Random stream-of-consciousness post

Hello all. I've spent over a month here in Kazan. It feels like fall now; the leaves are even turning a little bit, although it's nothing like the spectacular colors of New England. I've been really busy cramming my head full of new words, getting to know my Russian peers, preparing for the epic performance that is Day of the First-Years, and still getting to know my way around a new city and a new culture that seems more evasive and full of contradictions the deeper I go into it.

We Americans have finally received our schedules for our other classes; we were told that we hadn't received the schedules earlier because even the regular university students hadn't received their schedules, which was simply not true. So now that we have our classes, we've been spending the bulk of this week scouring the landscape in search of them. Each week the locations of the classes change, and the new schedule is posted in each building. This schedule, too, lies; more often than not we go to room 479 expecting a literature class, only to find that room 479 is really the office of the German department. Or, better yet, some of my friends were looking for a class in Room 2, and found the rooms in the hall numbered 5, 4, 3, 1. No 2.

There's a level of bureaucracy here, especially in the university, that borders on absurdity. No one seems to know where anything is; today I went on a wild goose chase across the center of town, looking for my rehearsal. The conductor told me it was in the psychology department; asking around, I was told that the psychology department was upstairs, across the street, that there could not be a rehearsal in the psychology department, and that there was no psychology department. When I found the psychology department, the security guard asked where I was from, and when I said "America," he launched into a hearty rant about Tatars vs. Russians, Chechnya, Afghanistan, etc, etc, etc. Then the conductor called me and said he really meant the physics department, so I went back to where I came.

The lectures I've found, though, have been good; I sat in on a History of World Art class in which the professor was talking about art in the Stone Age and how the representations of men and women changed as people's lifestyles changed from hunter-gatherer to agrarian. The visuals helped. Then I went to a Music History class where I understood almost everything the teacher said. It helped that I already knew a little about early baroque music, and a lot of the vocabulary was Italian (pizzicato, oratorio, conservatoria, etc.)

And speaking of which, I went to my first opera on Sunday. It was Puccini's "Madam Butterfly," and it was an excellent production, with an amazing set that used lots of moving furniture and projections of different images. The cast was really talented too, and the orchestra. It was a lot to follow, between the Italian singing and the Russian subtitles, but it was great. One fluid, colorful act, then down to the lobby for caviar, then another act.

I also discovered a Russian thrift store. The sign said "Second hand clothing," so I decided to check it out. I could have walked in there with my eyes closed; remarkably, it smelled exactly the same as the Turners Falls Salvation Army. They didn't have any shirts that fit me, but it was a nice find.

Day of the First-Years (Den' Pervogokurnikov), a big university holiday with a huge concert, is approaching swiftly, and I am in two acts. One: a rendition of "The Rocky Road to Dublin," a popular Irish folk song, with me fiddling, my friend Ben singing, and some of our Russian friends jigging in the background. At the "audition," we were one of two acts to get a perfect score, and the other students clapped along to it like they clapped to everything at Yalchik, creating a weird three-against-two Hemiola effect. It was great though.

The other act is a ridiculous dance, also with Ben and me and our Russian friends. We were woefully unprepared, which brings me to my big accomplishment of the week: my first legit joke in the Russian language.

We all went to one of the dancers' apartment to rehearse our dance. We ended up watching TV and eating lots of food instead. During the meal we were talking about how unprepared we were going to be, and I said something like, "This is only practice, guys; tomorrow we're going to have to do this in front of an audience: eat and watch television!"

Okay, okay, it wasn't great. I'm keeping my day job. But I said it in Russian, and they laughed. It's a start.

Na Lager!

Hello friends; I've just returned from the "lager" (camp) at Yalchik, a village about two hours away from Kazan by train. It was a kind of orientation/team-building camp for the freshman class at the TGGPU University, led by some upperclassmen.

How can I even begin to describe it? In some ways, it was like my freshman orientation for high school, except longer, colder, and mostly incomprehensible. We had several "trainings," as they were called, in which we broke into groups and did various team building activities, scavenger hunts, games, and assignments, most of which were totally lost on me. Then we sat around and talked about them for what seemed like hours...it was a grueling test of my aural skills, and often miserable. They kept us very busy at Yalchik; we got up in the morning for "physical education," which turned out to be a kind of outdoor, seemingly eternal, discotheque, and we also broke into groups and prepared skits, songs and dances for a concert, and ate simple but long-anticipated meals.

