Russia

I have officially begun to wonder how on earth I am going to adjust to being back in America. Last week I had several turning points. I finally felt at home and my routine was set, the oddities of the outside world had become normal. I feel that I also crossed a major hurdle in my ability to speak this fascinating language. While I have a long ways to go next month with my progress I am now far more confident and am excited to have more independence. I am becoming a tad terrified of my return, graduating, finding a job, etc., but for the most part I have come to realize just how much these past two months have truly changed me. Russia is such a unique and incredibly different place from Europe and America that I have the most difficult time in my attempt to compare and successfully analyze what is going on around me. The ideology from the Soviet Era is one that is still so evident that I often become desperate for more of an understanding. Our classes and lectures can only scratch the surface, but I believe that unless you live in this country there is really no way to ever understand. Thus, when I learned Friday that SIT is cancelling the Russia program for good I was shocked. Apparently all of the “issues” we experienced here with the government have led to this decision, one which I feel is an extraordinarily bad decision on their part. The more I am here and the more I learn of Russia the more I realize just how much we will need them in the near future. Russia has oil, Russia has the largest source of freshwater, and Russia has spheres of influence and power that we will soon be desparate to have. However, we must cross certain boundaries which we seem to ignore as so many Americans throw Russia in with Europe and that simply cannot be done. These two areas could not be more different. I walk around every day marvelling at the differences and constantly am reminded of what anyone over the age of 30 has dealt with in their life. Soviet times are so unbelievably unique to this country and the mindset, culture, and ideology is still so reminiscent and yet also at times quite distant. We had a wonderful anthropology lecture last week about communal apartments. There are many of them still in existence, and I was fascinated to learn and actually see how divided they were. In one apartment there may be many families each with their own room as their dwelling. Every single ounce of space in the rest of the apartment was divided up exactly, everyone had their own stoves, tables, even lightbulbs and light switches! There is a link that I will post later to his website where you can watch his documentaries and read his study in English, I would highly recommend at least checking it out!

Imagine that you are in a foreign country and you are sight-reading music on your own in a room full of people listening, ok, and then imagine that you are singing music in a foreign but modern language, ok, and then imagine that it uses a different alphabet that you just learned, then imagine that you are sight-reading a chant entirely unique to the country, and then imagine that the unique chant in the foreign language that you are sight-reading in front of a room of russian orthodox singers is in fact in ancient church slavonic which has its own alphabet, and then imagine you are doing this all at the same time. Ack! I was mortified but this was such a rush! This is my second full week in the choir at the Russian Orthodox church, and on Sunday I will be performing with them for Easter services.

My study next month will focus on Post Soviet Re-emergence of Russian Orthodoxy/Religion with Music as an example. I had originally planned on researching and studying environmental ngo’s and groups, but I found this to be literally impossible. The views of Europe and America do not exist here. While the Russian people are far from being wasteful, they basically lived through a great depression for 75 years, the mentality just hasn’t taken hold yet. So I had to change my focus and will spend May attending various services at different Orthodox Cathedrals, singing in choirs, an in-depth study of Zmanneny chant, many interviews and time spent gathering information about the re-emergance of religion here.

America seems to be so far away, and the headlines seem to be unbelievably frivolous or entirely disturbing but my constanst obsession with what is happening in the world has led me to a frustrating need to read the news daily. Trying to explain the news in America to my family is quite difficult, how do you explain a “war on terror”, Iraq, polygomy, a failing economy, and social upheavals to a country who views America as basically crazy. And, after these past few months I feel the same, I mean there are many issues here some even similar, but this superiority complex and our unlawful actions all over the world while our country is ripping itself apart from the inside are hard to understand. But, I must admit I miss my country for many reasons as well. I miss the push to change, I miss the idea that you can make change, I miss my own community in ways I never thought I would. I see so much hope and potential for Russia sometimes, but at the same time I must realize that I am no authority and that I have no right to impose my ideas on a country. My own nationalistic tendencies terrify me at times. Previously, travelling to europe I truly saw the evolution of societies that had progressed far past my own, thought that was to me literally brilliant. But here I find things that I stop and just think, why on earth do they still do this? why is their ideology so backwards? haha see! It’s not backwards at all and I have no right to assume that what they do is any worse than what I am used to. Anyway, Happy Earth Day!, it was glorious here yesterday but unfortunately despite my insistence to wear sandals and a sundress today (much to the surprise of the Russian people), it was somewhat dreary and cold. It’s not celebrated here 😉 But then again we have no Women’s Day in America! I led a discussion in class today on abortion/pregnancy/and the population crisis in russia. They were the first country to legalize abortion. The division between men and women in my class today was quite fascinating to observe!

