This will be my last post. I have decided to go home and be with my family for the remainder of the semester. I go back to Georgia this Friday, and I will be at Wesleyan Sunday, April 12th-Friday, April 19th. No, nothing happened. I've been thinking of taking time off from school for years now. If any of you want to know more details, ask me in person.
Read more...As I write this, I sit in a cafe eating a blini and drinking tea. It's a "fast food" joint, and yet I'm eating off a real plate with metal silverware and pouring my own tea from a ceramic teapot into a cup and saucer. All this is sitting on a cafeteria-style red plastic tray and Backstreet Boys' "Show Me the Meaning of Being Lonely" just came across the loudspeaker. Oh, Russia--the culture shock never truly ends--and I love it that way. This past week marked the end of my second month here. Sometimes I feel like time is flying, and other times I feel as if I've lived here for years.
...but often, in my dorm at least, no such luck. it just goes out sometimes, and seemingly only if i am trying to have a conversation on skype. sometimes it comes back, sometimes not. teaches patience. reminds of modern dependence on technology. but mostly, is annoying.
this, of course, is not an excuse for the fact that i haven't updated in here in approximately 783924 years. or, to be more accurate, since 15 february. which is just silly.
much has happened. lets see...
and then sean arrived, after a very involved hiding-keys-behind-planters-and-camouflaging-it-with-foliage-for-sean-to-find-3-days-later process that, thankfully, did not end disastrously, since he was getting into town before my return from wales. and it was a week to be remembered. sunny the whole time. nothing less for the californian.
in the midst of all of this, i was having my last few weeks of classes, which officially ended today. for the rest of my time here, i will be technically on break until 27 april, and then in our mysterious third term dedicated (i think) solely to exam-taking and performance-giving. very bizarre, if you ask me. but i'll take it. time to make use of those £20 tickets to rome and paris and budapest i see in ads all over the place...
my grandmother, and her long-time friend from switzerland, also paid a visit, just in time for our orchestra concert in st. johns cathedral in the middle of the city this past monday. it was an enormously fun, exciting concert and, as most concerts do, it reminded me how much i love being able to play for people in situations like that. i'm always going to, in some respect... if nothing else, being here this semester has made me realize that. but anyway, grandma's stay was very busy and much fun. spending real time with older people--be them family members or not--really does give perspective one loses when only hanging out with college kids. which i appreciate greatly.
since this is already a very long post, i suppose I'll sign out for now. coming up soon is an even more crazy CrazyTime, involving having to write 293847 million pages in the span of a week or two, exploring switzerland and germany with heather (!!!), and getting a week with Caroline, my best friend from high school! it will be very interesting, as that due-date-of-everything-ever will surely approach more quickly than i would like, and i'm embarrassingly enthusiastic about all of my classes/papers and want to do them well.
as always, i hope all is well and know that i miss you. stay in touch.
Okay, so I'm really starting to get bad at this. Not only am I late with posts, but I'm only going to put up pictures because I don't have time for beautiful prose. I just turned in my honors thesis application, I've had exams this week and last, and I'm still working several days a week as a volunteer. Not that I don't love everything I'm doing, but the weekends are my only time to relax.
Last weekend, I went to Arshan, a village in Buryatia located at the foot of the Sayan mountains to the West of Lake Baikal. We went hiking through the mountains (on a very icy "trail," I might add) to a waterfall. We then walked down the frozen river between the cliffs back to where we started. It was absolutely beautiful, so I'll let the pictures speak for themselves:
These last few weeks have been a very odd combination of emotions about the old and the new. Having lived in Jerusalem as a kid in the next neighborhood over from where I am now, a lot of bittersweet childhood memories have come back to me as I've been rediscovering this wonderful country as an adult. I've been having a great time seeing places I haven't seen in over a decade and getting deja vu, but it's also hard to remember that the last time I was in all of these places, I was with my family, which includes my dearly departed mother. And so while I'm very happy here, settling down as all my classes are in full swing, I'm also finally being forced to think about things I was able to ignore at Wesleyan, a place where my mother wasn't a major part of my life. And on that happy note...
(In typical Russian fashion, I am late on my blogs. Forgive me while I post several times in a row to catch up.)
Forgive me--I know it's the end of week 6, but I never got around to posting week 5!
Much to catch up on. (At right: the view from my living room window!)
We took our second group trip at the beginning of the month, going north to Tangier, a huge hilly city right on the water. In the past the city was famous for being a den of just about every kind of debauchery, as well as a hangout for Paul Bowles, a couple of Beats, and definitely painters (Sargent and Matisse for a start). Some of the seediness definitely remains - no where else in Morocco have we been offered drugs on the street...
