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, and the sound file of the second one.

Basically, I’ve been really busy. Six hours of choir practice a week, ten hours at my internship, and the workload of two mainstream Russian literature courses are my excuses. I think my host family thinks I have disappeared. This is not actually true, but they kind of look at me all dazed when I come back home after my three 11-hour days (Tues-Thurs) in a row, not understanding what I’ve been doing.

The good news is, that I feel like I’m within a good weekend-long lurch, so to say, of catching up totally, meaning I can get back to some blogging and keeping you all in the loop. I realize I have yet to talk about Severobaikalsk, the second half of spring break, and life here generally.

The even better news is, as I realized first while typing an email to Ben in Italy yesterday, that I’ve accomplished what I came here to do: I wanted to come abroad for a year to learn how to “live like a local” in a crazy, far-out place, and in my short moments of reflection, I realize that I’ve kind of built my life in a place, where the fact that it’s a mid-sized city in the middle of Siberia doesn’t make that much of a psychological difference.

This being the case, I’m crazy antsy to get out of here and get back home. It looks like I’ll hit St. Petersburg for 2 days, visit Ashley, Nick, and Zach in Yaroslavl for 2 days, and then fly on home on May 30. So hope to see you all in Arizona May 31!

Also, cool fact: on SoundCloud.com, the site where the sound files are hosted, you can make a comment that’s timed with a spot in the track, so if you hear something you like, comment on it–in time! Just click on the thin bar below the sound-wave.

They were spread out through the car, but it seemed that the “main” guy was one of the two sitting across from us, since the others came to him for tea, bread, etc., for which it seemed they had pooled their money together.

Most of them had made the early spring journey from Central Asia to the Far East coast to work during the warm, shipping season before. The main guy/our neighbor told us that he owned a grocery shop back home with several employees, but still needed the extra money from summer work–a fate to which he seemed to measuredly resigned.

Ryan got suckered in to giving a fairly long English lesson (i.e. translating words from Russian to English) for a really eager guy who was planning on eventually taking English lessons, but neither of us was brave enough to try Uzbek (or Kazakh, Tajik, or any of the others they spoke) –getting their names was difficult enough.

Otherwise, “poyezd yest’ poyezd” (“the train’s the train”): sleep, eat, read, repeat.

But. There’s usually one lady that pushes the beer/juice/ramen/fresh pirozhki cart back and forth the entire journey. This one, the job was divided up between two awesome women.

There was a buxom, slightly made-up, kind woman who strode into the cart every 30 minutes carrying a tray of fresh pirozhki and pigs-in-a-blanket. With a flick of the wrist she unveiled the tray’s contents, usually with a fairly creative salesman line. For instance: “Mmm. Hot, fresh pirozhki –just like me!” or “Oooh! What pirooozheshki I have!”

The duty involving slightly more manual labor (namely, pulling the waist-high beverage cart) was carried out by a short, headscarf-clad, Buryat lady. She, too, employed an equally entertaining dose of attitude in her work: when asked if she had a pad of paper, or even a piece, she stopped, cast an evil eye at the asker, and mumbled as she walked on, “What do you think I’m pullin’ a concillary shop here?”

Ohh, Russian Railways.

Commemorative monument to Chita's founding in 1653 (other pictures at end of post).

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 men still smelled, and the beds were still 6 inches too short for my legs, which, hanging out into the aisle, no matter, people walked through as if they weren’t there at all. But, the windows were able to be opened, and the wagon was clearly not of Soviet production (a personal first). We took off from our UU hotel at 4 a.m. (in an 80 ruble taxi!), slept ’til midday, ate, and began to see the outskirts of Chita a few hours later, around 5 p.m. local time.

Coming in from the west on the south side of the Chita River, you see the city stretches along the north bank, as if back into time: the more recent industrial smokestacks from the middle of last century–the last suggestion of economic development in most Siberian, Soviet-expanded cities–stand like bookends of the city-timeline at its westernmost limits. The colorful paints and woodwork of the dark-stained izby (traditional Russian houses) dot the horizon of concrete 5- to 10-story apartment high-rises, which lead eastward to the smorgasbord of a city center, a mix of centuries-old onion domes and a handful of gaudy, glass-gilded hotel resorts.

So exciting!

