Goin' back to cali...

(and totally dating myself with that reference to a 1988 - yes EIGHTY EIGHT - rap song)

So here I am back in good old San Rafael, California in the USA.  It's time to wrap up my journey to Russia, close the book on it, so to speak and start moving towards whatever is next (here's hoping that involves beaches and drinks with umbrellas most of the time)

So when last we left our intrepid hero, he was off to Italy and Switzerland.  I had a great time in both those places.  I met up with my friends, the Thies family, who are insanely traveling around with their children (here's their blog if you just can't get enough of self indulgent travelogs from me:
http://thiesfamilyadventure.blogspot.com/ )

It was really great.  They had everything worked out and I just had to tag along.  I met them in Italy at Lake Como, which is a stunning place where they are industriously trying to milk the tourism for all it's worth and also keep the place a secret from the world so too many people don't come and ruin it.  The latter goal was mostly obliterated when George Clooney bought a villa there and now everybody wants to see where he lives (spoiler alert: you can't really see anything).

Although we were mostly pelted with rain, we did manage to choose the best day to rent a small power boat and zip around the lake for 3 hours seeing so many amazing little places they began to lose their power to make us oh and ah.  For those of you who care we also motored past the villa used to film some of the crappy romance scene from Episode II of the Star Wars movies. (I think it was Episode II.  They were really bad and it all kinda blurs into one giant series of badness, albeit with great special effects and a pretty cool political statement that most people miss because Natalie Portman's clothes seem to keep getting torn into smaller and smaller pieces).

Here's me:

Here's the Thies family enjoying the sun:

Here's just a nice picture of the lake:

Then we drove to Switzerland.  First we went to Lucerne, where I happen to have visited last year and di some of the same things ... including eating chocolate so that turned out ok.  Then we continued on to the Interlaken region.  Now I have been there before and, although it was beautiful, Interlaken is a little touristy.  Fortunately for me, and all of us really, there was nothing available in Interlaken and we ended up in this awesome, huge, nice place in the tiny town of Lauterbrunnen.  Here's a picture I took from the street basically outside our place:

While there we went to this outdoor museum where they had collected actual houses and workshops from previous centuries.  You could walk through them and see how people lived.  But the best part was that they had people doing things live just the way they were done.  We saw people sawing logs with a water wheel powered saw, making bread, spinning yarn, and several other things that were necessities in daily life.  It really makes you appreciate how easy life is today, but also how artificial.  It made us hope that we could incorporate the best of both worlds in our lives someday.

On our last day we took the gondola up to a place even higher in the mountains and had this nice view:

Then I went back to germany to see my friends Kevin and Jessica one more time.  While there I took this nice picture:

And this silly one:

I packed my stuff, enjoyed the time with my friends, and came home.

до свидания РУСИА (Goodbye Russia)

Greetings from Germany,

  That's right.  Germany.  I have left Russia. And they even let me.  Of course I don't know how to say "Good Riddance" in russian so I can't be sure they weren't muttering that as they passed me through customs.

I have many final thoughts, but they won't all be here.

First I need to clear something up.  Sometimes I make things up in this blog for dramatic effect.  I usually think it is very obvious, but I guess that is not always true. So, for the small number of you who thought I actually bought a car that looked as bad as that one, I would like you to know that I did not. And really, what were you thinking?  I mean, be serious, there's no way i could afford a car that nice in russia.

My last days in Russia were nice.  Everyone wanted to see me and say goodbye and they also wanted to know when I would be back.  My class load slowly diminished until I was a tourist again.

Other than a small travel glitch that cost me bout $200 to get a ticket from Saint Petersburg to Moscow and then wait in Domodedovo airport in Moscow for 5 hours that turned into 13 hours with a flight delay (in other words, such a typical travel story that it is barely worth mentioning) it was nice and smooth travelling here to Germany.   I am visiting my friends here for a while

Now, I will go to Italy and Switzerland to visit my friends, the Thies family, who are travelling the world with their children (yes, that means they are way braver than I am, travelwise) for a week and then I will return to the states.

From there I get to examine my life, determine that I need to do something and start all over again, probably.  At any rate, this is not the end.

In fact, it is not even the end of russia.  I have some notes of thoughts I had that I will share as soon as I can.

I will share those soon.  Maybe.

Cheers

February - April (because I'm not a soldier, I skipped March)

Oh look at that.  It's April. I have not written anything here since the end of February.  Don't worry you didn't miss much, so I'll catch you up quickly.

