I’m back…kind of. Plus: Choir performance!

I’m sorry for being away. But here’s something exciting to make up for it!.. Listen and watch “Beryozovye sny” (“Dreams of Birches”) and another choral piece performed by my choir at the 2010 Student Spring Festival today. Can you find me below!? Answer posted at the end, along with a video of the first one, [...]

Spring Break (Days 4-5): Far-Eastbound

Our longest ride of the week–40 hours–came next: Chita to Khabarovsk on the Irkutsk-Vladivostok train. Most of our wagon-mates were on ’til the end of the line. More notably, nearly a third of the car consisted of a band of Uzbek migrant workers. They were spread out through the car, but it seemed that the [...]

Spring Break (Days 2-3): Chita rocks

If they made shirts that said “I <3 Chita,” I would buy one and wear it all the time. ‘NICE’ & ‘TRAIN’. Two words that up to now I hadn’t considered being utterable in the same sentence. Nevertheless. The train was nice (that is, from Ulan-Ude to Chita). Relatively speaking, of course. Yes, the Russian [...]

Spring Break (Day 1): ‘Trevoga’ redeemed in U.U.

Russians have a word (“trevoga”) for the spiritual qualms that you experience before traveling until you’re safely seated on your train/plane seat. I call it stress. Whatever it is, I feel it. The day of our departure, I went straight from classes to my internship, and then straight to choir rehearsal, leaving early around 8 [...]

A half month of vacation. Updates soon.

I don’t know why (and neither does our coordinator), but Midd decided to give us half a month of vacation: our trip to Severobaikalsk (posts coming soon) and an 11-day spring break. Two weeks in between–just enough to recover from the first trip and getting ready for the second–have left me stressed a bit, and [...]

Elections Updates: SURPRISE(s)!

SURPRISE #1. Since I was unopposed, I have won my election and am excited to have been named president of Sputnik for the 2010-2011 year. Hooray! Thanks for your support (?). Note: No bribes were involved in this. I swear. SURPRISE #2. Since Irkutskites, so they say, are heirs of the revolutionary spirit of their [...]

More elections (Vote for me!)

Today from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m., Irkutskians (Irkutskites? The Irkutskese? …”Irkutyanye” in Russian…) are taking to the polls to vote for their mayor. Unfortunately for believers (such as myself) in a free, democratic process, the fact that Moscow administration chose (and probably funded) Sergei Serebryannikov to the top of the contender list, pairing him in [...]

Weeks 24-25: Taking responsibility, a lesson in grammar

In grammar class, we are learning about how using passive voice and impersonal expressions is a good thing. In the Russian language, you are supposed to put the blame on an invisible, mystical (neuter gendered) something. The Star Wars “Force,” if you will. (And no, it’s not God, for God is male in the Russian [...]

Happy Defenders of the Fatherland Day, a.k.a. Men’s Day!

Since the holiday began a many year ago when, of course, men defended the country and women stayed home to have babies and cook, I’ll save the discourse on sexist discrimination for another day. The abbreviated history: the day was started under Lenin to honor those in the Red army, but once “the Fatherland”/USSR fell [...]

Week 24: Good to be busy again

Call me crazy, but I like it: this week every day, I’ve come home tired, slightly stressed by the evening’s to-do list, sometimes sore, and sometimes cold. But unfailingly ecstatic about it. Woohoo! I even got to reorganize my desk, which means moving the once hugely useless and in-the-way computer monitor to a closet, adding [...]