Okay, so I apologize for the blog delay, if anyone is still reading this. Anyhow, if you haven't already heard, I was unable to go to Budapest because I had a staph infection. I was waiting for the plane to leave (it kept getting delayed; fog in Hungary) when I started feeling very feverish and my throat swelling. I decided to make for the first aid place when my muscles started tensing of their own accord. Once I got through the passport control (it took some insistance), it was smooth sailing. The feldchers at the airport were all great, though no English. They called the American hospital for me, and took me to a nice dark room to sleep for awhile while I waited for the ambulance (about an hour, maybe). It was quite a ride, but I was a little out of it, so not scared. And it was a controlled crazy driving, probably like my own which led Laura to say I was "scary, but safe." Anyways, the American hospital was quite luxurious (but please, everyone going abroad, get travel insurance. I paid 50 bucks for my hospital stay, but it could have been $25,000). About half the people or so spoke English, and I had a flat-screen TV in my room with Discovery Science and Civilization, and more Georgian food than I could eat. After two nights they let me out, which was a bit of a shock, so I went to my relatives' for a couple of days.
I wasn't able to go to Samara either; the doctor said I still needed to take it easy. When I went in five days after I got out of the hospital, I had been doing pretty much like normal, except a little scared to get on the metro. But they freaked me out a little, took some blood and a throat culture. So I stayed in Moscow. After that, there were only about two weeks of school left, and I had a couple of papers and exams to work on. Lydia Grigorevna (Mongolian teacher) gave me one of her books (on Mongolian astrology... I think I'll have to translate the system and give it to Rob, nice calendar junk. Mongolians run on a lunar and solar at the same time, it seems, and combine Chinese with Tibetan stuff) when I left, so I'm really glad that I got her a rose and some chocolates. So that all went well, I got my souveneirs all bought (went back to VDNKh, and it was a bitch to find some nice stuff I actually wanted to buy; birch boxes and a couple of hand-painted lacquer boxes, cloth from Kyrgystan), and even met up with Dima the day before I left, which was great, because I hadn't heard from him for awhile and didn't think I would see him again. Before that, I caught the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, very amazing, and the Roerich Museum, a bummer because half of it was closed, and Roerich was way more of a mystic than I thought, and that was the part that was open. But it was still interesting. I think I would have been better off to have used the time at the Oriental Museum, though.
It was a bit of a pain getting to my dad's in Denver though, we were about a half-hour from Denver when we turned around for Chicago because of the snow. It turned out good though, Lufthansa gave us suites for the first night near my friend Jordana's place, so the second night I slept at her house and went to her friend's and hung out with some people I met with her this summer. So that's that, I guess. I'm not feeling too much of a shock being back here, and people are asking me questions and willing to hear about Russia, so that's nice. Meeting up with Gavin from CLS here in a few days I hope, so I think I will get my fill of talking about Russia for a few days, maybe.
Sunday, December 24, 2006
Monday, November 13, 2006
Well, this blog thing isn't working too great, because I still just don't take the time to type, though I found free internet in the school library a while ago. So, here's the last few weeks.
