369 and Counting

After doing some careful math (or maths if you’re using the Queen’s variant of English), I’ve determined that as of today, I’ve been in Russia 369 days. I surpassed the big one year mark on August 29th. If you want some more math(s), I’ve spent 4.25% of my life here. I think I’ve earned the honorary title of Сибиряк (Siberyak). My 365 day mark placed itself at an interesting time, as I am now staring down the barrel of another 300 and some days here, and am beginning to contemplate my future a bit more. Though summer isn’t officially over, it visibly is. The leaves are turning yellow and falling, and there is that distinctive smell of autumn in the air. Fall is my least favourite season for a number of reasons. I’m highly affected by light and colours, and since my favourite colour is green, the reds, yellows, and eventually browns of autumn really bother me. That wild and blazing orange sunlight that comes at four in the afternoon also gets to me, reminding me that soon the sun won’t even be out at 4pm. But, the thing that I hate most about fall is the sense of death and decay, because that’s what is happening all around. Slowly it grows colder and grey, and the drab Soviet apartment buildings become almost indistinguishable when set against the ever greyer sky. Many people don’t think about this, but it reminds me of my own mortality, and I don’t like that. It also reminds me that winter is coming, and here in Siberia, winter is long and very, very cold.

But enough about the weather. Today is not only just day #369, but also the beginning of the Russian school year, which I’ve never been present for, and let me tell you: It’s interesting. It is quite possibly the most disorganized thing I have ever seen. All over Russia, school officially starts on the 1st of September. Let me restate that: “officially” starts. As of the 31st of August, my department still didn’t have the schedule posted, or even finished. I went in to check my schedule and was informed that my class won’t even be put on the schedule until next week, after students have already started their other classes. This leads me to be a little worried that the university isn’t taking my course seriously, or even that they will drop it completely. I was asked by the dean back in June to plan a literature course for this semester and I chose the theme of short stories. I asked them when I should turn in my plan for the course, and they said September, and to me this was unimaginable that they didn’t even want to see my syllabus until after classes had already started, so I brought it in at the end of August, but no one really seemed to want to look at it. If they dump my class after I spent a lot of time planning it, I’m going to be pretty angry.

Another thing that has me worried at the university is a group of British exchange students who will be studying in our department. When I was checking on my non-existent schedule, I was informed that instead of teaching the four groups I was originally assigned, they were going to combine them all into one section and then combine the students from a different level and stick them in a class, meaning I’d teach 40 to 50 students per section, and only have two classes a week. I had set up my course to be discursive in nature with grading based on attendance and participation – a model that certainly wasn’t going to work with 50 students jammed into a lecture hall. I implored them to divide the classes into two groups so that I would only have to deal with 25 students at a time, which was still too many in my opinion. They reluctantly agreed to split up the larger of the two groups so that I would have three classes a week. I get paid a flat rate per month no matter how many classes I teach per week, but I legitimately enjoy teaching (most of my) classes here, so I asked them if they could give me back the students I taught last year, to which she responded “welllllllllllllll…..we’ll see, because….you knowwwww….we have these British students who will be here.” I pointed out that they were students and not teachers, but I was informed that part of their exchange program involves them participating in the Russian students' oral practice classes, so I wouldn’t be needed as much. This pissed me off a little bit, especially since I was told back in June that this would not be the case. At least none of the students like British English, and I still hold the status of native speaker of American English.

Despite all of this, I am glad for the beginning of the school year. Financially, it gives me stability. I’ll (as far as I know) be working at the university, and my private students are slowly trickling in. Summer was really tough, and a few times near the end I had to borrow money from my parents so that I didn’t starve, which made me feel really bad. The ultimate low was when my father was out of town and couldn’t put money in my account, and my mother was at work and suggested I call my little sister to borrow money from her. I couldn’t bring myself to do that, so I called my grandfather instead. The issues with money really get to me because over here, money carries a bit of an additional meaning. I know a lot of people my age and older who live with their parents, but at the same time, people here get married and start families much younger than in the United States, and the male is expected to be the bread-winner. A financially insecure male is not seen as marriage material. I am in no ways interested in getting married and starting a family at the moment, but I am still exposed to this culture 24/7, and hearing males and females alike speak on the topic of money with this attitude really annoys me. Believe it or not, gender roles in general are my least favourite thing about being here. For those of you who saw me back in December, you’ll remember that the first thing I did when I got home was paint my nails as a kind of personal protest against all the gender bullshit I was subjected to here. As an interesting cultural note related to this subject, it’s virtually impossible to have a long conversation with a female here without her somehow bringing up the topic of matrimony. Whether it be about one of her friends getting married, her own insecurities about her potential future, or another issue, the subject is unavoidable.

While on the topic of financial matters, yesterday I was contacted by a company here in town asking me to lend my voice to their software advertisement. The phone call went something like this:

Girl: Hello is this Andy?
Me: Yes
Girl: Hi Andy, this is Yuliia, I got your phone number from a professor Lyudmilla Milokova, do you know her?
Me: No…
Girl: Well, ok, she knows you. Anyways we are making a commercial for some software we’re developing and need a native speaker to do the voice over, are you interested?
Me: sure…but are you sure you want my voice?
Girl: Ok well stop by our office tomorrow at 11 and we’ll have you read through the script and we’ll see what we think!

So this morning I stopped by, and I was expecting them to be turned off by my nasally and sometimes annoying voice, but they were quite satisfied by my voice over abilities and probably more so just desperate to have a native speaker that they gave me the job. I’ll be recording on Monday and will receive a whopping $30 for my involvement. How exciting. I’m still not sure who this professor is that recommended me, for all I know the secret police gave them my number. I know from my blog statistics page that they follow these posts because before I even post on Facebook that I’ve updated my blog, I immediately get hits from Russia. Hey guys, thanks for reading!

The school year starting also means that my non-Tomsk born Russian friends have begun to come back to town, which I am grateful for. As well as being financially tough, the summer was also boring. I was sometimes actually glad when the weather was shitty because it made me feel much better about doing nothing. However, my boredom did lead me to take up some activities in my free time so that I wasn’t always banging my head against a wall or trying to find someone on Facebook to chat with. One thing that surprised even me was that I joined a gym. I’ve been meaning to get in shape for years and after running out of excuses, and getting tired of Russians asking me what fitness activities I engaged in, I decided to buy a gym membership. I picked the gym closest to my house, knowing that the closer it was, the more likely I would be to go, and to my surprise, I have been going four times a week. I also changed my diet to a relatively gluten-free and protein based diet. I’ve yet to become Arnold Schwarzenegger, but I have noticed a decrease in body fat, and hopefully soon I’ll gain some muscle. I’ve also taken up photography again, which I used to do back in high school. My father sent me my Pentax K1000 35mm SLR, which I’ve been relearning how to use. I’d never shot in colour before, so I’ve mainly been taking some test shots and trying to get the lighting and balance right. Here are some I took the other day, dust comes courtesy of the shitty scanner I used:





