Pictures from the safari and Table Mountain hike

Safari

The safari wasn't all that impressive in terms of animals, but it was still a nice day. We drove about 2 or 3 hours out of Cape Town to this reserve, and had tea before the safari and lunch after it. The safari itself was comparable to San Diego Wild Animal Park, but I had to see some of the traditional animals while in Africa. The album is a little bit boring, a ton of repetitive shots of animals that I didn't feel like weeding through. But enjoy anyway!

Table Mountain

Jaime and I went one afternoon to hike the easiest path up Table Mountain. We went with Angelique, an older volunteer from Detroit, and Katie, who has since hiked Mount Kilimanjaro. Jaime and I were pretty slow going up, stopping every ten minutes to admire the view and take pictures of the City Bowl. (Driving at night the view of the City Bowl reminds me of the view of the San Fernando Valley from Mulholland Drive or the 405 North on steroids). So there's a ton of repetitive scenery shots in this album, but I just couldn't resist taking out my camera. We finally made it to the top after about 2 hours. I rejuvenated myself with some water and a bag of pretzels and bought a Table Mountain beanie as a souvenir. And then we hiked back down it at dusk racing the Sun all the way.

Russian cultural excursions (old pictures)

Here are some old pictures and quick descriptions of different cultural trips we took in Russia. Because in the past I've had trouble linking to every specific album, this time I'm just going to link to my Picasa page and I trust that you'll be able to find the corresponding album. http://picasaweb.google.com/alpert.david

As part of the cultural component of the three-pronged program (culture, volunteering and independent free time) CCS took us on weekly Wednesday trips. The village trips typically consisted of us driving an hour away, eating a nice home-cooked lunch at the home of some local and then touring whatever churches and museums were in the area.

Banya:

While the trip to the banya (Russian bathhouse) wasn’t technically a cultural excursion (we went on a Thursday night and we had to pay around $12), it was still with the CCS staff and fit enough that I thought I’d include it here. We drove somewhere out in the middle of nowhere, the roads were even less paved than usual and we were surrounded by forest and no city lights, and found our little banya cabin.

Unfortunately, the almost frozen pool outside of the banya was out of commission so instead, between trips into the steam room we dumped cold buckets of water on each other. It’s also customary to rub a mixture of honey and salt all over your skin to help exfoliate. Finally, there’s the strangest part of the banya- the thicket of leaves that you beat each other with. (Insert your own crude joke here).

One person lies down on the hot wood benches with a sheet or towel to protect themselves, and another takes the leaves that have been pre-soaked in water, sprinkles a little water on the victim’s back and proceeds to hit them all over with the leaves, first harder and then softer. Combined with the overwhelming heat, being beaten was one of the more intense feelings I’ve ever had. And it was so hot that standing up and moving around to assist in beating Jaime was too much for me.

Valentina Tereshkova Museum:

Valentina Tereshkova was the first woman to enter space, completing her mission a full 20 years before (Westlake alum) Sally Ride left the earth’s atmosphere. Tereshkova is a Yaroslavl native so the museum dedicated to her and to Soviet cosmonautics in general, is located just a half hour outside of the city.

Gavrilov Yam:

This small village is located an hour outside of Yaroslavl. The name comes from Gavrila (Russian version of the name Gabriel) and Yam, meaning station. Gabriel’s Station sprang up as a convenient place to rest one’s horses on the ride between Yaroslavl and Moscow.

Felt boot factory and Museum of Music and Time:

These were our last two cultural excursions and our worst two by far. The felt boot (valinki in Russian) factory reeked so strongly of sheep and wool, it became hard to breathe. And there just wasn’t much to see there. It was a factory, and there were women operating assembly line machinery. And that was it. We left pretty quickly.

The Museum of Music and Time was at least amusing if not interesting. It was opened in 1993 by John Gregoryich and was one of the first private museums in Russia. The museum consisted of three rooms, one with all different kinds of clocks and old record players, another with collections of old Russian irons, bells and records, and the third which was part souvenir shop and part bell collection. We found out later from the translators that the main appeal of this museum is that it’s one of the first truly interactive museums. (If you so choose, you get to play the bells and strange hybrid piano/accordion). But there was just no coherent idea behind the museum.