SETTLED IN, AT LAST. The train station was euphorically bustling with the arrival of the Moscow train and the impending departure of another. Perhaps it was just the pleasantly positive (+3 deg. C.) temperature (at last!).

In comparison with the hotel-search fiasco of Ulan-Ude, our walking three blocks up, three blocks over, and into the Forestry School Dorms (which housed the appropriately named Hotel [read: hostel] “Taiga”) to receive a two-bed private room for $40 for a day and a half was beautifully simple. The refrigerator, water boiler, teacups, TV, and comfy beds and pillows were just the icing on the cake.

After a mostly unsuccessful attempt to track down a few of the guidebook-recommended (to cite my source: Lonely Planet, Russia. ed. Simon Richmond. 5th ed. Lonely Planet Publications Pty Ltd, 2009: Footscray, Australia) cafés, we noted the joint Subway and Baskin Robbins, complete with budget-priced menu and free WiFi.

Yes, a total sell-out as far as culture experience goes, but we were hungry. But, I’d argue that our coming across the, as labeled in the guidebook, “Huge Green Tube” (bottom of post) might have redeemed us.

WHAT TIME IS IT? When we “fell back” in the fall, I told you about how babushkas, a decade later, are still upset about the government-imposed daylight savings time on account of its disrupting their biological rhythms. Since the rest of the country “sprang ahead” without telling Ryan nor I on Sunday, I’m kind of on their side now.

We got up at what we thought was 9 a.m. to go track down the Catholic church that the Internet had slightly hinted was located at address x about 100 years ago. Worth a shot, right?

Approaching the given address and only seeing an Orthodox church with its own Palm Sunday service letting out, we asked a babushka for help. She directed us to the other side of town. Not really sure how much further we had to go until we’d see the so-called “Old Bridge” (not shown in the guidebook), I asked another nice-looking lady preparing to cross the street.

Good choice.

AWWW!! She was amazing. She practically grabbed us, totally forgetting about where she was going, to take us to the trolley stop a few blocks away and to wait with us there. Then she remembered that it was a different stop, and walked us there too. On the way, she told us about her work directing a university athletics program. She recommended the Decembrists Museum. She said it was “the Petersburgers’ fault” that the streets were straight and made sense (but “in the good meaning of ‘fault’”).

Passing one of the administrative buildings of Chitinskii Province, she pointed out, “This one, the Japanese POWs built for us. Good fellows (molodsty). Not like any of that Chinese construction!” A convivial laugh together ensued.

She set us on the right trolley bus, and Ryan and I found the church with no further problems. We walked in, around what we thought was 10 a.m., and two guys sitting there told us that mass started at noon.

Thinking we had two hours to kill, we walked around that side of town, hit the market (so close to China!), wandered through a few clothes shops just opening up, and made our way back 15 minutes before (when we thought) mass started.

If my foreshadowing hasn’t been explicit enough, we were late by an hour, but since the church’s lenten devotion, which they said after mass, kept us there for more than an hour extra, I felt like Jesus was probably okay with my ignorance to the Russian government’s messing with time (and not telling me about it).

The sights from the rest of the day:

• A synagogue, mosque, and the Orthodox church the Decembrists built for themselves. Some residents use this as reasoning to call Chita the “Jerusalem of Siberia,” apparently. We had a conversation with a few of friendly worshippers at the mosque, who said we could come in and take pictures, but then disappeared for ten minutes; given the fact we were an hour behind, we left.
• Decembrist’s museum (housed in their old church). It was obviously a Soviet put-together museum: one icon in the entire place (despite the fact that, again, it was in an old church) and there were lots of anti-tsar poems and comics and generally romanticizing, pro-revolutionary propaganda. Though, despite the obvious Marxist influence, I was actually taken by the manuscripts, artifacts, deathbed love letters, execution and hard-labor orders signed by the Nicholas I, chants mocking the tsar that the revolutionaries wrote for their kids, and secret society rules and member charters, written in the hand of the Decembrists themselves.
• The parliament building of the short-lived (less than a year) Far East Republic, which Chitan socialists founded shortly after the 1905 October Manifesto. Nothing but a building, but a testament to the multi-faceted history of the region: Chingis Khan was born here; Buryats, Mongols, and Chinese inhabited the region; the Russians came and took over along with their Cossacks; the Decembrist women came and “civilized” the place; and the White Army held out here against the Bolsheviks almost longer than anywhere else.
• Chitinskii Province History Museum. Another really well-put together (by Marxist historians) museum, with great natural history exhibits of Siberia’s rocks and animals (nothing too new), ethnographic exhibits (complete with mini Buddhist datsan), and an outrageously outdated, one-sided, and chauvinistic display on the two world wars. There was a veteran that kind of browsed past the bulk of the museum to get to that display to show his grandson: cute, but again, one-sided.