And so as the curtains close on summer, I look forward to the coming year in anticipation, as well as apprehension. The apprehension comes from the ever present sense of uncertainty that lingers around me. In this past year I’ve come quite a ways, but it’s always been 2 stumbles forward, 1 step back. I’ve gained friends and opportunities, but friendships I treasured have fallen to the wayside, and I’ve been stabbed in the back by people I trusted. I’ve come to expect the unexpected, but am still surprised when the unexpected occurs. I’ve been forced to grow up and have gained a lot of life experience, but I’ve also lost my sense of purpose and direction here in more ways than one. It’s becoming more and more apparent to me and to others that I don’t want to stay here much longer, I don’t belong here, yet some strange magnetic force draws me in. Russia is an interesting place because when I’m here, I hate it, but when I’m not here, I yearn for it. In my mind I’m tantalized by the romantic side of the country; Russia: Land of the Tsars, the onion-domed cathedrals, Dostoevsky, the samovars, vodka and caviar, mushroom hunting, shashliki, and those -40 degree winter nights spent inside drinking tea with babushkas. However, the reality is much harsher. I can only walk up and down the same dirty streets so many times, or ride the smelly buses that are packed with drunkards with prison tattoos. Eventually I will have to summon up the courage to leave. People often ask me what it’s like living here, and I answer them that it’s a lot like being at the circus, but someone has left the lions and bears in charge of the show, and has also given them the key to the liquor store.

To end on a positive note, I’d like to welcome my good friend Gary back to Russia. Gary and I started together in Russian 101, and he was in my group when I came here two years ago. As of tomorrow, he will be returning to Russia as a Fulbright scholar, and will be living in Kaliningrad. You can follow his highly entertaining blog posts here: http://wheninkaliningrad.blogspot.com/

Hunting the Elusive Great White

This post is from the end of July, but due to lack of internet, it has been postponed until the end of August. Enjoy.

Russia is a country that has a lot of ideas, legends, and images associated with it. Whether it be the countless onion-domed cathedrals, the vast tundra, black caviar, a journey on the Trans-Siberian, or nuclear warheads being paraded across Red Square, everyone has their own visions of Russia. A popular misconception my students have for instance, is that they think everyone in America thinks there are wild bears on the streets. One of the things that always interested me when I was studying Russian, and even for the first part of my stay here, was the variety of outdoor activities that people here engage in. Since making more friends, I’ve gotten to try a lot of them, my favourite being the traditional Russian grill out (shashlik). The planning for that is always quite annoying because there is always one person who invites everyoneeee they know without telling you, and trying to guesstimate how much food and supplies to bring can become an expensive pain in the ass. However, one activity that has fascinated and eluded me from day one is mushroom picking. I was first told that picking mushrooms is a popular activity here in Russian class at university, and ever since that day I’ve wanted to try it. Perhaps it’s because I hardly ever see mushrooms in the wild in the US, that the idea of a forest full of them excited me.

The only person I knew who picked mushrooms was the old lady I used to live with (Lyubov), and we had discussed going many times in the past, but nothing came of it. Well friends, yesterday was my big day. After going back and forth as to whether or not to go due to the possibility of rains, I made the decision that we should at least try. I was told to bring a bag, some water, a knife, something to eat, and anything else I might find useful. Then I was to stand at the bus stop at 8:30 and wait for Lyubov to call me and tell me which bus I needed to board. I waited at the stop and after several back and forth phone calls with instructions, I met Lyubov on the bus that takes you across the river and out of the city. We sat on the bus for about a half hour as it snaked in and out of the village across the river.

When we got off the bus, we weaved in between some apartment buildings and private houses to get to the entrance of the forest. I had expected to walk about ten minutes into the woods, veer off the path, and boom, there would be some mushrooms. I was partially right as there were mushrooms as soon as we got into the woods, but Lyubov informed me that we had an hour to two hour hike ahead of us so that we could go to a better place. She told me we weren’t hunting just any mushrooms, we were after the great Belie Griby (white mushrooms), and that they grow in the moss, which didn’t start for a few kilometers. We walked further and further into the woods and Lyubov showed me a few mushrooms here and there that were edible but that she considered shit. For being an old lady she sure cursed a lot. I was a bit worried at first because I wasn’t very good at identifying mushrooms and kept mistaking some mushrooms for others, and didn’t want to accidently poison myself. Luckily the poisonous ones are fairly obvious. We hiked on and I tried in vain to gather some berries along the way, but my harvest was quite poor. It’s a lot of effort to even just pick a handful of some of the smaller ones, especially when there aren’t many there.

Despite categorizing a lot of mushrooms as “shit,” I noticed that when we finally got to where the moss began to grow, Lyubov already had quite a few mushrooms in her bucket. Perhaps she was hoarding the good ones for herself. We steadily made our way off the path and made our way into the woods. Walking on moss was quite a nice feeling, as it is very soft under your feet. Because we had gotten there at around 11, many people had already been through the area, and the ground was littered with mushrooms people had discarded. Apparently a lot of people also thought these mushrooms were “shit.” Lyubov assured me that there were more mushrooms than people, and our search began. I had no idea what we were looking for, but Lyubov seemed to be finding stuff all over the place. At first I was fairly slow at finding anything, but gradually I began to find some here and there, but I still had no idea what this elusive white mushroom looked like. Lyubov said that we might not find any at all, but after a half hour or so, she called me over to show me her find. I had anticipated my keen eyesight being a key advantage over Lyubov’s magnifying-glass-sized-glasses, but apparently they weren’t. I was surprised she had seen this thing at all. There, buried beneath the moss and leaves was the barely visible reddish-brown cap of the Belyi Grib. She pulled back the moss to reveal a large white mushroom, the likes of which I had seen painted on souvenirs all around Russia. “Look how he sits there like a Tsar!” exclaimed Lyubov. She took out her knife and cut the mushroom just above the root, and then put it in her basket. I continued searching, and after a few minutes, I also thought I found one, however I was incorrect. Discouraged, I searched on, looking for mushrooms that sit there like Tsars. Mushroom hunting takes a lot of attention and patience, because a lot of them are hidden by moss or leaves, and good ones are sometimes quite rare. However, I soon began to get the hang of it, and after a while, I found my first few mushrooms on my own, and finally my first great white. I was very excited.

I figured we would be in the woods for an hour or two tops, because Lyubov is 68, and let’s face it, staring at the ground for hours on end hunting fungi can lose its novelty quickly. However, I was wrong. We wandered around for hours. After four hours I told her I thought we should begin to head back because of the approaching rain, and my hunger. My real concern was that the internet company was supposed to come to my house. Lyubov was not worried about either, and we continued on, perching on a log for a bit to eat some sandwiches that she had brought. I got up and wandered around, and found two huge white mushrooms right under the log we had been sitting on.

After our lunch, Lyubov kept wanting to wander off in all different directions to search for more mushrooms. I was done for the day and still worried about the internet, and the approaching storm. By this time the sky was beginning to darken with storm clouds, and we had lost our path. I told Lyubov I thought we should go, and she said ok, after she explores one more area. I followed behind her. By this point, neither of us had really found anything for a while, and the search was just boring. Finally she admitted defeat and decided that we should head back. But head back to where? There were no paths in sight. Luckily there were no bears in sight either. She asked where the sun was and we finally found it peeping out from behind some approaching clouds. She got out her compass and I followed her. It was a while before we found a path, but it wasn’t ours. I told her we should follow it anyways because it’s bound to go somewhere, but she wanted our path, so we trudged through the woods further. Finally we found something resembling a larger path, and to our luck it had some people (and dogs) on it. I convinced her to ask the people for directions, and after somewhat ignoring us, a man half-heartedly pointed us in the right direction.

