Баня

We have more snow! The Norwegian returned back to Norway. Yesterday, Tim and I ventured into the Баня (banya), which is similiar to a sauna except we beat each other with branches. Unfortunately, Tim and I didn't have branches but we saw other people beating each other with branches. It was a pretty fun time, although I had more fun in the sauna when I was in Finland with a bunch of Finnish students. Anyways it was enjoyable, during breaks from the banya Tim and I would run outside onto the beach and roll around in the snow. I made some snow angels. Then we would run back into the banya giggling like little girls as the бабушки (grandmothers) would shake their heads at us. After the experience, we bought some beers to replenish ourselves and watched Диверсант (Saboteur). A great TV series about three Soviet soldiers during the Great Patriotic War (World War II) who are special forces, but for sabotage. Its very good. Tonight I'm going with Tim to the theatre to see a comedy and then on Sunday I'm going with him to the ballet. Yesterday I bought Монгол (Mongol) and Black Sheep. Mongol is a Russian, German, Kazakh film about Ghengis Khan from his childhood up until he unified all the tribes of Mongolia. Very good film unfortunately no subtitles, but I understood a lot of it. Black Sheep I have yet to see, it is a New Zealand comedy about sheep zombies.

I apologize, I need to be writing these more often (Keith, tu es content? C'est une blague!) This past week has been full of new things. First off classes are different, instead of taking primarily language classes we are now taking subject classes. Before I was taking Лекция (Lecture) or a class on some hardships of the Russian language and learning slang. Lexicon is what we might say in English. Разговорная Практика (conversation practice), Аудирование (Listening), Культура (Culture), Грамматика (Grammar), and Литература (Literature). Now I have Литература, Культура, Грамматика, Дискусия (Discussion), and История (History). What was surprising is my history teacher is Tim's host mom. He didn't even know that until class started. I have met some more foreigners, one from Ghana and another from Norway. Norwegian is 44 years old, his name is Hauken. He is in the Norwegian military and was accepted to be the military atache to Moscow starting next year. He's only taken 4 months of Russian and he's pretty good at it. We eat lunch with him everyday, he is also the only other foreigner that has lunch the same time we do. This is probably going to be long again.....anyways...The weekend was fun, Tim and I went clubbing at Night Ocean, a popular club in Novgorod. We arrived around 11PM and no one was dancing, I felt like I was in middle school again! I learned that the place doesn't get bumpin' until 1ish, which is when we left. Saturday we went out with Hauken to some bars. One used to be the Comsomal for the town. At one of the bars, they were playing the Macarina so naturally Tim and I had to do the dance. There were already people dancing but no one there knew the Macarina. As Tim and I were dancing it, everyone was staring at us like "WOW, what an amazing dance." By the end of the song some people were trying to steal our moves. Oh we got an applause at the end. The result of that, for the rest of the night women in their upper 40s/50s were asking Tim to dance. Oh time for my show Дизертант I'll write more later.

Я Ещё Живу

Forgive me, I haven't written in awhile, I've had a lot going on. I've been to many places. The past two weeks I was on vacation, I spent about a week in Moscow with my friend Christian and with my parents. My parents and I toured Moscow we saw the Kremlin, Red Square, Lenin's Masouleum (very weird), the convent where Peter the Great sent his wife b/c he became bored with her, State Museum, and the American embassy with the golden arches also known as Don's or McDonald's or Макдоналдс. Christian and I had a fun time we found a cool wine place that just opened and we were invited to the opening by our new Italian friend, who also cut up a 40kg piece of bologna. We sang "Strangers in the Night" with musicians at a German restaurant and afterwards they recruited Christian to join them, don't know if he's going to do it though. Had the best hot dog ever, Star Dogs. A hot dog wrapped in bacon with ketchup, mustard, onions and pickles. soooo tasty! also had shaurma or in novgorod called shaverma also really tasty. Had Uzbek food which is also tasty and had Georgian food with Christian and my parents. Also very tasty if not more tasty!! After Moscow my parents and I travelled by overnight train to Novgorod for a day and saw the sights and had dinner with my host parents. I was the translator and by the end of the night my head hurt and was making silly mistakes such as saying "tomorrow" instead of "yesterday." Just from mental exhaustion. Slept very well that night. Next day we travelled by train to St. Petersburg where we saw Peterhoff, Catherine's Palace, Paul's Palace, and the Hermitage. I left them and went to Великий Устюг (Velikyi Ustyug). We also went to an ice bar which was way cool, everything was made of ice even the glasses! Velikyi Ustyug was an interesting place. 30,000 people and kind of difficult to get too. Took a 24 hour train ride to Kotlas and from there an 1.5 hr bus ride to the bus station followed by a ten minute cab ride into the middle of the city. Only thing there is Дед Мороз or Father Frost (their equivalent of Santa Claus) I happened to run into him at the post office where I was buying some souvenirs. So naturally I got a picture with him. I saw him the next day when I travelled to his estate, a 20 minute cab ride from the city. He recognized me, he even said, "Welcome guests! and the guest from America I recognize, yesterday we had a picture taken together." He has a very deep booming voice. I had a tour of his residence and must say he is more stylish than Santa Claus. He has fifteen different outfits all different colors while Santa Claus only has the red suit. Santa you gotta get with it. I even asked Father Frost what happens to the bad children, he responded with, "they get the worst presents you can imagine." Kinda creepy. His estate was also a little creepy. Set in the forest in the middle of nowhere, he has a trail you can walk around that has background noises of howling wolfs and hooting owls. Eerie. I'll post some pictures later. I even got a picture with his reindeer, he only has one. Father Frost is up with the 21st Century, he moves around be motorized vehicle. I think he even has his own helicopter. Though I would never want to fly in his, nothing against his piloting skills. I just don't trust Russian made helicopters. Anyways I left Velikiy Ustyug two days early and thankfully the railway ticket agent had the patience to help me change my tickets. I left Yadrikha which is in the middle of nowhere on the way to Kotlas, and went to Vologda. 12 hours. And to save money I went third class where 54 people fit into one train wagon, not bad but not too comfortable. Don't fit on the beds, luckily it was an all day ride. Arrived into Vologda with 3 hours to kill. Tried to negotiate with the head provodnitsa or nachal'nik on another train going to Petersburg if I could change my ticket. She said I was too late. But there was another provodnitsa (female carriage attendant) who tried to help me and was very nice. But it didn't work out, had to wait the three hours. Waited and caught the 12 hour train to Petersburg, thank goodness I went second class. I slept the entire train ride. Spent the day in Petersburg and saw the Blockade Museum. Very interesting, I wish it had more but it didn't seem like it had a lot of testaments from the civilian population. Took the train back to Novgorod last night. Today tried to buy some running shoes that caught my eye but unfortunately not in my size, uber lame. Went to the opening of a supermarket. Never have I seen soo many people standing in line to go to a supermarket! In front of the supermarket there were tents with games. One was arm wrestling, called arm wrestling in Russian. I played and won, after a grueling 5 minutes. I won a can of plov, uzbek food that I've wanted to try. I wanted the supermarket t-shirt but I got canned food instead. At least I won something. I saw a 12 yr old boy go up against a babushka (grandmother) and she took him down easily. It was hilarious.

