kiwi attempts russian assimilation.

Coming to you all straight from the desk in New Jersey that was very familiar to me six weeks ago. Right now, everything in my house seems foreign and somehow way different than I remember. It doesn’t help that my parents had the outside of our house redone, and we have new appliances and things all inside, so it actually is different, and it’s not just my imagination.

I feel the need to catch you all up on the happenings of the weekend, even though I’m home, and I bet nobody cares what I’m writing here anymore.

Friday night was our “Last Supper.” We had a group dinner at a really kitschy place, which I’ve already told you is called Russian Kitsch. :) It was the most bizarre place, but we had fun. It was kind of an awkward night because of a few people, but basically there was a band singing a lot of Elvis songs, so how awkward could it have been? haha. The food there wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t the best night we’d all had together. We made a list of our email addresses and phone numbers and it was a really sad sort of gesture. I really don’t have anything else meaningful to say about it.

Saturday was probably the worst day of the whole trip, at least for me. I really have no idea what was the matter with me. More than half of the Rutgers group left on Saturday, and saying goodbye to them was half sad and half awkward, and it’s so hard to explain. Like, through this whole trip I feel like I’ve really learned to be independent. It was the first time that I had ever really lived away from home, and I wasn’t relying on my parents for much of anything. But I also feel like this trip was also one of the first times that I’ve let myself be so completely interdependent on a group of my peers. I’ve never had a group of friends that I’ve been around so much, and relied on so much. Like on this trip, I was constantly with other people from my group, and whether we were “Friends” or not, we needed each other. A lot of us learned the language entirely from scratch together. We needed an entire group of us to translate signs and menus, order things, ask directions, learn the transportation routes, go on tours, etc. With any of the other friends or people I’ve known at home, I’ve never had to rely on them for anything, we just did whatever and had fun with it. It’s really hard for me to explain. So, watching most of our group leave and then be left behind was extremely odd. I felt really lost for the rest of the day, and I can’t explain it. I wasn’t even this sappy at high school graduation. We basically had an entire day to kill, and only Liz, Maria, Joe, and I were around. We decided to go to Pizza Hut and get some Wi-Fi and decent food. On the bus ride there, I listened to my iPod and I had the most annoying experience: my iPod was on shuffle, and every song that came on either reminded me of Russia or home. It was a mix of songs that we developed inside jokes about while in Russia, songs Liz gave me, old dance songs, Michael Jackson, Bye, Bye, Bye, and songs that I have no emotional attatchment to but that had gut-wrenching titles (I almost started bawling when New Found Glory’s “Coming Home” came on.) So I really don’t know why, but I was on the verge of tears for the whole time, and I was mad at myself. haha. So we had an awkward day to kill, and we waited it out in “da Hut.” After that, we all kind of just went back to the dorms to pack. And party. No, I’m kidding. No party. Liz and I watched Spinal Tap in our kitchen, and Joe came up to our room toward the end of it. We played music back and forth for awhile, but nothing productive came out of that. Mila had been in Gatchina for the day, saying goodbye to family friends. She came up to our room for a bit, but Maria was having this really random sob-fest after watching some TV show (ask me if you want the whole story.) and Mila basically couldn’t take it and just left.

Yesterday was a very long and intense day. I left our lovely dorm (R.I.P. 801) at around 9 am St. Petersburg time with Liz and Mila. We picked up Pirog and Svetlana and we were on our way to the airport. Our plane left at 12:35 and we got to Helsinki at 12:30. Liz made a typical toolish comment about time travel. :) haha, just kidding. I did a twinge of shopping in Helsinki, because I don’t know if/when I’ll be back. I got a tacky FINLAND t-shirt, and a copy of the Twilight book in Finnish. Then we got on our flight home, and I officially was ready to be back in New Jersey. I watched so many movies on the way home, it was ridiculous. I saw 17 Again, Watchmen, He’s Just Not That Into You, and Mosters Vs. Aliens, plus some episodes of How I Met Your Mother and The Big Bang Theory. While watching all of these things, I kept thinking about the really simple things I missed at home. I had told everyone, while still in Russia, that the first thing I was going to do when I got home was to get a glass of water straight out of the tap and drink it down. (By the way, I totally did.) At customs at the airport, the guy checking my passport kind of grumbled “Welcome back,” and I practically squealed “GOOD TO BE BACK, SIR!” I should really be more embarrassed of myself. (I’m not.) I was wearing my Russian olympics hoodie, and the guy collecting some of our forms was like “What does that say?” And I squealed (again.) “RUSSIA!” (because it says Russia in Cyrllic.) and he stuck his tongue out at me and threw me a raspberry. I was like, um, does this mean I can enter the country? I sprinted past him, anyway. Other stuff went down at the airport, but I am rushing to get to the part where on the car ride home, I got to call in my Chinese food order. It was the best thing ever. You know you’re in America when you can order take out from your car. I tried texting like a mass group of people that I was home, and then I could hardly keep track of the responses I was getting, so I just stopped that. If you’re interested, you can like text me now, because the mass amounts of “YOU’RE HOME<3333!!!!” texts have died down and I can probably answer you this time :)

So anyway. There are so many more things to say, but for blog’s sake (ha. ha. ha.) I will end now. I am thinking of creating a new blog for my “real life” (since Liz thinks Russia is not real life.) and linking it on here, to keep this one as my travel log. I will post something on here if I do create something new. Otherwise, thanks to my friends at home for reading this and keeping me connected to home. And to the strangers who have found me somewhere along the way, I hope my Russian antics have kept you entertained.