There were two ways to get back to the village we needed, the long way, and the longer way, and Lyubov was disappointed that we were going to be going the longer way instead of the long way. I didn’t care, I just wanted to go home. By now the sky was almost pitch black and I could see lightening off in the distance. I had come prepared with an umbrella, but I could see this was going to be bad. It rains a lot in Siberia, but I don’t ever really notice storms. Lyubov kept trying to pick any mushrooms she could find along the path, which slowed us down a bit. It’s interesting to note that on the way in, these mushrooms had been shit, but now she was grabbing anything she could find.

After a half hour, it began to sprinkle. Then, it began to rain. Then, it began to pour. Then, it began to storm. Then, it began to flood. This was one of the worst storms I had seen in Tomsk, and later I would find out that certain areas of the city itself had become so flooded that the buses couldn’t even move. We got lucky…I guess. Lyubov busted out some ponchos, and I used my umbrella, but neither were very effective defenses against the torrential downpour that was occurring. What would have been a nice defense would have been a car. And we saw lots of cars. I counted around 30 over the course of a half an hour that just drove on past us. I kept expecting one of them to ask us if we’d like a ride, but Lyubov said it would never happen, and it never did. Everyone did slow down to look at us though. It made me really disappointed that during a storm, no one with means of shelter stopped to help an old lady. It was somewhat of an apt metaphor for a lot of what goes on in life here, and elsewhere. Everyone slows down to look, but no one stops to help.

Finally after about an hour, we made it back to the village, and after waiting for a while at a bus stop, we made it onto a bus, and then home. We were completely soaked. I had stupidly worn one of my last pairs of clean pants, and would not have a washing machine for another two weeks, but I was at least home and had the ability to dry off. And thus ended our mushroom adventures. I am eagerly awaiting another chance to set off in search of the Great White, the one who sits like a Tsar beneath a blanket of leaves and moss, but I have yet to make another expedition. Hopefully, next time it won’t rain. For those interested, the internet company never did come.

And some photos:

2 Month Super Long Update + Pics

If you look at the calendar, than it is officially summer here in Siberia. However, if you look out the window, you might guess it was early October somewhere in the northeastern US. The past two weeks have been cold and rainy, with the temperature hovering in the 50’s or 60’s. This certainly makes me feel better about doing absolutely nothing all day, but it somewhat magnifies my already growing boredom. Summertime here is really boring because almost everyone that I’m friends with has either left for summer, or in the case of my foreign friends, left for good. I feel somewhat cheated, because after suffering the long and frigid winter, summer is (according to the calendar) here, but there is nothing to do, and I’ve found myself longing for September. I’m already getting a preview of the weather, so it’d be nice to have something to do again.

More than 2 months have passed since I’ve posted an actual update as to what I have been up to here in Siberia, so this post will serve as catch up for the past two and half months, during which a lot has happened. I’ll sort this post into categories so as to try to keep it somewhat organized, but it’s going to be long. In no particular order:

Mom: My mother made a journey to visit me here in Russia, and I think she might have regretted it. For those of you who have been here, Russia can be very difficult to adjust to, and I would imagine becomes more difficult the older you are. I flew to meet her in Moscow, and the first thing that happened was I had to search for her in the airport for 2 hours because she had turned her phone off right after landing, and….had fallen asleep!!!! When I found her I was pretty angry. She had apparently taken a sleeping pill on the plane and it hadn’t worn off yet. She definitely did not like Moscow. Moscow is a very fast paced city and it can really grind on you, especially if you’re not used to it. The amount of walking and having to take the crowded metro everywhere was difficult for her and caused us to fight a lot. My mother obviously does not speak Russian, and not being able to do anything for yourself (such as even ordering a meal) can quickly become frustrating. Luckily, Tomsk was much easier on her, and she actually liked the city. She really enjoyed meeting the old lady I used to live with, and the highlight for me was seeing two grandmothers force my mother to take shots of cognac (my mother has never drank before other than a few sips in the past just to try something). I felt bad that we fought so much, especially because she had traveled to the other side of the globe to visit me, and not very many mothers do that.

Work: For the moment, I don’t really have any, other than two sets of private students. At the beginning of June I was fired from my job at the private English school I worked at for the stupidest reason I think anyone could ever come up with. The entire story is this: There was an American girl (Madeline) here in Tomsk that worked at another university as part of the Fulbright program. I kept hearing her name over and over again and since she was another American in Siberia, I thought it might be interesting to meet her and share experiences. We met up one time back in February, and went to a coffee shop and sat for a few hours discussing our lives here in Tomsk, then we parted ways. Fast forward a few months to May. I get a call from the secretary at the front desk, whom I happened to be dating at the time. She informed me that the director of the school was furious at me and wanted to fire me, but she had convinced her not to. I asked why she was mad at me. Nastya informed me at some point during my conversation with Madeline 3 months earlier, I had told her that I don’t make very much money at English House, and that a teacher from the university I work at had overheard me and ratted me out to the director. I was obviously very confused as to what she was mad about, especially because back in February when I had made my alleged remark, I only worked there one or two hours a week, which totaled about $70 a month, ie: not very much money. I wasn’t complaining about the salary itself, I was just making a general statement. I shrugged it off thinking the director would calm down and forget about it. Besides, I thought, why would she fire me? I’m one of only two native speakers she has, and that would be stupid to fire me.

I didn’t hear anything about it after that until a month later when I received a text message from the front desk stating that I was fired. My first reaction was to burst out laughing. Then, I called the front desk to see what this text was all about. Nastya and I weren’t really on speaking terms, so she wasn’t very keen to answer any of my questions, and hung up on me. I decided I would go in when the director was there and demand that she fire me to my face. After waiting for her for over two hours, she walked in and ignored me. I waltzed into her office and she just looked at me until I confronted her about the text message, to which she replied “but, you never worked here,” as if she was trying to play some Jedi mind trick on me. At this point I became really angry and really let her have it. I demanded my pay and she told me I would have to come in the next day. The next day I came in, she saw me, and immediately left. It took me a few more days before I got my pay. I never did get to tell her to fuck off, which really disappointed me.

Other than my private students, the only work I have is to plan my course at the university for this upcoming semester. I’m pretty excited because this coming year I will have my own course and be a full teacher, rather than just an assistant. I originally wanted to teach a cultural course about social problems in Russia, but the dean decided it would be a better idea for me to teach a course about short stories. The course doesn’t exist, so I need to design it myself, which is somewhat daunting because I need to think of an objective for the course, set up the grading structure, find stories, etc.

