The sun just came up ... it must be noon

Excuses, excuses:

So I know I haven't written anything in a while.  Combination of nothing happening at all followed by a period of limited internet access followed by a little too much happening to sit down and write followed by a short period of no excuse at all (that means laziness).

Let me 'splain ... no.  Let me sum up
Since I last wrote, I have moved in to my apartment and taught my first 2 english classes and began to arrange for more. Also I have avoided being victimized by Russia's silent winter assassin,  met new age russian academic types, learned to embrace greedy corporate America (at least for some certain benefits it provides, while remaining aware that such materialism would/will ruin the planet in one way or another if left unchecked), and avoided freezing to death.  I also lived through the end of the world and the shortest day of the year.  I will write about all of this either now or soon. Or I won't.  You know me.


The best laid plans of mice and me
So things don't always go as planned.  In my case they pretty much never do.  I had most things worked out to come to Russia before I left, or so I thought.  I had a place to stay and a plan to work and live.  Well, none of it turned out the way I thought.  The biggest change was that I found out just before I left that I would not be staying where I thought.  After almost abandoning my plans, my good friends Ksenia and Sasha, generous almost beyond belief, offered to help me accomplish everything I had planned and hoped for.  Although, I cannot, at this moment, claim complete success, I can say that things are moving in the right direction.  When I arrived, I stayed with Ksenia and Sasha.  I ended up staying with them for 5 weeks!  Although I felt this was far overstepping the bounds of friendship, they said they knew what to expect and never complained or made me feel unwelcome.

Here is a picture of Sasha and Ksenia and I enjoying an evening at home.  Ok, you can't see us (that is Ksenia's hand behind the glasses) but you get the idea.

Sasha and Ksenia live with Sasha's parents in a small town outside the city (you know this if you've read my adventures trying to return there by bus in an earlier post or seen the pictures of the house).  Although they travel back and forth quite often, this remote location meant that I could not do anything (such as work) unless it fit their schedule.  In order for me to progress and work and be able to visit other friends, I needed to be in the city where I can walk or use public transport.  Also I was suffering from feeling bad about imposing for so long and it was making me uncomfortable.  I needed to get out of there and into the city.

Eventually, Sasha helped me find this little studio apartment in a good location for a somewhat reasonable price.  St. Petersburg is like New York or San Francisco in that somewhat reasonable is probably about the best you can do.  It's a little studio apartment with a bathroom and insufficient kitchen facilities.  The last is somewhat irrelevant as I can not cook anyway.  I will do an "apartment post" soon with pictures and links to maps and things.  For now, just know that I am very happy that I have a place to be where I do not feel bad about imposing on anyone and I can visit other friends in the city when I want.  That particular advantage paid off on my very first day here, but that is a story for another time.

I mean once word leaks out that a pirate has gone soft people begin to disobey him and its nothing but work, work, work all the time. 

Ok, there's nothing about piracy here and it's not really all the time yet, but I have begun my "career" here by being a substitute for two english discussion groups.  This is the easiest money ever (of course it doesn't pay all that well, but still).  The students are upper-intermediate english speakers and speak english quite well.  What these discussion groups are is an opportunity for them to practice their english with a native speaker (the english man and american woman who were already leading the two sessions  I am replacing have gone home for the holidays).  What this means is that I get to sit around with average Russian people and just talk.  Oh we are supposed to follow topics, but the conversation almost always wanders and nobody cares as long as they get a lot of opportunity to practice.  After the new year's holiday, I will have to begin real lessons where I actually teach and all sorts of unpleasant things like that, but I hope I get to have one of these discussion sections of my own.  They are just so much fun.  Oh, I guess maybe I am not talking to exactly average people either.  Let's call them average among people who are pretty well educated (one of my groups pretty much all had masters degrees), have good jobs, and already speak english pretty well.

I also hope to have a different opportunity to teach english after the New Year.   When I visited in May, I met someone who has become a good friend.  Her name is Vera and she is an english teacher at a Military boarding school here in St. Petersburg.  She is very knowledgeable about english (often she knows more about the actual grammar rules than I do) and about America (she knows all the US presidents.  I would recognize them, but I could not name them). I have attended her classes several times as a guest to give her students a chance to speak with a native speaker.  Now they will see if there is a way I can work for them in a conversation class.  I hope so.  I enjoy working with the students and also Vera and another teacher Lena and the other english teachers would be quite pleasant people to have a colleagues.  I will keep you posted.