First stop in Tangier was the American Legation, a beautiful building that used to be the American embassy, where they have stockpiled lots of art, beautiful furniture and old maps. The fluffy wall to wall carpets gave all of us a pleasant surprise after months of cold tile floors. Morocco and the U.S. have been buds since way back - and in the legation there's a framed letter asking the Moroccan government to fly their flags at half-mast after Lincoln's assassination. After poking around we hung out with the curator in the gazebo on top of the building and drank Coca Cola, in true American style.
We booked out of Tangier the next day to see Chefchaouen, a very cute, blue, and rainy mountain town. The drive was rather long, so I got a good look at the landscape, which is striking both in beautiful and depressing ways - gorgeous mountains, but cement buildings and trash everywhere. Everything is sort of cobbled together and half finished. You also see sheep grazing next to restaurants, and donkeys tethered next to parked cars.
The last day was even more of a trip - mental and geographical - when we crossed over into Septa/Ceuta, a city that is technically part of Spain. The difference is unreal. The second you hit Septa everything screams European, and Money. Developed Nation. We wandered around a little bit stunned, paid for things in Euros (expensive!) and took a peek at Gibraltar, which was just barely visible from the waterfront.
Next!
Last weekend we had two days off for the Prophet's Birthday, and I went south with three other girls to see some famous waterfalls at Ouzoud, a day trip out of Marrakech. This involved a) a long train ride to Marrakech, and b) a taxi ride to a tiny town close to the falls. The train was standard, but we didn't get ourselves a grand taxi until it was getting dark. Why? We stopped to eat, poke around the souk, make friends with the monkeys on Jama'a al-Fna... which for Laura meant an ape climbing in her hair, for me it meant getting peed on. And the handlers still expected money from me. Oh well. How many people can say they've had that happen to them?
So picture four girls crammed into the backseat of a twenty year old Mercedes, careening along in the dark up into the mountains, with a driver who passes every vehicle he can by going in and out of oncoming traffic. Weely weely weely. The next day we stumbled through ordering breakfast in darija - we had made it far enough into the countryside that French had evaporated - and bargained for a grand taxi to the falls. More careening along mountain roads, this time in daylight.
The falls, suffice it to say, are gorgeous. And there are wild monkeys there, who don't freak out in your personal space! Picture worth a thousand words, I think:
After the falls it was a long bus ride back to Marrakech, and an even longer train trip home. Next time we will engineer a trip that is a little more resting and a little less getting around.
We're coming up on midterms back in Rabat, but the weather is just getting nice, so here's to studying en plein air as much as possible!
Hi All,
I've been following the goings on at the house, more or less, though I'm always excited to hear more. I am terrible at uploading pictures, but my friends are good at it! so when I get back, we can log on to facebook. Plus, I've been taking some photos, I'm jst technologically challenged...
A lot has hapened since I last logged in... I fell on the footbridge walking home at 11 pm after a pint of cider and unbeknowst to me then, chipped a tooth, which will wait until I get home, since it's so small nobody can notice anyway, but I felt like I had finally joined the rest of the living and done something slightly embarassing while...under the influence? I had a really bloody nose and this really nice woman took me to her house across the street and let me clean up, she even donated a pack of tissues for the cause! It was more embarassing to fall flat on my face in public on an icy footbridge than anything else.
I've been taking Irish-which, let me tell you, is worse than English in terms of spelling. I ahve my oral test (sounds more fun than it is) n the 19th, along with a psych paper.... At least the phleghmy sounds arent' al that difficult for me to produce, since hebrew has worse ones. I suspect I will never sound native in Irish, though. Which isn't bad considering most people here do not actually speak it... It might come in handy in my trip to the ring of Kerry this weekend (what we all think of as we picture Ireland, according to Marian, head of Irish stuff here), though.
UCC is very much like ADP in that there are tons of parties where people dress up in their finest ball regalia, have big meals, get kind of tipsy (very trashed in some cases) and dance and dance. I miss the guys at ADP, though, who would never be so ungentlemanly as to refuse an offer for a waltz... yes, Irish guys (to my suprise) are not always as gentlemanly as you'd expect by your experience with them at Wes... though definitely mant of them are very nice indeed...
I really like the pubs here...there are Irish music sessions in some of them, basically, if you want to hear a trad session, you just ahve to find out where it is that day of the week. I've also discovered i really like cider-and we should all go to Eli's for some (I hear it's cheap and quite good) when I come back... I went to Blarney castle the other week, with my firend Noora from finland and her roommate from germany. It was nice, and I smooched the stone, which is supposed to make me more eloquent (and smooth-talking). However, I haven't noticed the desired effects yet..let's hope they appear while I write my thesis next year....