Vladimir and Suzdal- we went on the train with Olga, who was at Beloit last year. As soon as we got on the train, practically, people got up and started trying to sell things (chocolate, duct tape, doorbells...). I think Olga was really embarrassed. Really though, Russian trains are not that bad. like a school bus at the worst, and better than Amtrak for timing etc. Though we had some trouble coming back. More on that momentarily. So, we took the train for about three hours to Vladimir. It used to be a more important princedom than Moscow, but then the Mongols wiped it out. Later, the Soviets industrialized, so now if you go up to monastaries on the cliff above the river, you can see a nuclear power plant. Anyways, Vladimir was interesting, though there wasn't too much there. After about an hour, got on the bus to Suzdal. It was completely stuffed-- I mean people standing in every available place even, and it was about a 40 minute ride. Suzdal is much less industrialized than Vlad. We walked around for awhile, several monasteries. There was a market still in the main square kind of area, and several people pedaling horse and carriage rides. The most interesting thing about Suzdal was that it is still full of old Russian houses… I saw no apartment blocks. A fair number of these houses were still pretty well kept up too. By this point, though, Logan was all “I want to go back to Moscow…” Anyways, around when it got dark, we went into this restaurant and got some borscht and bliny. It was just us and some Japanese teenagers (only other foreign tourists I think we saw). So, after that, we had to take taxis back to the bus stop, where they wouldn’t sell us legit tickets in the building, you had to buy them from the guy on the bus. Olga was again embarrassed, I think. The bus was really comfortable, though, nobody standing and there was heat. We didn’t have too much of a problem getting on the train back to Moscow, though there was a stop over in this village, Petushki… anyways, we followed some Russians and ended up on the wrong train (there were no signs). So we had to go to the front of the train, jumping over passed out people, and when we got there, the conductor guys basically said they didn’t give a shit about what happened to us. So we had to jump out of the train (it was stopped) and run back to the platform, maybe ¾ of a mile away. And it was cold. I also forgot to mention that Talia was with us, she came from Estonia to see Olga and doesn’t speak any Russian (she isn’t Estonian, was just doing study abroad there). So anyhow, we made it back to Moscow okay, though we had to carefully select a wagon that wasn’t full of drunks playing cards and guys pissing in corners.
Overnight trains are pretty nice. We took the 5 PM train to Petersburg, and it was nice. In Petersburg we had an apartment... really nice and cheap ($30 a night). We were also nicely located near a Carl's Junior (also ate at the Uzbek place next door, and Pizza Hut). We went and checked out the Hermitage the first afternoon, were there for about five hours. We didn't make it through. There is actually a pretty nice display of Chinese, Middle Eastern, etc. stuff on the third floor, but it's not well taken care of... I think the exhibit has been the same for the last 80 years or so. After that, walked down to the Bronze Horseman (it's maybe %150 size of The Scout, but still pretty impressive.) I guess we also went to the Saviour on Spilt Blood, cathedral built after Alexander was assassinated. It's pretty great, interior covered with mosaics. The next day we say Peter and Paul Fortress, it was a bit of a let down, lots closed. But I got to see the Cosmonautics museum. The third day, struck out on my own, went to the Ethnographic museum, and then to Peter's cabin. Both were definitely worth seeing. Overall, I think that Peter is mostly old buildings of the type you can see most anywhere (turn of the century) and a lot smaller than Moscow. There seems like a lot less to do there. But, the canals are impressive and so is the Neva. Also, I liked it a lot better on the last day when it wasn’t raining.
So, I started going on walks with this kid Dima, who I met through a penpal website. He’s 19, so we are the same age, and he has been teaching himself English for about 3 months. We can hold conversations in English and Russian, and both learn a lot. The first place we went was VDNKh, which is now less nice because they turned the fountains off, and we went on a weekday at around 4 o’clock. They were playing Whitney Houston and “It’s Raining Men” and the like, and there were few people around, so it was kind of creepy. Last weekend we went to Kolomenskoe, which was a tsarist estate, started by Ivan the Terrible’s father, or maybe even earlier. Peter lived there after the Streltsy killed his family, and now they’ve moved other old buildings there, so there are several churches and a cabin Peter built when he was working on Arkhangelsk. I didn’t see the latter, but I’ll probably be back. We went into the museum, where Dima told me that he isn’t much for history. Luckily we found some 17th Century clock mechanisms on the top floor, that satisfied him. We’re planning on going to the Museum of Nuclear Technology at some point. Anyways, at this part there’s also a ravine, and once you cross it’s hard to get back because they’re working on all of the bridges. After we finally got back to the entrance, we went to McDonalds. Biggest difference there is sizes, though you can still get everything as big as you can in the US. Russians all seem to really like the sweet and sour sauce. There’s also this thing here called the GreekMac. Is that in the US now?
Last weekend we also went out to a bar with Ildar, Nadia and Olga (who were at Beloit last semester), which was fun, it’s too bad we can’t hang out with them more often. But like pretty much all the Russians here, they have to commute home on the metro for about an hour. The place we went was kind of German themed, but they were having a Celtic band when we got there, so that was kind of confusing. Anyways, though, the beer was really good. Afterwards we walked back to school through some snow singing what we could of the Soviet anthem, avoiding the militsia who were out in droves because it was the Day of National Unity (what they made up a couple of years ago to replace the anniversary of the October Revolution).