It only matters, if you have the option ...
So Christmas and New years are kind of switched here.  Most people here see New Year's as a time to spend with their family and Christmas a kind of a party night with more people.  I think people in the US and western Europe feel kind of the opposite.  As a result, many people asked me if I was going to celebrate Christmas.  Even leaving out the fact that I pretty much don't celebrate it at home, I had a hard time explaining that there wasn't much in the way of celebration for me to do here on my own.  For New Years, I have been invited back to Sasha and Ksenia's house where there will be many people.  It is very kind of them, as it means they regard me highly enough to invite me to a family type event.  No matter what, holidays have never been that important to me.  I simply enjoy the chance to have a nice time, so I will be good no matter what.

Happy Holidays!  Happy New Year! Blah Blah Blah!  :)

Stupid American, Go Home!

Prologue:
I had intended to write this post a long time ago.  I was delayed by two issues.  One is that, for a few days, I only had internet access on my phone, and I was not composing this on my phone. The other is that I found inspiration for this post surprisingly hard to come by.  I knew the idea I wanted to convey, which was to share my interest and love for travel and visiting cultures other than mine.  Other than the previous sentence, I had (and really still have) no idea how to accomplish said goal.  Fortunately, I found something else I didn't want to do even more, and so, in an attempt to procrastinate from something else, I am forced to attack this task, inspiration or no.

Re-Introduction:
At the end of my last post I was in the middle of trying to explain to my Russian friends, who don't understand why, since I am an American and can live in America, I would want to be here in Russia.  They kind of think I am stupid or crazy or something for doing so.  While I can not entirely rule out the possibility of crazy, I decided to try to address the issue.  I immediately realized that this was a topic all it's own and decided to do so in a post of it's own.  So I cut myself off and wrote that I would cover that in the next post (this one).  After I stated that intention, I received the following message from someone reading:

I can't tell how much I am looking forward to hearing why you are there and not here! What you describe is certainly not my worst nightmare, but definitely qualifies as a bad dream. But that's just me. 

First, the intent of the message issue.  I am assuming that the word "you" is missing from after the word "tell".  As it currently reads, my correspondant is not sure how much they are interested or not in what I have to say.  If this is the case, some of my point disappears, so I am going with my guessed meaning which is that they are really interested in my view because it is one they do not share.

So I have a question from my Russian friends and my American ones about why I would choose, voluntarily, to live in an environment that is assumed to be more difficult than my home environment. It seems that from either point of view, it is much nicer to be in America.  I am not going to explore that particular point much.  From any of a whole host of objective and semi-objective criteria  it is much nicer to be in America, and particularly California, and particularly the San Francisco Bay Area.

You Won't Find The Answer Here:
Traveling requires one to suffer through a whole host of discomforts.  Depending on your particular biases some can be worse than others:  Food is often different and unpredictable (unless you want to eat american fast food).  Language barriers can be intimidating at best and make some things difficult or impossible.  Cultural differences can lead to all sorts of problems.  I'm sure there are a thousand others that do not immediately spring to my mind.

And yet, in various forms, I have been traveling abroad whenever possible since 1994.  I have experienced the discomforts, disliked them and still come back for more.  If you've managed to read this far (or perhaps you just woke up later and, in a particularly inspired bout of self loathing, decided to finish what you started) you realize that all I have done do far was re-state the topic and add some details.  I have not, in any way, explained my reasons. Yeah, I noticed that, too.  

I am afraid that the answer is that I don't really know why I get fulfillment out of this any more than someone who likes gardening can explain why they derive fulfillment from digging in dirt.  I know that I like to explore.  I know that I get bored easily and so I like to experience new things.  I know that I am always hoping for a better beach.  All of these are contributing factors in my desire to travel and experience different cultures.  However, I am playing with the idea that there is another deeper reason.  I am not even claiming that it is definitely true, yet, but let's see what happens as I type it out, shall we?

I think I am very, very interested in people (that is not to say that I always like people.  Very often, I don't).  I notice that I write or say that I am interested in other cultures a great deal - as opposed to, say, ancient architecture.  When I go to see, for example, the pyramids at Giza, I am almost more interested in the people and the society that built them, than I am in the actual pyramids themselves.  When I go to a new place, I always want to try to live as much like a local as is practical.  To experience life as they experience it.  When I go see thousand year old castles I try to imagine what it was like to try to eat and sleep and bathe and everything else about daily life in this castle on the top of a mountain with out the benefit of modern conveniences.

