Back in Black? more like white.

I spent the 18th through the 23rd in Moscow, which was absolutely fantastic.  It was so great to see Americans, though I had just gotten back from American not long before; nevertheless, I felt no shame in going to Wendy’s (twice), Dunkin’ Donuts (three times), and even McDonalds (only once, phew), and hanging out most of the time with Americans in our hotel.  I felt no shame because, for the next six months I will be lucky if I see an American (or hell I’ll even take a Westerner) not through Skype. And so, I ate it up: the American food, jokes, laughter, and lightness.  And I loved every minute of it.

Fulbright ETAs (Russian faces, of course)

I was very much afraid to leave Moscow and return to Astrakhan. Not that I didn’t necessarily want to come back (I had very mixed feelings about that), but I feared home sickness, major stage 2-ing, and the desire to sleep and only sleep.  I’ve been pleasantly surprised.  I got back on Monday with the sniffles… I have now developed a cold, which is actually fine. I’m okay with that, as it gives me a legit excuse to lay in bed all day.  And I haven’t been that active, but yet I’m feeling great being back.  I’ve played Santa Claus four times: give cigarettes to a friend, dropped off a bag full of gifts to my colleague and her two sons for which I got some great hugs, gave the two boxes of Apples to Apples to two students of mine, who brought a bag full of fruit and juices to cure my sickness, and gave another student her Woody Doll.  These little “gives”, granted not all of them “gifts” per say, have been refreshing, if not simply for the realization of the little things that make people smile.

Besides that it’s cold here.  Like -18 celsius cold.. which is, I don’t know some where in the single digits.  Supposedly once one hits -40 the temperatures even themselves out.  Let’s hope Astrakhan never hits -40, but -18 is still quite cold, especially when you have Soviet windows that let in a lot of the heat, making my dorm room very cold as well.  The Russians have well passed their “window taping holiday”, but I didn’t quite make it back in time, as last week it was only -1.  So now, I must catch up and tape my windows.

scotch tape maybe will do the trick; you can see the blue marks from previous tape jobs

In other news, I wrote a small narrative today for a 90 year old man from the Western Michigan area named Mr. Padnos, who is very very well known and for whom many buildings at GVSU are named after, including Padnos International Center, where our study abroad office is located.  In addition, he has a pretty hefty study abroad fund in form of a scholarship, which I so happened to win last year, and which helped me live in Saint Petersburg for an academic year.  Cheers, Mr. Padnos.  I posted the narrative on the blog, listed in the tabs up top. It’s basically a “Rikki-Russia” life story. Eh.

Timeline of time

Yesterday at 1230pm I was riding down a big hill just outside Norway on a sledge, or sled. We slid down for ten minutes, as Therese and I dug our feet into the ground to slow ourselves down. Then we rode the tbane another fifteen minutes back up to the top of the hill and headed back down again.

430 pm I was eating pizza from a corner Carls Bergen Plass kebab restaurant.

630 pm I was at the gorgeous Norway airport drinking an accidentally 22 dollar beer.

130 am I landed in Moscow, Sheremetovo airport hoping to find my friend and fellow Fulbrighter, Logan. I passed through passport control with the same exact woman who checked me in a week ago at a different airport on the other side of the city… She looked at my picture and laughed. Quickest Russian passport control, ever. I call a supposedly legit taxi company that really is not a taxi company at all and fail to hail a cab.

145 am I couldn’t find Logan and we tried to communicate through Skype as he called me from the men’s bathroom.

200 am I finally meet Logan at his terminal… Same airport but 15 minutes away by car… Price: $30 dollars

215 am Logan and I give into the pressure of the taxi driver because we’re exhausted and hungry… Price: $40

300 am we finally arrive to the hotel but must walk around three times until we actual find check-in

310 am we venture across the street to the gas station to attempt to buy snacks and two beers. Fail.

