Student Note, St. Petersburg – 06/06
We have been in St. Petersburg for a week, and I’m finally getting used to it. Today we went on a tour to see the American Consulate, the health clinic, and the ACTR regional office. To get to the places, we took the metro, a bus, and walked. I was really nervous about the metro before I came to Russia because I don’t ride them in the US, but yesterday I conquered it–I started on Vasilievsky Island, went to the center of the city, transferred twice, and got home on the other side of the Neva within an hour! There are lots of things that are different in Russia, and the key is not letting them frustrate you. One thing is the bathrooms–they usually don’t have toilet paper, and the flushing mechanisms are sometimes hard to figure out. The food is also very different. Lunchtime is always fun because I always choose something new–I may or may not understand what’s in it. Even just walking down the street can be intimidating. Russians walk confidently and don’t smile at people they don’t know. It makes you think they’re mean, but if you ask someone for directions they’re always very helpful, and may even smile! As far as learning Russian, I feel like I have improved even outside classes. I think it has just now sunk in that Russian is a real language that real people use to communicate. I’ve been taking language classes for three years, and for all that time Russian was like the “special” language of maybe 20 people on my campus. But for a large number of people, it’s the only language they know. Realizing that has really helped me appreciate the language and culture.
The picture is from the coast of the Peter and Paul Fortress, looking out at St. Isaac’s Cathedral.
University of South Carolina, St. Petersburg, 2006
Student Note, Vladimir – 06/06
I’ve spent some time paying attention to public “signs” of communism; for example, in Vladimir, Suzdal and Nizhnii Novgorod, the statues of Lenin are still standing. (If you look from the right angle in Nizhnii, Lenin seems to be making the Russian gesture for hitching a ride!) We also still have ulitsa Komsomolskaya, ulitsa Dzherzhinsky, and ulitsa Oktiabrskaya. Street names like that occur in every place where I’ve been able to read the signs. The newspaper Pravda still exists, but as my teacher for Mass Media points out, “it’s a communist newspaper.” I was a little surprised to see the statues of Lenin and wonder whether there’s been any debate about removing them. On another note about the past–my host sister is showing me the series “Brigada” about bandits who became powerful after 1989. It’s fictional, but she hits pause all the time to explain how a certain element on the screen shows what was going in Russia at the time. Coming into contact with Russians is difficult when we’re only here for 2 months. Luckily I have a talkative host sister and KORA (the language school) finds tutors. Soon I’ll be free on the weekends to explore more, go out, and find opportunities for talking with various people. I haven’t gone out so far because we’ve had outings. Last weekend in Nizhnii Novgorod was great; the Volga is beautiful and we saw the city’s Kremlin, the Sakharov Museum, and spent a day in Semyonov, where matrioshka dolls are made. Tomorrow we’ll leave for Moscow and stay there for the weekend. After that, things might calm down a bit. The program has been good; we hit the ground running and I can barely believe that 2 weeks have gone by!
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Vladimir, 2006