Yesterday, I was walking out of the metro along with the usual crowd of people rushing off to wherever it is they were in a hurry to get to, and I had a vision of all the other people in all the other metro/subway systems around the world and how they were (or would be whenever the appropriate rush hour occurred in their time zone)  rushing around.  And then all the people using cars, buses, trolleys, trains, boats, bicycles, horses, donkeys, feet, hands and knees or whatever else was afforded to them to just try to make it through life.  I thought about how hard it was to hold in your mind all these people, living on the same planet, but also living in their own small world.

I write as if this were profound or something, but I want you to know that I am fully aware that it is not profound at all.  It is simply the reality of the world we live in.  I mean if you live in Manhattan, you can not possibly be aware of how the lives of other people who live in a different part of Manhattan are, let alone the lives of people in the other boroughs, let alone the lives of people in other countries.  Especially countries with very different cultural or technological backgrounds than yours.  You just don't have the time or the memory capacity to know everything, and if you did, it probably wouldn't help your life that much.

In spite of the reality of the previous paragraph, I seem to desire to know something about everywhere. While it is such an impossibility, it is not even worth discussing, I seem to be quite happy to go out trying.  Maybe it's like someone who loves music trying to learn all the forms, all the instruments  and all the songs that exist or have ever existed.  No chance, but an enjoyable pursuit.

I also like the little personal interactions.  Last night, I had to take the bus home from the city to the little place I am staying in the country.  It was one of those travel stories.  I knew the bus number to take and where I was going, in theory, but I was going alone, in the dark, and i don't speak the language.  So of course, the first thing I see as I exit the metro at the bus station was the bus I need trundling on it's merry way ... without me.  No problem, they are supposed to come every 30 minutes or so.  A little more than an hour and half later another one finally showed up and I piled in with everyone else and settled down to read knowing it was over an hours ride.  I thought I would be ok, because I have been here many times and I was sure I would recognize landmarks.  Well I am sure I would have ... in the daytime.  At night, every snow covered, tree lined country road looks the same.  And the window was frosted up and there weren't really lights, anyway.  Uh oh.  Finally, as the number of passengers thinned out and much time had passed, I realized I was going to have to brave the dreaded "communicate with the distracted driver who isn't really sympathetic to the fact that I don't speak Russian" gauntlet but getting lost would be particularly cataclysmic for me (even ignoring the fact that we just far enough out in the wilderness that I had been advised to watch out for wolves at night).  Gathering my immense Russian vocabulary of about 150 russian words, I asked the passenger next to me if he knew where Анташи  (Antashee) was.  He did.  He tried to tell me.
        "я не панимаю (I don't understand)," I kept saying.  Finally he told the driver and the navigator to tell me when we were at Анташи.  He told me they would tell me (I understood this, although I only understood a few words) and then he got off the bus shortly after.  Sure enough, a while later, the bus stopped and the passenger now next to me, who had moved forward, used all his english (3 words) and told me that we were at Анташи.  Now actually, I stay a little ways past Анташи, so I told them "a little past" and so they started driving again.  And then I saw a car turn where I wanted to stop so I told them,
        "I saw car. left. there."  They drove to the spot.
        "Here?" they asked.
        "Here," I said.  And I got out of the bus and a minutes walk later, I was home.

I love little stories about how nice a random group of strangers can be.  I love to experience it. Is that a reason to brave russian winter, russian bureaucracy,  russian food, russian vodka and who knows what else to spend 6 months teaching english here? (shrug)

The Answer.  If You Can Call It That:
Why Do I do this kind of thing?  Why do I like it?  ... I just do.

Epilogue:
Not satisfied?  I don't blame you.  Send specific questions.  I'll try to answer them.  Unless i don't want to :)

Weak week 3

Life Update

Here I am at the end of week 3 in Russia. I have made progress towards an apartment and a job, but things are happening slow.  New Years here is a very big deal to people and they are gearing up for the holiday.  Not much begins just before New years, so it seems that I can only take small steps at the moment.  As usual, with nothing concrete I will wait to give you any details, but I have spoken to some people and visited others and I hope to have some progress in my life soon.  Other than that, I am working hard at (and struggling with) learning Russian.