The constant structure, the trainings, the disco at seven in the morning and the techno at all hours of the night, all the clapping and chanting and singing together, all contributed to a sense of ubiquitous, (to me) oppressive, collectivism. Everything was done in a group, and any stragglers or people who went off on their own, usually the Americans, were quickly led back into the fold. All this made us Americans feel irritable and slightly rebellious, but the Russian kids seemed to love it. It makes sense after decades of a communist society. Maybe it's even older than that.

On the last night, after a concert in which the American men performed Monty Python's "Lumberjack Song" ("Pesnya pro lesnikov"), there was a long meeting , in which we sat in a circle and talked about our experience, passing a candle around. I was amazed at how emotional everyone was; after four days, and with five years of togetherness to look forward too, these kids were crying! It felt like a collective expression of emotion, just another part of the shared experience of the camp, of the class, of the university in general. The act of sharing these dance parties and treasure hunts was more important than those experiences themselves; the togetherness of it all was the experience.

That's what it seemed like to me, but how do I know? I only understood half of what was being said in the candle circle, and when I asked a Russian friend who speaks fluent, impeccable English, she said she couldn't explain why everyone was crying when everything was just beginning; she said she didn't have the English words.

After the candle circle, we put all the candles into the lake, and then we trekked off into the forest to a camp fire. As the fire was dying down, we chanted one of the several slogans that we had been chanting for the past few days: "Vmeste ne strashno!" Roughly, this means "Together, it's not awful!" This seemed to neatly sum up the past few days; we'd been hungry and tired and cold as hell, but what was important was the togetherness. Even for us Americans. This experience brought out all our American cynicism, criticism, and utilitarianism. ("Why are we doing this? This sucks. What is it for?") Still, we made close friends across a cultural chasm that's wide and narrow by turns. We learned Russian folk songs and Russian slang, and somewhere out there, some kids in Kazan are singing:

"I cut down trees, I skip and jump, I like to press wild flowers. I put on women's clothing, and hang around in bars!"

Well, maybe.

Week Three?

This week's gone by really fast. We've buckled down to the serious Russian grammar, media literacy, phonetics, and "speech practice." This week we've been delving into the wonderful world of the Prepositional Case, which I learned two or three years ago. What I really need is more practice speaking and listening, and tons more vocabulary. Russian teachers tend to emphasis grammar over vocabulary, and theory over practice, so that's been frustrating. It's hard to stay engaged in classes where I'm mostly not speaking very much, just listening and writing stuff down, learning and re-learning the ins and outs of the prepositional case.

On Tuesday, we had our first P.E. class at the university. It consisted of running a mile, maybe a mile and a half, and most of the Russians started walking after the first few hundred feet. For once I was running up front, along with a couple other Americans and a couple other Russians, and I left the class feeling pleasantly competent.

Not so with the sambo class we had later that evening. It was the first class, so we did mostly strength and agility training, falls and rolls. I'm pretty good at the falls, but I can't seem to do the rolls right; our instructor, miming without words so as to be perfectly understood, told me I was rolling over like a dead person. My whole body is still pretty sore from our Tuesday class, and I have another class tomorrow.

On Wednesday after classes, we went to Millenium Park and played a rousing game of Frisbee Post League, a frisbee sport we've invented that can be easily played in the small, thickly wooded parks of Kazan. Then on Thursday, I had an audition for the university "violin ensemble," a group of seven or eight violinists with piano accompaniment.

I arrived at the music department early. The conductor was very late. When he arrived, I was deep in conversation with a Russian student about race relations in America and the proper usage of the words "slick" and "cool."

The conductor, Oscar, is an energetic, eccentric man with a crazy sense of humor. I'd been told that he was "strange;" as I suspected, he's just a typical conductor. After I played part of the Beethoven sonata I'd prepared, he asked if I could play him something "technical," then took my violin, saying, "for example:"

He played a ridiculous Paganini caprice. I said, "Net." He laughed and said, "Xorosho, yasno."

He was very friendly, if a little intimidating, and it sounds like he's going to let me play.

The other violinists started to arrive. They were all really good, conservatory-level violinists, and they played some awesome arrangements of pieces by Dinicu, Khachaturian, and Shostakovich. I sat and listened; there was no way I could keep up sightreading. Oscar conducted, sometimes beating time with an orange comb that snapped in half under the weight of his exertions, sometimes waving his arms, almost dancing, sometimes, when the spirit moved him, picking up my violin and playing along from memory. I was fascinated and moved; I stopped worrying about my Russian, and suddenly I was understanding everything. I was speaking, as the Russians say, "freely," if not totally fluently.

