15 March 2009

Even though this was only a four day week, it really felt like it was dragging. I changed my class schedule around, though so it should be much better from now on. I really didn’t like my conversation class, and I really wanted to take a phonetics course. So, I mixed things up a little. Now I have three classes with a different group, and two with my original group. I had to drop literature in order to make it work, but I think that is ok. As much as I much as I was enjoying it, I was studying it as an interest, whereas I think I should be studying things more practical. Phonetics and business language are more useful to me after I go home than Gogol and Solzhenitsyn. I met friday with Natalia, the girl who asked me to tutor her that I made the arrangements with to help each other out instead of accepting payment. I think this will be a very useful trade, because I need to be in more one-on-one situations where I can have someone correcting me and I don’t have to feel socially awkward having someone repeat a word so I can stare at how they move their tongue.
I finally gathered all the documents to apply for my multi-entry visa. All I have left to do is sign a renewal contract for my studies and pay the rest of my tuition through July. At the ‘family day’ event last week, I was talking with someone who told me he went to Minsk last year and if he remembers correctly the train tickets were only around 40-50$ each way. Much less than I was expecting, if he’s right. Also, there is a trip to Novgorod next week, and I think I am going to sign up. Its another city I wanted to visit, and when I saw the flier for it I a friend told me that she had gone on the trip a few months ago and it was a good time.
I wrote a new letter looking for a home-stay and posted it on the wall for the Hillel’s Russian vkontakte site. I asked Irina if she could help me look, and she said that she had very limited response last time but would try. I found that the only posting was made on the site for the English club, which explains why nobody responded…I specifically asked for people that didn’t speak any English. So I wrote it myself and posted it. Hopefully I’ll start getting responses soon.
Yesterday I went exploring again. My Russian block-mates thought it was very strange when they asked where I was going, and I told them I didn’t know. I told them that when I have a free afternoon, I just go to the metro and get off at a stop I’ve never been to and walk around, and they didn’t understand. They wanted to know if I was meeting someone, or if I walked around listening to music, or what… but I told them I just go by myself, walk into shops, go into parks, see monuments, and listen to people on the street. I think they thought I was crazy. Regardless, I went to Парк Победы (The Park of Victory), and walked around. Right outside the station are two enormous parks, Парк Победы (aforementioned) and Парк Авиаторов (The Park of Aviators). They were both very big, very relaxing, and I saw a lot of statues of soldiers, nurses and important figures in the soviet union in the last 60 years. They also had a stadium there (currently hosting an Economic Forum on Industrial Style (what could be more exciting?) and a children’s carnival, named for Yuri Gagarin (first human in space, Russian national hero). It was really something- I walked around for a while and found that the bulk of the equipment was foreign, with German, British, and American labels on everything. Of all of the attractions, my personal favorite was a mechanical bull… with the safety instructions printed in English. They had one game where there were 20 cans set up on shelves along a wall, and they gave you a small pellet gun with 22 bullets for 100 rubles, and you had to try to shoot all of them to win a prize from about five meters away. I (along with about 10 other people) watched a kid who couldn’t have been older than eight or nine years old knock down every single can without missing a single shot, then when he went after the last can (which was smaller than all the others, maybe a quarter of the size) he hit it dead on three times and it didn’t fall… so I guess there are no cultural differences between carnies in America and in Russia…they will cheat you everywhere.
On my way back to the dorm, I stopped off at an internet café with my laptop to make some calls, and then walked around near the university a bit. There was a man that I had seen a few days in a row on the promenade by the metro nearest to the university who stands with a guitar, a small amp, and an open guitar case hoping for money. As I walked by at night, I saw him kneeling next to the amp, and for whatever reason I noticed that there were two wires coming out of his amp, with one going into the guitar, and with nowhere to plug it in it must have been a battery powered amp, so I began to wonder what the second wire was for. He was playing with something, I assumed a cell phone, and then I started to hear guitar playing, and he stood up and started playing… I realized he had an IPod nano plugged into his amp. Good for him, he figured out a more creative way to make some money than the beggars in the subway.
On a side note- on my way to a Purim party last weekend, I needed to make change in order to pay for my ticket (I had asked a friend to get one for me in advance, because they sold out) so I stopped into a small market. While I was looking for something cheap to buy, I heard the DJ on the radio say “and now we’re going to play some classic music from the past!” and he put on Весёлые Ребята, and I instantly recognized Dr. Lehrman’s voice singing lead.