride home. I moped around for the rest of the night, missing Wesleyan, political correctness, and the English language.

So there’s my novel-long post for this week. I promise that the next one will be more concise. Right now I’m sitting in my room on a Saturday night watching an old Russian movie on tv and catching up with friends on facebook. Most of my friends here when to Ulan-Ude for the weekend, so I’ve been hanging by myself for most of the day. Next weekend I’m going back to Lake Baikal for an excursion in Listvianka so there will be more pictures to come!

Siberian landscape
Our cottage at Nikita's on Olkhan Island
Quick story: During our excursion on the lake, we were pretty much under the impression that our driver didn't really know where he was going and was just driving in circles on the ice until he found the spots that we were supposed to stop at. On our way back to the island, the driver of the other mashrootka on excursion called our driver because he was lost, on the lake. In pure Russian fashion, the directions were "Follow the sun" or "Go against the direction of the wind."
Lunch

Scenes from Doctor Zhivago
Our mashrootka (parked on the lake, by the way)

Abandoned ship

Lake Baikal at sunset
Irkutsk: "The Paris of Siberia" (yea right)
A slide made of ice in the center city square
Ice horseman, ice maze

Лед! (Ice!)

Me standing on the lake

Photo of my friend Becca from inside a cave

Giant icicles!

The ice park across from our university

First week of classes and Olkhan Island

Russia never fails to make me feel like a complete idiot. All day long I only mildly understand what people are saying to me and express myself in only the simplest and shortest sentences. Native Russians speak far too quickly and do not annunciate their words enough for me to understand even the words and phrases that I do know. Although it’s getting easier, it’s hard to imagine a point in time when I will be fluent. School days are long and boring, and there is not nearly enough caffeine in tea (the preferred hot beverage by all Russians) to keep me going.

In light of frustrations at school, I decided to skip class on Friday (evidently something that is perfectly acceptable here) and go on a last-minute weekend trip to Olkhan Island with some friends. Naturally, we traveled the 7-hour journey by mashrootka, otherwise known as the Russian version of Greyhound buses (enough said). Now, I mentioned the mashrootka earlier, but I don’t think I articulated in enough detail the whole mashrootka experience. These van-sized buses seat sixteen people in a space that appears to seat only eight. The rows face each other, so half of the passengers have the pleasure of facing the rear of the vehicle during the bumpy ride. Undoubtedly, these are Soviet-era vehicles with the durability of an army tanks, and if you’re lucky, your mashrootka will have its own gasoline supply ready to be pumped from a barrel stored behind the back seats. This way, you don’t need to stop at gas station along the way; you just pull off the side the road and your driver pumps the gas right there. There is also something to be said about the Russian highway system, or lack thereof. Right outside of the city, it’s a paved, two-lane road with potholes approximately every 5 meters. A few kilometers (yes, I use the metric system now) outside of the city there are no actual “lanes” per se, and the terrain is gravel, not asphalt. Later, you’re driving on dirt, snow, and ice on what appears to be a back country pathway. But no, this is a perfectly acceptable road, and they even equip these “roads” with roadsigns. This may sound very dangerous, but honestly, a marshootka could probably drive through a heavily wooded forest without sustaining much damage. If a marshrootka gets in an accident, you’d be more concerned with the thing that it hit than the marshrootka itself.

After this long and bumpy ride we were greeted by a staff member from Nikita’s, the place where we had booked rooms for the weekend. The guy from Nikita’s picks us up in a marshrootka, of course, and drives us across the lake to the island. Yes, you drive across the lake. And there are roadsigns. In the lake. Naturally, I was afraid that we would fall through the ice when I learned that this was how we were getting to the island, but I was assured that the lake freezes in late November, and stays that way until early April. The ice is 7 meters thick.

Nikita’s is located in a tiny village consisting only of log cabins whose inhabitants were only introduced to electricity in 2005. There’s no running water or plumbing. For 800 rubles a night (about $15) you get your own little room in one of the cabins, complete with carved wood architecture and a stove-oven heater. You’re also fed breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and have free access to the banya (which is your only option for bathing since there is no running water). On Saturday, we went on an excursion across the lake. For most of the day we were driving around on the ice, even the parts where the ice had collected into stacks of giant cubes. There are few words to explain this whole experience—a video will be soon to come. Basically it was like the scene from Doctor Zhivago after he has deserted from the Red army and is wondering the Siberian tundra in a blizzard to find his way home (except here it’s too cold to snow; instead, tiny specks of ice fall from the sky and blow around on the ground like sand).

On our return trip to Irkutsk by way of mashrootka, our driver refused to stop during the 7-hour journey for a bathroom break and the marshrootka was completely full, leaving absolutely no room to move my freezing cold feet (of course there is no heat). About 20 minutes outside of the city, he stopped to have a smoke break. This was quite possibly the most miserable travel experience of my life. That’s all I’m going to say about that.

Although I had a great weekend away from the craziness of the city, I was happy to come “home.” It was good for me to go away so that I could begin to identify the dormitory as my new home, and I was really glad to catch up with my other friends. Even now as I sit in my room listening to a random dog barking down the hallway (there are various animals in the dormitory whose owners seem to be anonymous), I feel like this place isn’t so foreign any longer. I still wake up each morning wondering why the hell I’m in the middle of Siberia (oftentimes I feel like I’m living in Soviet Russia), but it’s beginning to become a little more comfortable and familiar.

Na, und?

Thursday, February 4

I've now been in Deutschland a week now, and slowly acclimating to the environment. Luckily, the weather is actually way warmer than Connecticut or Chicago but the sun is rarely out and it's always overcast so it feels like it's always night time. And always snowing.

