Думь Дити, Думь Дити, Думь Думь Думь

I'm in a McDonald's down the street from where I live. My favorite internet spot in town. I like to hear people saying the Russified Englishn words on the menu: Cheekeen Nowgetz, Beeg Makh, Koka Kowla Laight. Oh, and they've got blini with jam (dzhem) on their breakfast menu! Wi-Fi here is free, and McDonalds in always bustling. I'm attempting to translate (with the help of my Russian "mother" and the handy-dandy internet translator) my favorit kids book: Hand, Hand, Fingers, Thumb. I'm going to give it to the kids at the shelter that I worked at. Since I myself will not be able to give it to them (the shelter has been quaranteened for the past two weeks with the flu) I'm thinking that it will survive and not be torn to shreds (they are sweet kids, but they get a little too excited when we come to see them). So, next to the English I'm putting in, in black pen, the words in Russian. It's a little rough, but at least they can read it now. Well, back to the business at hand. Dum Ditty, Dum Ditty, Dum Dum Dum . . .

Our last main project for the semester is a fifteen page paper on some aspect of Russian culture, politics, or society. According to Harley, this “should not be a paper that you can write in a university library in America.” In other words, for this project we are required to interview three Russians about our research topic. So, Harley set up a time where we could go talk with a publisher that had come and spoken to our class a couple months ago. So we went and had чай there today. He was very nice, answered our questions and talked with us, and was kind enough to give us his point of view in English (YES!). He runs a Christian publishing house in Nizhnii Novgorod. They mainly translate Christian books from other languages into Russian: a risky business endeavor since less than 1% of the Russian population considers themselves (non-Orthodox) Christians. Coupled with Russia's notorious disregard for copyrights, their actual customer base is extremely small.
We also visited the Auto Factory in Nizhnii, build as part of Stalin's industrialization project, and opened by Henry Ford himself. Funny that an opportunity for capitalism was an instrument for communism. During the thirties, American Communist sympathizers went to work here and establish the car industry in Russia. At one point this was the largest car manufacturing plant in Russia, producing everything from the tires to the engines. During the war it was converted into a military production place; producing firearms and tanks. It was bombed eight times by the Germans- was damaged, but not extensively so .We visited the museum part, full of cars, German shells, and a lot of information in Russian that I couldn't understand entirely. Harley let us climb in and on the display tanks. Heeheee. “One benefit of the economic crisis here is that they can't hire the babushkas to constantly watch.” Yes, Harley said that. I guess I shouldn't be surprised. He was the one taking pictures in the metro in Kazan' at which point a women said over the loud speaker that taking pictures in the metro is запрещено! (forbidden!) I think he has been living here for so long that he follows the Russian love for rule-breaking. As one of our speakers said “we have good laws, they just aren't enforced.”

We had a girls' night at Debbie's apartment last Friday. Just the five American girls. The main event of which was throwing plastic figurines out the 8th floor window, and watching them float down. Nastya went to the equivalent of the dollar store (I like to call it the “Ruble Store,”) and bought a bunch of cheap plastic things. Mine was a plastic palm tree. Maria had a plastic machete holding man. We made them some sweet parachutes out of plastic bags and saran wrap. They were amazing, and most of them floated all the way down, provided they didn't hit the side of the building before they reached the bottom.

We went to watch the football game the other night. Russia vs. Slovenia. We got tickets to watch it in a theater downtown. We got there and the screen was not working. It would show about 5 second clips at a time. There was a roomful of angry people. Every time the screen turned off they would start yelling. They started filtering out, beer bottles in hand. Anya told us that the manager was hiding in a room upstairs. “He doesn't want to get killed.” It was all good, though. We got our money back, and watched the game for a few minutes through the front of a store window. And as far as I know, the manager came out of it unscathed.

Waiting for the bus the other night in the wet and cold, I stood at the bus stop for 45 minutes in all. Watching every single bus in the city pass by except for my bus. However, it was not a bad wait, as halfway through, one of these buses pulled up, in the dark and rain, covered in dirt with very dim lights inside. The doors opened, nobody got out or in, but a large juice box was tossed out onto the sidewalk in front of me by some unseen hand, the doors quickly closed and the bus drove away. Somehow several minutes later that juice box ended up in the road, under the tires of a big bus, at which point it popped and sounded like an exploding tire.

Before I came here I bought some pink gloves. I found them at the Good Will, brand new, and 50 cents. The lady that I'm living with noticed them, and, here, having matching hats, gloves and scarfs is a big thing. As anyone who knows me would vouch, I don't really like the color pink . . . one moring I was on my way out the door and Galina says to me “Laura, you're not wearing your pink gloves today!” “Oh,” I say, “I like the black ones.” “One minute.” She goes and digs in her closet, pulls out a bejeweled Barbie pink hat and scarf set, gives them to me as a “present.” Sweet woman.

