Culture and Tube Food

For many of you who read my facebook, I feel like going a bit in depth about a post I just made. Sometimes when I explain American concepts to my host dad, I feel a bit like I'm explaining something from the muggle world to Arthur Weasley.
  Take tonight at dinner, for example. The bananas my host dad bought for me turned black from being super ripe, and he was jokingly chastising me for not eating them. I said, (in Russian), "Well, we could make bread out of them."
  He looked at me like I was some sort of alien.
"Bread?" he said, "what?"
I then explained, "When we have black bananas, my mom prepares bread with them. It's like a dessert."
He said, "You know how to do this witchcraft?" (Ok, he didn't say witchcraft, but keep listening)
I said, "I don't know how. But my mom does. I could email her."
Then he said, "Natasha! (to his wife) Can you make bread out of black bananas?!"
And Natasha dutifully replied, "Not today. I'm mad."
Doesn't skip a beat, that woman.

I also had a great time explaining the special stores that sell alcohol in Utah, and that many LDS people don't drink wine, tea, beer, alcohol in general, or coffee. ( "But why?" )

I hope he's getting as much out of me staying here as I am getting out of staying here.

Side note: I really like eating food out of a tube while I am here. It makes me feel more like a cosmonaut. Our sauces come in tubes. :)

Banya Initiation, Russian music, Tima, and discovering my own Bravery

Hello. If any of you are like Emily, Connor, or my parents, you've seemed a bit worried about my whereabouts this weekend. I had a very Russian weekend, to say the least. And I will tell you more about it... now. :)

On Friday I got home from school and napped. When I woke up, my host dad and I ate dinner, then he explained to me very slowly ( I was still tired) that we were going to his friend's house to eat and drink. I was really nervous. But it was great! We ate and drank and chatted (me in broken Russian) about all sorts of things. There was a man there named Mischa that reminded me of a big Russian dancing bear. He was really goofy and loved teasing his girlfriend. At the end of the night he got out a guitar and everyone (except me) sang while he played with all the lights out and candles lit until his neighbor came down from the 8th floor and said that he had work in the morning and told us to shut up, basically. It was like, 1 am, at that point. It was really amazing.  I wish I knew Russian songs to sing!

Mischa's apartment is newly constructed and the public areas are still mainly unfinished. We took a cab to it and when we got in the elevator, which was still clearly under construction, Andre said to me that the elevator wasn't finished being built yet, so that's why it was still covered in wood. Then he said in English but with a strong Russian accent, "I can see you going to America and saying, 'In Russia they have wooden lifts.'" Then we all cracked up.

View of the Yensei and Komunalni Bridge from Mischa's apartment.

New apartment complex and dormitories.

This was on the back of Mischa's toilet. It made me laugh. He spoke really broken English on and off, and his place was covered with stuff from the soccer team Manchester United. He said to me, "Manchester United is my favorite team!!!" (imagine a thick accent here :))

Saturday (which was last night but feels like forever ago) I went to the dacha with my family. Arina and I picked these really really tart berries. When I ate one I said, "So sour!" and my host dad explained in Russian that they aren't actually that sour, home grown ones are much sweeter than ones in the forest.  I just looked at him like a crazy person. I bet he's getting used to it. :)

This is my new best friend, Tima! He's a big orange cat without a tail and the object of every family member's affection, even granny loves him. He, however, likes to try and escape the dacha and chase butterflies. He doesn't hurt them, he just plays with them. He's a sneaky cat, too. Last night when I was trying to sleep on the pull-out sofa, he scared the hell out of me by jumping on me and trying to give me a surprise bath. He's not Chicken, but he's a pretty good bed-mate. 

Tart berries.

Construction stuff, Andre worked on the house most of the weekend.

This is the banya from the front porch. My host dad says I am almost a real Russian now because I went into a Russian banya. As I didn't my swimsuit to the dacha, I had to wear this toga thing that Natasha gave me. So, I learned that Russians aren't afraid of being half naked. I, an American, am, so I stayed in my toga during the whole process. 

  The first part of the banya is the dry heat part. I'm talking 80 degrees CELSIUS or so in a sauna like room. It's made of special wood, and after a few minutes you throw cold water with scented oil on the stones to cool the room off a bit, though it tends to feel like it's getting hotter. Andre said, "The first rule of banya is if you are sick, run. That's all the rules of banya." It felt a bit like fight club.  So we stayed in a sweltering room for about 5 minutes, then went and dumped cold water on ourselves in the second part of it, and went outside and cooled off more. Although shocking, it was also quite enjoyable. 

  In my first round Andre explained that all good business transactions and political talks happen in banyas, so if I wanted to have a good business relationship with someone, I must go into the banya with him. Natasha then interrupted and said, "yes, but sometimes not." and we laughed. 

  So after two rounds of dry heat and dumping cold water on ourselves, Andre said, "Now you will go into the banya with Natasha and she will beat you with wet branches." Remember that, "you're-a-crazy-Russian" look that I said I was really good at giving Andre? I used it here as well. It's really quite endearing. 