We did get the honor of meeting egocentric Mr. John Gregoryich himself, and it was one of the more awkward conversations I’ve had in Russia. He told us about relatives that he had in the States and how he might move there because between them they have $2000. (Small chance something was lost in translation there). And then he urged us to go to his other two museums that he had in the complex and when we said we’d go later and tried to make our exit he presented us each with a gift; a $100 bill bookmark with his face replacing Ben Franklin’s. Altogether strange.

Rostov:

This was our first cultural excursion to the nearby Golden Ring city better known to Russians as Rostov the Great. Located on the shores of Lake Nero, the city was founded in the 9^th century and was once a lot bigger than its current population of 36,000. (For comparison, Yaroslavl, the unofficial capital of the Golden Ring, has over 600,000 residents.) Rostov is now most famous for its enamel- little vibrant glass paintings that are burned multiple times during the painting process to give it that eternal just-finished looked. We had a really fascinating conversation with our tour guide over lunch about the then upcoming presidential election and Russo-American relations in general. When I get around to writing my election post, I’ll fill you in on that.

Big Salt:

At Big Salt, so named because of the salty river it was built next to, we had a fascinating lunch with a family of artists. They had rooms full of art all made by one of the four family members. Lunch, among other tastier options, involved a pickled apple. I tried it out of a sort of morbid curiosity and never plan to again. Apples are meant to be sweet. If you want to preserve them, try making a sweet apple jam. Pickling them defeats the purpose of enjoying a nice, crunchy and sweet apple in the first place.

Pyotrpavelskaya (The Russian village I wrote “Village of sweetness” about):

This was our second Wednesday trip and it really touched me deeply as you can read about in my 3 part post in October called village of sweetness.

Summertime and the livin's easy

With just over a week to go, I thought I’d write a little about the CCS Home Base and what living in Cape Town has been like.

Our house is located on a small side street named Hermitage Ave. (reminds me of the world famous museum in St. Petes, Russia) in a neighborhood called Rosebank, right by the University of Cape Town. And I’m not sure what CCS’ deal is about being near trains, but like the Russian Home Base, we can hear and see a train rumbling right on the other side of the fence in our backyard.

I sleep in the top bunk, above Jaime, due to my childhood reasoning of the top being the safer choice in the event the bunk bed collapsed. But I’m getting rather sick of having to climb up and down a staircase to get into bed, and not having a place to sit in the room when I’m not sleeping. We have two other roommates, who share another bunk set, but the room’s gotten a little crowded and messy of late, so Jaime and I are going to move to an empty room upstairs.

One of the house’s many bathrooms is right next door to our current room, and we’re also right across from the kitchen and dining room. I’m always running in and out of the dining room grabbing a snack- either a granny smith apple, a pb& j sandwich, or a bowl of corn flakes cereal with warm milk. (They have this long-lasting milk here that is left out of the fridge. Takes a little getting used to, but it works fine).

Our house is located a quick ten minute’s walk from a commercial district named Rondebosch that has lots of shops and restaurants. There’s my personal favorite, Nando’s the Portuguese chicken place, our gym, Zone Fitness which I frequent a few times a week, and a fast-food burger joint named Steer’s which has incredible Dairy Queen-esque chocolate or caramel-dipped ice cream cones.

We call CCS’ recommended cab company, Excite!, to get around anywhere. We’ve heard from some South Africans that their prices are a little steep, but we also know they’re safe. The rand, (South African unit of currency) is pretty weak against the dollar. The current exchange rate is about 10 rand to 1 dollar. A movie here costs around 30+ Rand ($3), an half chicken, drink and side order meal from Nando’s is only about 50 Rand, and a 15 minute cab ride won’t be more than 60 Rand.

And of course, living in Cape Town there’s the security issue to contend with. Our house has 24 hour unarmed security guards whose job is to intimidate would-be thieves and if that fails, call the police in an emergency. Our house is also surrounded by electric fencing. We have to sign in and out of the Home Base and we have a curfew that isn’t really observed by anyone.

Outside of the safety of the Home Base, I’ve heard a few shudder-worthy stories. When we got here, we were told that the nearest underpass on the walk to Rondebosch is not safe. We were later told that this was because two former female volunteers who used that underpass alone at night were once held up at gunpoint. But it’s not like the city of Cape Town isn’t trying to make itself more secure. Check out this sign from outside the underpass.
















Clockwise from the top left: No automatic weapons, no axes, no knives and finally no bringing along the equally creative and lethal combo of spear and spoon. To me the sign is both really funny and scary. I wonder which city official approved it thinking it might do anything.