Passing by the gold-topped, baby-blue Assumption Cathedral (noted for its general beauty, plus the perfectly symmetrical floorplan, uncharacteristic of Orthodox churches) next to the train station was our last stop before grabbing dinner. We chose a Ukrainian restaurant, which turned out great: good baklazhani (an eggplant-veggie mix), a pork-bacon-and-cheese heart-attack-on-a-plate dish, and assorted vareniki (ravioli-type dumplings filled with meat, cabbage, potatoes, cheese, berries, poppy-seeds–in different ones).

After a last ice cream at Baskin Robbins and a nap, Ryan and I headed out the door at 3 to catch our two-day train to Khabarovsk.

The verdict on Chita: sooo good. Clean, wide streets; beautiful buildings at every turn representing the region’s super-rich, like, oligarch-rich history; nice people (for the most part …it could have just been the good weather, too); good museums; good hostel. Not too much to complain about. I’m impressed, despite the Lonely Planet diagnosis:

…the city might be considered one of Siberia’s more appealing. Sadly, each attractive area is a little too diffuse to make the overall impact particularly memorable.

Wronngg.

"Art belongs to the people," says Lenin. On the UU Opera House

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 p.m. to inhale my dinner, grab my things (packed the day before), and run to meet Ryan at the station to catch our 9:40 overnight train to Ulan-Ude. The guidebook says it’s nickname is “UU,” but I’ve never heard that in real life. (Prophesy from the future: more “the guidebook was wrong” moments to come).

Regardless, we got in at 6 a.m. and bought the last of our train tickets (the ticket lady in Irkutsk had advised us to hold off on getting a few of them, since better seats opened up in the end).

MISTAKE ONE: Not booking the hotel. We spent the first hour in Ulan-Ude walking around the center’s five or so hotels, finding that only the most expensive were available. Luckily, the first hotel/the one we wanted (we’d stayed there in the fall on our Midd expedition) let us drop our bags there while we waited to see if a room opened/did our sightseeing. Though we also lucked out, since a room opened up by midday, we learned our lesson and decided to call ahead to the other hotels to make reservations.

Too bad that all the phone numbers online and in the guidebook are bad…

BREAKFAST & MORNING SIGHTS. I had a cocktail glass of oatmeal (I’d say “a bowl of” oatmeal, except it was actually served in a cocktail glass…) and a kettle of green-colored Earl Grey tea at a Marco Polo cafe, whose advertised “Free WiFi” was neither free, nor functioning. Too bad Russian MTV doesn’t make up for disappointments like that.

Ryan and I saw the head (i.e. the Wizard of Oz looking, somewhat cross-eyed, largest head of Lenin in the world –built to celebrate his 100th b-day in 1970). Walked past the opera house (Soviet stars and emblems at every chance –engraved with the wisdom of a Lenin quote “Art…”). Walked through the arch (constructed in 1891 to celebrate a military victory against neighboring China, total rip-off of Napoleon’s in Paris) about a hundred times, at that, searching for an ATM, and then an Internet connection, then this marshrutka, then that one…

‘…WEATHER OUTSIDE IS FRIGHTFUL…’ The snow steadily fell all day, and since we didn’t have a hotel yet and weren’t necessarily up for traipsing about the snowy, forested acres of the architectural-ethongraphic museum that I’d seen in the fall, we decided to keep our cultural exploration to indoor museums.