Познакомиться

Yesterday was a good day, I met a guy from Congo at school. I found out that he's been in Novgorod for a year now and he doesn't like cold weather. There are a couple other students from Congo here. I asked him at one point if people spoke French in Congo, I wasn't sure. And they do, so I told him I also spoke French and from then on we spoke French. It was good to use my French, but I realized very quickly that I've forgotten many words and Russian has surpassed my French speaking skills, but I still can understand everything in French. Then last night Tim and I met a guy from Kazakhstan. We learned some things about how they do tea there, one thing is they don't have handles on their tea cups. They use their hands to hold the cups on the lip. Therefore, they don't fill the cup to the brim, unless they don't like the person, but usually they fill it up 3/4 of the way. We also learned some interesting things about the country. If you didn't know, Kazakhstan was the first of the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) to repay all its debts from the collapse of the Soviet Union. We also saw some really neat pictures of Kazakhstan and Abkhazia. We're going to meet him again and he's going to teach us some kung fu and we're going to play floor hockey on Saturday!

Фотографии

Here are some pictures that I've taken over the past month. Enjoy.

Me in Novgorod across the river from the Kremlin

New Moscow (where all the foreign companies are headquartered) I found out later that taking pictures was forbidden.

Christian and I at Red Square

This is Urevev Monastery (I think)

Everyday in Russia You See Something You Wouldn't Normally See

Today, I saw a stray dog wander through the cafeteria. puzzling. yes. Again it has been awhile since I last wrote. Last Friday, we had an excursion to Софиский Соборь it was interesting, a little on the long side but there was a lot of good facts. For example, the original cross that was placed on one of the domes was stolen by spaniards during the Second World War, not Germans. Spaniards. They actually kept good care of it, they kept in a church until two years ago they gave it back to Russia. That night Tim and I hung out with his host sister and her friend, we drank some beers ate pizza and watched TV. I learned a couple new words that night like бабка which is slang for money, and then there is жрать which is to eat like a pig or gobble up. Saturday we learned to never ever take a bus to Saint Petersburg b/c traffic is a nightmare. It is supposed to take 3.5hours, it took us 5 or more. then we took a commercial bus to Petrodvorets and that is supposed to take 40 min, took us 1.5hrs. But it was definately worth it, it was a beautiful day and most of leaves have changed color. I took some great photographs, I'll upload them later. After we decided to take a boat back, it was worth the $10, comfy and no traffic only 30 min. We should've spent the night but we didn't. Sunday was fun. I went to my family's dacha out by a forest. Russians are pretty much self-sustaining. My family grows apples, potatoes, tomatoes, garlic or onions, and they even have their own honeycomb. So they make their own honey. As well as their own jelly and alcohol. I got to use the banya and it was a great experience. I had to wear a hat so as not to burn my head, ears, or hair. My host dad told me that sometimes you have to wear gloves. Anyways I got beaten with birch leaves, then I beat myself them. It was fun. I learned that Russians can also drink a lot too, at dinner I had about 4 shots (as many as everyone else) with my meal. I didn't feel it because of all the food in my stomach. Last night was another story. Last night was my host sister's 28th birthday. So lots of toasts=lots of drinking, I had about 7-8 shots (as many as everyone else). Classes are going well, in grammar class we started learning about verbs of motion and in literature class we finished reading some Dostoevsky and tomorrow we're moving onto Чехов. Life is good, but still need to decide where to go for break...maybe Murmansk and Petrozavodsk?

Another week gone by

Another week has gone by and little by little things are falling into place. I'm understanding things better, not neccessarily retaining certain vocabulary, but I am retaining some. Highlights of the week, going to a club with Tim. Tim danced with a prostitute, and we didn't know that she was a prostitute. Either the club was lame or Russians/Velikiy Novgorodians don't know how to break dance. I tried break dancing in the circle but no one did anything, TIR. Tim found Grand Dad's Vodka. If you didn't know Tim is a huuuuuge fan Grand Dad's Whiskey. So naturally we bought it. I went swimming on Sunday, it felt really good to get back in the pool. Next week I'll start volunteering at an archeological dig, I'm really excited about that. Oh and I'm attaching a picture of the swim team doing the haka because its sweet!