Starting in February, I basically steeled in to a routine.  I had classes all day. I prepared for them in the evenings and, on weekends I tried to do something interesting.  

I guess I am a good english teacher (though it didn't feel like it to me) because I was pretty popular.  But I don't have much to say about it.  Most of the learning depended more on the motivation of the students as far as I was concerned.  I liked almost all my students and the classes I dreaded most were when the students were not motivated, but they were still nice people.  

Almost all my classes were corporate clients.  I would travel to their offices and give them lessons at either the start or end of their work day or, in one lucky case, on their lunch hour.  This meant a lot of awkward downtime and I ended up using up a lot of my day waiting.  For a few weeks I was spending an hour and a half each tuesday in a train station waiting room because it was too much travel time to go home and it was warm there and they had cheap soup in the vending machines.  

I discovered that I am best in one on one situations because I can react to exactly what a student needs work on and skip the stuff they already understand.  I hate the situation where students need different things and I have a whole class so I have to choose between boring the more advanced students or leaving the slowest behind.

Two of my clients were a woman who works for Baltika beer company (now owned by Carlsberg, in case anyone cares) and a man who works for Philip Morris (although it turns out that Philip Morris Europe has almost nothing to do with PM USA anymore).  So basically I am contributing the alcohol and cigarettes distribution in Russia.  Most annoyingly, seeing as how I don't smoke, it was only Phillip Morris that offered me free samples.

Out side of work, only a few interesting things happened, and I suspect that they were more interesting to me in the moment than they will be to you in retrospect so i'll try to make the details short and use pictures.

I went snowboarding again

I went to a professional Hockey playoff game (that was actually quite fun):

I bought a car.  Of course I had to buy a used car, and they are quite expensive here so this was the best I could get:

Sadly, a few days later it was stolen before I ever got to drive it.  I just came outside one morning and it was gone...

Following a tip on the internet, I had the best doughnuts ever:

So far, I have managed not to go back, but my willpower is weakening.

I went to an outdoor celebration of "spring" with my multicultural group.  Notice how warm we all look.  Later we went to Lyuba and Roman's house(they are the couple on the right) for lots of pancakes (the best part of how they celebrate spring here)

I had a party at my apartment to celebrate 3 birthdays: mine and also Dennis from Cuba (far left in picture above) and Cristina from Spain (middle - in orange hat so we don't loose her in a crowd)

A month later, spring finally came.  Well, what passes for spring in Russia.  Now I can wear my "light" jacket, rarely need a hat and the river is almost melted.

Actually, 2 days before I took this picture, people were walking their dogs on the completely frozen over river.  I was stunned at how fast it melted and broke up, but then someone told me that they drive an ice breaker through as soon as the thaw begins so people will not walk on thin ice.  I wish I had been home to see that happen.

Oh, and I met my cousin, Marina, who lives here in St. Petersburg.  My maternal grandmother's family is from here and some faint contact has been maintained, so armed with an old address and phone number and the help of english speaking russian friends, I tracked her down and we met.  She doesn't speak english, so I needed a translator, but it was fun.  We are 3rd cousins. That means we share a great-great grandmother, or, to put it another way, each of our grandmother's shared a grandmother.  Here we are together:

(I got a haircut as soon as possible after I saw this picture)

So, you are caught up.  My visa expires in May so things are coming to a close here.  They like me where I teach and have invited to help me get a new visa and return.  I loved the people, hate the cold.  I will think about it.  In May I go to moscow for a couple days with a friend and from there I will fly to Germany for a visit with some friends.  I also may travel to italy and switzerland to see other frinds.  I'll try to keep this blog updated.  I will back in the USA on May 30th.  And wither then, I cannot say. (bonus points if you know where that line comes from ... sadly, only nerd bonus points).

Babushka Land

Hi,

I have some small things I've been meaning to share.  Just random thoughts I try to write down when I have them (the ones I forget to write down are always much cooler and more interesting than the ones I remember)

Anyway, here, in no particular order (including, thanks to the vagaries of entering some thoughts on my phone and some on the computer, the order I actually had the thoughts) are some random thoughts.

McDonald's and KFC are best companies on earth...unless you actually,you know, eat their food.  It is actually less important to me now that I kind of have a full schedule and lots of places to be, but before, when I was often wandering around the city, I would sometimes find myself in need of a bathroom.  Now there are often places near the metro stops where you can pay about $1, but McDonalds seems to have a policy of trying to take over the world but making sure it offers clean and free bathrooms in compensation.  That might not seem like a good trade, but believe me, it depends on how long you've been ... waiting.  I have also have had good luck in a KFC in this regard.  Anyway, when I travel I try to eat local food.  Not in a save the planet kind of way, in a try the local cuisine kind of way, but I feel no need to sample local waste disposal alternatives when there are free modern choices.