• History: Lenin and company were held at bay within the walls of the Buddist-style building of the largely ethnographic museum. The only display open was a collection of 400-year old Buddhist manuscripts, icons, statues, and medial diagrams (rather graphic for the eyes used to Western medicine). There were also jars of dragon bone, wolf tongue, elephant skin, dried raven blood, and other Harry Potter potion ingredients. If I’d known the German words for these animal-body-part combinations, I’d have clued in the German tour group next to us, who was making do with a tour guide (“Tell them this…. Did you tell them that?”) and confused-looking translator (“Und das ist…”).
• “Literature”: After we spent 20 minutes searching for the Literature History Museum along Victory Street (banner read, “Praise to the people who is victorious!”), we finally found the well kept-up wooden house with the right address. Except that museum had been traded out with about 3 different ones since the guide book’s publication, and now housed a small, but nice exhibit of a Polish dude’s drawings of Buryatia and the handcrafts from the youth-senior cultural center.
• Nature: I justified my 30 rubles ($1.00) with accidentally walking into the kids exhibit with random almost-loose (as in, the glass had disappeared from all the aquarium frontings) reptiles and a monkey (all getting along in perfect Soviet harmony), and then a to-scale model of Baikal, which gave me a visual (at long last) of the lake’s relative dimensions. Usually, Aleksandr Pavlovich (Baikal Studies teacher) usually just drew a slanted “V” on the board to represent the lake’s walls….

NOMADS & THE BURYAT IRISH. The Mongolian restaurant we found was good, nice service, and the right price for the sampling of all my faves (irony?) from my trip in October to Ulan-Baatar.

Ryan and I had seen an “Irish” “Pub” earlier in the day, so we thought we’d give it a whirl for a last, after-dinner drink. On-tap Guinness plus Russian guys and Buryat girls dressed in britches and the green-white-and-orange were entertainment enough until it was time to go back to the hotel to pack for our train to Chita.

Ulan-Ude, with wider streets, kinder population, and slightly improved traffic, despite the winter weather, was a great break from Irkutsk on day one. We were sad to leave, happy with what we’d got done and seen, but as I’m reflecting in retrospect from Chita’s Baskin Robbins’ WiFi (Chita entry coming from Khabarovsk in 2-3 days upon arrival), I can say that Ulan-Ude was nothing compared with what’ll be a great rest of our “spring” break.

Spring is coming... slowly.

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 busy: classes, choir, internship (see post on my site-resume), and craziness in general.

So, I’m more than happy that within a few hours I’ll be on a train to Ulan Ude, Chita, Khabarovsk, and Vladivostok for a week and a half of relaxation, with some playing catch-up squeezed in there.

I promise posts on Severobaikalsk and the rest of March, plus photos and updates while on the road, as much as Internet time allows.

Photo AP.

SURPRISE #2. Since Irkutskites, so they say, are heirs of the revolutionary spirit of their Decembrist predecessors, Moscow-administration chosen candidate Sergei Serebryannikov did NOT win the Irkutsk mayoral elections yesterday, and the other (independently, self-nominated) United Russia/KDFR candidate (Kondrashov) will take his seat as mayor soon.

Yevgenii Yevgenievich shared this news with me yesterday with a great deal of excitement. He didn’t know the name of “other candidate”, but just knew he wasn’t the guy that Moscow wanted.

On the other hand, Tatyana Eduardovna was disappointed with the results, as she and her boss (city duma deputy) were pulling for Serebryannikov. She was all aflutter last night, lighting up the phone lines with babble about needing to call the Voting Committee, crying foul, since she “saw with her own eyes” the support people have been giving to Serebryannikov.

No comment.

I agree, and pledge to act as follows: The Deputy is at the service of the people!

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 countless ads next to the incumbent Irkutsk Oblast’ governor, there’s little surprise expected for the results.

Again — the city duma elections last fall were equally unexciting, too.

POLITICS BACK AT MIDD. A flashback to the good ol’ high school days of running for student council, and with hopes of this one being more fair than the elections I’ve seen in Russia, I’ve got a campaign of my own underway — Casey Mahoney for “Sputnik” President! (Sputnik is Middlebury’s formerly-named Russian and Eastern European Society.)

My campaign points will be emailed to group members within the next day or two, at which point I’ll post them as an addition to this post. Let me know what you think. Tell your friends!  If you’ve come to my blog to learn more about me as a candidate, check out my “Favorite Posts” page to see what readers frequent the most often. Current members can send votes to dparker@middlebury.edu (all others, thanks for the thought, but please refrain from emailing David–it won’t help).