The News: I was on it. One of the local news programs runs a series about interesting people around town and for whatever reason they picked me. I have turned down interviews in the past based on the principle of “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all,” and I considered saying no to this one, but the girl was a friend of one of my students so I agreed, thinking that this would be for a newspaper no one read. I was quite surprised when this girl showed up with a film crew. I’ll be honest, at first I said no and they left, but after 5 minutes I felt bad and called them up and agreed to do it. I was a bit surprised because most of the questions I was asked dealt with my band in the US rather than with my life in Siberia. After much pleading and prodding, I agreed to play them a song or two on guitar, which is something I HATE doing. They requested that I do one of my songs, and for whatever reason I decided that I was going to change the time signature from 4/4 to 6/8 and play all the chords in jazz voicings. I played the intro and then immediately switched to Dylan’s “I Shall Be Released,” which I must say, I sang pretty well. Unfortunately that’s not what they used for the news. They instead used my second attempt at playing my own song, this time with the original chords intact, but slowed down quite a bit and with my voice warbling.

I was pretty worried about how the actual news clip would turn out. I wasn’t too keen on being on the news to begin with, and it came across in a lot of my answers. Part of the reason I had turned down interviews in the past was that the questions are so boring that I was afraid I would start making up ridiculous lies to entertain myself, but I answered all the questions straight, but somewhat absent-mindedly. Usually when you are given a sit down interview, you are told the questions ahead of time, and you can often edit your response a few times. Not in Siberia though. I was especially concerned because I would be speaking Russian on TV, and didn’t want to make a lot of mistakes. I thought they would give me a few chances to answer the questions, but they kept just telling me not to worry. In the end, the clip turned out better than I had expected, but I did come off as kind of a douche. They added their own narration, a few times making up things that I hadn’t actually said, or they had misunderstood. The one clip of me actually speaking that did make the news was a grammatically incorrect story about how my friend and drummer Carson had taken in a picture of Zak Hanson to his barber so that he could get the same haircut. Other moments included them using footage of me just sitting around and not knowing they were filming. Once a get a copy of the clip, I’ll link it here.

Misc: As previously mentioned, all of my friends who are not Tomsk natives have left for the summer, making me pretty bored. This past month has been filled with a million goodbye parties for various foreigners leaving, and I really miss them all. My initial impressions of foreigners in Russia were those of the rich old American men in Moscow who are there because of a midlife crisis. I wanted to stay far away from that scene, and swore off hanging out with foreigners here. However, I wish I had given them a shot much earlier here in Tomsk because they are all students, and I ended up meeting some really great people, some of whom I really wish to see again in the future. I’m so used to thinking that my Russian friends are coming back that it seems a little strange to think that my foreign friends aren’t.

I have been trying to put my boredom to good use, but I still haven’t managed to start tasks such as “getting fit.” Today I spent way too much money making a cheesecake (cream cheese here is rare and really expensive), and I have been trying to learn about wine. One major plus is that I’ve had time to focus on music again. My mother brought me my guitar, and the ability to write once again has alleviated a lot of stress. It’s been almost a year since I’ve completed any sort of composition, and getting back into it takes some time. I’ve been experimenting with a lot of open tunings and have come up with about 5 song structures already in the past month, but lyrics don’t come easily. I often have a lot to say, but once I put it down on paper, it just doesn’t seem right. The stuff I’ve been coming up with also seems a bit strange because it doesn’t have the “pop” quality I usually strive for. I blame my recent immersion into Dylan’s catalogue for this.

Apartment: I moved! For those of you who have read past posts, you know that my last apartment was a piece of shit. Well, at least the building. The apartment itself in retrospect also really wasn’t that great. However, now I live in a new (5 years old) building that until a few days ago was completely graffiti free. This means no piss or shit in the hallways, no crazy old ladies diving through the dumpsters, no gangs of kids in the stairways, no needles, and no drug addicts shooting up in the stairwell. I was hipped to this apartment by one of my former students who informed me that he was moving and put in a good word to his landlord. I pay the same amount of rent as before and have a bigger and much nicer apartment that is still in the center. Comparison pics:


Living Room


Living Room Continued


Kitchen


Entrance Way


Balcony


Elevator Area


Hallways


Bonus pics of old apartment building:



Can you count the needles???

It was 2(0) years ago today

June 21st, 2011
Two years ago today, I first stepped out of a plane and onto the soil of Siberia. Or the asphalt of the Tomsk airport. I was then yelled at for taking a photo of the plane. But minor details like that don’t matter. When two months later I stood on that same tarmac (and again got scolded for my photography), I told myself I would never come back. Now two months later, I’ve accumulated 10 months of exile here in the middle of Siberia, and am preparing myself for another 14 months here. How I ended up here again was somewhat of an accident, and I was a bit amused this morning to stumble across a message I wrote to my friend Nicole the day before I left to return to Russia back in September. For those of you who don’t know her, Nicole was in my study abroad group two years ago, and is one the nicest and most genuine people I’ve ever met. She is currently serving 26 months in the Peace Corps somewhere in Georgia. If she has a blog, you should read it.

The note I wrote to Nicole back in September underlines the uncertainty that has followed this entire experience. For those of you why know any details of my trip, I never intended to stay here in Siberia, I originally intended to live in the city of Petrazovodsk with my friend Dustin, but more or less got stuck here after coming to visit my friend’s host sister whom I had met on my study abroad and had corresponded with for a year afterwards. My plan never involved staying here at all, let alone living here for 8 more months. Here is an excerpt from that letter:

“I forgot to reply as to what I was up to yesterday. Or I didn't forget I guess but I didn't want to post it on facebook because I've been keeping it secret. Anyways, on Monday I'm going back to Russia in the hopes of finding some sort of work and improving my Russian. I'm going to start in Moscow for two weeks and then hop a plane to Tomsk to do some visiting/eating at Sibirskoe Bistro. After a few days there I'm going to Petrozavodsk where Dustin is living for his Fulbright, so I'm going to stay there with him since it's free. I'm going to try to get a job someplace and if that fails I'll try to give private English lessons.”

Reading this made me look back and smile a little bit about the naivety with which I embarked upon this whole adventure. I’m a little bit surprised I did it at all, and a bit more surprised that I succeeded to the point that I have. Packing up and moving to a completely different country without any sense of a plan o or job prospect is a really stupid idea that I don’t think I’d recommend anyone trying. Someone probably should have stopped me but luckily no one did. I’m not sure if I expected to succeed, I just didn’t consider failure as an option. If I hadn’t succeeded, I think I would have felt like a terrible failure and fallen into some sort of depression, so it’s good that I did.

A lot of people, both back in the states and here in Siberia, have asked me why I’m choosing to stay here another year. My original goal was to simply become fluent in Russian so I could move to NYC and find a job and pursue my love of music, and to some degree those goals haven’t changed. I’m not going to lie, I don’t particularly like it here, and I think most people know that. I myself question what I’m doing here at times. However, despite not exactly enjoying my surroundings, I do find it to be interesting. I’d honestly love to move to another city here in Russia, somewhere in the south west with a warmer climate and a more European culture, but I’ve chosen to stay here in Tomsk because I don’t want to start over, and moving would undo the months of networking I’ve done, which is really the only way to move up in pay here. There is also the issue of starting over when it comes to friendship. It is analogous to the first few months at university when you go through 75 groups of friends until you find people you actually click with, and I’m just now starting to click, although I am also trying to reconnect with the people who I used to hang out with here every day when I first arrived. Being here is lonely enough, and I don’t want to have to meet new people all over again.

