я хотел бы остаться с тобой, просто остаться с тобой

I’m still in Russia, still in Siberia. But not for very much longer. I already feel weird, weirder than I thought I would, but it will only be weirder when I get back to America, which is June 23rd, by the way.
The last few weeks have been nice. Testing at the international department went fine, we had a nice last dinner, but I was a little disappointed that Alexandra Vladimirovna didn’t start crying. Because she said she was going to. It was a bummer seeing the new students go. They had all gotten a lot better at Russian and they were a good group. After our farewell lunch we walked one last time down the hill, bought a bottle of Soviet Champagne for $3.50 and 5 little plastic cups and we all said a little toast. In the woods by Lermontov street. Which proves that we all learned something from Russian culture here.
After that I mostly just hung around and wrote a paper about the fall of the Ottoman empire for my class at the history department. And did absolutely nothing to plan for my parents’ arrival with my aunt. The day before they arrived I didn’t sleep well at all—soon my parents, probably the anchor of my previous life in Americaland—would be in Irkutsk, the center of Irkutskland. I was especially anxious waiting in the hotel lobby. But it was fine, the day was hot and gorgeous and we walked around all my favorite parts of the center. But that evening I realized after my host mom called how many things I had not done to prepare for their time here and how I would not have time to do them: I had to write a paper about Vasily Shukshin, buy tickets for a boat and a van, find housing, etc. And I got really stressed out. And I don’t hardly ever get stressed, even at Middlebury, and I remembered that I don’t deal with stress well. I just get really tense and irritable and unfocused. So that night after we went out to dinner I didn’t sleep well either.
I’m not going to share all the boring details, but everything worked out, except for the weather, which after two brilliant days around 80 degrees, in which we finally went swimming at the dacha, which I had been looking forward to all year, and which was blissful, turned to 55 degrees and cold ugly rain. Which continued for 2 and a half days. So we had two sort of gray and not-so-great days at Listvyanka, but my planned showcase, Bolshiye Koti, went really well. I think they saw Baikal and enjoyed their Russian banya and etc. Only the public rocket boat doesn’t run on Mondays, so we had to hire a fisherman for three times the price. Oops!

I downloaded a saccharine Russian pop song from the 90’s after I read the chorus at the end of a Viktor Pelevin novel. The chorus has taken on a sort of strange meaning for me now:
Завтра улечу Tomorrow I'll fly away
В солнечное лето To a sunny summer
Буду делать все, что захочу I'll do whatever I want

The lyrics are about as heavy as the casio accompaniament, but I like that image. Its not like I haven't had fun in Russia. It's not really about Russia, but about a time in my life: I think living here has made me more confident, and there were a lot of things that I never did earlier in my life that now seem harmless. I think I should do more things that I always wanted to do, as long as it doesn't bother anybody else. So I guess study abroad really is a formative experience blah blah blah.

Two holidays and a funeral

MAY: SPRING LABOR PEACE VICTORY GLORY

There’s a Russian superstition that its bad luck to be born or get married in May, which I don’t really understand, because May is probably the greatest month in Russia. It starts out with May 1st, International Labor Day, which is basically an excuse for a 3-day weekend and some protest marches by old Communists who don’t matter any more.
Then May 9th is Victory Day, where the achievements of those old Communists are celebrated. I think an American wouldn’t really understand what all the fuss is about: we fought in World War II, as well, and Veterans Day is enough for us. But then you have to look at how the war was fought for both sides. We lost about 300,000 men, which is roughly all of Anchorage. Which is awful. But the Soviet Union lost 25 million, which is like all of New York City, its suburbs, and part of New Jersey as well.
After the war we were finally completely free of the Great Depression and a new period of prosperity began. The Russians were left with almost all of European Russia (the part where everybody lives) in ruins, and there was starvation in the first years after the war.
So despite all the ineptitude that the Stalinists showed at the onset of the war, despite the cooperation between Nazi Germany and the USSR before June 1941, despite the war with Finland, the occupation of eastern Poland and the Baltic states, and despite the 40 years that followed the war in Eastern Europe, all of these things that are not really mentioned in Russia, despite all this, the Russians have a reason to celebrate. Because they fought 70% of Germany’s armies back to Berlin while we landed in Normandy. But 25 million is 25 million, and today I saw a poster that said “May 9th Is Joy With Tears In Its Eyes,” and that seemed appropriate to me.
What did I do on these holidays? For May Day I went back to Arshan, a 3-hour trip, with the other American girls minus Sarah and Igor, a nice Russian kid who is dating one of the Americans. Across from me on the minibus sat a buryat girl who frowned most of the way and asked Claire to close the window in an offended tone. But, as has happened several times before, she surprised me by talking to me after the mid-way rest stop. It turns out that she had just spent 5 months in Myrtle Beach, of all places, under a program called “Work & Travel.” She liked the US a lot, she was afraid of black people when she took a grayhound from NYC to South Carolina, she worked in Eagle’s, if any of you have been to the beach on the East Coast. She liked Atlanta a lot, as well.
We had a nice relaxing time, I washed the dishes, that was the only thing I was good for, really, and the weather was pretty nice. At the base of the trail of the waterfalls Claire made friends with a drunk Russian named Vladimir, who tried to speak German with her. While we were relaxing at the base of the waterfall who did we see but Vladimir, who walked right by Claire, seeming to have lost his peculiar interest in her entirely. He instead stripped to his underwear and dipped into the shallow, cold water and slapped his belly for comedic effect. The other Russians all laughed. Igor decided to go for a dip as well, and I decided to join him, because besides watching dishes my other talent is enduring cold water. Except I’m not especially good at washing dishes, I just don’t mind doing it.

The water was really cold.

As for Victory Day, I was at the dacha and had a relaxing time. We worked on what will hopefully one day become a chicken coop. Grandma was sometimes in a good mood, sometimes not, because her back has been bothering her a lot lately, and sometimes tempers flared a little between her, my host mom, and her son Konstantin. It’s strange how my family works in an entirely different way. Tolstoi was wrong when he said that all happy families are alike. Every damn family is different, even happy ones.
I watched the live news feed of the parade on Red Square in Moscow. I purposely avoided thinking about what modern helicopters have to do with the unconditional surrender of German forces on May 9th, 1945, about whether military parades themselves are fascist, and instead just tried to enjoy the pomp and ceremony of the event. It was neat, I should say, to watch those big planes that refuel other jets in the air fly over the Kremlin.

Last Wednesday was my first trip to the Russian police station: what happened today? Nothing as alarming, but also very strange. You see, on May 10th a helicopter carrying the governor of Irkutsk oblast’ Igor Esipovskiy and three others crashed not far from Lake Baikal, killing everyone on board. When I was told this on Sunday I just felt weird. I don’t trust any Russian politician, really, and very few American ones, but on TV he seemed like an okay guy. His tubbiness and thinning hair was sort of a relief from the tough guys that take most positions, and he seemed likeable, really. He had only been governor for about a year—in Russia they aren’t elected but appointed by Moscow.
But it was just weird, in a word. He was 49, he was making himself a career, and he died. Even stranger is the alarming number of Russian governors that have died in helicopter accidents—at least 4 others, maybe 5, including Alexander (?) Lebed, the third-place candidate for President in 1996.
Today as I approached Kirov square I saw a row of police officers. When I got closer I saw that the whole area around the hulking gray Administration building was cordoned off to traffic. There was something going on in front, so I crossed the street to check it out. There were four military cars lined up with artillery pieces attached, and a red velvet place to hold a coffin. Government members were standing on the front steps of the building, woman were coming in and out with flowers, and military men were walking around, giving orders. The crowd was made up of mostly passerbys like myself, and was pretty quiet. We all waited patiently for at least 15 minutes: the cars all started their engines and everyone perked up, but it was a false alarm. After 10 minutes the doors opened and a lot of the who’s-who in the Irkutsk region gathered out front, along with the bereaved. I should mention that it was hot—at least 75 degrees. Soldiers appeared, carrying four coffins, and a military band started playing. The cars went out first, followed by people carrying huge garlands, and lastly a large column of various businessmen and community leaders. I spotted a rabbi, two Orthodox priests, a Catholic clergyman, and a Buddhist monk, who looked a little out of place, honestly, in his yellow and red robes. The parade moved very slowly and people watched it go down Lenin street. Woman scattered roses along the way and the band kept playing.
People weren’t saying much, just watching quietly. I walked along with the band and listened. The songs they played were very simple and slow. They seemed to say “this is sad, this is sad, this is sad,” and nothing else. It was very strange, I had never been at a public funeral like this before. After about 3 blocks they carried the caskets into vans, which drove away to the airport and on to Moscow. Kirov Square is a rectangle surrounded on four sides by a traffic circle, and the empty street with roses scattered all over it was probably the strangest sight of all.

After the buses taking the policemen home started to leave, I bought myself some ice cream.

An Unpleasant Incident

After class at the literature department I set off with my german friend Almut to find the used book store that was located somewhere around the bus station. We found it only after asking a grocery store security guard who shocked us by telling us exactly where it was and how to get there. It was just what we were looking for—it was full of old soviet books for ridiculously cheap prices. I bought a photo-guide to the neighboring Buryat republic from 1971, a 15-postcard set of Soviet actors from 1972, some postcards with nice black and white pen drawings of the Russian countryside with Esenin quotes on them, two trashy science-fiction/adventure journals aimed at teenage soviet boys, and a collection of stories by Platonov. All this together cost about six dollars. It was great.
We decided since it was a nice day to sit down in a nearby park that we saw and look at our finds together. We both bought some beer to drink, which I should say is pretty normal in Russia, in every park there are young men and women and older men drinking beer causally. We were told that officially it is now illegal to drink in public, but nobody ever seems to follow that rule. While we were looking at photographs of the Buryat republic together, a young man walked up and asked if he could sit with us. He was wearing an orange long-sleeved shirt, had earbuds on, and seemed fine enough. He explained that he also had a book. But as soon as he started talking to us it became quite clear that he was insane. His name was Sasha, he spoke English surprisingly well in little fits and bursts and apologies, and he asked us at least 6 times if we understood Russian, and every time said he was really happy that he met us.
He seemed mostly harmless, but he asked us to help him buy drapes for his windows, and I said that we have to go soonish, so we couldn’t. But I was getting sort of uneasy because whenever somebody passed by us he would say something to them: when a young buryat walked by he offered him some cognac (I forgot to mention that he had some cheap cognac in his backpack, too) and when he ignored Sasha he sneered and said “I bet he doesn’t speak Buryat. Didn’t even say “I don’t want any.”. When a lady walked by he blurted out a tangle of swear words that I didn’t understand but understood as such, and he said in Russian “what I said was untranslatable.” And then in English “that is untranslatable, sorry, how do you say it?” Lastly, he was smoking the second of Almut’s lady cigarettes and smoked it down to the end when a Central Asian man walked by with a cart full of stuff. Sasha got up, walked to the trash can, but instead flicked the butt into the Central Asian man’s cart. The man just looked at Sasha and kept going, thank God.
When I repeated that we had to go soon, he got sort of upset, and asked me, in Russian then in English, why I was afraid of him. I tried to explain that we were planning to sit there for just a few minutes and we had already been talking for 10, and he asked for Almut’s number. I wrote mine down on a piece of paper and gave it to him, just so he wouldn’t get upset. He demanded that Almut listen to one song on his mini ipod, but when we found out that it was 8 minutes long we said nuh-uh. We compromised on a song less than a minute long. At this point I was getting nervous. I tried to get him to write something on a paper so he didn’t feel cheated, and he kept mentioning about how we should come see him. Finally he asked Almut about the song and we said that we had to go. Some girls asked us where a movie theater was and he got up to help them and during that time we also gathered up our stuff. But he didn’t want us to go. It was painful and disconcerting to look at his face when suddenly he would narrow his eyes at me and said that he had a feeling that we weren’t planning to go before he came and that we hadn’t drank our beer yet.
We were about to break away, finally, when I noticed some police officer talking to some Central Asians in the park. I thought, if Sasha won’t let us go than I can at least address the police officer. But as we were getting ready to go the police officer walked by us, with Central Asians in tow, and I think Sasha’s strange behavior caught his attention, and he asked us for our documents. He was surprised to see that we were foreigners, and Sasha gave him his textbook instead of his documents and in general didn’t answer any of his questions. The officer calmly asked us to accompany him to the station.
I wasn’t too worried, because I knew that we would probably have to pay a fine, and that’s it, and I had my passport and my documents all in order, anyway. I was more upset that I didn’t just walk away from Sasha earlier, but in the beginning he seemed like a normal guy and then the rest was just trying to leave without upsetting him. And I gave him my real number because I was worried that he would call me right then and there, so that I knew his number, and he would find out that I lied to him. So I walked with Almut and sort of apologized and said that this is just #(!%(*@#, and listened to Sasha babble on with the police officer behind us.
The “station” was one room in the bus station. There were a lot of people there, and while we were waiting for a space to clear, the police officer asked us a few routine questions, and Sasha started making fun of our accent, which made me lose a lot of sympathy for him. We all sat down. A drunk was mumbling loudly when we walked in:
“Let me go, let me go! I have two kids! I have to pick them up, I was sitting in the park, drinking a beer calmly, let me go. This is ridiculous.”
They told him to be quiet. When the officer announced to his senior that we were citizens of Germany and America, he laughed, and everybody sitting there was surprised. “Foreigners, huh? And a visit to the police?!” and he laughed.
I laughed too, because it was sort of funny, but in a way that I hoped that people didn’t think they were laughing at me. They asked us if we drank cognac, we said no. Only Sasha drank the cognac.
“That’s right! Russians drink the strong stuff!” and we all laughed.
Sasha kept babbling on about random things, and making fun of our accents.
The drunk started ranting again, and he even stood up. “I have two kids, let me go home, I have to pick them up!”
Sasha translated for us “I have two children, I need to take them, I need to go to home!” He spoke English pretty well.
The cop thought this was funny. “You’re translating for them?” “Yes.” “Like, a live translation?” “Yeah.”
“I’ll show you a live translation. Keep me here 3 more minutes, and I’ll show you a goddamn live translation.”
He was still standing and was shuffling towards the door.
“What, you didn’t understand? Sit down immediately. What don’t you understand? That’s it, we’re keeping you as long as we can. Sit down!”
But he didn’t sit down, and the cop pushed him down. He stood up again, and the cop hit him, not too hard, in the chest. He stood up again, and the cop hit him again, but I didn’t see where, because I was trying to pretend like I didn’t see anything.
“That’s enough, Grisha!” the other cops said. “That’s already an excess!”
“C’mon, Grisha, let’s go.” And Grisha left.
“I’ll show you a goddamn live translation.” Said the drunk.
“Respected citizen, please sit down.” Said the cop who took us in.

“So, citizen, I take it you were drinking with these two foreigners in the park.”
“Yes, officer. (in English: I waz dreenking witt deese foreigners.”)
“You’re translating again?”
“Yes. We were _____” and here he used a Russian verb that is more formal than “boozing” but less formal than “having a drink.”
“Now you’re talking like an honest Russian. So you were _______ing.”
“Drink” said another drunk shyly from the corner, in English. He looked at me and I gestured that “drink” is absolutely the right word in English.

They kept talking with Sasha for amusement, during which they gave us back our documents, and when Sasha said “be careful!”, the officer said “check them, if you want. Are all your documents there?” They were. He explained that we weren’t going to pay a fine, because we were foreign citizens, but Sasha was damn well going to pay something. It was unclear if we could go or not, but we could. “We have no pretensions to you”, he said, which is a phrase I hear in Russian a lot, which seems to mean “this is just a warning.” He said that we could wait on the bench for Sasha if we wanted to and then we could continue drinking. Almut and I left, relieved.

It wasn’t really scary, the only part that was unpleasant was when they hit that man who refused to sit down, but in America they would have just handcuffed him so he couldn’t leave. I didn’t see any handcuffs. It was sad that all the Russians in there were either drunkards or perhaps prostitutes, while the Central Asians seemed pretty sober and were probably just drinking one beer in the park. I heard that they have a quota, but I have no idea if that’s true. Now I’m only worried that Sasha is going to use my number to find me and confront me, but I don’t think that’s likely. I think he already called me, but I didn’t answer. Another plan is to ask a Russian to answer and say that he has the wrong number. It was a weird experience but the police weren’t that bad, but if I was not a foreigner I don’t know how it would have played out. I know I won’t be drinking beer in public anymore, though. My host mom seemed more concerned with germs from the police station. So it was sort of unpleasant but not as much as when we were on the Mongolian border, and now I tell this boring story to people to make me feel tough.

the pacific ocean

So I will briefly here sum up my trip to the Far East:

I left really early Saturday morning. I really didn’t want to, I was anxious about traveling alone and in Khabarovsk I was to be met by my language school teacher’s brother, and I was grateful and at the same time worried about that, too. Because I didn’t know him at all. I laid in bed and couldn’t sleep and my host mom was sick so I thought: “maybe I’ll get sick and then I won’t have to go, I can just hang out here.” And I also thought: “do I really have to get up at 4:45am? Let’s see, the train leaves at 6:30. So I called the cab for 5:30. So I have to –yeah, damn, 4:45am.
At the train station it was snowing wet and thick and it was quite nice waiting on the platform. I really lucked out, because I bought 2nd class tickets and in my four-person compartment there was only a middle-aged lady. After 30 minutes she was already calling me “sonny” and she fed me the whole trip and we talked a fair amount. Her name was Vera, I am going to send her a postcard from Alaska cause I wrote down her address. The train ride to Khabarvosk was 60 hours long, but it wasn’t so bad. Only I didn’t like the other people in our wagon—my favorite was the guy in the orange t-shirt who stood in the aisle, hiccupping, and giving me a dirty look. Or when I was in the bathroom, brushing my teef, when somebody bang/knocked on the door. There is a convenient light that says “occupied/vacant,” but he knocked. I said “one second,” although quietly. Twenty seconds later he knocked again, and I said “occupied,” not that quiet. He knocked again and I opened the door in anger and then realized that I hadn’t finished spitting out the toothpaste, so I sort of half-closed the door and finished up real quick. But my teeth didn’t get to be as clean as I wanted them to be.
Vera got out after hour #46, and I had the compartment all to myself. Except 2 stations later, very early in the morning, a Tadzhik got on. He was a pretty friendly guy, he was driving a truck when his partner messed up and the truck got stuck and he had to take a train back to Birobidzhan. He also shared his food with me, along with his opinion of the young lady in charge of keeping order on our wagon (favorable.) There was one sad moment when I said that my mother was a biology teacher and he said “I used to teach biology.” And later on he reminded me that “we have higher education, too, in Tajikistan.” And I thought about how sad it was that he would probably rather be teaching biology in Dushanbe than be driving a truck far from home. Its not fair, that he was born there instead of there, but what can be done?
The landscapes went from taiga to hilly taiga to swampy and barren towards Birobidzhan. The stations were all very small and dirty and full of policemen walking with passive drunks, and people selling beer. I was at this point a little tired of “the great unwashed masses,” or whatever, although I hate elitism it seemed like every face I saw was swarthy and prematurely wrinkled and showed signs of alcoholism and did not like me. I think this was just because I was only passing by train platforms—just for fun, David, try taking a tour of Greyhound stations in failed industrial towns and compare your impressions!
Another strange reminder that Russia is strange, but the Soviet Union was stranger—miles away from any other inhabited point, in the deepest steppe-taiga flashed by me a little sign made out of plywood and steel bolts, painted white. It said СЛАВА ТРУДА or "Glory to Labor!", only the C and the T were intertwined to form a hammer and sickle. But it seemed sort of out of place, and I wondered if the people who put it up were honestly excited about labor or if they just felt like they should do it to make up for some non-socialist sinning they had done earlier or something.
I got to Khabarovsk and was met by Semyon. He seemed like a good guy and I was immediately not quite so nervous. But when I got on the bus with his girlfriend Katya I couldn't think of anything to say, and I again started to worry. LUCKILY they were great people and after I chilled out I soon felt comfortable with them, I talked about Spiderman with their young son Artyom and we later watched I, Robot in Russian.
The next day we walked around Khabarovsk, and I liked it a lot. It looks like an actual city, unlike Irkutsk, and has wide streets and nicer city planning. In the great regional museum they had a 3.5m long model of a sturgeon. I heard they can grow to be 6m long, I want a 6m long sturgeon in a moat around my house. Except I was planning to live in an apartment in my future life. I recommend everyone to visit Khabarovsk, it was v. pleasant, especially in good company.
I only stayed one night and the next evening late I got on a train to Vladivostok. It was only 14 hours long, but after half an hour on that train I had the thought: "why are these people so mean?" Yes, everyone on the train was not sympathetic except the lady who took our tickets. Her replacement was not mean, but he was also sort of condescending. It was hot on the train so I decided to buy a bottle of water from the wagon lady. I was told that she only sold tea so I had to go to the restaurant car. I walked through 3 wagons, down the narrow aisles with every single passanger glaring at me as if I had 3 heads or something, and then I gave up and returned back to the same amount of glares to my spot. I don't think it was because I was a foreigner, and that bugs me even more. Why such dirty looks? It's a goddamn train, I'm not walking through your house. I just want a bottle of mineral water. Sheesh.
Luckily, Vladivostok was great. I found a cheapish hotel with a good location and because I left Khabarovsk a little early I booked 5 whole nights, which is a lot for a town of 600,000, by yourself. But Vladivostok is probably the most pleasant town east of the Urals to spend that much time. Apparently it has a climate like Seattle, but when I was there it was sunny and the days seemed longer. It is a hilly city, like Seattle too, and that pleased me a lot. I purposely planned to do very little and walked around all day and saw some museums. They have a funicular that has a nice view of the city, it has a great location, laid out on a series of spits and bays at the very end of Russia. I expected more Chinese, but I guess they are just tourists, not migrant workers like in Irkutsk.
It is strange traveling by yourself, but I've already done it several times. After I descended from the funicular I stood in line at a fast food stand for about 15 minutes because a big group of students were ordering from the local university. I listened to them talking and unlike the people at the train stations I felt like I could relate to them. I had nothing to do so I didn't mind waiting. By the time I got my blini with cheese and mushrooms they had left, and I sat down on a park bench by myself. A little homeless dog walked up and waited patiently. I fed him scraps of dough and started talking to him, in Russian, because he was a Russian dog. "I just got to this city today, dog. I don't know a single person here. I am alone in this city, but I like it a lot. You're not listening to me, huh? You just want some more dough. Fine. Here. You _____ (mildly offensive word)." Then I left. He was a very smart dog, he knew how to beg without lowering himself.
I bought some various things—a cd, a light jacket cause I was dying in my Irkutsk one, and a wristband of the Russian rock band KINO. I went to a fortress museum which was not bad but mostly interesting because of the owner, with whom I talked to for 20 minutes. She was so Russian I can't explain it. The unveiled nationalism, the energy, the spontaeneous reciting of poetry that she wrote, she was a force of nature, she said I had a slavic element in my composition. Ha.
To summarize, Vladivostok was a real city and I could see myself living there for a year or two and liking it. It's a lot cooler than Irkutsk and the middle-aged women there seemed to love me. PS to my utter shock the hotel cable included ESPN America and I watched the UNC-Villanova game in my hotel room with Russian commentary.

Ummm what else happened. My birthday was 12x better than I expected. On christmas I was sick and it didn't feel like christmas anyway, so I figured my birthday would sort of be like that, far from friends and loved ones. But it was a good day. I got up late and bought a new razor that uses razor blades but is still safe for idiots like me, and then my host mom came home and we drank wine and she said a little toast. I was planning to go to a movie with the german girls but they invited me to their dorm and there we drank champagne and they gave me nice gifts and cards and I felt very lucky and happy. Then I missed the last minibus home but I decided that since it was my birthday I was going to walk to the next stop to try to catch a bus, and if I got mugged it would be fine. I wasn't mugged, and everybody on the bus was drunker than me.
A nice moment: a few Fridays ago it was warm and sunny. I got my haircut by a lady who seemingly didn't want to cut my hair, and emerged from the salon to meet the german girls who waited for me, they had bought lime-flavored beer and we searched for a place to drink them. All the benches in the courtyards of the vast network of tower blocks that make up University region were occupied by 14-yr old emo girls, except for one bench that upon approaching was revealed to be in a kindergarten playground, which is not a good place to drink beer, even in Russia. Then Julianna pointed at a white cylindrical structure made of concrete, located on a slope covered with dead dry yellow grass. It was clean enough and we had a good view on the hillside of more giant tower blocks and a seemingly pointless ditch/ravine. It is the best place in the city and next time when the temperature raises above 50 and the snow that has fallen the last two days melts we will return.
Sunday was Russian Easter, which meant that we ate too many eggs and Easter cake and drank Easter wine, which is sort of strong. I enjoyed the game where people knock eggs against each other and whosever's cracks loses. I won a lot, for once. The day before that I worked on the dacha with my host-mom's 14-year old grandson, who is a good, very serious young kid. Things feel good with my host family, and it was nice to be there on a holiday. There are two more coming up right quick: May Day and Victory Day.
PS I met a girl from Anchorage today at a competition of people who are studying Russian. Weirrrrrrrrrrrrrrd.
PPS: in the last weeks a mysterious man has moved in next door. He is home at various times of the day and it seems that his job is to yell in a really unpleasant voice, so that it is heard through the wall, muffled but still clearly, "TI SHTO?! NI PONIMAYESH, SHTO LI? CKOL'KO RAZ YA TEBE ZHE GOVORIL? DURA!" I really don't like him. Apparently there is also a huge dog that lives there, even though his two young daughters are afraid of it. If I ever was in a situation where I yelled that much I would leave and start a new life.

That is sort of a negative note to end on, huh? PS two months from today I will be in America. I can't say that the thought isn't pleasant, but I'm not exactly counting down the days, either.

Я ГОТОВ

So I guess a lot has happened. I’ve been in a good mood a lot, I don’t want to say that I’m comfortable yet, but I think I have reached another nameless stage in the battle with Culture Shock. My 21st birthday is coming up in less than a week, and although I haven’t accomplished many of the things I hoped to do by then, Russia isn’t to blame for that. But more importantly, things seem to have been going my way the last few weeks, and I think I will start off the 22nd year pretty well.
We had a group trip to the neighboring Buryat Republic. Basically our coordinator Lisa planned everything very well, as usual, and we drove around in a little van around the region. One day we visited local Buddhist temples, which made me want to learn more about Japanese Buddhism, like when I was in Mongolia. The best part was a little room “museum” devoted to some holy figure of the Buryat people, which had some of his personal items and three wax sculptures, very realistic. I think I am secretly a Buryat and no one told me. Russians are so funny—we stopped in a small roadside café and the lady behind the counter seemed bugged because we were slow to order and hard to understand, and when she asked us where we were from it seemed more accusatory than friendly. But then she revealed that her son studied abroad in Charlotte, NC, and when we got up to leave she gave us little packets of incense as a gift, without dropping her serious tone. I’m glad I didn’t tell her that Charlotte, NC is nothing special.
The next day we drove out again to visit another Russian religious group—the semeiskiye. They are a group of Old Believers that ran away to Poland, lived peacefully, and then Russia acquired Poland and Catherine the Great sent them to live in Eastern Siberia, where the land isn’t so great. But they didn’t complain, they made a pretty damn good living for themselves. Nowadays only the young kids and the very old are religious, but we happened to show up in the small village on the last day of Russian Maslenitsa, and there were all sorts of folk games—climb the greasy pole, jump over the burning effigy of Winter, tug-of-war, and a contest that I will call “how many times can the young men of the Village raise and lower a 15-pound weight over their head”. Only the pole was too icy, and nobody could climb it. But I got to see the Russian version of Red Rover, which is probably safer than our limb-wrenching version. It wasn’t for tourists, it was a real Russian village, celebrating more or less like they had for hundreds of years, and we were lucky to see it.
That night Middlebury College gave Lisa 4000 rubles to give to us to find a place to eat. 4000 rubles is a lot, so we walked around Ulan-Ude, the capital of Buryatia, looking for a place to eat. We walked down their pedestrian street, which is a lot nicer than ours, and I realized that Ulan-Ude has a much nicer center than ours, although ours is recognized as being better and more historic. I just like Soviet centers, especially when they include ice sculptures and the largest Lenin head in the world.
Our groupmate Sarah was taking her time photographing the ice-sculptures, and I went over to her because I was sort of hungry. But it turns out she was talking to two Buryat ladies, who were delighted at everything we said. They were slightly (or not really slightly) drunk, and soon they were escorting us to a nice restaurant. We walked to the nearby hotel Baikal-Plaza, one of those ex-Soviet ones that are quite luxurious. We were the only patrons that night, because there were “elections” going on. I’m not sure why elections would stop people from dining at 8:00pm, but still. Our new aunties loudly demanded that we be served well, because we were foreigners that study in Irkutsk, and left us in peace.
Our waiter was a young Buryat named Evgeny, who was probably the best waiter in the world, because he did not even smirk at us despite our casual/outdoor apparel and the fact that we all spoke to each other with ridiculous American accents and grammatical errors, as if that was the normal thing to do. He informed us that the kitchen could prepare European, Russian, Buryat, and Mexican cuisine. “You said Mexican?” I asked.
“Of course.” So I had Mexican-style lamb. The only thing that could make eating alone in a fancy Soviet restaurant was when the DJ made a speech to the center of the hall, where no one was sitting, because we on the side, and said, looking at the imaginary, (he was probably imagining hot, well-dressed Russian women instead of frumpy Americans), he declared that the next song was “especially for you.” And then he sang three or four songs, only not to us, and then sat down again. We even ate desert. Middlebury College, shame on you! There is an economic downturn going on!
The next three days we spent on the frozen Lake Baikal, which is especially beautiful in winter, the ice is transparent and makes strange patterns. We drove directly on the lake, and when large cracks appeared our trusty guide/driver Misha looked for a good place to cross and then gunned it. We stayed one night in a yurt with other fisherman, and we drilled holes into the ice right by our yurt-beds, but the fish weren’t biting.

