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 ...