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.
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