Preparing to stay another year forces me to examine a lot of questions about my future, such as what am I doing here? How long do I intend to stay? What do I hope to accomplish? What will I do when I get back to the United States? I unfortunately don’t have answers to a lot of those questions, which worries me a bit because I don’t want to get stuck in the rut of complacency. As I’ve said time and time again, I never intended for my path to lead back here to Siberia, and Russia is a big place which I would like to further explore. Perhaps I’d be much happier in another place. However, exploring different places here will take more time and at some point I have to return to the United States. I can’t stay here forever, and don’t want to stay here forever. I have dreams to pursue back home, mainly music, and I don’t want to be too old by the time I get back to seriously pursue any of my goals. I feel a bit like the main character in Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone” in that at the moment, I really do have no direction home, and that bothers me a little bit. My response to the question “how does it feel?” is that it makes me feel uneasy.

Another problem with staying too long is my growing inability to relate to other people when I get back. Throwing yourself head first into completely different country and culture forces you to grow up quite a bit, and question a lot of things about yourself. This type of experience fundamentally changes you. It doesn’t necessarily change who you are, but it does force you to do some serious self reflection and pick what you value and who you want to be. When I get back, I will have spent at least 2 very formative years of my life living in a culture and place that I’m not part of, that that’s not something a lot of people deal with. I’m dealing with all the pressures, anxieties, and uncertainties of post college life, except I’m facing those problems in a language and place I will never, ever fully comprehend. I’m not taking the “holier than thou” approach, I am just doing something different than most other people, and I don’t think I’ll be able to just snap back into place when I get back to the United States. I found it hard enough to relate to other people while I still lived there, so I can only imagine how much harder it will be when I get back.

I’m having a similar experience here just because I am a foreigner, and that automatically sets you apart from others, especially in a place that doesn’t have a lot of Westerners. One of the things that is really strange about this whole experience is the minor celebrity status you can achieve as a foreigner in such a small place. The second you open your mouth you can be assured that everyone is going to turn around and stare at you, which is something I’ve more or less gotten used to. People approach us on the streets all the time, the papers want to interview you about your experience here, some people take your picture, and others want to start fights. I think being “special” is paradoxically one of the things I will miss the most, and at the same time absolutely won’t miss at all. It will be a strange day when I can stand on the street talking on my phone and no one turns around to look at me, but that day is a little ways in the future. I’ll be interested to hear how other friends of mine who have just returned home after spending a year here take to adjusting back to their lives in various countries. I guess I’ll find out in about a month.

I think this post is long and disorganized enough already, so I’ll sum up what I’ve been up to in a future post after a week or so, because these past two months have certainly been interesting, and I think my experience here will only get stranger. Hopefully I’ll have some good news to share come next week, but at the moment I don’t want to jinx it. I’ll also someday post pictures. I promise. For now though, I’m going to just hold on tight and see where things take me. And I’m sure that after a year, looking back on this post will certainly be interesting as well.

Saturday Bloody Saturday

As I’ve mentioned a few times in previous posts, part of my job at the university entails simply “being American.” Actually that seems to be my job in general here. I get asked to come to classes and events all the time just so that they can have a real life American there. This past Saturday was not really any different. The university was holding an event titled “Armchair Across America,” and as it was explained to me, would be a fantastic day full of school children and university students putting on plays, singing songs, and giving presentations about the United States. In other words, 6 hours of torture. They begged me all month to come to this event, trying to lure me in with promises of apple pie and banana bread. I asked if the banana bread would have walnuts in it, to which there was no general consensus. I said I would probably come, and they asked me to give my own presentation at the end, restating over and over how excited people would be, and that there would be apple pie and banana bread (with or without walnuts). Then I found out they invited some otherrrrr American who is doing something or other at the American Embassy in Novisibirsk (a city located a 4 hour drive away from here). Fuck. That. I want to be the only American, so I retracted my previous probablys in favour of “no.” Plus the woman I work for assured me that it lasts all day and is in general a snooze fest.

Despite my repeated answers of no, the begging continued, and I compromised by saying I would arrive for the second half…maybe. No one really ever checks up on what I do at the university, so sometimes I show up to events just to make sure she knows (or thinks) that I am doing something. It will be good leverage when I decide to ask for a higher salary. When Saturday morning rolled around I was very hungover, but figured I should show up anyways in case the dean of the department was there. I would have much rather spent the day walking around with my friend, but I was good and went to the university. Sometimes when I’m hungover it feels somewhat like being stoned and I just sit there with not much going through my mind. I sat through some inaccurate presentations about American civic groups, Indians (of the feather variety), fast food, and a rendition of Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” that resembled sober and shameful karaoke. I had to look away so that I wouldn’t laugh. Pro tip: If you can’t access the upper register of your voice, you probably shouldn’t choose that song to sing in front of an audience. But to her credit, she at least didn’t mess up that key change there at the end.

When the performances had ended and the judges were tallying up the votes, I conversed with some of my more mature and interesting students (the kind that don’t invade my life or gossip). I also talked to some sorority type girl from Indiana who is here to do her teacher training. She wanted to “do something outside of her comfort zone,” so they shipped that bitch here to Siberia. She doesn’t speak any Russian. Coincidentally, I ran into her on the street slutting it up with an Ivan Dragov knock-off. Then John Silver (the American from the Embassy) tried to talk to me, but my desire to be wantonly rude got the best of me so our conversation didn’t get very far passed the question “So, how did you get here?” to which I dryly responded “On an airplane, and you?” I unfortunately missed my opportunity to make any Long John Silver cracks. What a pity.

After sitting through the awards, which always consist of “prizes” which are actually just leftover text books and teaching materials from the office, I left with some friends of mine. As we came around the bend by the main building, we noticed a large congregation of police, students, and police vehicles by the main gates of the university. Large gatherings of police aren’t really unusual in Russia, but that they were on campus and that there was a large gathering of students set off some alarms. We approached slowly and were directed around the vehicles towards the gates. As we passed by the cars, it became apparent that something awful had taken place. In the center of the ring of vehicles were two huge pools of blood and some blood soaked rags. In the woods next to the entrance, a few police officers searched the surrounding area with search dogs.

We stood by the main gates not really knowing what to do. Obviously we wanted to know what had happened, but Russian police are in general not very friendly people. One girl, Natasha, debated as to whether or not she should ask, and finally I went with her to ask a police officer. He stated simply that something bad had happened, eerily smiled and told us to leave. Natasha said we have a right to know what happened but once again he told us to leave. Natasha then asked if he would at least tell us if whatever happened had happened to a person or a dog (I’m not really sure why she asked this, but she was perhaps hoping that maybe someone had killed a stray dog). He smiled and said it wasn’t a dog, and to go home. We stood there for a bit longer and the police began to disperse, leaving the two pools of blood unattended. A large orange power sprayer had been brought in to clean up the scene. Natasha and her friend then walked over to a group of students who had just been questioned by the police. When she came back she had a horrified look on her face. She informed us that two students, a male and a female, had been attacked and stabbed in the neck by one of their classmates. The attacker then fled the scene, which explained why the police were searching with dogs. The reason for the stabbing wasn’t known, but according to the students, the attacker had always been fairly mentally unstable. They also said that the victims had been alive when they were taken away, but that the girl in particular had lost a lot of blood and was in bad condition.