So, I try to keep up with the local news.  I recently read an article about how San Francisco was considering reducing it's regulations on how small an apartment could be so some company could make a fortune selling these little 220 square foot mini apartments.  Well, the politicians say they are trying to ease the housing shortage, but ... well you know.  Anyway, russians already live this way.  Their apartments are small and they get by on what they can.  My apartment here is giant for one person and usually would be occupied by 2 people ... well, with a real kitchen.  I do think these little mini apartments are overkill, but if the world is going to be a fair place, some people are going to need to reduce their needs a bit.  Oh, wait, life isn't fair. ... never mind.

People get their shoes repaired here.  Like they don't throw them away and buy new ones (I mean they do if they can), they just pay someone to fix them.  And there are people who can fix them.  I even got my jacket fixed when I tore the pocket.  Thank god or my right hand would either have been cold for the rest of the winter or I would have received some strange looks.

Ok, everyone here is like my grandmother.  And not in a good way.  "Ray zip up your jacket or you will catch cold." "Here, do want some bread? No? Some fish? no? Ok, here, have some potatoes... and some bread ... and some fish.  Well, you have to eat."  It's like they think I am unaware of my own body temperature and level of hunger (ok this one is sometimes true, but always in the opposite direction, making me eat too much and never too little).  It's amazing,  after one english class I was walking to the metro with one of my students.  It was only the second time I met her and she looked at me as we were walking and asked, "don't you have a scarf?  you're going to get sick."  She doesn't know it yet, but she is not going to pass my class.

Speaking of zipping up your coat, russians have amazing temperature regulation.  The minute I enter, for example, the metro, I need to take off my hat and gloves, unzip my jacket, and try to get some cool air inside my clothes because inside here, even the metro usually, is kept comfortable ... for shorts.  But russians don't notice.  I guess they just don't want to be bothered to take off all their carefully arranged winter clothes, but they just ride the metro all bundled up.  I'd be a dripping ball of sweat in minutes.  I really don't know how they do it.

Actually I can sympathize.  While I am not really a winter person, it's not the cold that bothers me as much as the long process involved in constantly having to take off and put on outside clothes.  It's annoying and tedious.

Old cities like St. Petersburg become more modern the further away you get from the old center of the city.  In the US we just modernize everything, but they don't exactly seem to do that here, so in the center, where I live, there are no large supermarkets, or movie theaters or other trappings of modern life. Actually the theaters are no big loss to me, as, while they show lots of american films here, they dub them all, so I can't watch them anyway.

I'll finish with this joke I keep telling by an '80 russian comedian named Yakov Smirnoff who defected from the Soviet Union:

"... Don't feel bad that you are from Cleveland.  In every country around the world they have a city that they make fun of.  In America it is Cleveland, in Soviet Union ... it is Cleveland"

Stop making sense, making sense

Hello Faithful readers,

uh, let's just dive right in ...

The best way to learn a language is to immerse yourself in the culture
As you all know, or maybe you don't, in addition to teaching english, I was coming here with the intention of learning some language skills of my own.  Of course, it's quite useful, especially if you want to buy anything or talk to anyone, but I also like the feeling of learning a new way to communicate.  It can also help you understand the way people think as it has been postulated that the way we speak is related to the way we think.  (Shrug) Maybe.  Anyway, when I arrived here, I was only able to say a few words, but lately I have had a lot of opportunity to practice and things are starting to stick in my head  little better now than they did before.  I'd sure like to be able to spend more time practicing, but even so, I am pretty proud to say that my spanish is coming along nicely! No, really.  Read on.

Mixed messages

In my last post I mentioned that I had an interesting gathering in my new apartment (Ha, you thought I forgot about that when actually, it ties right in).  Here's the story.  My friend Vera, who speaks english and spanish, as well as russian, has been inviting me to various places when she can.  I went to a cool party for a friend of hers names Daria who just completed her doctorate in linguistics. She speaks many languages (including spanish) and can read sanscrit (she tells me the sanscrit version of Harry Potter is lame because the sanscrit phrase for "he who must not be named" is about 2 pages long so the book just becomes to large and unwieldy to read).