It's that old saw again - "music is a universal language." I would assert that it's more like a universal community; all my life I've felt at home among musicians, and Kazan is no exception. Once you share something as deep as music, everything else seems easy.

Second Week

The second week in Kazan has been a good one...after September 1st, we really only had three days of class, culminating in a grueling grammar, reading comprehension, listening and writing exam. I've been sick, but I'm getting better. Things are beginning to fall into place...we will likely start sambo classes next week, we'll be going to some kind of team-building camp with the freshman class of the university later in September, we should be starting our university classes soon, and we might be doing some volunteer work with Russian kids. I've also found out that there is an orchestra at my university, and that the conductor is "strange."

Maybe conductors are like small children...the same in every country.

Yesterday I went to the Kremlin for a film-and-music festival. The films were pretty good; the music less so. We went to this awesome bliniy place on Bauman Street (bliniy are a kind of Russian pancake-type thing). Then we went to the park, played some frisbee, and continued an epic grass-throwing war that's been going on for days now. Then we got dinner and went home.

Just when I think I have the public transportation system figured out...it turns out the buses stop running at 10. This I learned last night when I got off the bus and walked a friend part of the way to her home, since she didn't know exactly how to get back from that bus stop. Then by the time I got back to the bus stop, the buses weren't running anymore, and people were flagging down the other kind of the taxi, the unmarked kind. So I ended up walking home from there. This being-a-gentleman business is harder than it looks. But life goes on. I got home and had shoma, which is a really good Turkish burrito-type thing. And today I'm going to see a string quartet at the Kremlin.

Den' Respubliki (c fotografami)

Privet, all. This weekend was a series of holidays...Sunday was Den' Respubliki (Day of the Republic), a holiday celebrating the Republic of Tatarstan and its capital, Kazan. We all met up with our host families at a cafe on Bauman Street, and I ordered peach juice and a desert called chak-chak, which has the consistency of Rice Krispies but tastes like honey. Then we walked around the center of town. All the roads were closed to cars, and there was music and lots of excellent street food to be had.

Then our group split up, and some of us went to the Kladbische (Cemetery). It was a long walk, but definitely worth seeing. It was a riot of color; the dead were festooned with flowers, trees, vines and other living things. It seemed almost festive. Some of the graves were locked up in what looked like metal cages. It was kind of a downer...I couldn't help but remember the last time I'd been in a cemetery, at a friend's funeral. But it was well worth the trip.

When we got back to Bauman, we went to a cafe called Meat House, where we got really good, really cheap Turkish food. Then we walked over the bridge over the Kazanka river at sunset, since the roads were closed. Then later that night I went out with my family to see the fireworks.

Yesterday I got up and went running with Liliya, and then went to the university, where we practiced our Soldja Boy extravaganza. Then some of us went and hung out on Bauman Street. Then I went home and played some basketball with Marat, which I haven't done since I was younger than he is. We played a shooting game called "33," which I eventually figured out after playing it a few times. That night I worked on the Mendelssohn violin concerto, which was and remains an impenetrable fortress of double-stops and perilous shifts. I need to find a teacher.

Today was Den' Znanii (Day of Work). On the First of September, throughout Russia, school and university begins. There are no classes; it's basically a big holiday. We all gathered, along with all the Russian students and faculty, in the square in front of the Tatar State University of Humanities and Education. There was a big stage set up, and it was here that we would share our traditional American dance, as part of a big beginning-of-the-year show.

We met several students majoring in foreign languages; they all wanted to talk to us in English. We also met a couple Korean students, which, for me, felt like coming home; there were a lot of Korean kids at my school, especially in orchestra and on the ultimate team.

The show began; it featured lots of singing, dancing, and speeches both in Tatar and Russian. Our dance was well received...we did the superman part more or less at the same time, and then we were joined by the other international students, and the Korean guys beatboxed to "Amazing Grace."

That afternoon, we checked out a couple gyms and looked into taking sambo classes. Then we went to the Millenium Park and sat in the grace and played frisbee. More than anything, I've missed just chillin in the grass with no shoes on and tossing the mellow earth biscuit. Old hippie yearnings die hard.

Here are some photos for you: