It's been a good almost two weeks here in Kazan. The weather's getting chilly and the heat's coming on in my apartment. I can't believe I'm almost halfway through my time here.A couple weeks ago, a few of us went to our friend Kostya's English lecture. We had nothing prepared, so we fielded questions from the students, who were mostly upper-level English or lexicology students, and skillfully drew muffins, bagels, and a map of the United States. We explained American humor, such as "knock-knock" jokes (which were lost in translation), "that's-what-she-said" jokes (which were altogether not kosher for class), and walking into a wall, which is pretty funny in any language. We also taught the students and teacher some useful American slang, such as "chill," "fo sho," "that party was off the hook," and "thizz face." (Forrest's Bay Area slang was new to me too.) However long these students had studied English, I could tell most of what we were saying was lost on them; they sat quietly, wearing faces of polite confusion. After close to seven weeks trying to do everything in Russian, I recognize that face. I guess it's a long road to true fluency, past the entry level of practical vocabulary and into the thicket of real speech.
On Sunday we went to the orphanage and told the orphans about Halloween. We showed them how to carve a jack-o-lantern, too. We're planning some Halloween festivities for them there at the orphanage, and also an event for our friends and acquaintances at a school, with food, a haunted house, a play, and a raffle, as a benefit for the orphanage. Sam, Ian and I have been put in charge of the haunted house, and I'm teaching myself Saint-Saen's "Danse Macabre" as fast as I can.
This week has been a tiring series of rehearsals and audition/performances for "Day of the First-Years." I will likely be in two acts in the final, surely epic, concert on the 20th, playing Irish music and dancing with American and Russian friends.
Today Hillary Clinton was in Kazan. She spoke at Kazan State University, and we were hoping that since we are, after all, here on state department scholarships, we might be able to get in to see her speak. But no such luck. From what I understood of our conversation with the head of security, only people on a list, or of a certain "quality," (i.e., Kazan State students), were being allowed in. So that was disappointing, but I had a nice walk in the park after, so it was all good.
The other day one of our teachers told us about going to school during the Soviet era. It sounded awful. She told us about being made to write with her right hand even though she was left-handed, being made to drink milk even though she hated milk, even to wear her hair a certain way. We had typical American gut reactions to all this: "That sucks! Stick it to the Man, man!" It's one thing to say that and another thing to really stick it to the whole Soviet system of conformity-as-collectivism. Still, I wanted to tell Stalin, do you think the Bolsheviks accomplished the revolution by sitting down quietly, speaking when spoken to, drinking milk when told to drink milk?
The way our teacher put it was, "At home, I was a person; at school, I was just under this system." Since Gorbachev, the education system has changed, but a lot of that mentality still prevails. There's still often a stark contrast between who you have to be at work, at school, out on the street, and who you become at home, around friends and family. Maybe it explains the way people dress up, don't smile, and blend in on the street, giving Western tourists the impression that Russians are cold and paranoid. Exchange students who live with host families find out otherwise; inside the apartment, everything changes.
I was talking to a Russian guy on the bus who simply could not understand why I came to Kazan. "What are you, a Muslim?" he said. I said no. "What are you doing here? Why did you come here?" he asked me five or six times. "To study Russian and understand Russian culture," I said. He repeated, "Why did you come to Russia? Your own problems aren't enough?" I tried to explain that I don't have any problems here in Russia: I'm having an amazing, paid-for study abroad experience, I have friends, I have food, I have interesting and meaningful stuff to do. He still didn't get it.
I've been in a good mood lately. I think that's because I came here to do exactly what I'm doing: learning through experience what I can only learn here. I don't know whether I'm on that long road to language fluency, but I'm definitely in the catacombs of culture, going back and back like the bazaar, through an endless maze of dog-hair socks and discos.
Hello all. This post will consist largely of several unrelated observations, and maybe a few photos as well.