Anyway, Vera and Daria invited me to meet them and some of their friends in a cafe.  What the hell, I said, it sounds cooler than writing a blog entry.  The other friends included Eduard and Dennis, brothers who have a cuban father and russian mother so that they both speak spanish but Eduard was raised here so he speaks russian, while Dennis just moved here recently but does speak some english.  Also there was Cristina, who is Spanish but has been living and teaching here for 5 years so she speaks russian but understand a fair amount of portuguese (helpful to me) and even some english.  Last but not least were Lyuba and her husband Raman who both only speak russian with smatterings of english (actually, it would later turn out that Lyuba understands quite a bit of english but is mostly too shy to speak).

If you have been counting, that's 8 people, 6 speak russian (excepting me and Dennis), 4 speak spanish, 3 speak english, 2 speak some portuguese, and 1 reads sanscrit.  Do the math.  The second most used language was spanish.  I don't really speak spanish, but I know some from trying to learn it long ago.

Vera and Daria were working to help everyone communicate, but I didn't like to make them work all the time (it was a social occasion after all).  So I tried to communicate with Lyuba and Raman in my russian and their english (about a 500 word shared vocabulary - actually amazing what can be conveyed within that limitation) and with Dennis, Eduard and Cristina in spanish.  I totally failed to talk to the guys because they have a cuban accent and I literally couldn't follow it at all.  We ended up using more english because Dennis knew more than he admitted (a common theme).  Speaking with Cristina was the funniest (in a ha ha kind of way) because when I try to speak spanish, I actually speak more portuguese, which only works if, you know, the listener actually understands portuguese.  Turns out that she is from a part of spain that is north west where the dialect is even closer to portuguese than normal spanish and is also close to the northern border with Portugal so she understands quite a bit of portuguese.  Also, she is a spanish teacher, so she is used to people mangling her language and also used to speaking clearly to us.  To add  to the confusion, the brain is a funny thing and sometimes mine would come up with the russian word for something I was trying to say.  The result is that more than once I started a sentence in spanish, took a short detour though russian, found my way to portuguese, and finally resorted to english to get to the period at the end.  That's not what was amazing.  What was amazing was that this mish mash was intelligible to her more often than not.

Oops, I forgot to mention, my brain has some high school french still stuck in there somewhere and all these latin languages are obviously stored near each other in my brain.  Cristina happens to be studying french at the moment so occasionally we resorted to that as well, although I don't remember any 5 language phrases at the moment.  Actually I'm pretty proud of how well I managed to communicate considering I only speak one of those languages well (if you're reading this, and wondering exactly wish language that is, I don't blame you)

In these situations a phone with internet access so you can get to google translate is extremely helpful, and of course all of had Vera and Daria to help if we really got stuck.  Fun fact:  Daria is a pretty common name here in Russia, and the nick name for Daria is Dasha - yes, it saves one easy syllable and no letters - and that's only if you consider the dupthong 'ia' to be 2 syllables.

The upshot was that the next weekend, I invited everyone over to my new apartment to recreate the fun (and get a lot of free food).  Now I have this strange international band of friends and I can't seem to learn any russian.

Oh, by the way ...
A meteor hit this country recently (I didn't even hear it).  More about that next  time ...

Wintertime, and the living is ... normal

It's been a while since I have written.  No excuse except lack of dedication.  What can I say, you are getting your money's worth (the time spent reading, you will never get back). Anyway, here I am.

About 2 weeks ago, I had a serious crisis of intention.  As in what am I doing?  Not really so much what am I doing here in Russia, but what am I doing overall.  Is this what I want to be doing (teaching english, living in strange cities)?  Even if it is should I be doing it somewhere warm with better fruit selections (hello Brasil)?  I was on the verge of packing up and returning home to think about it.  I finally decided that I could think about it just as well here and that by actually doing it for a while longer, I might actually answer some of those questions.  At least if the answer is no, I will have eliminated one possibility.

So, here I am, living in Saint Petersburg, Russia.  I work as an english teacher.  Damn is this glamourous.  One reason I haven't written is because life here is the same as it is anywhere.  Get up, go to work. Go home. Shop for food. Cook. Eat. Do laundry.  If you are reading this and you are alive, I expect you know the drill.

Ok, so I have an apartment in the middle of the city.  The apartment is fine although the kitchen is ridiculously small.  Here are some pictures:

This is the main room.  All the pictures except this one are taken from that door over there on the far left.

This is the same room with a picture taken from that door.  Those windows look out on Fontanki canal (see the map I will link after the pictures) and the entrance to the building is on Kryukova canal, the little canal that meets it at my corner.