315 we’re finally registered

330 we succeed in finding a 24 hour produkti, buy beers, and a cheap pizza and successfully wake up Gary

630 am we’re all still up working on presentations and talking about nothing

645 am we start Princess Bride

800 am we finish Princess Bride, freshen up, get breakfast and go to sessions

10 am we listen to a lecture by an IU professor regarding the up and coming Russian elections

11 am Geoff and I set off to stop by my friends and pick up some of my essentials, like shower stuff

140 pm We finally return, hoping to make lunch after getting lost, walking for over a half hour and riding the metro quite thoroughly. I obviously thought I knew where I was going. We walk into the middle of a presentation; they had pushed lunch back.

315 I’m sitting in another presentation on Russian art and cultural heritage/history. I haven’t slept. I travelled three hours ahead in time after five days ago when I travelled nine hours ahead and then three hours back the next day. My feet are wet from the soles of my shoes practically detaching from the boot. I’m in Russia. I’m exhausted.

Oh hayyyy, Norway!

I’m currently in Norway spending five days with one of my close friends. I’ve spent all five days in Oslo, mainly because I don’t really have the time and means, meaning money, to travel far outside the city. However, after being in Oslo I will definitely be back sometime in the summer to further explore Norway and enjoy Oslo in the sun.

Oslo’s great. I love it, as well as Norwegians and their life styles. I’ve spent a ton of time walking around the city, which is exactly what Norwegians do, walk. They love being outside, no matter what the weather and the T-Bane, or metro is crowded with cross country skiers. if you ride the T-bane out of the city, you exit to forests and woods patches for skiing, hiking, and sledding. Oslo is also neat because the city center is pretty low, in terms of sea level and as you go outside of the city you continuously go uphill. If you go out side the center, you can feel, as you leave the T-bane that it’s relatively colder there and the air is a bit fresher.

This is the shore of Norway. On the left is their new opera house, which I believe is quite new and gorgeous on both the inside and out, the “roof” is tilted and open for people to just walk on and sit on. I declined, as I probably would have slipped down the building on my ass.

Ive had an amazing time so far, just relaxing, walking around and enjoying Oslo, and hanging out with Therese and her friends, who have all been so welcoming. Also, I commissioned Therese’s grandma to make me a true Norweigan sweater:

Until we meet again, Norway (I’ll wear the sweater often).

oh the junk you’ll bring

 

Don’t you really hate when you just have those great moments when you’ve written everything you want to say and then BAM something happens and you loose everything that you’ve just written, which is everything you just wanted to say and now you can’t quite write what you’ve just written and you can quite remember those good words you just said.   This just happened to me and I am angry.

My reasons for hating the Frankfurt airport are steadily increasing.

Take 2: (internet time: five mintues; cost for one hour of internet: 5 euros; total time: 1 hour. Time I spent looking for an outlet (working one): 15 minutes.)  The above shit is what I shoved into my bag.  And yes, it really is shit.  I mean I have two games of Apples to Apples, the entire series of LOTR books, including the Hobbit, Ranch Dressing, maple syrup, its blueberry equivalent, gum and chocolate, not to mention two boxes of Honey Bunches of Oats, four boxes of cheesy Dollar Store Valentines which I intend to distribute to my students, a mini projector, a new text book, two T-shirts, some plate, some plaque thingies with cute little sayings… sigh.

I’m well prepared to play Santa Claus.

my apologies!

I’MSORRY.

it’s been far too long.  like a month too long.  what happened, you may ask?  I’m not sure. Well I am sure. I lost myself for a bit.. you know those small time-frames where you just fall out of your element and you don’t realize it until afterwards and you’re sitting and reflecting on what you did and didn’t do and BAM it hits you that you just weren’t quite you.  That was me last month.