<3

Since I have last updated, every hour of my life has been jam-packed with activities that nobody wants to miss out on. We’re all leaving the country this weekend, so last weekend, we started cramming random things into our last week. On Monday, I met with my peer tutor, Xenia, because we still hadn’t gone to the used book store that she was telling me about. We went there, and it was the coolest place on earth, for me. “Newer” books were only a little cheaper than they would have been brand new in stores, so they weren’t really worth it, but the really old stuff and the classics (aka: what I was interested in) were insanely cheap (think 30 cents.) I got 2 books by Gogol that aren’t that old, but they’re like the same series/printing edition, which I’m obsessed with. I also got a new-ish copy of Confessions of a Shopaholic in translation, which was 20 roubles (75 cents?) because most Russians seem to not care about modern novels or frivolous books. Then I got this absolutely ancient copy of The Great Gatsby in translation, a really old Chekov, and, my personal favorite, the most Soviet-era looking copy of Blok’s poems in the entire world. I obviously love them all, but since probably none of you care about my old books, I’ll move on. After book shopping, Xenia took me to this vegetarian café in the area. That’s such a rare find in Russia, let me tell you. I got this amazing vegetable lasagna with rice and peas and for a minute I forgot that this is such a totally meat-dominated country. At the café, Xenia helped me with my Russian. She was explaining the tenses and cases to me, because they make a lot more sense when explained in English. (In class, we spend a lot of time guessing what the teachers are saying, and we need a firmer understanding of what the cases are, because they are really basic things that we will need to build off of later.)

Tuesday was a hardcore class day. I talked to Anna about my Russian grade, asking her if there was anything specific she could tell that I needed to work on (so that she would know that I was trying, and so that I would be prepared for Russian II) and she said that I was progressing very well and very quickly, and that I was at a normal spot. She also told me that I’ve come a long way since she first started teaching us (not the first day, as you remember Annas 1 & 2.) so hopefully that will reflect in my grade (like how I told you about my preliminary B before.) What was really annoying was that Anna managed to say all of this in really amazing English, with a little Russian thrown in. I was like, you won’t speak English to us in class, ever? And you’re amazing at it? While we’re scrambling around with the Creeping Finns trying to translate words into the five languages our group speaks, and you’re just sitting there laughing at us? Anyway, it was cool. I told Svetlana that I talked to her, but she didn’t really say anything about it. She recommends that Emily and I come to Rutgers a week before classes start to have meetings with her so we can look through the books that the Rutgers students have been using, so that at least we make sure we know the same vocab. On Tuesday night there was a really major ordeal at night involving food, and I am willing to tell anyone individually what happened, but I’m not comfortable posting it here, so get in touch.

On Wednesday, we probably had the best excursion ever, and one of the most memorable parts of the trip, and my literary life. I know you all saw how dorky I got about the Raskolnikov trip, but this one took the cake. After class, our whole group went over to the Stray Dog Café. This is the place where, since it’s opening, the literary and artistic crowd of St. Petersburg has congregated. Basically, it was the hangout spot of writers, poets, artists, composers, musicians, etc. The café itself was a really cool and artsy place, and there we met Russian poet Aleksander Kushner and his wife, who had somehow come into the acquaintance of Prof. Pirog somewhere along the line. He was such a nice guy, and he read a bunch of his poems. I knew that he had written the introduction to Lidia Ginzburg’s novel, The Blockade Diary. (I thoroughly enjoyed his portion, which is usually not the case with book intros, and I have even quoted some of it here on this blog, if you so recall.) I told him how I enjoyed it and he lit up, because he was personal friends with the late Lidia Ginzburg, so he and his wife were so glad to talk about her. They said how not a day goes by when they don’t think of her, and that so many things in St. Petersburg remind them of her. It was so awesome to be connected to the literature and history that we have studied on our trip here in such a personal way. Our group got the back room of The Stray Dog, where all the important poetry readings and big group meetings are held (read more about this in a second!)