What the hell happened to March? I just got back from yet another trip, this time to the Far East, which was all by myself and I think a life-changing experience. Not really, but I had a lot of time to think to myself, and I walked around a lot by myself. I will write about it in about a week or so, probably, after I remember what I did in March. I think I mainly just read articles about UNC basketball on the internet, who by the way WON THE NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP. But I have been using the internet a lot less, lately, because I can go back to that in about two months, anyway.
PS yesterday it was sunny and almost 60 degrees, today there was gray dust blowing everywhere and I could taste grit in my mouth, but the sun is shining again now. I expected more out of this post, sorry. Nevermind.

PS I should also announce that I am going to write a senior thesis about the Russian rock hero Viktor Tsoi:

One more thing: a linguistical exercise

and then i will finish reading "we are all similiar, but we are different!" to gain valuable culture knowledge.

Actually, two things: one: I posted some pictures from first semester, they are on the side.

Two: I have always thought about being a translator, and I remembered in Nabokov's "Pnin" that the emigre-hero once recalled a particulary beautiful passage from the Russian translation (Kroneberg's) and cannot find similiar words in the english version. I looked both of them up and I am surprised at how easy it is to read Shakespeare in Russian. Which is sort of odd, I'm not going to say "wrong," just that Shakespeare is hard to read at times for English speakers, although I like him a lot. But I did a rough translation of the Russian version, it just shows me how hard it must be a translator. Because if you translate too closely you lose the poeticism of it, but if you fool around so much you will lose the most beautiful images. It seems like Kroneberg opted for the former. Here is the scene where Queen Gertrude talks about Ophelia's death:

In English:
There is a willow grows aslant a brook,
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;
There with fantastic garlands did she come
Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them:
There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke;
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide;
And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up:
Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes;
As one incapable of her own distress,
Or like a creature native and indued
Unto that element: but long it could not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pull'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death.

From Russian, my shabby version:
There is a willow there: she, brushing aside its branches,
gazes at her reflection in the crystal waters.
In it's shadow she weaves garlands of lily, rose, violet, and jasmine.
Wishing to put them in order, she climbed up the tree
The branch under her suddenly broke
And she fell with it into the weeping waters
with her garlands and blossoms. Her clothes,
spread wide among the waves, carried her up instantly,
like a mermaid.
Unhappy, not comprehending her calamity,
she swam and sang, sang and swam,
like a creature born in the waves.
But this could not continue for long:
Her clothes grew wet and she went to the bottom.
Life and tender melodies fell silent!

The original Russian, so you can point out my mistakes and explain how I don't get it, because its true:
Там ива есть: она, склонивши ветви,
Глядится в зеркале кристальных вод.
В ее тени плела она гирлянды
Из лилий, роз, фиалок и жасмина.
Венки цветущие на ветвях ивы
Желая разместить, она взобралась
На дерево; вдруг ветвь под ней сломалась
И в воды плачущие пали с нею
Гирлянды и цветы. Ее одежда,
Широко расстилаясь по волнам,
Несла ее с минуту, как сирену.
Несчастная, беды не постигая,
Плыла и пела, пела и плыла,
Как существо, рожденное в волнах.
Но это не могло продлиться долго:
Одежда смокла - и пошла ко дну.
Умолкли жизнь и нежные напевы!

and lastly, the words that poor Pnin were looking for in English were "Plila i pela, pela i plila", or "she swam and sang, sang and swam." But those verbs just aren't the same in English. They just aren't the same. Now I wonder if I will ever be able to feel russian literature if I read it in Russian or English, and not just read it.

happy women's day

Oi blin I forgot to update this blog for a long time, huh? I don’t think anybody lost a lot of sleep about it, anyway. But today I am in a good mood and I have been in a good mood a lot recently, probably because spring is coming, earlier than the Anchorage one, I might add. But any kid who has lived in a northern town (who wrote that song? Bonus points) knows that spring is pretty caca for the first 3-7 weeks, because the snow is melting and strange gray dirt/mud covers everything. But that’s not important.
Looking at that last post, there was a lot of enthusiasm in it, too much for a country like Russia. The new students are great but we don’t see them too much because I am taking only 2 classes in the international department, and there is sort of a weird language barrier where nobody really speaks Russian, but we don’t speak Russian better than they do. I guess. I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings.
On the making Russian friends issue I have made not much progress, but as they say, (actually, I think I’m the only one who says it and everyone else thinks its stupid,) if I made zero progress last semester and I made a little this semester so far, that means that I am doing infinity times better. Sorry for that.
Here is a good story, I think. Sarah, the other student who stayed on, and I took the three new girls to a cheap and not awful fast-food place called MakFud’s. And we were explaining how things work in Irkutsk when some girl two tables over said “Where are you from?” We started talking a little bit, but mostly Sarah with them, and we exchanged phone numbers. Well, mostly Sarah did. I told the new girls that this never happened to us, that someone in public reacted to our accents with something besides a smirk or impatience. But as our new friends got up to leave, I noticed there was something odd about them. They didn’t dress fancy like most Russian girls, and they had short hair. And then I remembered how one of them introduced her friend: “This is Nikki, or “Nick.” “Were they lesbians?” I thought.

I try not to judge people, but the next day I asked Sarah what she thought. She showed me a text message from Alyona that she received later that evening: “Sara u r a very cute gurl ;)” Sarah, who is not attracted to the “weak sex” (a common and not very offensive term in Russian) wrote back “and you are a very friendly girl.” We never heard from them again, and I think they never wanted to see me in the first place. Maybe they wanted a “straight friend,” like the teenage girls in those Hollywood films always have a “gay friend.”
Although it was warm when the new students arrived, I am glad to say that the temperature hit a new low for my time here—32 below zero, Fahrenheit! Now they can say “it was 30 below!!!!!!!” but it was winters last hurrah, I think. No more frosts from now on.

One thing I was looking forward to/dreading was signing up for more classes at the history and literature departments across the river, because the students are nicer there and it would be a real class with real challenges, etc, just like “real” Russians. Unfortunately, fate conspired against me a little bit. But now I think I can say that things are going okay. But here is a chronology of my attempts to find classes, visit them, and get the professors to sign forms:
First week of classes: we had not received formal permission from the dean, so we didn’t try.
Second week: Monday: received a shot against tick-borne encephalitis (not funny) and only had time to look at the schedule. Although that evening I attended a screening of the Mexican film “Nazarin” at a film club full of thirty-year old intellectuals. I plan to go there more often. The film was a little dry and awfully dubbed, but I went with two German girls who study in a different program and who are becoming my new best friends in Irkutsk.

Tuesday: eagerly showed up to the class “history of Western and Southern Slavs,” sat awkwardly in the corner until a girl asked me “who are you,” after about 2 minutes of conversation I asked her how the professor was. “He is really strict, scary really.” I didn’t really believe her, I thought she was screwing with me. So, using my carefully constructed casual speech that I have just begun to use, I asked her: “Are you messing with me?” But she didn’t hear me. So I sat for about 12 more minutes until some kid came into the class and said that the professor wasn’t going to show up. So I left with them. PS afterwards I went to a music store and bought two recentish albums by The Fall for about 4 dollars.

Wednesday: Sarah and I sat on an extremely interesting Soviet literature class, with one of those sardonic, brilliant, hardass professors, and it seemed right up my alley, but when we talked to him afterwards he explained to us that we were studying in the philology dept, not the journalism dept, so we should take some other class. We tried to explain that we were actually studying in the intl department, and that we were Americans so it doesn’t matter what class we take, but the matter would not be decided.

Thursday I didn’t go to that building across the river.

Friday: Sarah and I decided to take a “history of Russian lit” class in our own department, but I arrived 10 minutes early and noticed that the class was in room 115. But the ground floor is numbered 200, and the basement is blocked off. So after about 9 minutes I asked the grouchy guard where room 115 was. It was in the dormitory, of course! I didn’t know which dormitory and where it was located, so I gave up until next week.

0 for 3.

The next week worked out fine:

Monday: Day of the Defender of the Motherland: no classes. I never defended any motherland, much less the soviet/Russian one, but the holiday sort of transfers to all men, so I was congratulated. My host mom and I have been having better, almost real conversations lately, and we were having a good one when her sister Ira called. “No, David and I are talking, we are tired, its too late, we won’t come. Maybe if you had called earlier. What? Your husband? Put him on. Vladimir Evegenich! Hello! Happy Defender of the Motherland Day! (note: Vladimir actually served in the army) What? No, we can’t co… Oh, fine. David, get dressed, we’re going to my sister’s.”
And so we did. And it was nice, we sat in the living room and ate yummy chicken while the TV showed gory war movies. Only my host mom’s granddaughter had this thing where she threw up a little every 35 minutes, and that pretty much killed the evening. She was fine, though. But not a bad holiday, at all.