Or if you’re more for the pictures than travel blogging, here’s a short slideshow from my trip to Moscow for Novii God 2010 (New Years).

1st semester: were told our grammar was "dirty." 2nd semester, were offered the "Clean Grammar" text.

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 language).

For example: don’t say, “I’m cold,” but rather, “[Mystical neuter something] is cold to me.” Likewise, not “I didn’t finish my homework,” but “[Mystical neuter something] didn’t let it get done for me to finish the homework.”

(Get more facts–there’s no pun in that–about Russian grammar from a colleague in Yaroslavl on her blog. Otherwise, my life story (of sorts) is continued below.)

This was supposed to be the week that we got settled in to our firmed-up schedules and caught up on work. (But this assumption was wrong. More proof that when you “A S S (of) U (&) M E” in Russia, you just get it handed back to you.) The week started with Men’s Day. Happy enough of an event (see previous post). Except, this meant coming back from a five day weekend and realizing that the stack of work had yet to significantly shrink.

Regarding phenomena of this kind, Irina Milentievna says, “A Brit or American will say ‘I didn’t do it,’ but a Russian will say, ‘It didn’t work out for me.’ That’s how they’ll know you’re Americans–by taking responsibility for your actions.” We ask ourselves silently, “Is this a bad thing for us?”

But, despite what they’re teaching us in grammar classes about life values, as an American writing in English, I’ll answer for the fact that there are concrete reasons (no mysticism or word gender involved) for my still being behind schedule in my catch-up game.

SNOWSTORMS. Romany got an emergency call from Middlebury (in Vermont) about a snowstorm and classes being cancelled. This is not fair, as it is I who am in Siberia, I thought. We had no snow. Time lost: Following Twitter, Google news feeds, photo slideshows, and watching the emails about power outages and classes resuming come in took up a portion of one evening.

THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. Raise your hand if you’ve read James Joyce’s Ulysses. Wonderful book. Raise your hand if you tried it in Russian translation for your class in Russia on the history of foreign literature. Yeah, not happening. Which is fine, because the book, though still complex and excruciatingly slow, is fantastic in the original (but, of course, helped along by Nabokov’s criticism translated back into Russian from his originally English lecture). Time lost: 1-2 hours per episode, 18 episodes total.

MONEY LAUNDERING. In addition to sneaking the reading of English text into my Language Pledged-away-life (™Midd), I’ve also taken up an illegal post as a tenth grade English discussion class leader on Saturdays. It’s not money laundering, don’t worry. But, lucky for me, getting 600 rubles ($20) a week as spending cash, in exchange for sharing my cultural diversity and language skills, is hardly the biggest problem on the local police’s plate. Just don’t tell. Time lost: 35 minute commute, 80 minutes, 2 minutes of laundering, 35 minute commute home, but if we’re putting this against the value of money, time gained: see next.

RIDDING MYSELF OF SAID $$. On Saturday, the Moscow program kids flew in for a long-weekend excursion to Listviyanka and Baikal. They had the night free, so Ryan and I took them out for a night out on the town (cough laughter mutter cough). But, we did the best with what we had: a nearby “kino-bar” (snack stand in a movie theatre lobby that sold beer) and the club “Panorama” (actually a good club). I’d forgotten how good a workout dancing is. Time lost: a few hours of sleep.

GLOBAL ARTS. Returning to the Irkutsk Philharmonic for the fourth time in one week (a new record!) — that is, (1) after inquiring about tickets for the Men’s Day concert (not needed), (2) the Men’s Day concert (left early), (3) inquiring about tickets for a piano concert (cancelled) — Ryan and I (4) attended the final concert (“Global Rhythms”) of the city’s “Music Without Borders” festival on Friday, in which my choir (The Irkutsk State Choir of Youth and Students) was the final act. No, unfortunately, I was not a part of that, as I have only been to three rehearsals thus far.

Other acts included African drumming, two performers doing island songs with a looper, a belly dancer, and a somewhat out-of-place tap dancer. Since this show’s conception of “global” seemed to be comprised of music associated with warmth and heat, I was struck by the honest self-admittance that the Russians’ country occupies most of the world’s ice-covered wastelands. Time lost: a few beats.