I’m a little unclear about the details, but a volunteer who just left and was Jaime’s and my roommate when we first got here was also apparently held up at gunpoint recently. But supposedly it was right after he had spent almost all he had on souvenirs, so he had no money on him. The muggers thankfully were not interested in Cape Town trinkets, so they let him go.

Jaime and I also had one pretty close call, although we didn’t find out about it until a few days later. We were in a near-by neighborhood named Obz, short for Observatory, and we had just finished shooting a couple games of pool at Stone’s, one of our favorite bars. We called a cab and were just milling about the well-lit, decently busy for a Sunday night area, when we saw another bar called Rooster or something like that. We peered inside but decided to stay outside and wait for our cab. Later that night there was apparently an armed robbery at the bar that left two people shot and one dead. Spooky stuff.

But don’t worry about me. Just one more week here, (so excited to come home!), and I plan on keeping safe. I’m working on typing up my log of our amazing five day trip to the Eastern Cape and our hike into the African wilderness, so I’ll try to get that up soon.

It should be a pretty fun last week. Tonight we plan on going to the gay pride parade, which is supposed to be one of Cape Town’s best parties. Tomorrow night we’re going to Kirstenbosch Botanical Garden for its weekly concert in the park, followed by dinner at an amazing set-menu, all-you-can-eat restaurant named Africa Café. No real plans yet for the week, except Jaime and I have two tickets for a comedy show called Three Wise Men (featuring Christian, Jewish and Muslim comedians). And for Christmas I think we’re cooking for ourselves like Thanksgiving. Jaime and I plan on the afternoon of Christmas Day on the beach, lounging around and throwing a Frisbee.

Bonus! How to speak South African

Considering South Africa’s British roots, South Africans generally speak the Queen’s English. You have your fair dose of “bloody,” “mate” and other British words and phrases. But South Africans have also developed their own uniquely South African phrases. Here’s a random sampling of stuff I’ve picked up:

Robot- Traffic stoplight (Nobody’s been able to tell me how this one got its name)
Howzit?- How are you? (Answering “how’s what?” makes you look like an idiot. Trust me).
Izit- Oh, really/ You don’t say
Okes- Blokes/ guys

That’s all for now!
DA

About to go to Jo'burg

Cab should be coming any minute to take us to the airport. Should be a nice weekend. We're staying at a bed and breakfast owned by a fellow volunteer's friend's dad. It it supposed to rain so we'll make do.

Had a good week. Finished up my first volunteer placement at a school for the mentally disabled, which was really challenging. Spent Thursday and Friday at Jaime's placement messing around with little kids, which was a lot simpler and more fun. Next week, I'm going to start being a camp counselor with another 18 year old volunteer from San Fran.

Hope everybody has a great weekend!
DA

And I ran, I ran so far away

Just got back from the 10k. Finished it in 299th place at 52:20. I had wanted to break 50 but it was really hilly so it's ok. There were a few runners who were barefoot for the 6 miles. And there was broken glass at more than one intersection.

The best part of the race was definitely the ending. There was a full brass band playing close to the finish line and they were cheering like crazy in addition to playing their music as I finished. And then we went to Nando's a healthy fast-food chicken restaurant, like CA Chicken Cafe but better, for a massive feast.

I will sleep very well tonight. And be extremely sore tomorrow. But it was fun to race, and we're going to look into more races while I'm here.

Much delayed final impressions from Russia

I wrote this at around 3 in the morning on my last night in Yaroslavl and never got around to posting it. So better late than never, here are my final impressions of Russia.

In no particular order here are some of my final thoughts as I prepare to leave Russia, and some random tidbits that never found their way into other posts…

Russia seems to be a country torn in two different directions. On the one hand there is the illustrious history and culture and the accompanying desire to preserve and respect both, and on the other there is this frantic desire to catch up with the West. It’s been 17 years since the fall of the Iron Curtain and 20-odd years since Gorbachev instituted glasnost and perestroika, but I still sensed this pressing urge in Yaro to show the world that despite its near thousand year run, the city can be just as modern and hip as any of its European neighbors. Whether it was the Mario’s pizzeria or the posters for the weekend’s clubs and parties posted on a wall that separated the street from a cathedral that was a couple hundreds years old, I felt this strange dichotomy all the time here.