Once we heard this, we decided it was best to just leave. Staying there a few yards away from such a scene just made us kind of sick. We walked down the street and stopped outside of the movie theatre to get some free snacks from two guys passing out cracker samples. While there, one of the girls in our group got a text from one of her friends stating that apparently the female victim had died, but I still haven’t been able to confirm this. True or not, it made my mood for the rest of the day rather melancholy. If the girl had died, it makes me really uncomfortable to have seen the remnants of her life spread out there on the pavement. It’s too intimate for me to have shared in the last moments of someone I didn’t know, and to see their life giving fluids splattered everywhere, knowing that the loss of those fluids had caused their death in such a public way. I don’t even know quite how to put these thoughts into words.

Besides having to see the scene, another thing that upset me was the way the whole thing was, and is being (not) handled. The fact the police didn’t tell us what had happened isn’t exactly surprising, but in the context of the situation, the public definitely should have been informed that there was an armed psychopath on the loose who had already stabbed two people. Universities in the United States would probably be put on a state of alert or lockdown. Also, the media outlets have chosen to completely ignore the event, in favour of stories such as May Day celebrations, or pickets at the main square by angry mothers. I’ve been searching the news sites in hopes of finding out if the girl lived or died, but nothing is mentioned at all. I don’t work at the university on Monday, but I’ll be very interested to see how this tragedy is handled. I’m guessing they will also gloss over it as if nothing had happened. That seems to be a trend here.

Insert Title Here

Everything is broken. I had hoped to make this post a little bit sooner, but my internet has ceased to work. I’m hoping it’s because of the construction going on in my building and not something wrong with my computer. I’ve been in Siberia for 8 months, and by this time, I’ve gotten used to minor inconveniences (what some people would dub “white people problems”). These inconveniences include: no hot water, no water at all, no internet, jackhammers going in the hallway, jackhammers in the room next door, having only one television channel, the elevator sporadically not working, food not at all resembling the picture on the menu, the list goes on and on. Really the only one of these things that actually bothers me is when the water gets shut off. I at least think it would be polite if they would let us know about it. Supposedly in the summer the hot water will be shut off for anywhere between 2 weeks to 2 months, depending on who you ask. For me this is terrible, because I like to be clean, and showering in cold water is awful. The water isn’t even just cold, it’s fucking. Freezing. My attempts at boiling water for bucket showers have proved relatively unsuccessful, but I’m sure practice makes perfect. This rich Russian tradition of shutting off the hot water during the summer seems antiquated, and many argue that they don’t actually do anything to the pipes as promised, it’s just a way for people to suffer more. And while I’m whining, my headphones also stopped working. I have a hard time existing without music, and unfortunately due to finances, buying new ones looks way off in the future.

Finances have been really, really tight the entire time I’ve been here. April has been the most difficult month because a lot of my students who studied with me at the private school left to go to various countries and won’t be returning for quite some time, if at all. Despite the fact that I make a lot more than many Russians, the salaries here are extremely low compared the cost of living. All of my end of the month income goes straight to rent, so I am forced to live off of the money I get from my private students. This is about $40 dollars a week, which is very hard to live on when you need to buy food, pay for transportation, and any other incidentals. There are many times when I have to choose between eating or something else. Most of the time, I choose eating. When dealing with such small amounts of money, the difference between something that costs 50 cents and 75 cents becomes a very big difference in the long run. I don’t think my mother would be very happy to know that there are spans of days when I have absolutely no money in my wallet, or in my bank account. Luckily, I don’t think she reads this. But despite all of this, Russia makes me thankful for what I do have, and I still wouldn’t ever consider myself poor, because I know that I can always ask for help. Some people unfortunately don’t have this option, and I am not sure how they survive here on such small salaries. I’ve certainly learned a lot about budgeting.

But moving on, my Easter turned out to be much better than I had anticipated. Despite my prior pessimism, the whole weekend was one of my better weekends on memory, especially in Russia. I unfortunately worked until 9pm on Friday, but after that, one of my coworkers and I engaged in my new favourite activity, which is drinking on playgrounds after dark. This is a popular activity among disenchanted youth, especially gopniki (the stereotypical track suit clad white trash gangster wannabe’s, look them up on Wikipedia). Saturday was more of the same, this time at a café instead of on a playground. Easter morning I actually worked. I thought both sets of my private students would cancel, but they didn’t. This was good for me, seeing as I need money, and had not much else to do. The two children I taught in the morning were surprisingly well behaved, and they and gave me a “kulich,” which is a traditional Russian Easter cake. After teaching in the morning, I went to a soccer game with previously mentioned coworker. We attempted to meet up with my Italian friends but there were some technological problems that prevented this. However, it turned out to be a great time anyways, despite having to avoid another one of our coworkers. After the soccer game I taught another private lesson, and that was Easter.

Hanging out with a small group of my coworkers has turned out to be a much better idea than hanging out with students. I only hung out with my own students a few times, but even hanging out with other students can sometimes be annoying because I still have to deal with their dorm gossip bullshit. Some of my groups have recently taken advantage of my past casual approach by being just plain rude and arguing with me, which I’m going to have to put a stop to. Marina’s (I’m assuming Pashkova?) comment on my last post is pretty spot on. I have unfortunately achieved a minor celebrity status at our university, and in town in general. There are extremely few native speakers of English in town, so when people hear English being spoken, they turn and stare. I guess I’m used to the United States where everyone is speaking a different language, so being stared at was at first quite strange. It’s very difficult to carry on a conversation with a friend when 20 people are staring at you. I’ve gotten used to it, but it still bothers me from time to time, and sometimes the attention isn’t always positive (drunks wanting to bother me or fight on the bus, for instance). Men especially have quite an angry look on their face when they stare at me, as if they suspect I’m here to steal their women-folk.

In other news, my past prediction about it becoming cold and snowing was accurate. It has been overcast and rainy all week, and on Thursday night it snowed an inch or two. It has since all melted. Thursday night was especially nasty because it had rained all day, and then the snow covered up the slushy puddles, making spotting them impossible. While walking my friend back to her house at 2am, I several times fell victim to these camouflaged slushy traps. It’s interesting that despite surviving a winter where temperatures reached -40F, 30F feels really cold after experiencing summer like weather. That’s all for today. I’ll update with another soon about a tragic event on campus and some photos of my apartment. For now you can enjoy these photos of the view from my balcony:

Plants and Students

This week has been rather uneventful, save for my aforementioned trip to the botanical gardens. On Tuesday, I accompanied a group of first year students on a field trip to the university's greenhouse, and I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised. Lena, their teacher, told me that I shouldn't have high expectations, and I certainly didn't. The botanical museum is just a short 5 minute walk from the main building, and as you're walking to the greenhouse, there is a gate and a small building labeled "Botanical Gardens." Since Lena told me not to have high expectations, I was sure that this would be the gardens themselves. Luckily, I was wrong. The botanical garden was housed in a rather large building, and was much nicer than Ohio State's greenhouse because they could actually grow plants and trees in the ground itself (really OSU, whose idea was it to put the greenhouse on top of a parking garage?!). I love plants and am greatly affected by colours (Siberia isn't very colourful), so after a long, gray winter, being in a room with a lot of colourful tropical plants really lifted my mood.