Tuesday: I showed up again to that history of Southern and Western Slavs class and the professor did as well. He was an aged, doughy man that was hard to understand but it seemed pretty interesting, and I was looking forward to taking the class. And he wasn’t scary or strict at all, suchka. So I asked him afterwards if I could sit in. He said “of course,” but that he would be in Poland for a month in a half. I should have known—western slavs live there. But the point is I couldn’t get credit for that class.
I was forelorn. It was already almost 3:45. I looked at the schedule, and the only class besides “foreign language” which I couldn’t take was “History of the countries of Africa and Asia.” With slung shoulders, I went to the classroom. A sort of dopey-looking kid was standing by the chalkboard. “Is this History of the countries of Asia and Africa?” I asked. “Yes.” he answered. “And it meets once a week?” “Yes.”
So I sat down. And the professor for some reason reminds me of an American: first of all, he talks more about cultural understanding, not industry, and he sort of looks like a Florida retiree. So actually it is turning out to be an interesting class.

Wednesday: I attended “Siberian literature” and “History of Russian literature” and both were interesting, but a bit too fast so far, but I think I will get better at writing stuff. The only hard part is when they mention an author’s name only once. We talked about “Dersu Uzala,” which is funny, because I watched the Kurosawa film adaptation a long time ago and namely the Russian spoken by the main officer convinced me to start studying it.

So we’ll see how that goes. I should be studying more now, a lot more reading, but unfortunately I bought a USB modem and finally got it to work and have been reading articles about UNC basketball instead.

Also we just got back from a week-long excursion to the neighboring Buryat republic, where we visited Buddhist temples, ate pozi, celebrated Maslenitsa (like Mardi Gras) in an old-believer village, and then drove around on the ice of Lake Baikal for 3 days. And the girls in our group danced with Buryat boys in a Chinese restaurant/disco in Ulan-Ude. And you know what, those Buryat boys really could dance. I probably should write more about that, but I plan to post pictures on the internet besides on facebook so all you old codgers can see them too.

my favorite russian pictures

I am going to take the luxury of loading a picture on my blog, for the first time, but not one that I took, but of my two, maybe, favorite Russian paintings, that I had the fortune of seeing in person.

They depict the two sons of Ivan the Terrible. They are both quite tragic. The first is by Ilya Repin, and it is called “Ivan the Terrible has killed his own son.”

The second is by Ilya Glazunov, who is still alive today and paints quite strange and haunting megamurals that show dozens of real people, from Hilary Clinton to Alexander Nevsky, with Russia’s ruin at the hands of the West usually being the theme. He is, basically, an arch-conservative monarchist, but there’s something very Russian and sometimes beautiful in his work. This painting is called “Tsarevich Dmitri,” who was the boy-son of Ivan the Terrible who was sequestered away to a monastery after his father passed away. A few years later he was found with his throat cut. The official commission decided that he had a fit of epilepsy while playing with a knife. Others suspected the new Tsar, Boris Godunov. Tsarevich Dmitri returned twice more to Russia in the form of people pretending to be him, and times were so tough that people believed them. Twice.

And isn’t Russian history interesting?

I could tell you all about the rest of my trip, about the incredible things I saw in the most oldest and most churchy part of Russia. But it was mostly museums that had old things and old churches, and the weather was either thick wet snow falling at night, which adds to the atmosphere of a town, especially if its already dark, or muddy slush the next day after the snowfall.

The dark Petersburg nights were not so bad after I made friends with a Finn in my hostel, who was all around a very good guy. Only I never learned how to pronounce his name, which only adds to my tremendous guilt about the fact that I only learned two finnish words for the whole 6 days I was there, “restaurant” Erich figured out from signs, but we never learned how to pronounce it. And we only learned “thank you” on the very last day from a Lebanese guy who sold us kebab. Oh, there is “hey,” which means “hello.” So I guess 3 words then.

After Peter I went to Velikiy (Great) Novgorod. It is called Great Novgorod because it is really old, not because it is big. Because there is another Novgorod to the south, appropriately named “Lower Novgorod.” I stayed in a hostel there, too, but not a “hostel” like the kind that you might find in Berlin, but in a Russian hostel. So when I got there I was told that I had a room on the 5^th floor—room 503, to be exact. I saw two bathrooms, someone’s frying pan plugged into an electrical outlet, and rooms 509-515. I searched a while for room 503 and then I found it: it was beyond the room with the lights turned off, in the room with, as far as I can tell, no light switch at all. My roommate was a youngish man, I think an engineer, named Aleksei, who was sociable enough, except he made a few not-to-subtle hints about how I should convert to Orthodox Christianity. He gave good reasons too, but its not really that simple, Aleksei.

The main things in Novgorod are the Kremlin, some ridiculously old churches, and the Monument to the 1000-year of Russia. It’s a sort of big statue in the middle of the old town with three tiers of figures shown: on the bottom row are war heroes, artists, and religious leaders. The middle tier are all the tsars, great princes, and emperors of Russia, and on the top: Mother Russia and the Orthodox church. Some lady asked me if I was on the tour, and I said no, and walked off to look at all the people on the statue. Then I realized that I was in Novgorod for another day and I didn’t really have anything to do, the Kremlin turned out to be a lot smaller than I thought. So I returned and decided to join the tour.

The excursion turned out to be our guide, a middle-aged woman in an incredibly ridiculous fur coat (even for Russia) and an pensioner-ex-engineer who was full of good cheer and energy and constantly interrupted the guide to ask unrelated questions and share personal jokes and anecdotes on the subject. I was secretly rooting for him, but the guide won the battle when she said “If you will stop constantly interrupting me and be quiet for just one second I’ll explain. Questions can come later!” But the tour was good, I found out who literally everybody on this statue was. I should say that it was commemorating 1000 years of Russian history in 1862, so there was no communists on there or anything. But the best part was on the artist’s section, where Gogol, Pushkin, and Lermontov are shown standing together like real pals.

I liked Novgorod a lot, the center is very peaceful and pleasant, but there’s not much to describe. There was a church that had some surviving (barely) frescoes from Theophanes the Greek, which means that they must be at least 700 years old. If you are at the train station, however, do not order an “open kebab” from the Firebird grill next door. Yech.

After Novgorod I returned to Moscow after a few weeks break. What can I say? Moscow feels different from other cities that I have been to. It feels terribly important, if that makes sense. I felt this when I was walking back from the New Tretyakov gallery, which had zillions of great modern art from the Soviet times, even after they “implemented” Socialist Realism and all that. Anyway, I was walking by Gorky Park, watching young Russian couples ice skating, I passed on, and snow was falling thickly. I passed by a young father with his son, they had a duffel bag which meant that they were going to go ice skating as well, and after I passed them I stopped and looked onto the Moscow river and the buildings crouched over the river with their yellow windows gave me the impression that Moscow was a very “dark” city, but not evil, but also terribly important. I don’t know.

I had a great time in Moscow largely due to the fact that I stayed with my friends Sarah and Liza, who lived in Irkutsk for a year, just like me, three years ago, and in the evenings I did not go crazy from boredom but in fact had “fun”. I still like museums a lot, and I had good reason to go now rather than later, because my Russian student ID means I pay 40 rubles when a normal Russian pays 100, and a foreigner—250!

The last major thing I did on my vacation was go to the town of Yaroslavl, four hours away from Moscow by train. Middlebury has a program there, and I was met by Glen, who had had a great semester there. I met his many friends, who were all very good people, and it gave me hope. I mean, it’s the same country, right? But I did notice that people in Yaroslavl seemed a lot more interested in foreigners, and they all spoke English a lot better than people in Irkutsk do. A lot of it has to do with distance. I once met a Kansan who told me that he had never gone abroad and didn’t really feel like doing so, not even once. I don’t know if that story makes sense to you.

But I am going to try harder this semester, there’s a film club that meets by my house, and there’s new students coming and all that.

I’m sure I forgot something, but that’s okay. I feel pretty optimistic, though. If things don’t get any better, I’ll be fine, and if they get better—even better! Всё будет в школаде!

люди как люди

its not worth it to write about my trip so far because i don't feel like it. so here is what i will write:

after finland i took a really rough ferry to tallinn. tallinn was beautiful and quite pleasant, they are doing pretty well for an ex-USSR country. I have always wanted to go there, and the Tallinn old town was gorgeous, especially with thick snow falling.

Riga was almost as pleasant as Tallinn but it seemed more like a real city, it is also the biggest city in the Baltic states, I think. There is a strange problem that I noticed: Latvians are very proud of their culture, being a small state threatened by surrounding countries throughout history (Poland, Sweden, Germany, Russia)

BUT 50% OF THE INHABITANTS OF THE CAPITAL ARE RUSSIANS

and they are definitely Russians. They speak Latvian, of course, but their mentality is still very Russian. And two days after I left, riots broke out in the capital because the economy was mostly based in stuff effected by "the Crisis."

But I have been in St. Petersburg for a few days and I really like it. Its like being in a Russian novel, and the weather was really awful, just like I expected!

But I mostly wanted to talk about Russians. About how they are really a downer and rude and not fun in public, inside of grocery stores, anywhere, really, at all.

but how one on one they are not bad at all. But they are still not like me, but that's okay, because if a country was full of people like me, it would be pleasant and boring, a little.

but here are some examples:
in riga the lady at the reception desk of the hotel seemed a little cold but then when i said i was from alaska she sat down and talked to me for about an hour about why the world financial crisis was caused by a global conspiracy, her daughter, the time she became a deputy almost by accident in the Soviet Union time and was embarassed, etc.

on the train from Riga i sat next to Stanislav, who seemed unimpressed by me, but still shared his chicken, beet salad, and cookies with me, and when I said I was full he said "ploxo kushayesh'," which translates to "you don't eat right". Then he got in an argument with the young woman sitting next to me about whether russia was in a bardak right now or if its doing well, seeing as how there are no tanks on the streets. then when we got off the train he gave me his number, just in case, even though i still think he was completely unimpressed by me.

Today I wanted to see Nikolayevski cathedral which is next to a little park. 70% of the church was covered with scaffolding so i sat down on a bench to find out where to go next. Then an old scrappy looking babushka came up to me and asked if I could help her. I expected her to say that somebody stole her purse or that times are tough, and I was prepared to give her about 20 rubles, but instead she asked me to open a beer.