FREE LABOR. Since the good folks at Babr.ru are busy fighting the feds’ decision to reopen a chemical spewing factory on Baikal’s shores, they haven’t got back to coordinator Elizabeth’s emails regarding my interning there. Which we forgive them for, if they’re reading. If not just for their environmental quest, then also for the fact that Elizabeth found a probably even better (read: AMAZING) opportunity for me at the Dom Literatorov (Litterateur’s House, or if we want to be French, La maison des littérateurs), which is the new home to the Irkutsk Writer’s Society. We had the initial interview-meeting today, and it’s all set up. More to come next week. Time lost: 30 minutes

And last but not least, my taking responsibility for my actions would not be complete without mentioning:

EARTHQUAKES. No, I’m not blaming my homework not getting done on my surfing on the Chilean tidal wave or my flights to volunteer in Haiti. Our earth’s trembling here in Siberia was somewhat overshadowed by those catastrophes (no offense taken, obviously). It was a 6.1er on Baikal’s shores, and a 4.0 in Irkutsk. It happened on Thursday morning during, of course, grammar, of course, talking about natural disasters. As my first earthquake, it was relatively exciting (relative to not having an earthquake, that is). Not as eventful of this MiddKid’s studying abroad in Chile, though. Time lost: 30 seconds thinking “Wow, the ground is shaking” plus the time it took to write the extra sentence about it in a number of emails and a Twitter message.

A few seconds after the fact, Irina Milientievna told us that, “Oh, yes. It usually happens around this time.”

We think, “What, so she controls the movement of the earth’s crust too? There’s not even someone to take a bribe for that…”

Going on, seeing the blank expressions on our faces that she was vying for, with authority (responsibility?), she says, “Whenever I begin this section on nature, there’s usually an earthquake. [Mysterious neuter something] it happens.” Then she adds, “[Mysterious neuter something] shook us today in Irkutsk.”

. . .
I leave for our group excursion to Severobaikal’sk begins on Wednesday evening (Irkutsk time; early Wednesday morning in the U.S.), meaning I will tentatively be away from the Internet until Thursday, March 11, and accordingly have posted this as Week 25, as well.

I will take my iPod with me to catch any WiFi waves I can to send a Twitter here and there, just in case. However, seeing as our schedule is comprised of back-country winter hiking/cross-country skiing, ice-fishing, horse riding, driving across the frozen Baikal to camp on it, and taking part in natives’ religious thanksgiving ceremonies, I’m doubting I’ll be doing much tweeting this week. Wish me luck (and warm weather)!

"You're stronger and bolder from year to year, army of the Soviet people!"

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 to pieces, they decided to call it “Men’s Day,” to balance Women’s Day on March 8. Or read the long history.

But, old names stick. Ryan and I went to a concert at the Philharmonic, bearing the name of the former holiday, attracting the age group of people most attached to such a name (i.e., seniors). It was also free, attracting a larger than normal attendance, as well as two poor American students, yours truly.

As expected, it was a lot like the 80th Anniversary gala Romany and I attended last semester, with different ensembles, soloists, songs “from the good ol’ days,” and congratulatory speeches (though less of the latter, this time). I remembered the really excited-to-be-there violinist and the really cheesy soprano-tenor duet.

They also passed out boxes of wafer cookies. Someone also thought it would be convenient to include plastic bags, though failed to realize that crinkling plastic would cause a significant ruckus in the theatre during the show. But, the army colonel belting out a techno karaoke version of some oldie, on stage during the appearance of the plastic-wrapped wafer cookies didn’t seem to mind.

Ryan and I hopped out early, though even our sitting near the back didn’t defer the babushka, whose legs we had to crawl over, from angrily adding “WHY are you LEAVING?! Just, go. Get out” while pushing us over her granddaughter’s legs.

Later, we went over to Vova’s for a moderate round of toasts and a nice dinner prepared by his girlfriend and her friend.

“To the men!” (slash, the defenders..?).

I even got to reorganize my desk, which means moving the once hugely useless and in-the-way computer monitor to a closet, adding its speakers to my laptop, and using the keyboard tray as a dictionary holder. Hoorah!