  So, it's a form of massage and it's not really so much of a beating as more of swatting. It relaxes the muscles a lot. It felt nice, but while I was lying there I kept thinking it was the weirdest thing I'd ever done: lie naked in a toga in an extremely hot room while a Russian woman hit me with wet branches, willingly.  When we were done we had wine and chai (that means tea) and I was really really sleepy and ready for bed. I also had real kvas while I was doing the banya thing. It is a carbonated drink that is made with bread and yeast basically. It's god-awful in the US (I had it at a Russian club activity), but not so terrible here. Still not a huge fan of it, but it didn't make my gag reflex go into effect.

  But I didn't get to go to sleep quite yet. Arina, Andre and I went to a concert in a bar that was an old band, "Pep-see". It was really great and hilarious in parts. The three women in the group were in these giant dresses that had carrots printed on them. One dress was pink, another blue, another green. It was really enjoyable. 

  I discovered on Friday that hipsters have invaded Russia. Andre likes to make fun of them and I even told him a joke that translated alright into Russian. "How much does a hipster weigh? An instagram." He thought it was great and I could tell he was logging it away for his friend Olya. After the concert we went to the dacha and went to bed, and around 4 am I discovered that I am braver than I know. The bathroom is quite far from the house, and is in outhouse form. I woke up and had to pee BADLY, something about all that tea I drank. So, I put on my shoes, confused Tima by throwing all my blankets on him so he couldn't escape like he wanted to and went and peed in the dark. It took a lot of courage on my part because I hate outhouses/am afraid of them and I had to leave the safety of the dacha to do so. Almost the best pee I've ever had. 

Part of the garden. 

Tima, hunting butterflies.

View from the Dacha. 

The dacha itself. It has 2 floors, with a mini kitchen and I suspect a bedroom upstairs. I learned that Andre LOVES pirates. The whole dacha is pirate themed and there are a bunch of empty bottles of Captain Morgan Rum everywhere. He hung a sign on the door that says "Pirates Only, All others will walk the plank." and was trying to rig it so that the eye of the skull was the peep hole. There's a stuffed monkey dressed as a pirate, and it's all themed with pirate stuff, even the banya. It made me wish I'd known this beforehand so that I could have gotten them a pirate themed gift! 

To end this post, I found a mushroom that I like. (See photo. It's a little cookie with a mushroom cap made of chocolate. It totally counts as a mushroom in my opinion.)

I miss you all. Especially my family and close friends. Tomorrow, I have school. We are going to Lake Baikal soon, I will post the exact dates when I know them so none of you worry. 

And now, I present a diorama photograph of a cosmonaut's new city

Hello, all! I'm sorry I've been such a slacker-- it's been a busy few days, and when I got a free moment yesterday, my Russian dad took me to the dacha to meet his daughter and cat. Can you guess which one I was more excited to meet? :)

So yesterday was our first day of class, but instead of class we had an excursion that went all around Krasnoyarsk to see sights. They used to print 10 ruble bills that have several sights from around Krasnoyarsk on them, but they stopped because it's basically worthless.. 10 rubles is roughly 33 cents.

This is a plaque on the clock that the people here refer to as "Big Ben", it reminded me of an English saying, it says, "Time is not measured in hours, but in heartbeats."

Another view of "Big Ben". Honestly, it's not that big. It has an hourglass inside though. 

 

Bjac and Andrew on a fountain edge. 

This is the fountain near the opera house. My host dad told me that at night it lights up at plays music. Shantel and I were talking about going to see it. 

This is "Krasnoyarsk" in Russian.

So the Yensei is a very big river, and 7 other rivers flow into it. These female statues represent the seven rivers that flow into the Yensei. 

The man in the middle represents the Yensei itself. 

Monument to Chekov. 

One of the HUGE beautiful bridges that crosses the Yensei. 

me. :)

This sign says "Infinity-- 459 meters". I thought it was great. 

 

Some Artsy thing that involves the river. Our guides didn't really understand it. Daniel had to push the last one so I could get the picture of it pouring out. It wasn't working like it should. 

The Matroshka represents Mother Russia. 

A Russian love story: A Russian is sent by the Tsar to go and establish colonies and cities in Siberia. He gets lost and instead makes it all the way to America, where he becomes acquainted with the Native Americans. He meets a woman and they fall in love. He decides to head back to Russia, and tells his love that he will come back and they will be married. When he reaches Krasnoyarsk, he somehow dies (falls ill, gets in an accident, whatever..) and he never gets to marry his beloved. And they live like Russians ever after. The end. Happy, right?

One of the neater functions of my camera. It makes a diorama photo of landscapes. Looks a bit like Mr. Roger's Neighborhood to me. 

This is the one of my school. It's the yellow-y building near the center. I had class for the first time today, and during break I went to go to the bathroom and upon entering it I thought better of it. Russia is a beautiful place, with neat people, but anything public has been very dirty. The bathrooms smelled terrible and were filthy. And the toilets were weird. Moral? I'm going to hold it until I get home to my host family's each day. 