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Russian drivers are that scary. There are practically no lanes on any roads, and also no recognition by most drivers that they are powering a massive machine of metal, gas and rubber and us pedestrians are not. They weave through crosswalks and people as often as possible. Between us, Jaime and I had somewhere around 10 close calls. With that there comes this healthy dose of panic (“I don’t want to die in the middle of a street whose name I can’t pronounce in a small city in Russia nobody has ever heard of”) anytime you step off the sidewalk.

There are also two fun little variations on the traditional red, yellow, green stoplight. Green flashes before turning to yellow, giving drivers the heads-up they need to really floor it to make it through the intersection. And before red turns to green, there’s the intermediary warning of red and yellow, which most drivers seem to see as green regardless of whether you’re still in the sidewalk.

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For the largest country in terms of area, you might be surprised to find out that there’s only about 10 Russian names. Seriously.

For guys there’s Vladimir (Volva for short), Ivan (Vanya), Alexander (Sasha), Dmitry (Dima), Pavel (Pasha) and Nikolai (Kolya).

For ladies there’s even less options. There’s Ykaterina (Katya), Anya, Asya, Maria (Masha).

Honestly, 90% of the Russians I met were named one of those above 10 names.

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Russians always seem to be getting married. Whenever we went out to a museum in Moscow or St. Petes, or even out in Yaroslavl on the weekends we seemed to encounter at least one large, traveling marriage party of twenty people following around the happy couple. We’d go somewhere and there would be a man in a tux and his bride in a white wedding dress taking pictures on the steps of the Hermitage in St. Petes, or laying flowers at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Moscow. And this is in November! I can’t imagine what it’s like in the peak wedding months.
Another note on romance. Anytime I stepped on the escalator in a metro station in Moscow or St. Petes, I was able to find at least two lovebirds in what I nicknamed, the couple pose. The couple pose consists of the woman standing as one normally would on the escalator with the man on the step below, risking life and limb to face her and stare into the eyes of his beau and occasionally steal a kiss. I watched bemused as couples young and old stepped onto the escalator and automatically assumed the position. I worried about the ones who rode the escalator normally.

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We were told by Nadia that Russians spend something like 80% of their income on clothes and fashion accessories. And you can tell. Woman almost always go out for any errand in the city wearing high heels. And I was turned away from a casino in Moscow because I was wearing “sport shoes.”

Megan pointed out that there’s this big discrepancy between the quality of what people wear and the quality of their buildings and cars. At least once a week we saw a car that did not fit with the image of its owner break down in front of our hotel. And every apartment building in Yaroslavl had boarded up balconies and other signs of outward wear and tear.

In that vain, it seems like half the buildings in Yaroslavl are being renovated, reconstructed or repaired. There’s a long way to go, but should be interesting to see what this city looks like when they make some improvements.

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It’s really strange to know that I’ll be saying goodbye to Russia in less than 12 hours. When I thought about the gap year, I got excited for each and every stop, but it was hard to look past that initial two month stay in Yaroslavl, and accordingly most of my preparations seemed to be focused on it too.

And now, it’s over. I’m done with the first stop out of five, and almost a quarter of the gap year in terms of weeks abroad.

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So as promised, here’s what’s coming up next. At noon, Jaime and I will leave Moscow for New York. We’ll spend two days in New York. I’m staying with my sister Michelle who lives there and works as New York Teaching Fellow. Jaime’s mom and older sis are coming to town so he’ll stay with them in a hotel. I’ll probably be pretty jetlagged from the 10 hour flight, but I have the rather ambitious plans in my 49 hours in the Big Apple to go to dinner with Michelle and my cousin Brian, see friends at NYU and Columbia, visit Michelle’s 4th grade classroom at Public School #1, and unload all of my winter clothes on her for her to take back to LA during her Thanksgiving break.

Tuesday afternoon, Jaime and I are headed to Cape Town, South Africa for five weeks! We’ll be doing our second and final CCS volunteering program there. The program doesn’t start until Sunday so we’ll be staying with family friends of a South African friend (Daniel Ozen) until then.

Random side note about South Africa. Whenever I told my people I was going to Russia, the response I got almost unfailingly was somewhere in the neighborhood of “Wow. Interesting.”

Cape Town seemed to generally net the different response of “How fun!” I’m curious to see how close that expectation comes to reality. I had a ton of fun in Russia. I enjoyed my time here, met some great people and would love to come back. But I also am not the average Russian tourist.