The semester’s finally taken off to the start I’d wanted it to. My classes are lined up with about 99% confidence they won’t change, I’ve got a nice selection of extracurricular gigs with a few more options promised to be on their way, my classmates are awesome (the Americans and the Russians), and (shh, don’t tell the feds) I might have found a way to bring in some moolah. Here’s the schedule.

Tuesdays.
» 10:00 – 2:40: Classes at the MezhFak (International Department, where the Middlebury program is). Grammar, Speech Practice, and my independent study. Last week, I finished designing my independent study “syllabus,” and I’m going to be reading a lot of literature, supplemented by criticism, history/biography, film, &c., all on the theme of Russian citizenship/civic duty in the 20th century. Once a week I’ll have 75 minutes with Olga Vladimirovna, and the rest will be on my own. So excited.
» 4:30 – 6:00: I’m planning on playing tennis with Ryan at some (pretty beat-up) courts during this time slot.
» 7:00 – 9:00: IGU choir rehearsal. I never got around to trying this out last semester, which is too bad, because I’m hooked after my first week. The people are great, choir people/singers are a universal species and fit every stereotype given them, so socially and musically I fit right in. Funnily enough, the other bass that’s been at rehearsal both times I’ve gone, Anton, was a friend of Ryan Gillette’s, who was in Irkutsk the year before he and I sang together in SIM. Small world. Literally.

Wednesdays.
» 10:00 – 2:30: Classes at the Philological Department (FilFak, from now on. Just remember, “Fak” is like “faculty.”) downtown. I really liked the History of Foreign Literature (that is, non-Russian literature, in Russian translation) lecture I went to last week, and both the professor and the students are great, and the workload manageable (meaning that if I get in a cram of not being able to finish a novel in Russian translation, the English text will usually be an Internet search away). So that  will be my mainstream course. I’m also planning on sticking around with the same group of 4th year students to audit “Contemporary Problems of Modernism and Journalism” and the “Problems of Electronic Mass Media.”
» Rest of the day: Chilling out and studying, for now. Will probably be replaced with my internship or playing the piano, once the coordinator and I get those two items figured out.

Thursdays.
» 10:00 – 12:50: Classes at the MezhFak. Speech practice and grammar, again. Followed by our weekly meeting with Elizabeth.
» 1:30 – 3:00: Swimming. They’ve raised their price to $4 for the 40-minute session, so I’m considering a weekly membership to make it 1) cheaper, and 2) an investment I have to stick to.
» 7:00 – 9:00: Choir rehearsal.

Friday (…the 4-day weekend begins!).
» All day: Whatever the heck I want. For now. For an eight-week period this semester, though, I’ll need to add 10 hours of interning at Babr.ru, an online news agency for Eastern Siberia where I’ll be doing some translating and hopefully Web production. So, most of that time will probably be here. Otherwise, I’m hoping Friday will be for day-trips or catching up on work, blogging, or sleep.

Saturday.
» 2:00 – 3:30: Leading an English conversation group. I’m not sure if this will actually come through yet, but I’ve been told it will. Just leading conversation in English with a group of 10th graders (great age group!) on whatever topics I pick. Look at that.

Sunday.
» 11:00 or 6:00: Mass. I finally found a church (the East Siberian diocese cathedral, go figure…) that is much closer to my home and offers more than  one obscenely early Mass across town that requires hoping that just-starting public transport will get you to in time.

Monday (oh yes, that’s right, my weekend still isn’t over…).
» Daytime: I think that I’ll be using Monday’s to go downtown to study and research in the main library. It also looks like there’s an organ concert series on Monday around noon, so that might be a good way to start every one else’s work week, too…
» 6:00 – 7:00: Interpreter Course. The past two weeks, I’ve been going to the GBT (greatbaikaltrail.org) training sessions for translators on the organization’s summer trail-building projects, 50% of the participants of which are international volunteers who don’t speak Russian. I was invited by Anya, who was the teacher of the classes I was observing/helping in at the Waldorf School last semester, although so far, my services as the only present native speaker haven’t been very necessary. I think I’ll give it another time or two to see if I feel any more useful.

I still have yet to add in piano practice time, my internship, a few volunteer hours at the Waldorf School, and maybe a few more hours of exercise. I’m not even close to spreading myself unmanageably thin, so why not?!

…Just proof that you can take the MiddKid out of Middlebury, but you can’t take the Middlebury out of the MiddKid.