We heard the Putin would be in town today to open the new bridge. Coincidentally, today is a holiday and we didn't have classes. So we met up, planned a few other things we were going to do, and headed out on the town. We went to the bridge and didn't see Putin. But it's okay, we still have Moscow.

Проходить

I moved in with my Russian “family” last Saturday. This “family” is comprised of a mother. Other families got fathers, brothers, sisters, and a mix of the above, “fathers” being the most lacking component. There are several reason for this. One reason being that Russian men's average life span is 58 years old (I hope my facts are right). Another reason being that the divorce rate here is 80%. My “mother's” name is Galina. She's probably in her late 50's, like to watch Russian soap operas, is very dramatic, and always on the phone with somebody. She made me answer her phone for her the other day, because she was taking a shower. “Laura, Laur! See who it is . . .”

My secret belief is that she can speak English fluently, although I have absolutely zero proof of this. Her daughter was visiting the other day and caught me off guard by knowing the English names for all the animals on my mug.

I've been walking to school every morning. One and one half hours. Quite a change from the five minute walk when we were on campus. But it's better this way. The first morning I took the bus . . . the usual rush-hour bus ride . . . Forty five minutes to go the 5 miles to school. Traffic jams, very crowded, pressed up against hot bodies, some overdue for a washing, and telling you so by the odor.

At 7:18 my alarm goes off. I try to sneak through the living room where Galina sleeps, without waking her up, but have not succeeded yet.
I have a nice room here-- the only bedroom in the apartment. It's warm and cozy, and looks down on a busy sidewalk, and the bus stop and street a little further away.
We have a bathtub, but not a shower. Now, this bath tub has a hose with a sprayer on the end, and, in theory, you would hang it up to make a shower, only it doesn't hang up. There's also no shower curtain, so that it order not to get water all over the floor, you have to either hunch down, or lie in the bath tub and spray yourself with the hose thingy to take a shower. I feel like Gollum hunched down naked in the tub, stringy hair hanging down, water and splashing. I've wanted to sing the “juicy sweet fish song” every single time. One of these days.

Yesterday we visited the “Fantastica” (Фантастика). A huge shopping mall in the city of Nizhni Novgorod. Actually, it looks exactly like the West Gate Mall in Spartanburg. It has a movie theater and everything. I felt okay speaking English out loud here, since all the stores had either English or French names. We even ate at Subway . . . Losers.

Today I made one of the best purchases that I will make here. A bus pass. This way I don't have to constantly dig in my pockets, scrounging up enough rubles to make it to wherever I need to go. However, since this pass only works on the state buses, I am going to have to give up my favorite bus: Маршрутка (Marshrutka) №19. This is one of those extra junky buses, with the dusty outsides, falling-apart seats, and brakes that don't work so well, but are obviously driven by skilled drivers, because I haven't been on one that has crashed yet. I like to stand up at the front by the driver and watch how close he gets to the bus in front of him at every bus stop. This bus brings me to school, home, Harley's, the grocery store, and my service project. And, if that was not enough, this bus only costs, 10 rubles, as opposed to the standard 14 ruble fee. An excellent bus all round. I will miss you, my friend.

Рынок - The Market

Anastasia and I went pumpkin hunting today. They don't sell pumpkins in the grocery stores here like they would back home in October. For pumpkins, you must go to the market. The market consists of rows and rows of stalls (rusty metal boxes turned on their sides) lining a dirt, or concrete street, in which muddy water stands, and from which people sell their vegetables and fruits, pickles, cabbage salads (out of buckets), socks, coats, DVDs, pig heads or anything else that you might be looking for. We got the directions to the market from our Russian teacher, who lives in this part of town that we had never been to. This smells of adventure.

We hopped on our Marshrutka bus, carefully counting out the allotted 10 stops to Ploshad Sovietskaya, between struggling to stay standing upright despite the jolting and sudden stops with worn out, squeaking breaks, and trying to talk quietly enough so as not to turn heads. After locating the market, we wandered throughout, keeping our eyes peeled for pumpkins, and soon had the located the whole two in the entire marketplace. At two different stalls. My transaction went smoothly and I got a nice sized boogar for 50 roubles, or approximately a dollar and a half. We went back to the stall where we had seen the other pumpkin earlier, and asked the old lady at the stall if we could buy it. She said a price and started talking about something. We were confused for a second, but then realized that she was giving us a recipe for how to make the pumpkin, how to peel and cook it, and what to serve it with. When we replied to her, she realized that we were not Russian, and asked us what language we spoke. “English” we said. She then asked us if we were from England. “Da,” we said. “Oh, I studied German in school,” she said. Very nice lady.