I miss you all very much. However, academically I'm having a great time here. I'm finding that what the people at the study abroad office said was correct. The people who say studying ehre is easy were not painting an accurate picture. It's freer here. You ahve more free time for research, reading, walking around, socializing. However, professors (or lecturers, as they are called) are very knowledgeable, and most are both entertaining and very informative during class time. There is less supervision here, which makes sense, because students here vary in age and academic experience. One of the women in my history class is probably in her forties, and she isn't the only older student here, far from it... I think some of the visiting students find the variety weird and uncomfortable, but I really like it. After class on Thursdays my history professor walks me into town and we talk about class and just chat, which I like.
Psychology here is different than at Wes and I took a class on group work that I could never have taken otherwise. I need to go to class, but I will continue this soon...
suffice to say:
I like it here, but I really miss you all...
Xaipe and Hugs,
D'or
This week in Russia was full of various adventures, but the recurring theme was the setting: Lake Baikal.
LISTVIANKA
The first time I visited Lake Baikal was last Sunday. A few of my friends and I took a marshrutka (a 15-seater van that has routes like a bus) to Listvianka, a small village on the shore of Lake Baikal about an hour away from Irkutsk. It was cold and windy, but we had the time of our lives. We walked around on the frozen lake, browsed the local market, and walked through the town. The only damper to our journey was trying to catch a marshrutka back to Irkutsk. In typical Russian fashion, when a marshrutka comes, you just push your way onto the van—regardless of how long anyone else has been waiting. We missed our first marshrutka because we were pushed out of the way, and had to wait 20 minutes or so for the next one to arrive. Once we got on that marshrutka, though, it felt like we were had won this particularly Russian game.
Here are some pictures of our trip to Listvianka:
(From left to right, top to bottom: My friends Nick and Martijn stroll with ease; My roommate Hannah steps carefully; The Lake; The frozen shipyard)
TALTSY
The second time I visited Lake Baikal was last Wednesday. This past week was Russian “Maslenitsa,” which is like Fat Tuesday/Mardi Gras, but lasts for an entire week. Our university hosted a trip to Taltsy, where the Maslenitsa celebration happens all week on the grounds of the museum of wooden architecture. I went with a few of my friends from my classes, and we had a blast. We ate bliny, walked around, had a snowball fight, and played several traditional Russian games.
Pictures from Taltsy:
(From left to right, top to bottom: A wooden house on the edge of the Lake; Me at the shore; My friends Ashley and Martijn play a traditional Russian (violent) game Boys playing soccer on the Lake)
BAIKALSK
The third time I visited Lake Baikal was this weekend, Friday through Sunday. My roommate’s boyfriend invited us to go skiing at Baikalsk, about a 3-hour drive south west of Irkutsk. We drove out on Friday and rented an apartment for the weekend. On Saturday, I went skiing for the first time in my life. Unfortunately, I went with three experienced skiers/snowboarders, who didn’t necessarily think I needed to go slowly. My first experience skiing was—by mistake—on the second hardest run. I, literally, flew down the mountain—with a couple tumbles. I felt fine until my last fall, near the bottom of the run. My legs flew out from under me—my left leg went forward and my right leg went behind me—and I heard my hip pop. I was so scared that I had broken something, but fortunately, I was fine. I gathered up my gear and decided to walk down the rest, completely discouraged. I had no intention of ever going skiing again, cursing the Swiss (the Swiss invented skiing, right?), before I realized that there was a beginner’s slope. Why I wasn’t told to start on this, I will never understand! So I watched the beginning snowboarders and skiers for a little while before gathering up the courage to go up the slope. I am so glad that I did! My first few times down I only fell at the bottom, and then I consistently had a few times where I didn’t fall at all. My friends went on the big slope one more time, and asked if I wanted to go with them—I promptly said “no.” Once was enough for this beginner—I don’t have a death wish. My roommate and I decided to stop for the day (four hours was plenty), so we walked to Lake Baikal. We walked out onto to frozen water and got perspective on our mountainous ski slopes. I have no regrets, and while I’d love to go skiing again, I know that I’ll be sticking to the beginner’s slope next time. We were all dead tired Saturday night, but enjoyed each other’s company with food and lively conversation before getting some sleep for the night. We came back today, Sunday, and my roommate and I are nursing our sore and bruised bodies by staying in for the rest of the night.
Baikalsk pictures:
(From left to right, top to bottom: The view of the Lake from the beginner's slope; The tail end of the second hardest run; The Russian ski lift; Standing on Lake Baikal - view of the mountain)
That wraps up my fourth week in Russia. I still can’t believe that I am even here—much less that I have been here for a month. Until next time, enjoy the pictures—and try not to break a leg skiing!
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