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 [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Sovietism’
Spring Break (Days 2-3): Chita rocks
Posted: March 31, 2010 in Far East (Spring), Out of TownTags: Assumption Cathedral, Baskin Robbins, Chita, daylight savings time, Decembrists, food, huge green tube, Jerusalem, Lenin, museum, Siberian culture, Sovietism, Subway, train, Ukranian cuisine
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Spring Break (Day 1): ‘Trevoga’ redeemed in U.U.
Posted: March 28, 2010 in Far East (Spring)Tags: Buryatia, cold, datsan, friends, guide book, hotel, Irish, jungle animal, Lenin, Lenin head, museum, тревога, трудность, Russian MTV, Snow, Sovietism, train, WiFi
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 [...]
More elections (Vote for me!)
Posted: March 14, 2010 in Иркутск, Student LifeTags: elections, Middlebury, New Years, politics, president, Russia and Eastern European Society, Sovietism, Sputnik
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 [...]
Where bananas are cold and green
Posted: February 5, 2010 in ИркутскTags: babushki, bananas, cold, food, host family, mayonnaise, Sovietism
The somatic triggers of late-winter rain’s smell and the gymnastics of skipping over the slush-puddles of Prague got spring on my mind a few weeks ago. The disappointing irony of the fact is that I’ve returned to the hard freeze of winter in Irkutsk. Night temps are comfortably below -30 deg. C. and not going [...]
Holiday: It’s beginning to look at lot like New Year’s. . .
Posted: December 22, 2009 in Иркутск, Holidays & TraditionTags: Christmas, cold, consumerism, culture shock, friends, Irkutsk, New Years, Old New Years, Russian Christmas, shopping, Snow, Sovietism, tea, Uncle Frost
To properly describe my experience in the realm of the Russian “holiday season,” if such a concept actually exists as a period defined apart from the general conception of everyday life in this country, then I should go back to my Thanksgiving holiday here. Walking out of a delightful evening of intercultural dialogue (conversation over [...]
Theatre: Romeo & Dzhulietta à la Russe/J.C. Superstar
Posted: December 5, 2009 in ИркутскTags: "amusing/characteristically Russian", adaptation, corruption, Romeo & Dzhulietta, Sovietism, teachers, theatre, translation
On Tuesday night, I ran into another extra-curricular “committment” to keep myself well distracted from the significant, but shrinking, pile of work I have ahead of me this weekend. Hooray! Irina Melentievna (grammar teacher), that wonderful woman, her, got her hands on tickets for the Irkutsk Dramaturgical Academy Theatre’s production of Romeo and Juliet for us. I [...]