We also needed some red potatoes out of this trip, and found them at a stall on the way out. They were piled in buckets all around the front of the stall, freshly pulled out of the earth and covered in dirt. Anastasia walked up to the man selling them. “Can I have four?” she asked him. He then pulled out a plastic bag and proceeded to dump the bucket of potatoes into the bag. “Nyet, nyet, nyet!” says Nastya, “four potatoes.” “Oh,” says the man, laughing, “I thought you wanted four kilograms.” -“Are you Finnish?” He adds . . . “Da,” says Nastya.

We got four free potatoes out of the deal. “A present,” said he.

Spay and neuter doesn't happen in Russia. As a result, there are packs of dogs wandering the city streets, swarming the outside of the dormitories, and cats in the Hermitage (which is actually intentional, since they keep the rodents at bay). The dogs in the streets are not a problem, they are not vicious, or mean and will eat whatever food scraps you throw to them. I'm just worried about them when it gets cold. Humane societies? Nyet. I've also seen packs of dogs, ear tagged like cattle-- still intend to ask some Russian friends about that-- I'll get back to you when I find out.
Birds here are interesting, too. They've got some monster-sized gray and white ones, bigger than the biggest crow I've seen. I tread carefully past these ones. They're like sleeker, faster, flying chickens. Then there are the smaller ones that live in the grocery store down the street. They seem to be out only at night. In flocks. Yesterday they were at the packaged foods, I don't know if they actually got into any of the bags, but they were having fun hopping around on the shelves. The night before they were perched in the produce section, helping themselves to the green grapes, leaving little beak marks as I chased them away. That same night, Masha and I walked back to the dorms. It was dark. As we came up to the doorway into the building, we saw a nasty rat scurrying into the basement culvert right under the kitchen. Eew. I'll now keep my eyes peeling for fur or pooh in my salad.
In other dormitory news, Rich and Rob woke up to people propelling on bed sheets from the third story past their window. The curfew isn't to their liking. But bed sheets? I guess there is a reason that people actually use them to climb out windows. They work.

Вчера

Yesterday was the first day of our service projects. I chose working at the orphanage; mainly because that's what I've wanted to do for my entire life. But other than that, no special reason. ;) Other options were helping with a middle school English class, helping with a college English class, or working on a church building. Rob is my compatriot in the orphange visits, which will be happening for the next weeks. This orphanage is actually not really an orphange, per se. Most of these kids still hae parents. It's more of a between house. This is where kids who have been taken away from their parents (mainly because their parents are alcoholics) are taken while the state decides whether to give them back, or transfer them to a more permanent Children's Home. Our group of kids was between the ages of 4 and 5. These kids are amazing: they are extremely friendly, come up and hold your hands, talk to you in their sweet little Russian, climb up in your lap to watch a movie . . . Just generally all around sweet. Don't be surprised if I come home with all 13 of them. The first day, as usual, was pretty confusing. The orphanage is located on the other side of the town across the river, the side of town that we don't ever go to, and are not really familiar with at all. For that reason, Harley brought us over, with the intention of teaching us how to get there so that we, by ourselves, could get back. One of the issues with getting to this place is that there are two buses that go there, after riding one of those two buses to the designated spot, we walk to the next bus stop and wait for another bus that takes us directly to the front of the orphange-- this bus only runs once every hour. So if you miss it, rain or shine, you're waiting. We missed it. By a few minutes. After waiting for about 20 minutes in the rain and cold, Harley hired a taxi (a toasty warm BMW) and we took it to the orphanage. Everything went well there, although we were pretty late. Harley introduced us to the director people, and left. Nobody there speaks English. After our time with the kids was up (we took them for a walk in the rain, played some games, and watched Monsters, Inc.), we went out to wait for our bus. Everything went well up until the time to change buses. Rob thought we should go to the other side of the road to wait for our bus, since that was the direction that we needed to go to get back home. I thought that we needed to go the the stop where we got off, since, obviously, even though it was headed the wrong direction, the bus had to turn around at some point. Plus, all we could see on the other side was a tram stop. Oops. We waited for our bus for about 20 minutes, after which we got on the bus, relivieved that we were out of the cold and finally headed home. We rode the bus for about 10 minutes, and watched as we pulled into this big bus parking lot. We looked around and realized that we the only people on the bus. The lady told us that this was the end of the line, and that we needed to get off. We looked horrified. She looked confused, but said the same thing again. Crap. We were now 10 minutes in the oppossite direction away from home than when we started. We found our way back to the main road, located a bus stop, jumped on what we thought was our bus, and headed back towards the university. Once we saw that we were crossing the bridge, we finally felt secure, and, 2 hours after leaving, jumped off the bus in front of our home sweet university. No worries, we have the kids to look forward to, and now we know what not to do next week.