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!