Not much ado about nothing

29 November, 2012

Well, here we are at the end of week 2 in Russia.  Really not much is happening so I will catch you up real quick and then share some observations.

Work - I have been in touch with both paces where I will probably work.  One place is working to secure my work visa - but this is Russia, so it is moving glacially.  I will meet with someone at the other place next week.  I have a rough outline of what I might be doing, but everything is rather vague and nebulous right now. I will just keep moving forward as best I can.  

http://www.flickr.com/photos/skemsley/7957760590/

Live - As I wrote, I have been living at my friends house about an hours drive outside the city.  It's not too much of a problem as Ksenia, my hostess works every day in the city, and Alexander (Sasha) also works most days so I can come in whenever I want with them, but the timing depends on their schedule.  The good news is that I think/hope I found a really nice apartment in a good location for a good price. I don't want to count my chickens or jinx anything, so I won't say to much until I actually move in.  It is still being fixed up so it won't be ready for about 3 weeks (or however long a time that means in Russia).

So I spend my time studying Russian on my own, reading, studying aikido with Sasha and working on improving my skills at web design while I wait for some of this to sort itself out.

Here's some pics I took of the house where I am staying for the moment:

 

And here are some pics I took while taking walks in the nearby countryside:

Weather - So, it had been above freezing for quite a while.  Kinda cold and muddy, rather than frozen tundra.  Most of the days were in the 5-7 degree range. That's really not that bad.  I was not wearing my down jacket and even bought some regular shoes because my boots were actually too warm.  A few days ago we had the first snow overnight, but it was not that cold.  Yesterday, it got real (as in WTF was I thinking?  I could be home in San Rafel in a nice 15 degree rainstorm).  The temp dropped 14 degrees to -7 (of course while I was out without my boots or super warm parka) and the snow started falling (pretty gently, though).  It still wasn't too bad and I wasn't outside for all that much time, but we will see how i feel about long walks in the stuff.



Some little things: It is not exactly like California as far as opportunities to get outside and get some exercise, but I am doing my best.  I have been walking around out here whenever possible.  Sasha and I spent some hours shoveling and moving some rocks to make a walking path along the muddy driveway in the picture of the house above.  When I go to the city I usually walk a fair amount.  Especially if I travel by metro, which I do often enough to visit a friend for lunch or talk to one of the prospective job people.  You walk a lot to change trains and then you walk to wherever you are going (as it is not usually right at a metro station.  The metro was also designed to be a bomb shelter.  So it is very deep underground.  The escalator rides up and down are just sooooo long.  I will try to take a picture, but I don't usually carry my nice camera around the city and I doubt my cell phone will capture it.  Never mind.  This is the internet.  Here are 2 sites with pics and if you want to waste 3 minutes of your day, an actual video:

A pic

Some one else's blog with a metro entry

Video

So anyway, I had this idea that I would walk up and down all these escalators as I traveled around the city.  I started doing this and was quite satisfied with the idea (I was even going to call it the St. Petersburg stair master) until I was foiled by yet another quirk of Russian society.  Apparently, the first couple times I tried this, I just did it in very low traffic stations.  In most places with moving pathways of this sort, people who want to stand still stay to one side while leaving the other side open to people who want to walk.  Well Russians do this too ... on the way down, but not on the way up.  Now sometimes it is just too crowded and people need to get on as fast as possible, I get that.  I don't expect this to work in rush hour, but unless there just aren't enough people to block me, I always find people spread out on both sides blocking my way, even if they don't need to be.  I guess they can just not imagine someone walking up for no reason.  Oh well, I still do it as much as I can.

Ok, this got long.  I guess you only get the one story.

This Blog

Hopefully, more interesting things will happen and my writing will improve with practice (like my swimming did).  Otherwise, I fear I might cut my readership in half (down to 2:).  Actually, I don't expect that many people will be interested in reading this, but I do want to reach anybody who is.  I tried to give this blog address to anybody who is interested, but if you know a friend or relative who would want to read this drivel for some reason (the best one I can think of is to say to yourself "damn!  I'm glad I'm not in the cold dark place") please make sure they know about it in case I failed to reach them somehow.

I also would be happy to write more (or maybe less) of what anyone is interested in, so email me (or write it in the comments if you want everyone to know your request) and I will try to expound upon your topic of interest.  I am happy to make this a bit of a conversation with everyone.

Lastly, if you have not done it, I encourage you to sign up for the email notifications for when I publish new posts.  I have no regular schedule in mind and that is the best way to know what is going on.