Perhaps this short clip will make up for lost time:

I’m currently home.. as in the United States of America and to be honest I’m not sure what to blog about.  Well there’s lots to talk about, but its stuff all of you already know about.. except for perhaps my Russian friends and readers who maybe are interested in life in America; or I could do some comparisons, but I feel everyone does those and they have already compared what there is to compare.. sigh.

And so, I will reflect on one interesting experience I had last month: a trip to the Northern Caucasus.  I posted my departure on Facebook and I got lots of “be careful’s” and “oooo really?! isn’t that dangerous?!”  and stuff like that.  No, it wasn’t dangerous.  I do believe there were a few car bombs there back in the “war years”, but since then there has been little violence.

okay so the maps a little small, but there it is... Astrakhan to the upper-right, sort of cut off by the white speech bubble; Georgia to the south.

So I went there with Angelika, her son, and two other girls for a language camp in coordination with an American who lives and works in Pityagorsk.  They were supposed to do three days of language and Angelika and I were there to watch, take notes, and participate with the goal of creating our own camp in Astrakhan in the spring.  We had a horrible twelve hour bus ride, leaving Astrakhan at 7 pm and arriving in Pityagorsk around 8 am the next day, and I experienced my first dose of good ole’ Caucasus corruption.When one, as a foreigner checks into a hotel in Russia, one must always show their passport, thus making it obvious that one is a foreigner.  In this instance, I had to show mine.  The lady then demanded that I pay 1000 roubles for a registration.  As a foreigner in Russia, I am well aware of these regulations and so I started arguing.  “This is not necessary. I am not going to pay; I don’t need to register.”  She insisted that I do, it’s policy, and I kept fighting.  “no, I know I don’t need to register. I stayed for almost a week in Piter without registration and the hotel asked me if I wanted it.  I have seven days; I’m here two, and even if I was here for longer, it’s a weekend you can’t even process my registration!”  She then went on to tell me some bullshit story about this American guy who had been there before without regisitation and how he got charged 100,000 rubles, as did the hotel and I just shook my head and thought whateverrrr.  Perhaps this really did happen, but I’m sure it was some other circumstance.  I walked away and as typical, left my passport at the front desk.  Accordingly, Angelika later went to gather our passports and they asked not one question nor did they again demand money for my registration.  VICTORY CORRUPTION, VICTORY.

Our “students” went to day one of sort of a “language camp”.  Meanwhile Angelika and I got on an Elektrichka, or local communter train and headed in the direction of Kislovodsk, a small town near Pityagorsk, though located deeper within the foothills of the Caucaus Mountains.  We had a gorgeous afternoon walking the town, touring an amazing park, eating a fantastic meal in a azerbaijan restaurant and drinking great red wine:

Pityagorsk was great too, don’t get me wrong, we just only had an afternoon of exploration time.  The camp was interesting.  I was really tired, making it very very difficult to focus on language, though I did attend an interesting lecture on teaching American English and we played some fun games.  On our last day we took a hike up the local mountain, which I suppose is truly a very big hill. However, to give Pityagorsk the credit it deserves, it is a very hilly city and you can see Mt. Elbrus, the tallest Peak in Europe, which is still located in Russia but very near the Georgian border.  Pityagorsk was quaint but not so different than any other smaller Russian city.  The people there had an accent, enunciated through their intonations.  I was expecting it to be very different, a whole new world.  In fact, it was not.  I’m sure if I stayed there long enough I would notice many more differences from Astrakhan and St. Petersburg; however, when Angelika and I went to Kislovodsk, I really noticed darker features, especially in women. The architecture in Kislovodsk was also a bit different and more caucasian.  Though, what else would one expect – we were only kilometers from Georgia!

the view from our hotel. Elbrus is somewhere out there.

Okay so that’s it!  Well I mean I suppose there’s lots more to add, however I’ll probably be going back in February and can hopefully provide more interesting details then.

Also, one of my New Year’s resolutions is to blog twice a week.  BE PREPARED.  However (disclaimer) I will still be in America for a bit, so perhaps once a week until I return…