After the café, Emily, Liz, and I decided to check out the Anna Ahkmatova museum. We had studied her poem, “The Requiem” in class on Tuesday, and watched a really cool biography/documentary about her. She’s an interesting person, historically, and her poems are really affecting. So we went to her museum, which was her converted flat, and it was pretty cool. There, I bought a book of her poems in Russian, because she uses really simple and direct language, so even a Russian beginner like me can understand what she is saying. There was a gallery of her photos, and one of the photographs was of Anna Akhmatova and a bunch of other important authors and poets of her time sitting around the huge table in the back room of The Stray Dog, where we all had just been! That was probably the coolest thing, another connection to history and literature, which I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m all about that.

Thursday was our final day of classes. For the first class, Anna let us watch a movie in Russian. It was a comedy from the 1970s about a guy who built a time machine and traveled back in time and became Ivan the Terrible. It was pretty funny, and of course we got our mandatory dosage of Russian history. Then we had Tatianna, and I realized how much I’m going to miss her and her random conversations. I like her a lot better than I did in the beginning, because I understand what she’s saying now! My maddd Russian skillz lead to me understanding the stuff she rants about, and it’s kind of fun. Then we had our last Anna class, which was bittersweet: she worked us like dogs, trying to get in the last bits of grammar, but we’re all going to miss her a lot. We all gave her tons of stuff, I gave her most of the things I brought from home to give out as presents, because I think she’s the kind of person who would appreciate American fashion magazines and the like.  After our classes, we had “graduation” which was really awkward. The director of the school spoke to us in really slow Russian saying how she was glad our group was so good and that they loved having us blah blah etc. etc. Then we got our “diplomas” or rather, just the crazy certificates that they made us. And then they started asking each of us individually what we thought of St. Pete’s/the work/ the school…. And they started with us newbies, just to laugh at how we said the same three phrases over and over again to describe the trip.

After “graduation,” we had a little luncheon with our teachers and peer tutors (the Annas didn’t come, it was a sad day.) and hung out for a bit. Then Liz and I went to have real food at this Italian place called Mama Roma’s. I had to beast it out of there quickly though, because that night, Michelle and her Russian friend Alex organized a trip to go see Harry Potter in Russian, and Galina, Rachel, and I went along. It was a really fun experience. I understood more of the movie than I thought I would. Especially more that I thought because I don’t even follow Harry Potter to begin with. Fun fact: his name is Gary Potter here. J

Yesterday, Xenia, Galina, Rachel, and Galina’s peer tutor Anna (I swear, everyone is Anna here) went around town. They wanted to show us this authentic Russian cuisine restaurant and other things. They got us little presents and made us CDs of Russian music, which was really cute of them. After our meeting with them, we had our intense Potluck dinner at Pirog’s apartment. We all brought our favorite foods from the trip to share with each other, and everyone from our program was there. (I brought iced tea and chocolate covered marshmallows!) It was a pretty fun night, and it made me realize how I’m going to miss most of the people here a lot. We told a bunch of stories about our favorite parts of the trip and Pirog had a slideshow going of all the pictures he’s taken of us here, so we were laughing at how ridiculous most of them were.

Today isn’t even close to being over, but I’ve already done so much. This morning, Rachel and I went to the Leningrad Blockade Defense and Siege Memorial Museum. It was so intense: it was a really small place, but it was so awe-inspiring. We felt like we couldn’t speak above a whisper the entire time we were there. There were a lot of artifacts from the blockade, and it was very nice to sort of close my trip here by actually seeing the things that we’ve been studying and learning about the whole time we were here. They had a section of the museum dedicated all to bread: there were food rations during the blockade (you know about my fascination with Ginzburg’s Blockade Diary, and this is bringing it to life.) and they had the actual portion sizes of bread in the case. It was absolutely heartbreaking to see the portion of bread a family would have for a day. I can’t even imagine living that way. This was just another sight that I’ve seen in Petersburg that just makes me appreciate my life at home so much more, and brings to life the history that I am so fascinated by. After the museum, we went back to the souvenir market. This time we saw a guy who had the most amazing artwork and photography. We immediately were awestruck by his work and became friends with him. He and his friends live in St. Petersburg and they take the most amazing photos here and sort of graffiti-ize the backgrounds they put them on… I can’t even explain it. We were looking through shoe-boxes of his work for about a half hour. He struck us each a bargain on buying a bunch, and I’m really excited about my purchases. I’m already planning where in my room I want them. The works are already signed, but I feel like actually meeting and talking to him is even cooler. He even seemed sad when we told him we were leaving this weekend. (Because we got into a discussion about how we’ve been studying the language here for 6 weeks, and he was like, “Girls! Why didn’t you come here sooner!”) He gave us his art website and email address, because he posts his photos online and we can contact them if we want to buy them from home. I’m really glad that we ran into him at the market.

Right now, I’m at a Japanese food place with Liz scamming Wi-Fi, but we need to be on our way to meet the group at the Russian Kitsch place I told you all about. I may not be able to update more before I leave the country, but you better believe there will be more stuff when I get home on Monday. Hope my flight goes well! See most of you very shortly!