20 April 2009

The lecture last night was interesting. Not particularly educational…but interesting. They discussed Jewish identity in St. Petersburg and Russia as a whole. I think the moderator spoke more than both speakers put together, but all in all it was a good presentation.
Apparently today was Hitler’s birthday, and as a result I had been told that there wouldn’t be many people in class. Supposedly every year on April 20th, skinheads come out and attack foreigners, in particular the Chinese. When I got to class, it was almost empty. Half of my class is from China. We started talking about the issue, and my professor said that likely none of the Chinese students would show up. Then Mao Sin (he goes by Maksim) showed up, and when the professor said ‘good for you that you aren’t afraid’ he pulled out a switchblade and said ‘I’m not worried.’ That was a little weird. One other Chinese student showed up, Dsen Dsei (or something like that I’m never sure how to pronounce it)…but I think he came because he’s not very bright. He’s the one that every week in class when our Monday professor asks how our weekends were, he says he sat at home and studied…but then never has any homework done, doesn’t know the grammar, is hard to understand, and whenever a professor asks him a question one of the other Chinese kids has to whisper to him in Chinese before he answers. Anyway…we started talking about the issue, and everyone said that in their own countries it isn’t recognized as any sort of holiday, and most of us didn’t even know it was Hitler’s birthday until we were told a couple days ago. We spent quite a while talking about it.
After that, the topic moved onto same-sex marriage. It is a conversation class, so in order to keep everyone interested in participating, the professor chooses controversial issues and makes sure to get input on everything from every country represented. Everyone put in their opinions, which for the most part were pretty liberal (except one girl from Austria) until that guy Dsen Dsei from China told everyone that he thinks homosexuality is a violation of human nature and that he thinks that it is wrong and that marriage should never be allowed because it ruins the idea of a family. The professor asked him what he would do if one of his friends told him that he was gay, and he said that he wouldn’t associate with such people. I raised my hand, and said that we just finished talking about how wrong it was that the skinheads in Russia were targeting people because they were different, and how can someone say that its wrong for skinheads to target foreigners, or Jews, or Chinese…and then talk about how homosexuals should be cast out for being a minority. I might have gone too far…because he didn’t say anything else for the rest of the class.
After class I came home for a bit, then returned to the university to pick up my registration for my new visa…and after waiting in line for a half hour they told me to come back tomorrow.
When I went today to work out, I ran into Dima again. I’m not sure if I mentioned this yet, but a few days ago I ran into Dima, the guy who was my translator two years ago when I was here. His English hasn’t really improved at all and he’s gotten chubby. Other than that, he’s still kind of a jerk. I was bench pressing heavier than I’ve done in a while, and when I got to my last rep I pushed a little harder with my right arm than my left, and the bar tipped a little. The weights fell off the left side of the bar, and fortunately for me the guy I was working with was spotting me, and he slowed down the bar as it flew in the air but it still pulled me off the bench onto the floor. A few people came to see if I was ok (I was fine, the bench was pretty close to the floor so I didn’t hurt myself) and Dima started lecturing me. Apparently the bar I was using is the only one in the gym that isn’t Olympic standard, in the sense that while it is the correct weight and length, the bar tapers a bit on each end (which doesn’t make any sense to me). In order to continue condescendingly scolding me, he decided to switch to English but kept using the wrong words for things… so eventually I just told him in Russian that I didn’t understand what he was trying to tell me because his English was completely unintelligible. After that he stopped. It seems like I pushed the envelope with people a few times today…
As I was finishing my workout, I had been talking with Oleg a bit about the different exercises. It’s hard for me to learn the different names, because they are all very specific technical descriptions of the movements. He joked to someone that it was an international gym, because the American student had partnered up with the Czech student to work out. This girl came up to me, and asked me if I was an American. I said yes, and she asked me if I would help her with an assignment. Apparently she is studying English, and her homework was to come up with 20 words that are spelled differently in England and in the United States. I gave her the only two words I could think of at the moment. It was really difficult to finish a hard workout and then be asked in Russian to think in British English. I gave her my contact information, and told her to get a hold of me before her homework is due and I’ll help her out further, but I just wasn’t in the state of mind to do anything useful. She then switched to English and said “you speak very well.” I thought she was talking about my Russian but I just said “huh?” and she said “you speak English very well. You have a good accent. I like it.” In retrospect I think she was trying to say she likes the American accent, but at the time I was completely confused about how to respond to a compliment that I speak my native language well so I just gave her a meek ‘um…thank you?’
Tonight Valentin, An and I exchanged Skype information so that when I move next week it will be easier for us to stay in contact. It turns out An’s Skype handle is the Russian word for “room.” Yeah…try and understand that one. Valentin and I laughed for a really long time after that. He didn’t get why it was strange, and told us that it’s easy to remember. I told him I’m going to remake my account and call myself “window.”