After my week of illness in Irkutsk, I was ready to join my group. My friend Korrina had travelled back to Irkutsk to see a play and she joined me on Saturday for our long journey to the village. We boarded a marshutka (small van) headed for улан уде ( the city we would meet our group in before the bus ride to the actual village). It was filled with laborers from Uzbekistan, and for eight hours we travelled through siberia, through the hills, all the way up lake baikal, around curvy streets, and waited for lengthy periods of time for cows to cross the road, trains to roll over the tracks, and for the men to get out and smoke. We finally arrived and soon we found our group. The next day we travelled to the old believers village on a bus, not knowing what we would find. We arrived and walked through a maze of wooden houses painted and decorated with beautiful designs, a sign of the old believers. We went to each of the houses the members of our group would be staying in. At every house they insisted on trying to feed us. When Russians offer you tea, they are offering you so much more! They are actually attempting to stuff you full of the most wonderful food and make you drink shots of vodka with them. The tea in the village itself was fanstastic and I miss it still. My babushka was a lady in her 80s. She had children adn grandchildren, but only one daughter and one grandaughter still lived in the village. The old believers are struggling to survive and continue to exist. This is primarily because of the fact that historically after the purges and the soviet times, a resurgance of religion occurred and those who had been alive or who had still practiced religion during those years were able to continue. However, as Russia now develops, the jobs and education in such villages do not meet the needs of their offspring, so instead the village is full of the elderly. The first house we arrived at was the spiritual leaders house. She had broken her leg and was so upset she could not prepare tea for us, but really we were far more interested in the red corner, the corner in which icons from the 17th century sat. I was in awe of their beauty and their history. Soon we moved on to where stacie and riley would stay. Their babushka simply could not understand why we had come to siberia, why we had come to a place where there was so much hardship and so much work that had to be done. These people get up every day and work all day, but there is a certain beauty in the way they live their lives. They gather together often and make music and cook, something that Americans take for granted. She instantly attempted to label stacie and I with nationalities laughing at stacie and calling her a gypsy and grabbing my cheeks and awing over how I must have been ukranian. The day before, the Uzbekistani men thought that Korrinna and I were from Latvia and since then I have been called German and Finnish. I have also had numerous people come up to me and speak other languages besides Russian, so convinced I know the language they are, that even when I begin to tell them in Russian, German, and English that I don’t understand and my bewildered face is apparent, they still talk. I am quite glad they don’t think I am American! Our group does not look very American, so it is rare that people can tell where we are from. The next day we gathered at the spirtual leader’s house once again and with our hair tied back, kerchiefs on our head, and aprons covering our bodies, we made palmeenee (a type of dumplings). We rolled out the dough, placed meat and potatoes in, and learned how to fold the beautiful dumplings, while Alla taught us Russian folk songs to sing. Soon we were done, and while they cooked we were shuffled back to our own homes where our babushkas dressed us in traditional clothing. Then, we returned in full ensemble and sat at a huge table, americans on one side and all of our babushkas and the two dedushkas on the other side. The table was full of food and alcohol. Moonshine and vodka kept filling our shot glasses and I drank more than I ever have in my life. We sang, we danced, and it was wonderful! We left that evening for the airport, to fly back to the modern world.

The flight from Irkutsk back to moscow and then on to St. Petersburg took its toll on the group. We were all quite affected by the time change and the flight, not to mention the alchohol and events of the day before. We met our families and moved in. I adore my family here, they are wonderfully crazy and treat me as a daughter. I have been extraordinarily lucky with the families that I have been placed with. Others in the group have had issues and problems with their living situations, and I have been fortunate. Poor Stacie, she is a vegetarian and the people here get mad at her when she doesn’t eat meat, tell her she’s crazy and anorexic. I have tried to tell people how unhealthy it is to meat in general but they don’t listen. I had to fight my father this morning to stop him from cooking me eggs and sausage again. Yesterday he made me some for breakfast after Stacie and stumbled back home early in the morning, and I could barely stomach it. They have cereal, granola which they call muesli, that I eat for breakfast and that is plenty. But they insist on big breakfasts here and smaller lunches than I am used to.

This was my first full week back in St. Petersburg. Three hours of the Russian language a day and lectures in Gender Studies, Economics, and Politics at the grad school here have filled this first week. Stacie and I also met two british men at the Irish Pub next to my apartment. They speak almost no russian and they are engineers for Nissan who just moved here. Nissan pays for their housing and everything on top of a generous salary, friday night we went over to see their apartment and the two flats, which are connected,  were the largest I have yet seen in Russia and quite beautiful. My group is dealing with major sickness. Stuart is in the hospital with some terrible virus, he was vomiting blood on Friday night.We visited him at the hospital yesterday. Sasha, Michael, and Stacie have also all been throwing up this weekend. Riley, Korinna, and I have been lucky enough to be healthy all weekend, thank goodness. Hopefully we will continue to be healthy.  I must go now as sasha, korinna, and stacie are coming over to play music, sasha has a banjo and there’s a piano here. I hope all is well in the states, that this terrible election fight will be over soon, and that NATO falls apart (oh how I wish, poor russia!).