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.