Unfortunately, I'm not yet in Berlin, still in Bremen, a Northern coastal city that I think was once a castle and still has a moat. I've only met one other American and one Brit, so I speak German 24/7, which is great, but exhausting. I had a dream two nights ago in German, which I never thought would happen. I also dreamt that Kaitlin wanted to get a tattoo on her hip of a dragon (?), so...yeah...I have a lot of weird dreams. This is definitely the most international experience of my life: the students in my class are from Sri Lanka, China, India, Tunisia, Albania, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Colombia and Russia. No Europeans. It's pretty hilarious to listen to us all speak German though. Just try to imagine it.

In case it makes you feel better Kate, before I wrote this post I watched an episode of the OC.

Kudos on the name by the way. You're totally brilliant.

Love to all.

First Beginnings

31 January.

There’s Jan Jacques from France, Mark from England, Anna from Holland, Rhia from Canada, Paolo from Spain, Christian from Denmark, Brendon from Oregan, Becca from Virginia, Lina from Germany, and many other Chinese students whose names I cannot pronounce nor even guess how to spell. Our dorm is just like any other college dorm: people hanging out in the kitchen cooking together and drinking tea, running back and forth across the hall from room to room, drinking together on a Saturday night. I’ve met so many people within the past two days that I can’t even imagine how many great friends I will have during my time here. For the past few days I’ve had nothing to do and have felt no guilt spending extra time under the warm covers, debating electronic music with Jan Jacques, and qualifying any outing into the subzero degree weather as a great accomplishment. I’ve actually enjoyed my lack of access to the internet, and I’ve much better spent my time staring at the ice crystals on my window that completely obsure my view of the crazy Siberian locals who I can hear playing basketball outside my window in -15 degree weather, in the dark.

My roommate and I have been living off of cereal and chocolate, though tonight we have endeavored to cook eggs and toast. I have no idea what the future holds: my class schedule is still a mystery to me, I haven’t yet started my internship, and evidently I have yet to really experience authentic Irkutsk temperatures.

Even as I think of how much more cold I will encounter and the length my stay here, I am nothing other that excited for what is come. I plan on affording my schoolwork as a secondary concern and taking advantage of the everyday opportunities to speak Russian on the street, meet people from all around the world, and making up for the misery I endured last semester under piles of reading and paper assignments. I set as my goal to read Anna Karenina in Russian by the end of the semeter, taking it only one chapter a night. Although today I guiltlessly put off starting it and instead popped one of my OC dvds into my laptop and watched it my bed with a cup of instant coffee.

Arrival to Siberia

29 January

The first full day in a strange and cold place halfway around the world has ended and it is nearly time for my jetlagged self to head off to bed. It was an exhausting 30-hr journey that I’m already dreading to endure again in May. In Moscow, we had fun trying to figure out how to get to our terminal, though after asking three different people for directions, we finally caught a shuttle to the terminal (though of course this involved a lot of pushing and shoving to get a spot for both ourselves and our suitcases). I slept in short shifts on the plane to Irkutsk (5 hours), and disembarked into a surprisingly warm climate (“warm” meaning in the teens, later described by a Russian as “very warm”). The representative from the university who picked us up was only mildly friendly but nonetheless seemed nice enough. When I got to the dorm, which from the outside appeared very much “Soviet-style,” I met our “babushka” (aka the woman who guards the door/takes our keys when we come and go) and carried my 100-lb luggage up four flights of stairs. The dorm is—ok. The room is small, but relatively nice. We have a fridge, a tv, a balcony (which we won’t be using anytime soon for anything other than a freezer), a heater (which is quite toasty), and a small closet.

After our brief stop at our dorm, the woman who picked us up at the airport (Irai’ina) brought us to the school to register. After a confusing conversation about how to go about choosing classes, we were sent home on a mashrootka (translated into English as “mini car bus”) with very little information about where we were supposed to get off. After getting off at the wrong stop, forgetting which dorm was ours, and almost getting hit by cars while crossing the street, we finally found our dorm. Exhausted, we unpacked and headed off to bed at 7pm. I unfortunately woke up at 3am feeling completely rested and I haven’t slept since.

Today began no less confusing than yesterday. We again got off at the wrong stop on the mashrootka, but luckily made it to school in time. It seems as though the Russian version of “university” is much, much different than the American version. Classes don’t always take place in the same room, students freely talk during class, and professors take phone calls. My second class consisted of the professor reading from an overhead projector for the entirety of the 90-min class while we were expected to copy it down ad verbatim.

After class, my roommate and I successfully purchased food, cleaning products, cell phones, and international calling cards. Everything here is such a project and often involves doing things wrong a few times before getting it right. We’ve mostly had to rely on asking people on the street, who have been surprisingly friendly, but difficult to understand because they talk so quickly. When we got back to the dorm we cleaned off our desk (which was filthy), stocked our fridge, called our parents, and felt very much pleased with ourselves.

I’ve now just returned to my room after having met a few of our neighbors upstairs. So far we’ve met other students from the US, and students from Canada, England, Denmark, France, China, and Holland. Everyone seems very friendly and agrees that the university is not worth fretting over, it’s just very—Russian. To conclude, by the end of my first full day in Siberia I’ve successfully navigated my way back and forth from school, purchased a phone and a calling card, stocked up on groceries and other supplies, got a lead on how to get internet in the dorm, made friends, and got invited to a party tomorrow night. Tomorrow I have an excursion of the city led by a woman named “Natalie,” who will meet us in front of the school (however, there are many different entrances to the school and I’m not sure which is the “front”; additionally, we have no idea what Natalie looks like). While last night I was contemplating ways to get out of the whole situation, I now feel 10x better after having made a few friends. Although, I have to say, it is COLD, and I’ve been told that today was “warm” . . .

Welcome all!

Start blogging, now.