Vignettes Of My Life Over The Past Week

A little snow upstairs:

Last Thursday and Friday, it snowed a lot.  Saturday morning, Sasha pulled down the stairs to the attic (which are in my room) to show me that- to my horror, but, interestingly, not to his - quite a lot of snow had blown its way into the attic.  Like anyone would, they use the attic for storage.  So they had a lot of snow covered things.  The upshot of this was that Sasha and I spent the late morning shoveling snow out of the attic through a small window.  I tried to do this with some normal (not warm gloves) and almost froze my fingers off.  Still a california wimp.  Sasha had no such problems (and later that afternoon I saw some neighborhood kids playing in the snow with similar thin gloves and even one with fingerless gloves.  Small kids. California wimp.  What can I say?  The bigger issue to me was the lesson about how people just cope.  I found it insane to have a house where the attic could fill with snow.  The floor of the attic also wasn't insulated.  As I said, Sasha was not worried.  They do the best they can with the resources they have.  We did later go shopping for the material we would need to cover the worst gaps where snow could get in, but were unable to find it locally.  We will have to take a trip to one of the construction warehouse stores (think Home Depot) in the city next time we have time.  In the meantime, if it snows hard enough, we will shovel out the attic.

At least I didn't turn into a pumpkin:

Earlier in the week, I went out to dinner with a friend and then we went to see her new kitten and drink some wine.  It was a very nice evening.  So nice that I didn't leave her apartment quite in time.  The reason I needed to leave her apartment in time was that I was taking the metro back to where I was staying that night and the metro stopps running soon after midnight.  The reason I didn't leave quite in time (even though we both thought I had) was that she doesn't live that close to the metro station and I needed to take a tramvoy (little old russian cable car that I think is cute, but most of my local friends seem to hate because they are a little slow and rickety.  Anyway, I had had no trouble getting there on one, but it turns out they run MUCH less frequently later in the evening.  I had to wait so long that by the time I got to the metro it was very close to closing.  I managed to get on the first leg, but when I tried to transfer to the next train it was too late.  They just closed the system and said everyone go out to the street.  So I had to take a taxi home.  I found a kind of private taxi and called Sasha on the phone to give him directions. Turns out he didn't understand them that well (Sasha later told me that he didn't speak russian all that well either, he was from a neighboring country).  So he got us close and then I had to figure out how to get us the rest of the way.  Luckily I have a good sense of direction, and also luckily I had been taught my directions (right, left, straight etc. this - yes I could have done with hand gestures, but knowing the right words was more satisfying).  When we got close, I recognized some  local landmarks and I was able to direct the driver the rest of the way.  I was not able to negotiate the fare, something I am assured is required here as they always quote too high a price and so I probably overpaid for the ride.  The result being that I am working hard to learn my numbers in russian now :)

Winter-B-Q:

Saturday night, Ksenia and Sasha invited some friends over for dinner.  Nadia and Vanya and their 3 year old daughter Daria as well as Nadia's mother and her new husband.  It was a typical nice russian evening with good food and a fair amount of drink, but nothing excessive.  The interesting part was that Vanya brought some meat to cook for dinner and so we went outside, fired up the bar-b-que and cooked it right up ... in freezing weather.  To them it is just cooking.  Another day we had fish and Ksenia didn't want the kitchen to smell like fish, so she cleaned it up outside ... in the cold.  The meat was great.  The fish was great.  In this climate, you just do what you have to.

Here is a picture of me and Nadia for no reason other than I don't have many pictures this week:

Stupid American, Go Home!

At the moment, the majority of my time is spent with Sasha and Kostya.  Kostya is Sasha's good friend and also his business partner in their Aikido school.  He doesn't speak much english, but can mostly communicate between his english and my few words of russian.  If not, Sasha has to translate.  If that fails, we resort to google translate on our phones.  How did people live in foreign countries before internet enabled smart phones?  Kostya is one of those super nice always cheerful people that everyone likes.  I hate him.  Ok, I like him a lot.  I am just jealous of his easygoing, cheerful nature.  He can talk to anybody and get them to smile.  So anyway, the three of us spend a lot of time together.  We talk about a lot of things and I will miss it when I have my own life and not so much free time.  While we often have things to do - they have classes and we spend time putting up posters advertising their school and they also are trying to secure a better location to be their home base - we have a lot of time to talk.  They are always joking and Sasha is often causing trouble by mistranslating things.  Anyway, one topic that keeps coming up, usually after they have had some especially frustrating experience with russian bureaucracy, is "Ray, you are american.  you can go live america.  what you doing here?  go home where it good!"  It is very difficult for me to respond to this.  I can't argue with their main point.  With all it's faults (and there are many) the US is just better. It has more resources, it is better run, there is more opportunity ... on and on.  It is not my purpose to compare right now, but rather to try to explain why I don't just give up and come home.  Actually, I realize that this should be it's own entry, even if it's a rather short one.  So think of this as a teaser for my next entry ...