I brought along my camera because I don't often get a chance to take pictures of my life here. Our guide was very enthusiastic about her job and gave us the full tour....twice. We took the second tour after she saw that Lena and I had brought cameras, and so she insisted that we go through again so that she could take pictures of our group next to all the various plants. I'll post a few below, and those of you that are my friend on Facebook can see the rest. Most of the students were a bit too timid to talk to me, so I've noticed that in all of the photos I'm standing with the only girl who made the effort to speak to me. I would have spoken to them in Russian, but I don't think they knew that I know Russian. Strangely though, after our trip, about half the group added me on vkontakte, even though I have never spoken with them.

Like I mentioned before, working at the university has provided me with the opportunity to make a lot of new friends, however, I feel that as of late some of them have been invading my space a little bit too much. If I could back up time, I might not have made the choice to hang out with students that I specifically teach, but that in itself is problematic because I switch groups and there is the potential for anyone to end up becoming my student for a few weeks. I don't give grades so there is no conflict of interest, but I feel as though sometimes they don't take me as seriously as they should.

Really what has gotten to me the most though is the gossip. The fact that I am young and their teacher is then compounded with the fact that I am a foreigner. This is a label that I can never shed, no matter how long I stay here. All of the foreigners here (from Western countries) are strange. All of them. That includes myself I guess, but I just haven't figured out what brand of strange I am. After all, we all chose to come to Siberia for some reason or another, and this is not exactly someplace that is at the top of people's "places to go" list. Anyways, the students loveeee to gossip, and it's unavoidable. The international languages department is seriously comprised of about 80-90% females, and most of them live in the dormitories together. This obviously causes rumors to bound about. Some students who are not my actual students have told me a few of the things that are said about me in the dormitory, and while they aren't bad, I still don't like being talked about, and it makes trusting my other friends harder. Anytime I hang out with one or a group of them, it gets around, and that's just annoying. People like to invent their own version of what events transpired, when really, nothing happens. The whole thing causes me to be wary of hanging out with students anymore. I already transferred out of one group after an inadvertent trip to a club with them caused the end of a two year friendship, which I really miss.

The weather the past few days has become dark and rainy, which has been making me feel a bit down. Also Easter is tomorrow and I don't have anything to do. I kind of wanted to go to church, since Easter is the one day when every Russian goes to church, but I'd feel a bit strange going by myself since I don't know the traditions. Ordinarily I'd always be invited to Lyubov's house (the old lady I lived with), but she is going to her son's to celebrate Easter, his birthday, and his daughter's bday, so I would feel out of place.
But anyways, here are some pictures from the botanical garden:

Getting better, a little better all the time

So I guess my return to blogging only lasted one post, but I figured I would update again because maybe my friends or family that I don’t get a chance to talk to might be interested in what it is I’ve been doing here in Siberia. I’m going to try to blog a bit more to keep people in the loop, but to keep my posts shorter and less rambling. I’m not really even sure where to begin. For starters, I’ve finally graduated to my own apartment. Finding an apartment was by no means easy, and definitely put a heavy strain on the relationship between me and my friends who helped me search. Decent apartments in good parts of town are hard to come by and get taken quickly, and this is made even more complicated by the fact that several real estate agencies were trying to rent out the same apartments and there was a lack of communication between them. When I found an appealing listing, I had to call a friend, who then called the agency, who then called the owner, who they could never seem to get ahold of. Then we all played phone tag. It’s quite a frustrating process and more than once I showed up to look at an apartment only to find out that it had been given away 20 minutes beforehand. The Russians abide by more of a “take what you can get” sort of attitude, which made things even more difficult between my friends and I. Ultimately they got mad at me and I found my apartment by myself. I don’t blame them though, I would have been annoyed as well. On the bright side though, I now live in a nice apartment in the very center of town, and it’s only a 20 minute walk from all of the various places that I work.

Living in my own place has made a huge difference in my life here and improved my mood by an exponential amount. It’s nice to be able to come home to my own space and do whatever I’d like. A lot of people really hate living alone, but conversely I feel that living alone makes me want to hang out with people even more because I don’t have a roommate around to talk to. I also like living alone because it means I can do what I want, when I want, without having to worry about what someone else is doing. This seems fairly obvious but for some reason people here really seem to hate living completely alone.

Anyways, my apartment itself is fairly nice, at least for a one person apartment at the price I pay (apartments here are for whatever reason are either the same price more expensive than apartments in a normal city such as Columbus. The fact that the salaries are only about 25% of what I would make in the US makes them even more expensive), however the apartment building itself is absolute shit. It is a roughhhh place that is comparable with inner city projects. The building is full of drug addicts and because the building really isn’t owned by anyone, no one takes care of the entrance, halls, or stairs. There is (literally) shit, piss, vomit, etc., everywhere. The aforementioned drug addicts hang out in the stairwells and can sometimes be found there passed out with a syringe next to them. Dodging syringes outside, and inside, the building has become second nature. Because heroin is too expensive for the drug addicts here, they shoot up on “Krokodil” (crocodile), which is made from a mix of various pharmaceuticals in someone’s wooden house. I haven’t gotten a chance to take pictures of my apartment/building, but when I do, I’ll post them.

Other than having an apartment, the other thing that has improved my life here has been working at the university. My official position at the university is something along the lines of guest lecturer, but I serve several functions at the university. My primary function is obviously teaching. I am assigned to different 3rd and 4th year groups and conduct their oral practice classes once a week. My secondary function involves just being an American. Because the foreign language departments here are severely lacking in native speakers of English (our university is in the lead with two, most have none), I am often asked to come to classes that I don’t teach, in order to talk with the students. This generally just involves me standing at the front of the classroom for two hours while 18 year old girls bombard me with questions about America, and more often, personal questions about myself (am I married?). Some groups turn these guest lecturers into a party and bring tea and cake. This coming Tuesday I’ll be going on a field trip to the university’s botanical gardens with a group of first year students. My job of “being an American” also involves going to events that I don’t want to go to just so that the university can show off that they have a native speaker. Sitting through presentations, films, and talent shows is not my forte.