This was sort of moral dilemma, because its sad to open a beer for an old lady, especially when its Baltika no. 9, which is extra strong. But I didn't really want to refuse, because she would get somebody to open it anyway. So I opened it for her and she sat down next to me and started talking. I gradually came to realize that she was insane. She said she worked in churches all her life and drank because her shoulder hurt. She said that the priest in the nearby cathedral was actually God himself, that he had a son but they don't talk anymore. She told me about the 3 monks named Isaac who gave their names to the Isaac cathedral that I was going to visit next.

She kept asking me if I understood, and when I said yes, she kept talking, or sometimes she said "you don't understand anything." I wrote down her address and I will try to send her a letter. She told me that she is afraid for me because all Russians are dangerous and that I have a very spiritual look about me, and when I tried to leave after about 15 minutes she said, "don't go, its nice with you."

But then she would get mad at me when I didn't understand her. She also told me a secret about my heritage that I can't tell anyone. I don't think she's right, but she got so mad when I told her that that I don't think I can reveal the secret, because I want to remain alive. I'm serious.

But I guess she wasn't a typical Russian, more like a crazy person.

Also right before I wrote this the old Russian jew who is living in the hostel as well asked me to rub cream on his back and then told me about world war II and his opinion on the Gaza conflict.

So people in Russia are really lyudi kak lyudi, you know?

No, I don't know, I don't really know anything about Russia. Or Russians.

Chapter 2: Western Europe (Finland)

So when I got into Helsinki my first reaction was sort of shock. Shocked at how clean everything was, how the streets had proper drainage, and how bourgeois everyone was. How all the men over 35 had little trendy euro-glasses and turtlenecks, and how everyone spoke english with basically no accent.

I felt at ease.

But then, as I got to know the Finns better, I decided that they are cool. Because they embody a lot of things that I belive in: they are liberal and tolerant, they are quiet in public, and they are friendly. Especially the young finnish people. Here is an example:

I went to a record store and asked the guy if he knew when the new Annie album is coming out. Here's how the conversation would have gone in America:
Clerk: Who?
Me: Annie. You know, she's Norwegian, pop singer...
Clerk: Yeah, just a second... No, its not in our computer. Sorry.

and in Russia:
Clerk: What?!
Me: Annie, she's an... a norwegian singer.
Clerk. What?!?!?! No. I don't know.

but in Finland the guy said in perfect english:
"Yeah, I think it got delayed until, like, May or something." and he said it with a perfect mixture of sympathy so that I didn't regret asking him at all.

But the main thing about Helsinki wasn't the attractions, which were nice, but the fact that it was very pleasant, with nice buildings that were very angular and attractive but not suffocatingly so, and it was safe, and also I was there mainly to meet my friend Erich, who had been studying in Germany, so we mostly walked for many hours every day and talked a lot.

We went to a nice modern art museum, tried to decipher swedish captions at the history museum (only 5% ish of finland are native swedish speakers, but the whole country has to learn the language and write stuff in two languages. sux.)

so it would be cool to visit finland again. most places i like to say, "it was fun to visit, but i wouldn't want to live there," but i think the reverse is more true for finland. not that it wasn't fun to visit.

but you can't buy beer after 8 pm. even in gas stations.

baltic

so everything went okay, especially in comparison with the mongolia border time. but i should note that i have recently been outside of russia. but i will try to summarize my time here, day by day, in telegraph style:

dec. 30 - flew to moscow. plane only delayed by 1 hour- miracle! being incredibly shocked by the sophistication and worldliness and wealthiness of muscovites. drinking a warm (?!) milk shake for 6 dollars in KOFEE HOUS.

dec. 31 - Patrick and I visited VDNX, or the exhibition of the achievements of the people's agriculture, ish. Now re-named the All-Russian Exhibition center. Basically a huge park surrounded by huge gaudy buildings built in a half fake classical palace style and half socialist concrete style. My favorites were the arch that had two proletarians grabbing a bushel of wheat on the top, the Karelian and Armenian pavillions, the rocket ship in which Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space, and the fact that all these buildings are now turned into strip malls.

Also, my first encounter with the infamous Moscow police. "Good evening. Your documents please. Hey, Vanya, look, an American passport! Wow!" I wished him happy new year's, which was probably too much, but I think that speaking Russian a little and having a more permanent visa helps.

Then we went to our rented apartment and got ready for New years. We walked down Tverskaya street to Red Square, passing through 3 metal detectors on the way there. The countdown was suprisingly lackluster along with the fireworks, but it was still Red Square on New Years eve. The best part was walking back to the hostel with thousands of drunk, estatically happy Russians. We couldn't stay up because by Irkutsk time it was 6 in the morning already.

In Moscow I realized that I love cities, I have since I was a kid, and Irkutsk is like a trial. Because I will speak better Russian after this year, but when I come back to Russia (and I better, considering the fact that I'm majoring in it, etc.) it will either be probably to St. Petersburg or Moscow.

Aw hell this is going to take forever so I'll just do it in installments. So thus ends my time in Moscow, or approximately 1/7 of my trip so far.

Студент! Учись!

The school year is officially over for the Predstavitelstvo Midlberi Kolledzh v Rossii. That is the official name of the Middlebury program here. At the beginning of the year I accidentally wrote “Pravitelstvo” instead of “Predstavitelstvo”, which means “the Government of Middlebury College in Russia.” Which goes to show you how much I have learned, like how to copy a word written at the top of the page onto a space two inches below. Actually, let’s see some of the things that I have learned:

1. You can eat mayonnaise with spaghetti, but only if you want to.
2. Italians eat said “spaghetti” with ketchup, and they love it. Love it.
3. If you are eating a meal and there is not bread in your mouth or in your hand, you’re doing it wrong.
4. Siberian pigeons can survive -30 weather, but more than a few of them will die.
5. I can eat salted pig fat. That doesn’t mean I like it, but it doesn’t mean I hate it, either. Salo—don’t say anything until you’ve tried it.
6. I learned a lot about the Russian army on the news. Nothing ever happens, but every week they have some report about how awesome they are is so that people know that they still exist, selflessly meeting with a French cruiser in the Mediterranean. Or training in Orenburg against fake terrorist attacks.

Actually I learned a lot, from my classes and from my home life. Learning a language is such a slow process that I am never sure if I’ve improved a lot, but at the end of the semester we took the same test that we took at the beginning and I could see that I actually was a lot more comfortable answering those stupid roleplay questions this time around. Except when prompted to “confront a friend who constantly misses class because he is sick all the time” I said roughly the following:

“Sasha (my friend), what’s with you? You’ve got sick, sorry, you’ve been getting sick, um, a lot, often, and you haven’t been at school 3 times this week, um, I think you need to go to a doctor, because, um, you’ve been sick, um, like, 3 times this week, and, um, I think you need to go to a doc—um, I think its bad. Yeah, its, um bad, that you are getting sick so often, a lot, so, um, maybe you’ve been nutrienting yourself, no, that’s not a word, is it? No, its not. Um… Your diet! Yes, maybe your diet is bad.”

It was a stupid question, and I don’t usually speak that poorly, but it was also a cultural miscommunication, because in America we would probably just say “go see a doctor,” but in Russia they would probably smear some cream on your ankles or something. I don’t know.
I will miss the 4 kids who are leaving from my program, they were a good group of people. Three new students are coming in February, and I hope to act like a snob and alienate them, laughing when they get on bus #80, thinking it will continue pass the Philharmonic on to Lenin, but actually turns onto Derzhinskovo and they have to get off two stops after they got on, all flustered and upset with themselves, with everybody on the bus staring at them, like I myself may or may not have done 3 months ago. Plus, I wasted 10 rubles.
But I probably should talk about next semester, next semester. I have big plans, namely to do the many, many, things that I did not do this semester.
Like:
*“hang out” with a Russian that is within 15 years of my age.
*Find an activity to do after classes
*Find out what in KVN is funny (this will probably never happen)
*Be outside of my apartment after midnight (not in a dark alley, though)
*Tell a joke in Russian
*Write fascinating posts on my blog

Other than sports, there are few clubs, but at our farewell lunch I found out that there is an Esperanto club in Irkutsk. Laugh if you want to, but I studied Esperanto for 3 weeks sophomore year. But mostly I figure that people who learn a made up language can’t be jerks, right? I’m sort of serious about this.

But I can already see that this post is going nowhere, so I will just do a rundown of the best moments of these past weeks. Actually here is the worst moment:

Drowsing off in the class Baikal studies, not because it is dull, it is in fact very interesting, but because it was around 1 pm and my body always gets kind of tired around 1 pm. I thought to myself “Okay David, this is rude. Industrial complexes in Angarsk and Bratsk are fascinating. Time to pay attention, for reals.”
And I agreed with myself. But then I suddenly woke up and there was drool stretching from my lip to my notebook and I was sitting 3 feet directly across the teacher Pavel Aleksandrovich and he was looking directly at me. It appears that I fell asleep for literally just enough time to lose control of my lip muscles and then I woke up to be shocked at my horrendous behavior. I probably have been more ashamed in my life, but I can’t think of the moment right now.

But anyway here are some good moments:

*Buying a knockoff Adidas down jacket from a Chinese guy for $80 so I can exist in -20 degree weather.
*Ending a conversation with my host grandma with the words “death to fascism.”
*Going bowling, which was great except I accidentally hit the cleaner resetter machine with a size 13 ball and was informed that I had to pay a fine of 8 dollars. Which is a lot, considering that we paid 10 dollars for 3 people for one hour. Nothing was even damaged. Fascists.
*Going to the open air museum at Teltsi, which was pretty cool, but not the best part. The best part was giving a deposit of 100 rubles to a van that rented out cow hides so we could slide down a hill made of ice and wood, and swinging on old-fashioned Russian swings, which are sort of scary, sort of great. So basically the first time in 4 months that I acted like a child in public, which is really underrated and necessary.