Chapel on top of the tallest hill (mountain?) in Krasnoyarsk. The story goes that there was a watchtower built here so that the citizens could see invading enemies. A rich merchant (meanwhile) nearly drowned and while recovering he prayed to the patron st. to help him recuperate. He got better, and gave a boatload of money to have this beautiful little chapel built. It has a fence around it with locks similar to the ones we saw in Moscow. It's apparently a wedding tradition. If I get married, I want to buy an engraved lock to put somewhere to annoy people. Add that to my bucket list. 

So, see the smog that is in the air? Yeah, that's an INVERSION! Krasnoyarsk, like good ol' Salt Lake, has surrounding mountains that create a bowl that bad air gets trapped in, causing the inversion. My host dad was explaining it last night and I was like, "Oh my god! like Utah!" 

My dad took me to the dacha yesterday and it was beautiful, though getting there was a bit scary with narrow roads and such. However, I learned something hilarious. He was showing me different fences and said that the tall fences around a dacha mean that the people like to go around NAKED. Haha. Makes me laugh. 

We were also listening to music in the car and my dad was listening to "Personal Jesus" by Depeche Mode, and he said, "Chto eto? Reach out and touch face?" (The original lyric is "reach out and touch faith.") And so I explained it, then I had the hardest time explaining what "reach" meant. He said it made more sense that it was "faith" instead of "face". 

I got lost yesterday and found my house by speaking only Russian to a stranger. It's getting easier! I described my family and the man was like, "oh, yeah, I know Andre" but in Russian, and voila! I was home. 

I have a hilarious shoe tan line that made my host family laugh. It's good I'm not just hilariously bad at Russian, but also sometimes hilarious in the normal way.

Love you all. Go eat something super American for me. The food here is nothing like home. Except the wine. :) 

Do cosmonauts get airsick?

Sorry for the delay in post, all. Yesterday was an exhausting fiasco, and today I flew to Krasnoyarsk and met my host family. The good news is that I didn't get sick on the plane. I don't have to take a scary  Russian bus to school. My family has internet for me to use. And they asked me the magical question, "Do you like white wine?" (but in Russian), meaning that these people could be serial killers for all I care and I would still be their happy American guest. They might think I'm lingually retarded but it's alright. I'm here to learn, and learn I shall!

  My host parents are Andre and Natasha. They live in the top apartment of an old Soviet looking building. They are English professors, but speak mostly Russian to me unless it's something important, like when we drove my walking route to school and he made me tell it back to him in Russian and I got mentally lost. Andre also asked me what Americans say while "chinking" glasses. I laughed and said there isn't anything special we say, he shook his head and said we are strange people. I also had a great time explaining the special stores in which we buy alcohol in Utah.

So, yesterday, Julia, our host professor, dragged all of us around the city for 11 hours seeing sights. I saw a few things that I really loved. First, we went to Red Square and saw St. Basil's on the inside. Unluckily I only saw the bottom floor inside because some Russian woman started chewing Shantel and I out for 150 rubles and we couldn't get back in when she shooed us out. The rest of the group escaped unscathed. When we return we plan on buying another ticket when we return (it was only 50 rubles, 1 ruble = 3 cents) and seeing the rest.

Then we went to Lenin's tomb. It was weird and gross. He looks really fake, except his rotten fingernails on the one hand that is stretched out. It was free, then we walked the graveyard of Russian leaders and saw Stalin's statue. There are no pictures for this because they don't allow cameras of any kind. I had a really proud moment here when I explained to a guard checking bags in Russian with little error that I'm a diabetic.

Then we went to the Kremlin and saw all the Cathedrals and such. It was beautiful, and I got to practice my Spanish because in one Church the only map translation available was in Spanish and Julia had me translate the history of the crown and other ceremonies.

After the Kremlin we went to Arbat, an old street that Stalin built to drive his cars down on his way to work. It was interesting and hot.

My favorite thing we saw was Patriarch's pond and the Evil Apartment from Bulgakov's novel, Master and Margarita. The apartment is evil because it makes people disappear because it is so desirable and the devil lives there at one point, and Bulgakov lived in and used it as his inspiration. Patriarch's pond is another point in the story, where a man gets beheaded showing Ivan the 7th proof of God, the existence of the devil.

In passing we also saw the KGB torture building, and other historically relevant sites.

Bolshoi Theater

Shantel and I in front of Bolshoi Theater

St. Basil's Cathedral 

So, this bell was made for the Kremlin a heck of a long time ago. However, the Russians didn't anticipate that it was too big to lift, so because of this it was never rung. "Could the Russians build a bell so big they themselves could not ring it?" Timeless question. 

Top of one of the churches in the Kremlin. 

Me. 

The bell tower. 

That big chunk missing out of the unringable bell was caused by damage from a fire.  

It says, "In this home from 1921 to 1924 lived and worked the writer Mikhail Afanacervich Bulgakov. Here he developed the novel Master and Margarita."

The pond where Ivan meets the devil. 

Where Berlioz loses his head. 

Shantel, Andrew, and I preparing to get on our plane. 

In case of emergency break glass with mallet. Our bus to Krasnoyarsk from the airport was high tech, I tell you. 

More next time. :)