Being at the university has provided me with the opportunity to make a lot of friends, because obviously the students are more or less the same age as me. I know, I know. Those of you coming from the American frame of reference are thinking “Noooo, you can’t hang out with your students, that’s in direct breach of the barrier between teacher and student.” At least in my case it’s not. Because I work with so many different groups, and don’t appear on any “official” list of university employees, I can’t give grades. Plus, it’s Russia and no one cares anyways. Anyways, making friends has been great, although sometimes I have a hard time trusting people who want to hang out with me (or their intentions at least). I know this is a somewhat pessimistic viewpoint to take, but when you are one of less than 10 native speakers in a city of 500,000 people, you have to be wary of people using you, even unintentionally, to practice their English. I can’t tell you the number of times that I’ve been in a café with friends and a group of attractive girls approaches purely because we are foreign. I also really try to stay away from hanging out with foreigners here because there seems to be this satellite group of girls who hang around them purely because they are foreign, and I’m not into that. Maybe I’m old fashioned, but I like it when my friends like me because of who I am, not because of what my passport says. That being said, I’ve met a lot of really great people here that I enjoy hanging out with. The weather here has been getting much nicer, and it’s really wonderful to just walk around and talk to people. I feel like because there isn’t as much stuff to do here, Russian’s really value conversation, and enjoy just sitting around talking (and drinking of course), which is something I think is a definitely plus about their culture. Anyways, I’ll stop here for today and in the future will try to update more, but with less text. Hopefully because the weather is nice, I will be participating in all sorts of interesting activities (anyone want to take me to their Dacha?) that I can write about.

Я Вернулся

After an overwhelming majority vote of one vote by Zac Little, I've returned to the blogosphere to fill your spare moments with tales from 11 time zones away. A lot a lot a lot has happened in the months since I last wrote, and I have to be honest, for the most part it's been disappointing. I think a lack of proper planning on my part is mainly to blame. Here are the cliff notes of what happened:

-Came to Tomsk, Siberia to visit some friends
-More or less ran out of money and was forced to stay in Tomsk (my original plan consisted of living with my friend Dustin in another town)
-Found a place to live within a few days (I pay ~$100 a month to sleep on an old lady's couch. I lived with her when I did a study abroad to here)
-Found a job teaching at a private English school
-Tried to register my visa, because legally you have to
-The immigration office wouldn't let me register my visa, even though legally I have to
-It got really fucking cold
-Found some private students
-Found out it was impossible to extend the type of visa I had, forcing me to return to the US
-The university promised me work, I applied for a student visa through them
-Was forced back to the US of A for a month, sat around, gained 7lbs
-Came back to Siberia a month ago
-The dean of the language department is crazy and forgot who I was, putting my work in danger
-It's still cold
-Got my work problems (hopefully) solved today
-I still unfortunately sleep on a couch and searching for an affordable apartment is nearly impossible

If anyone would like an extended version of any of those events, ask.

Now on to the thrilling tale that I promised a long time ago: My brief trip to Russian jail.

At this time I had moved out of Benjy's uncle's apartment and had taken up residence at a hostel located on Arbat street, the center of tourist activity. I may or may not have already blogged about being there, but I don't remember. Anyways, at some point during my stay, a 36 year old Vietnamese man who lived in Switzerland was assigned to my room. His name was Phan (pronounced "Fun" according to him). After ignoring him for the better part of a day, we became buds. The next day we went around town together and I showed him the sights of Moscow. After 2 weeks there, I was a pretty good tour guide. I was also the only non Russian in the hostel who spoke Russian, so I was able to help people with various things such as buying plane tickets, but I've digressed. After a day of taking in the town, Phan bought me a beer to celebrate. After telling Phan how much I hated the foreigners I'd met who were only in Russia to find a wife, Phan revealed the fact that he was in Russia because he had met a girl on an international dating site, and after months of correspondence, she invited him to come visit. He bought tickets, planned his trip, and then she wrote him to say she had gotten back with her ex-husband. Bitch.

Phan and I headed back to the hostel and Phan began talking to what I had assumed was a homeless person who I had seen around the hostel. It turns out he was actually a fairly well-off Columbian who had fell asleep on the metro a month prior and had had his wallet and passport stolen. Having no money, the hostel had been nice enough to let him sleep on a couch in the entrance way. Every once in a while he got a bed. He spoke no English and no Russian, but luckily Phan spoke Spanish, and was able to translate. I don't know why, but I decided we should drink some more and that I would buy the Columbian kid a beer. We set off to a carry out where Phan and Columbia got a beer, and I bought a bottle of my favourite and rumoured to soon be discontinued champagne. Since we couldn't drink inside the hostel, I said we should just drink on the street. Phan was uncomfortable about it, but I pointed out that everyone else was drinking on the street, and that in my 2 months in Siberia I had never seen anyone bothered about drinking on the street. (short note: drinking on the street is illegal as of 2006(?) but no one bothered to tell the general population, and the police generally don't give a shit).

We sat down at a table directly outside the hostel and began to drink a little bit and chat about our different experiences here. Phan, always ready to contribute to the celebration, asked if anyone would like a snack. We decided to make the 2 minute trek to the McDonald's down the street where he bought us a 20 piece McNugget to share. We returned to the table and got out the sauces and began to eat the McNuggets. Not even 3 McNuggets in, 2 police officers (one with a machine gun) approached our table and shone a flashlight in my face, then picked up my bottle of Sovietskoe Champagnskoe to examine it. Yes, it contained alcohol. We were busted. I told him I thought it was still legal to drink on the street and that we were sorry. He demanded our registration papers. I handed over my passport and what I thought was my registration. This is where the trouble started. I had registered at the hostel, but they hadn't given me the correct paper proving my registration. Phan had arrived that morning and had yet to register (you are allowed 3 days), and Columbia had no documents what-so-ever. I explained this to the officers. They explained they were going to have to take us to the station for not having registration, and for drinking on the street. They actually had a brief argument amongst themselves about this. The one with the gun didn't seem to care that we were drinking, he cared more that we didn't have registration, but the other one was convinced we should be booked on both counts. Luckily the one with the gun seemed to be in charge. My poor attempts to bribe the two officers didn't seem to work either. Perhaps it's for the better. We offered them some Chicken McNuggets as well, which they declined. One of them escorted Phan into the hostel to get his registration papers, while the other one questioned me since i spoke Russian (very poorly at that point since i was nervous). At some point during all of this, some tourists came up and asked the officers if they could take a picture of a cow statue. This detail struck me as kind of stupid so I decided to include it.

Phan and officer #2 returned and we all were escorted to the police station, located a convenient 2 minute walk from the hostel. I feel it's important to mention that we brought the chicken nuggets along too. After all, we didn't know how long we would be sitting there, and perhaps they would keep people from taking advantage of our bums. When we got there, the officers told me we could do things the easy way or the hard way. The easy way was that I would translate and after paying a fine, we could all leave. The hard way was that we would sit in a cell until morning, at which point a real translator would arrive (we'd have to pay for that too). We agreed quickly to option #1. Unfortunately, my Russian wasn't very good at that point in time because i was nervous, and the officers quickly got annoyed. They told us we'd have to stay until morning, and then took our passports. We stood there, and decided we might as well eat our McNuggets. After about 20 minutes, another police officer drug in a drunk and bloody man who had been booked for fighting. He sat him down at a table and tried to interrogate him. We clearly didn't belong here. The drunk man kept trying to talk to us instead of the interrogator. He asked why the hell we were standing around in the police station eating McNuggets, and I answered we had been told to stand there. He escorted the drunk man away. After a few more minutes, the officer returned to tell us that they couldn't get ahold of a translator. He returned our documents and told us to just go away and not do this again. A lesson learned.