So, those are the bigger events, I guess. Now I’m planning on going to Budapest, meeting Joanna and others from her France program. I just have to get a train/plane ticket. The train is 28 hours, I guess, but long trains like that sound like a lot of fun (Meredith just got back from Kazan, etc. this week). After that, I will hopefully go to Samara with the school. There is supposedly some kind of international student conference at a school there. I gave them money for the train ticket today, I hope this works out. One of the teachers who was planning it got sick and has disappeared, and they even replaced her this morning. So now I have a guy teacher, Mikhail Mikhailovich, who seems pretty cool. Anyways, I want to go to Samara pretty bad, it’s in Tatar land, south of Kazan.
Vladimir and Suzdal- we went on the train with Olga, who was at Beloit last year. As soon as we got on the train, practically, people got up and started trying to sell things (chocolate, duct tape, doorbells...). I think Olga was really embarrassed. Really though, Russian trains are not that bad. like a school bus at the worst, and better than Amtrak for timing etc. Though we had some trouble coming back. More on that momentarily. So, we took the train for about three hours to Vladimir. It used to be a more important princedom than Moscow, but then the Mongols wiped it out. Later, the Soviets industrialized, so now if you go up to monastaries on the cliff above the river, you can see a nuclear power plant. Anyways, Vladimir was interesting, though there wasn't too much there. After about an hour, got on the bus to Suzdal. It was completely stuffed-- I mean people standing in every available place even, and it was about a 40 minute ride. Suzdal is much less industrialized than Vlad. We walked around for awhile, several monasteries. There was a market still in the main square kind of area, and several people pedaling horse and carriage rides. The most interesting thing about Suzdal was that it is still full of old Russian houses… I saw no apartment blocks. A fair number of these houses were still pretty well kept up too. By this point, though, Logan was all “I want to go back to Moscow…” Anyways, around when it got dark, we went into this restaurant and got some borscht and bliny. It was just us and some Japanese teenagers (only other foreign tourists I think we saw). So, after that, we had to take taxis back to the bus stop, where they wouldn’t sell us legit tickets in the building, you had to buy them from the guy on the bus. Olga was again embarrassed, I think. The bus was really comfortable, though, nobody standing and there was heat. We didn’t have too much of a problem getting on the train back to Moscow, though there was a stop over in this village, Petushki… anyways, we followed some Russians and ended up on the wrong train (there were no signs). So we had to go to the front of the train, jumping over passed out people, and when we got there, the conductor guys basically said they didn’t give a shit about what happened to us. So we had to jump out of the train (it was stopped) and run back to the platform, maybe ¾ of a mile away. And it was cold. I also forgot to mention that Talia was with us, she came from Estonia to see Olga and doesn’t speak any Russian (she isn’t Estonian, was just doing study abroad there). So anyhow, we made it back to Moscow okay, though we had to carefully select a wagon that wasn’t full of drunks playing cards and guys pissing in corners.
Overnight trains are pretty nice. We took the 5 PM train to Petersburg, and it was nice. In Petersburg we had an apartment... really nice and cheap ($30 a night). We were also nicely located near a Carl's Junior (also ate at the Uzbek place next door, and Pizza Hut). We went and checked out the Hermitage the first afternoon, were there for about five hours. We didn't make it through. There is actually a pretty nice display of Chinese, Middle Eastern, etc. stuff on the third floor, but it's not well taken care of... I think the exhibit has been the same for the last 80 years or so. After that, walked down to the Bronze Horseman (it's maybe %150 size of The Scout, but still pretty impressive.) I guess we also went to the Saviour on Spilt Blood, cathedral built after Alexander was assassinated. It's pretty great, interior covered with mosaics. The next day we say Peter and Paul Fortress, it was a bit of a let down, lots closed. But I got to see the Cosmonautics museum. The third day, struck out on my own, went to the Ethnographic museum, and then to Peter's cabin. Both were definitely worth seeing. Overall, I think that Peter is mostly old buildings of the type you can see most anywhere (turn of the century) and a lot smaller than Moscow. There seems like a lot less to do there. But, the canals are impressive and so is the Neva. Also, I liked it a lot better on the last day when it wasn’t raining.