I have been fascinated by Russia since I did a non-fiction book report on the history of the Soviet Union in 5th grade. And Russia was included in Jaime’s and my gap year largely due to my urging.

So it’ll be interesting to see how much fun South Africa is compared to Russia. I’m also curious to see how I’ll find the culture and history in the upcoming four countries compared to that of Russia, since I’ll have had no prior interest in them. Promise to keep you all updated.

Ok. Now it’s time for me to go to bed. Have to leave the hotel at 5 am for the five hour trip to Moscow.

Da Svidanya Rossiya!

Playing Catch-up from Cape Town

I’ve gotten lazy. A ton has happened since I last checked in, I’m on a different continent in a brand new hemisphere and I’ve crossed the Atlantic twice just for starters, and maybe because of that I just haven’t had much of a desire to write lately. But it’s time to catch you all up, so I’ll do my best to keep this a manageable length….

New York

I was ecstatic to land at JFK in a way I can’t really describe. I didn’t really feel all that homesick in Russia, so it was a good, unexpected kind of happy when I touched down on American soil. I exchanged pleasantries with the not too pleasant customs agent and made small-talk with a woman waiting next to me at baggage claim. I really missed the ability to strike up a real conversation with a stranger, which I think is one of those big little reasons that Russia never felt like home. New York felt like home instantly.

I headed to my sister Michelle’s apartment and while she distracted me with my American cell phone, my parents burst through her door, my dad filming my reaction to their surprise just like he’s done for every other potentially meaningful moment (and countless trivial ones) since the day I was born.

My mom didn’t believe me that I was surprised, but I swear I was. I knew Jaime’s mom was meeting him in NY for the two day layover, but I personally thought it would be a little ridiculous for my parents to fly all the way across the country and back just to see me for two days. But they also missed me a ton (and I missed them right back) and made it a bigger trip, getting to see Michelle too and stopping to see my sister Karin in Michigan on the way back.

I was real busy over my two days in New York. I got to have some real ethnic food for the first time in almost two months, specifically Mexican (Chipotle!) and Indian food. I worked out in a gym, saw a close friend at NYU twice, and even observed Ms. Alpert’s (Michelle) 4th grade class at PS 1 in the Bronx.

She’s part of this amazing program called New York Teaching Fellows. It was surreal to watch these 10 year olds addressing my sister only four years older than me, only a few months out of college as one of the main authority figures in their lives. I’m so proud of her and her subway e-mails chronicling the highs and lows are a real source of inspiration for my writing.

Watching Michelle, excuse me, watching Ms. Alpert (we got in trouble if we called her Michelle in front of her class) also got me thinking about how fast life goes, how quickly sheltered (at least in my privileged case) student life ends and endless real-world responsibilities (jobs, bills, etc) begin. (Excuse all those parentheticals).

It was really hard to say good-bye to my parents and sister, and harder still to get myself excited for South Africa. But the ticket was booked, so I checked my baggage and my little boy homesickness and boarded the plane for my 17 hours of traveling.

Getting into Cape Town and the Barnett Family

Our CCS South Africa program wouldn’t begin until Saturday and we arrived Wednesday afternoon. So in the meantime Jaime and I stayed with the Barnett family.

After Jaime and I had signed up for the program we debated going back to LA for a few days, but both decided it’d be too short a period to be home for, and it’d be better to get a little used to Cape Town before our program. We were left with the problem of finding a place to stay. Luckily one day, the South African mother of our friend Daniel volunteered to help us out and connected us with the Barnetts. There’s a good few degrees of separation, but Mr. Barnett, the brother of our friend Daniel’s mother’s friend, was willing to host us and that was good enough for us.

Mr. Barnett picked us up from the airport, gave us an impromptu tour driving around the city and then back to his house. I really didn’t do my research before coming so I was surprised to find that Table Mountain is in the middle of the city. Mr. Barnett told us it was once three times its current size, but the winds slowly leveled it so it is now much smaller then it once was and its summit is now completely flat.

We got to the house and Jaime and I were shown to our rooms with our very own bathrooms, a luxury I hadn’t had since September!