*Today we went to the Nerpanarii, which is where some nerpa seals live and put on shows for little Russian children and 20 year old American students. I hope you know that a nerpa is a freshwater seal that only lives in the nearby Baikal, the deepest lake in the world. I think I have mentioned nerpas in every entry and I will probably do so until I return to America. My favorite part of the nerpanarii is the sign in front of it, which is a very large picture of a seal playing a toy saxophone with his nose and the words «WELCOME TO THE NERPINARII» written on it. It is probably one of the best pictures ever, but also a picture of one of the stupidest things ever. It was a seal playing a toy saxophone, with his nose. It was hard for us when we approached the building because you can't smile on the street and we were already laughing into our scarves. I forgot to add that today was officially the coldest day of my life- -30 degrees fahrenheit. Which isn't that bad, there wasn’t any wind, thank God.
Anyway the show runs every 45 minutes, and we waited for a while. The session before us was a class of elementary students, which made us feel really cool. Then we went inside a little room with a pool in the middle and a crazy-looking lady who talked really loud into a microphone about the performer-seals, Laska and Tito. Tito was very sportive and aggressive, while Laska was graceful. They played «soccer», «danced», «danced a waltz», «break-danced», and Tito painted a picture. But not in quotation marks, he really did, the only seal in the whole world who paints pictures. There was an auction and among the 6 of us, Kevin bought it for 100 rubles. The show was at times awesome and at times depressing. We had to clap for them while the lady explained how Tito is young and loves break-dancing. Which is ridiculous, of course. First of all, he is a seal, and they don't have culture, and second of all, he is a Russian seal, so maybe he has culture, but not, I am certain, hip-hop culture.
I plan on returning with the new students next semester, and with my parents in May. I will get my picture taken with one of the seals for 6 dollars, in the big glossy format. I plan on having a very serious look on my face, or maybe I will smile. I still haven't decided yet.

He played the saxophone with his nose!

Soon (tuesday) I am embarking on a one month adventure across northwestern Russia that I am not planning very well. Wish me luck!

Current temperature: -9 F. Feels like: -31 F.

Nothing exotic happened since I went to Mongolia. I wrote 5 posts in Sleptember and only 2 in November, and they described events that mostly took place in October. What does this mean? I guess things aren’t as noteworthy anymore, I have started forgetting that I am in another country from time to time, which doesn’t mean that I feel comfortable here, it just means that my brain thinks that I’ve always been a foreigner, or at least for a lot longer than 3 months. So its gotten used to not being used to the surrounding environment. Maybe. I don’t know.
So in case you were wondering about my November, here are some (the) highlights:
*Helping my host grandma take apart a sofa chair to save the rubber belts that held up the cushion at her dacha in the countryside, then chasing after a garbage truck through five-inch thick mud in rubber boots because he only comes once every two weeks. (it was a lot more dramatic, you really had to be there guys)
*Watching the new James Bond film, surprisingly well dubbed into Russian, but in the end deciding that it would still be pretty unsatisfying even in English. I think I honestly enjoyed the new Kylie Minogue song that they played over the speakers before the movie than the film, which isn’t to say that it wasn’t a fun movie, its just that that Kylie Minogue song is great. I think its called “In My Arms”
*Getting a hair cut from what I think is the first or second gay man I have seen in Irkutsk.
*Watching 2 basketball games at the stadium “Labor”. The local team is the Irkutsk Irkut (a pretty stupid name, if you ask me,) and although the level of play is about at an american high school, the crowd is a lot less animated and men don’t really clap that much. Which is a problem, because I can’t make that “woooo” sound, so I have to clap to show my support. We won the first game and lost the second against Saransk. Also sort of depressing: the little middleschoolers who break dance during the timeouts while the crowd watches, bewildered and not feeling anything. Basketball may one day become big in Irkutsk, but break dancing—not so much.
* Visiting the nearby town of Listvyanka on lake Baikal when the temperature was -6 (f) with a very strong wind blowing. It wasn’t that cold because I got to wear my new mink hat with the ear flaps down. We went to the little museum and in a little tank they had two nerpa seals! They are freshwater seals that look like lumps of fat, and they are adorable. I think everyone’s sentiment was expressed in the exclamation of a little girl, who said “Ookh ti! Nerpochki!”, which translates to “oh jeez! Nerpa sealies!”
The only problem with Listvyanka in the winter is that there wasn’t anything to do for the five hours between check out time and bus leaving time. I mean, nothing. Also, the five of us ate in an empty restaurant that somehow managed to far exceed my expectations of bad service: it was icier than the wind along the shore of lake Baikal! Hahaha!
*Buying a small tv for my room, sort of against my will, and not understanding that the word “passport” can also refer to a manual, and, following the wishes of my grandma, almost asking the cashier at the electronics store to stamp my U.S. passport. But I didn’t, because something deep down told me that even in Russia, Best Buy-like stores shouldn’t stamp official government documents.
*Watching a hockey match: In line for tickets, I heard about 400% more swearing than normal, and I knew that this wasn’t a great sign. I saw some little 12 year olds and women, but for the most part everybody was a man. A Man, with a capital “M”. So we bought our tickets and were surprised to see the stadium had tons of blank spots. But as we quickly found out, the most outstanding member of each group shows up early and claims a whole row, and we weaved among many rows, trying to guess whether that man with the big club flag was saving two rows or just two. We finally sat pretty far to the side, and I felt a little uncomfortable, because there were about 200 police officers with little world-war-2 style helmets and riot batons standing around the rink. But they had sweet uniforms on—not their normal camo jackets, but sort of beige great coats and wool boots, so they looked just like Ivans from Stalingrad, or something. So it was fun to look at them, but not really, because they glared at everybody who walked by them. At least they were there, though. So before the game started the rows around us filled in a little, and the people behind us started talking about their preparations to the match. One of the questions was, “did you bring the drugs?” “Yes.” Which I thought was weird. Although I think they were joking about alcohol. I mean, the rink is outside, it was pretty warm that day but it was still a lot of sitting in the dark in winter. I got a good lesson in Russian swearing, and the game was actually very beautiful, actually. They play hockey with a little orange ball instead of a puck, and our team, Baikal-Energiya scored two goals in the first seven minutes.
It might seem like “Baikal Energy” is a bad name for a team, but the visiting team from Novosibirsk was called “SibSel’Mash.” No joke. Which is short for “Sibirskiy Sel’skokhozyaistvenniy Mashinazavod”, I think, or “Siberian Agricultural Machine Factory.” Such names aren’t that rare in Russia, so its like “Home Depot Arena,” but a lot worse. In the end we played badly and it ended in a tie, 3-3, although our team is pretty good, we’re in the same league as the Moscow teams, etc.
*Celebrating Thanksgiving at the coordinator’s apartment, eating marshmallows and sweet potato paste… in Russia!
*Asking for the brand of vegetable oil that host-grandma wants at the local market and the saleslady not understanding.
* The stupid lady in the coat check breaking my coat zipper, and now I have to button it up. Good thing this week has been freakishly warm. Goddamn coat lady.
So that was November. I have six more months left, and that’s starting to sink in, but I don’t regret staying another semester. Although I miss namely the people who read this blog.
PS. I thought I would have a little side note on music. I can’t find new music here, really, so I just put all the unlistened songs on my computer on shuffle, which is several hundred hours worth. It has been a pretty positive experience for me: there are more than a few brilliant songs that I just never listened to on my computer, and songs are sort of like friends. I mean, there was a time when you weren’t friends with X, your really good friend, and your life wasn’t empty before that, but its even better now that you know him. So the song “Ready For The Floor,” by Hot Chip, or St. Christopher’s “All Of A Tremble” was there before, but I hadn’t listened to them before I came to Russia, so I didn’t know that they are immaculate. And just like it is odd but altogether nice to meet up with Y, your best friend from seventh grade, when a song that used to hit me hard comes up on shuffle, I can remember why I used to like it so much. I hope that made sense.

Now I have to buy a new coat because it is really cold outside. Like face-sucking cold. And not in the sense of kissing, but as in the air is trying to suck the life out of you. Something about low pressure systems, I think.

The rest of our trip in Mongolia, a month later.

So I wrote this, after nobody cares anymore. Mongolia? Was I there? Oh yeah, I was. And I rode a camel:


So in Ulan Bataar there was plenty to do. We went to a museum of Buddhist art, which is beautiful and sometimes terrifying, especially when they wanted to depict a wrathful demon, and the whole painting looks like a bad acid trip. We also visited the largest temple in Mongolia, which was amazing, and although I am not a Buddhist a lot of my Japanese relatives are, and it made me want to learn more about it. But here they are Tibetan Buddhists, which is pretty different from the other branches, I think.
It was nice in the hostel to speak English with people who are not Russians. Especially with the brits, I don’t know why, but they are always 100x wittier than Americans are. In the morning we started our tour, which was five days long. Our guide was a very normal Mongol girl Dogie, who spoke english perhaps worse than I speak Russian, although her vocabulary was good. She always said «did you full?» and «we wake up at the nine hour» so I think I could be a Russian guide. Maybe.
I finally got to ride a camel, which is a life-changing experience. Camels are terrifying, no, horrifying creatures. They are kept in check by a wooden plug that is placed in their nose so that the slightest pressure is painful to them so they have to yield, and at first I thought this was inhumane, but later on I was glad, because my camel was pretty angry and probably would have bucked me and bit my face off if he had the chance. But not really. Basically we just sat between their two humps and looked at the gorgeous scenery around us. They are completely unnatural animals: their necks are freakishly long, their legs are all knobbly, and they make dinosaur sounds. But it was an experience.
I think it is known that I hate horses, but now I have to say that I only hate non-Mongolian horses. They are basically ponies, but we're not supposed to call them that, and I had a blast riding them. This time it was for a few hours and we weren't all together, so we had to control our own horses. Our guide scared us when she said: «don't take pictures on the horse, don't take off the coat on the horse, or he will throw you off. And, please don't try to kiss the horse. Last summer, a girl from Ireland kissed her horse and he bit her nose very badly.» So I didn't try to kiss my horse.
I knew from the start that I was going to get the white horse, and I was right. At the beginning he wanted to return to his horse friends, so he constantly went to the right. I thought I was a bad horse-driver, and I was ashamed. He also loved to walk extremely slowly, ignoring my exhulations of «chu!» (that was what we were supposed to say) until he got far enough behind and on his own will decided to trot up to the last horse ahead of us, and then promptly started to walk extremely slowly again. However, after we stopped the first time to look at a waterfall, he was a completely different horse. At this point I had already chose the name Yan-Yan for him, because it was his name, I think. He still liked to be a little separate from the other horses, to the right of course, but now he listened to me and we gaily trotted across the great plains of Central Mongolia. We stopped at a second waterfall, which was much more impressive: an icy river poured down into a crater-shaped depression through an ice-waterfall. It was really neat. But I was excited to get back on Yan-Yan, and prove to everybody that he was the best horse. He might have been the smallest as well, and I was the tallest. Sitting on him, I think my torso was almost taller than he was. But not quite. It was a little uncomfortable when he trotted, but the land around us was golden with little strips of white snow, and the sky was enormous and dark blue, and I thought I could ride a horse across all of Mongolia. But then it got more uncomfortable, because Yan-Yan loved to trot sort of quickly. At the end we went out for a little jaunt to make our horses gallop, and it was fun but a little scary, because you really have to balance right.
We slept all 5 nights in yurts, which have five beds, a little table, and a central stove that either uses cow dung or wood. Yurts are great for nomads, but I didn't really love the eye-burning lightbulb, or the plastic kindergarten seats that Mongolian used. And my least favorite part was the yurt heating system: the local family put about 50 logs into the stove so at bedtime it is 95 degrees, and then we woke up 4 hours later and it was 25.
Another highlight was a visit to an old temple that was pagoda-style, and I really felt that I was in Asia, and while we were visiting a dust storm blew up, which was unpleasant for my eyes but created a beautiful light over the temple walls.
When we got back to Ulan-Ude I went to a huge market and bought a Russian fur hat for $200, which is of course a lot, but it was made out of real mink fur and it will come in handy when it is -30 here. I hope I didn't offend anybody. It's a sweet hat. We also ate… Cuban food! In Mongolia! And the chef was Belorussian. What a strange country.
In general, Mongolia has shed a lot of the Russian influence from the past 70 years. I felt like I was in a dirty Korean town, not Siberia or Kazhakstan. There were some strange things on the streets: people had home telephones that somehow worked without wires, and people could pay for one phone call or one cigarrette, but the strangest thing I saw was a lady sitting on the sidewalk with a scale in front of her. I had to ask the hostel owner, but it turns out that people will pay her to see how much they weigh, even in winter clothing.
In the end, we were a little sad to leave Mongolia, because a) except for the border, the people were more calm and friendlier, b) it was a lot more exotic that Irkutsk, c) there was more things to do in Ulan-Bataar than in Irkutsk, and d) no more speaking English. The second border crossing went swimmingly, the customs agents were not even angry at us! We took a bus to Ulan-Ude, capital of the Buryat' Republic on the other side of lake Baikal, and all trains to Irkutsk were full so we had to stay in the train station hotel, which was surprisingly nice, except for the loudspeakers announcing the arrivals and departures. The next day we had time to see the main attraction of Ulan-Ude: a gigantic head of Lenin. A gigantic Lenin head. It is probably 35 feet tall. It is odd—you are walking along, admiring the Soviet architechture, and then—oh. It's a giant head of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Wow.
Our train home started in Beijing and was headed to Moscow, and so I spent 7 very interesting hours in the company of Pasha, who made me shake hands and hug various young Chinese people who passed through our wagon in the name of Eternal Russko-Sino-American friendship. Then I joined Kevin in his compartment with Pasha and drank beers with four young men that looked exactly like the people that intimidate the heck out of me at the bus stop but they turned out to be good people. Even the one with tattoos all over his hand, which meant that he had been in jail. I even was able to discuss world politics with them, but when they began arguing amongst each other about the price of Hummer-3's, I couldn't follow. And then we got home, back to our beloved Irkutsk.

Chingis Khan energy drink

So we went to Mongolia last week. I think I should say that our first 18 hours in Mongolia were awful, and the rest were really fun.

Most people just take a Russian train straight to Ulaan Bataar, the capital, but there were only 1st class trains on the day we wanted to leave so we decided to take the train to the border and see what we could do there. We heard that there were cars and stuff that would take us to a Mongolian border town, so I wasn't too worried.

The train ride was fine, we left at night and arrived around 1:00 at the border town of Naushki. On the trip, a train policeman asked us if we were Americans, and we kept trying to give him our documents because we didn't understand him but he said that he didn't need them. "You are Americans?" "Yes." "And you are going to Naushki?" "Yes." "And then on to Mongolia?" "Yes." "I see. Then blah blah something something something, okay?"

We didn't understand him, so we said yes and tried to give him our documents. "I don't want your documents!" He said, and walked away. Later I realized that he probably gave us some valuable advice on how to cross the border, like probably not to do what we were about to do. Oh well.

We got off the train and immediately found a person who would take us to the border town of Sukhbataar in Mongolia for 600 rubles per car. Great! Except we just drove 25km to the actual border, and then we had to change cars. And still pay him. So at the border there was bunch of trucks and little beat up cars and Mongolians yelling at us to get in their car. Kevin and Patrick were in another little van because they got there about a minute earlier, and I was about to get in with them when the other three of us got into a beat up little white car. It was one of those decisions that you know is completely wrong, and yet you still do it anyway. I immediately felt pretty uncomfortable, what with all the shouting and pointing in Mongolian, the fact that the car had only 0 doors that were working perfectly, and that our driver was drunk, farted next to our window, and did not speak english and about 4 words of Russian. Before we got in I asked how much and his friend said 200 rubles. "To Sukhbataar?" I said. "Yes."

So the Russians opened the border gate and to my delight our car was pushed into the zone. Our driver asked me to write his own damn name on a customs form, which I did, but when he started telling me to write some numbers down and I didn't understand what he was saying at all I suddenly realized how stupid this all was and said in Russian "no! No! I don't understand! Where Is Your Friend, Who Speaks Russian?" It went on like this for a while, with him pushing the car from station to station, and in the car it was revealed to me that the car was not going to Sukhbataar (probably because it did not run) and now cost 300 rubles. At the Mongolian passport zone the border guard looked at my passport and asked me if I was an Indian when he saw that I was from Alaska. In english.

So Chris and I decided that we weren't going to pay him, seeing as how he didn't do anything close to what we agreed on. We decided, in our naive American certainty, that we were going to give him 30 rubles, because he did take us across the border. In Mongolia proper there was a van that promised to take us to Sukhbataar for 100 rubles each. We tried to give our guy his 30 rubles, and he responded by grunting angrily and grabbing Chris's bag. Chris held on to it, and we tried to explain that he didn't do what he promised. I then looked around and with a sinking feeling looked at the hard, unsympathetic faces of the 9 other Mongolian men around us, including the border guard who thought I was an eskimo. Everything became clear to me: give him the 300 rubles. Except then we found out that it was 300 each, and we protested a bit more, but there was really nothing we could do, so I gave him 1000. He didn't have change, of course, but that didn't matter. I just made sure to shake his hand so that he wouldn't get the idea to ask for any more money.
At this point I must say that I was not to hot on Mongolians in general, and when our last driver told us that he had to stop at his house to tell his wife, I pictured a bunch of baseball bat-wielding Mongols waiting for us, and was extremely unsettled. It turns out that he really just told his wife that he was going to take us there, and he turned out to be a very nice guy who spoke a little Russian. "Your driver, taxi driver, bad man." he said. "Very drunk."
Its surprising how quickly I went from being a generally trusting guy to a guy who hated non-American Asians to a normal trusting guy again.
So we finally got to Sukhbataar, and all we had to do now was buy a train ticket to Ulaan Bataar. Except the ticket office was closed. So we waited in the small station hall for about 7 hours. At the start of the last hour about a million people flooded in and the ticket sellers came opened up shop. In Mongolian trains there are basically two classes: hard and soft. Soft means slightly softer beds and a guaranteed spot. They sell unlimited hard tickets, so we obviously wanted soft ones. They were twice as expensive, but when choosing between a 4 dollar ticket and an 8 dollar ticket, it wasn't too difficult.
Except:
They were out of soft tickets. So we were just given a wagon, #3, and we gathered in a big clump around it. As soon as the wagon attendant showed her face by the door, people started fighting to get on. Not like Americans fight to leave a baseball game, or even like Russians fight to get a spot on a minibus, but like a big battle. Probably because of our size advantage, Patrick managed to get the last compartment on the wagon, which meant that we didn't have to watch our bags as we could put them under our seats. Unfortunately, this was a night train and we tried to sleep sitting upright while dozens of Mongolians talked loudly and banged the door as they went to smoke. Every time I woke up, which was a lot, there were more and more Mongols on the train, sleeping on luggage racks and such. It wasn't nearly as bad as Indian trains, though, I bet.
When we arrived in the capital at 6:40am it was really ______ cold, because it is in the desert and the temperature pretty much keeps dropping until sunrise. Nobody was there to meet us from our hostel like we thought, and there apparently no telephones in the station, so we decided to walk.
I was just glad to be in Ulaan Bataar at this point, and as we walked the sun rose and despite the cold I felt pretty good. It was my first time in Asia proper, and I saw all the little kids walking to school, and the signs for Korean hair salons and everything. It wasn't a pretty city, but it was a very pleasant city and I liked it a lot. We found our hostel by accident because although it is very close to a central landmark, the State Department Store, it is hidden away in a nearby courtyard. We got there around 7:30 and I finally took a shower.

Well that was the first bad part of the trip, but I have run out of time so I will soon write about the rest, which was fun and interesting and safe. But that was the thing. Also, I have been in Russia 2 months and Obama will be the next president of the United States and that's good for me and for the Russians, I think.