So, I started going on walks with this kid Dima, who I met through a penpal website. He’s 19, so we are the same age, and he has been teaching himself English for about 3 months. We can hold conversations in English and Russian, and both learn a lot. The first place we went was VDNKh, which is now less nice because they turned the fountains off, and we went on a weekday at around 4 o’clock. They were playing Whitney Houston and “It’s Raining Men” and the like, and there were few people around, so it was kind of creepy. Last weekend we went to Kolomenskoe, which was a tsarist estate, started by Ivan the Terrible’s father, or maybe even earlier. Peter lived there after the Streltsy killed his family, and now they’ve moved other old buildings there, so there are several churches and a cabin Peter built when he was working on Arkhangelsk. I didn’t see the latter, but I’ll probably be back. We went into the museum, where Dima told me that he isn’t much for history. Luckily we found some 17th Century clock mechanisms on the top floor, that satisfied him. We’re planning on going to the Museum of Nuclear Technology at some point. Anyways, at this part there’s also a ravine, and once you cross it’s hard to get back because they’re working on all of the bridges. After we finally got back to the entrance, we went to McDonalds. Biggest difference there is sizes, though you can still get everything as big as you can in the US. Russians all seem to really like the sweet and sour sauce. There’s also this thing here called the GreekMac. Is that in the US now?
Last weekend we also went out to a bar with Ildar, Nadia and Olga (who were at Beloit last semester), which was fun, it’s too bad we can’t hang out with them more often. But like pretty much all the Russians here, they have to commute home on the metro for about an hour. The place we went was kind of German themed, but they were having a Celtic band when we got there, so that was kind of confusing. Anyways, though, the beer was really good. Afterwards we walked back to school through some snow singing what we could of the Soviet anthem, avoiding the militsia who were out in droves because it was the Day of National Unity (what they made up a couple of years ago to replace the anniversary of the October Revolution).
So, those are the bigger events, I guess. Now I’m planning on going to Budapest, meeting Joanna and others from her France program. I just have to get a train/plane ticket. The train is 28 hours, I guess, but long trains like that sound like a lot of fun (Meredith just got back from Kazan, etc. this week). After that, I will hopefully go to Samara with the school. There is supposedly some kind of international student conference at a school there. I gave them money for the train ticket today, I hope this works out. One of the teachers who was planning it got sick and has disappeared, and they even replaced her this morning. So now I have a guy teacher, Mikhail Mikhailovich, who seems pretty cool. Anyways, I want to go to Samara pretty bad, it’s in Tatar land, south of Kazan.
Sunday, October 29, 2006
St. Petersburg is pretty cool. My first impression was that it is just really like Manhattan (it is... a lot of turn of the century stuff). Today, though, it was finally nice and clear out (cold, too, but that made it better). It really felt like "the North."
Anyhow, I struck out on my own today and checked out the Ethnographic Museum, and Peter's cabin. Went down Nevsky, found Dom Knigi, but it's being worked on and is closed. I tried to go to the Buddhist temple (read they had a Buryat restaurant there), but wasn't sure where it was, and turned back.
Had Carl's Junior for dinner (we had Pizza Hut last night, and Uzbek the night before).
Looking forward to getting back to Moscow, it really feels like home now.
Anyhow, I struck out on my own today and checked out the Ethnographic Museum, and Peter's cabin. Went down Nevsky, found Dom Knigi, but it's being worked on and is closed. I tried to go to the Buddhist temple (read they had a Buryat restaurant there), but wasn't sure where it was, and turned back.
Had Carl's Junior for dinner (we had Pizza Hut last night, and Uzbek the night before).
Looking forward to getting back to Moscow, it really feels like home now.
Thursday, October 19, 2006
All right, things are going pretty good. It's been a little bit of a boring week, but if all goes well we'll be in Vladimir and Suzdal this weekend. Hoping to escape the Soviet architecture, it's a little overbearing.