Here is the "kitchen".  It's actually something like an entrance hallway.  The front door, which you can't see, is to the right of the door you can see which leads to the bathroom.  Yes, this is the whole kitchen.  The small fridge with the microwave on top is just inside the door.  Just behind the butter you can almost see my stove.  Ok, it's a plug in electrical burner.  It's a damn good thing I can't cook.

The bathroom is just fine.  It has a nice shower and even a washing machine.  You can't really tell, but the washing machine can only be called cute.  It's about 20" deep and has room for about 1.5 changes of clothes. I didn't think you would miss seeing the toilet which is around the corner to the right.  It works.  There is no dryer.  You can kind of see the lines strung from the wall above the washing machine to over the toilet for drying clothes.

Here is a link to a google map showing where it is located:

My place in SPb

If you look at the street view, you should see the corner of the building and you will see the entrance down the right side.  My place actually looks at the big canal.  My windows are down the left side just above and past the door you can see there.  Of course all these pictures were taken in summer.  At the moment there is ice and snow all over the place and the canal is frozen over.

I had an interesting international gathering of friends here last sunday.  I will write about it in the next post.

Ice, Ice, Baby

Cold Blooded
The silent predator looked down from a height upon it's unwary and unaware prey.  Soon ... soon... just a little closer ... wait, not too fast ... the timing has to be just right.  A little droplet of water fell, warning the prey of the danger if only he had been paying attention.

Obliviously, I walked down the snowy sidewalk.  It's an obvious point, but you have less traction for walking when there is snow on the sidewalk.  I have to concentrate to walk smoothly and avoid the occasional patches of slick ice.  If I don't I might fall or run into the many fast moving russians all around.  The snow is slippery, but the ice is deadly.  Well, not deadly in most cases, but you can slip and fall pretty hard.  I didn't pay attention to what was going on above.

Yes, yes, one more step.  One more second of warmth.  One more drop. Now I have you. The predator, released from its bond, swoops down ...

I wasn't looking.  I didn't know it was coming.  It didn't make any noise.  I didn't hear it.  It just fell ... silently.  Swooped down from where it had been attached to eves of the building above.  An icicle, released by the warmer temperature and it's growing weight.  It had slowly built itself up, drop by drop,  into an icicle of damocles and then, as I approached the building where it was attached, the string was cut and it began to fall. Down it dropped and still oblivious I walked.  Completely unaware of the danger.  Unaware until it actually struck, smashing through the head of the pedestrian ahead of me...

OK, nothing like that happened at all.  But I am assured that not only could it happen, but many people die each year from exactly that.  Here in Saint Petersburg, they are pretty good about closing off the sidewalk and knocking them down as soon as they can, but you have to be aware.

Here's a picture of some of these cold blooded predators:

Can you see 'em up there? (you can also see how the sidewalk is closed until they knock them down)

Warm Blooded
So it's pretty warm as I write this.  It's actually raining outside (that means it's like 1 degree above freezing).  But a little while ago, it was so cold that the locals were complaining.  The thermometer said it was -20.  My friend Vera said that she comes from a place where it is regularly -30 in the winter but she assured me that it didn't feel as cold as that days -20.  I am used to being the wimp when it comes to cold around here.  After all I am surrounded by russians who live in this stuff every winter.  In this case I was not that bothered by the cold.  I'm not saying I wouldn't have rather been lying on a beach, but once it's damn cold, it's damn cold and not really any worse.  There are two qualifications I should add here.  One is that we didn't actually have to be outside for all that long.  I walked for about 20 minutes and my face got numb but the rest of me was fine (hat, gloves on, hands in pockets) and then we went inside where it was about 22 and cozy).  The other is that I have a particularly warm parka and my boots are kind of overkill for the city so I may be more resistant to cold based on my artificial insulation.   I don't care.  Not cold is not cold.

Um, there's no other kind of blooded ... 
So as I said the weather has "warmed up".  Is this good?  Not really.  It's still too cold outside to go for a run.  Well actually it's not too cold.  It's actually too warm. See the weather warmed up enough to where the snow melted so there was water all over the ground.  Then it re-froze.  Not as snow, oh no, that would be too easy.  It needs to fall to be snow.  If it's just frozen water, we call that ice.  Yes, the streets of Saint Petersburg basically became a giant ice skating rink.  The first day that happened was the day I had to walk the furthest to get to work.  Then I decided to walk to the next place I was going.  And after that I had to walk home.  It was treacherous.  I didn't fall.  I saw some locals fall.  I quietly gloated to myself.  I'm sure my come uppance is on its way the next slippery day.