Also, I'm getting the metro pass tomorrow, I hope, so then I will be able to do a lot more. Also getting the guts to stick my credit card in an ATM machine, finally called my company last night. With money and cheap metro, I think things will be much more exciting.
I'm also putting up some older pictures. VDNKh, a Soviet exhibition center that's now full of shops, the pavillions are all in varying states of decay though they keep the fountains going. There's a picture of Logan with the Kremlin in the background, and a camel at VDNKh. Also Swan Lake at the Bolshoi. These were all taken by Meredith; I haven't loaded any of my pictures up on a computer yet.
Also, I'm getting the metro pass tomorrow, I hope, so then I will be able to do a lot more. Also getting the guts to stick my credit card in an ATM machine, finally called my company last night. With money and cheap metro, I think things will be much more exciting.
I'm also putting up some older pictures. VDNKh, a Soviet exhibition center that's now full of shops, the pavillions are all in varying states of decay though they keep the fountains going. There's a picture of Logan with the Kremlin in the background, and a camel at VDNKh. Also Swan Lake at the Bolshoi. These were all taken by Meredith; I haven't loaded any of my pictures up on a computer yet.
Monday, October 16, 2006
Okay, this is two weeks old, finally getting to post it... I will hopefully get a metro pass on friday and got a lot of really cool stamps at Izmailovo.
I really love it here, it's a little different, but you can pretty much get anything you need in Moscow, and my school's at an excellent location (right off Tverskaya...). The buildings themselves are older and kind of dilapidated, but
nothing worse than Texas public schools. For Cody people, my dorm is a lot like the Elks club.
Class is pretty good; we have class in Russian with other international students (themed courses... current events, grammar, literature- where we're reading Chekov stories, not too shabby). You can also take courses with Russian students- started taking Mongolian on Tuesday (I have to catch up with everyone else, but that's going pretty well so far), and I've been going to an anthropology class (pretty interesting to see how it differs here from in the US). I've met lots of interesting Russians, and can actually talk to them in Russian. A lot of people I've met here have some English, but not a ton.
Everything is still going pretty well... Yeah, I'm really glad that the Russian is working out for me... I was pretty scared before coming. It's weird though, it's much
easier in some situations than in others. When I just meet a Russian around school or on the street, it's pretty easy to talk, but if I'm in a store or have to ask someone at school for something, sometimes I get kind of freaked out and have
more trouble.
We haven't done too much; just the Tretyakov, Novodevichy, and also saw Master and Margarita at Taganka and Don Quixote at the Bolshoi (had to stand again, but it was also only 20 p., less than a dollar) A little too much theater for me, actually. We might go to Izmailovsky this weekend. We're getting our student metro passes on Friday, hopefully (we finally got our passports back), so after that we'll probably really be mobile!
I really love it here, it's a little different, but you can pretty much get anything you need in Moscow, and my school's at an excellent location (right off Tverskaya...). The buildings themselves are older and kind of dilapidated, but
nothing worse than Texas public schools. For Cody people, my dorm is a lot like the Elks club.
Class is pretty good; we have class in Russian with other international students (themed courses... current events, grammar, literature- where we're reading Chekov stories, not too shabby). You can also take courses with Russian students- started taking Mongolian on Tuesday (I have to catch up with everyone else, but that's going pretty well so far), and I've been going to an anthropology class (pretty interesting to see how it differs here from in the US). I've met lots of interesting Russians, and can actually talk to them in Russian. A lot of people I've met here have some English, but not a ton.
Everything is still going pretty well... Yeah, I'm really glad that the Russian is working out for me... I was pretty scared before coming. It's weird though, it's much
easier in some situations than in others. When I just meet a Russian around school or on the street, it's pretty easy to talk, but if I'm in a store or have to ask someone at school for something, sometimes I get kind of freaked out and have
more trouble.
We haven't done too much; just the Tretyakov, Novodevichy, and also saw Master and Margarita at Taganka and Don Quixote at the Bolshoi (had to stand again, but it was also only 20 p., less than a dollar) A little too much theater for me, actually. We might go to Izmailovsky this weekend. We're getting our student metro passes on Friday, hopefully (we finally got our passports back), so after that we'll probably really be mobile!
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