The Barnetts were our South African Brady Brunch. The Mr. and Mrs. are two divorcees who met through their sons at school. Between their two previous marriages there was a dizzying array of sons and daughters, belonging to one or the other constantly coming in and out of the house. And the house itself was gorgeous. It was located in one of the more posh areas of Cape Town, Camp’s Bay, nestled between Table Mountain and Lion’s Head Mountain with picturesque views of both. (The latter is named because it slightly resembles a lion lying down. At the opposite end of the mountain is lion’s rump, aka Signal Hill, where right below a cannon called the Noon Gun is fired everyday at, yep, you guessed it, 12 noon).

We went out our first night with one of the many Barnett kids, only mere hours after landing. The only real note of interest from that first night out is our discovery that our impressive first-hand knowledge of the English language isn’t nearly as impressive in an English-speaking country as it was in Russia. So while we are no longer instant celebrities the second we open our mouths, we do now get to have real conversations.

We spent a ton of time during our stay with the Barnetts at a seaside mall called the V&A Waterfront, sometimes going there twice a day. We had lunch while watching the African dance performances, wandered around book stores and strolled (arm in arm) by the ocean.

One of the daughters also dragged us out of bed at 6:30 in the morning to go down to Clifton’s Fourth, one of Cape Town’s many amazing beaches. She was training for a triathlon and was scheduled to do an ocean swim. The beach was absolutely deserted, and the sand was really clean. The Atlantic was damn near freezing so she and I decided to pass, but Jaime ran in while we watched. Just watching him got me cold. But the weather on the whole is really nice. They talk about there being four seasons (rain, wind, sun, and way too hot) in a day, but even the occasional sudden shower beats the constant freezing of Russia.


CCS

Saturday afternoon we were dropped off at the Home-Base. First reaction, very intimidating and overwhelming. And it stayed that way for much of my first week. As irrational as it was, Jaime and I couldn’t help ourselves in imagining CCS South Africa to be CCS Russia in Cape Town complete with South African versions of the same volunteers and staff we got close to in Yaroslavl. And from everything from the weather to the house to the people, we quickly found out that Russia, this is not.

Between Sunday and Saturday I went from the Hotel Kotorosl in Yaroslavl, Russia to my sister’s apartment in New York, to a posh house in Cape Town, to a packed house in a not-nearly-as-nice neighborhood of Cape Town. And there are 17 volunteers here! 17! The most we ever had in Russia was seven and that was only for my first week.

Everybody’s pretty interesting, and it’s fun to find out everybody’s reasons for coming to Africa. We range in age from 18-41 with a bunch of us on the younger side. There’s one girl who also went to CCS Russia and another who plans on organic farming (WWOOFing) in Europe like Jaime and I after the new year. Among the three Canadians and 14 Americans, a bunch are college-aged and are either taking time off during school or just not ready to start.

So after recuperating from being in three continents in four days, and four different beds in six days and meeting everybody, there was a whole new city to explore! And we’ve been doing our best at it. Already in the two weeks since I’ve gotten to Cape Town, I’ve been to Robben Island, hiked up Table Mountain, went on a pseudo-safari, went to a holiday lights street festival and went to St. George’s Cathedral for World AIDS Day.

And Jaime and I are now busy planning a trip to Johannesburg (Jo’burg here) and a five day hiking trek along the Wild Coast of the Eastern Cape. Pictures and stories to come from all that sooner or later.

I think it’s now getting time for me to wrap up this first dispatch from the Rainbow Nation. Tomorrow a bunch of us are going to run in a 10 km race (around 6.2 miles) at night, so I need my rest. It does seem a little silly to say it, but everything here is very different from Russia. And different of course takes some getting used to, but I’m really enjoying myself. Hope everybody had a great Thanksgiving wherever you were! We made dinner here at the CCS Home-Base ourselves, and (with a ton of help from one of the cooks) my garlic mashed potatoes came out alright.

Fun with no sun (Yaroslavl 08)

The Centr concert:


Megan had for some reason bought a cd of a rap group from Moscow named Centr earlier in her stay. We then found out they were coming to Yaroslavl and decided to go to the concert. Before the concert they were playing American rap music, so Jaime, Megan and I sang along loudly and drew stares from the Russians around us. We ended up hanging out with the opening act, a local group from Yaroslavl off-stage, and traded numbers with them at the end of the night, but never did end up hanging out with them.

But then on the train ride back from Moscow, Jaime turned around and shouted “No way!” We looked back and saw that it was one of the guys from the Yaro rap group, so we went over and said hey. He was riding third class like us so his group could clearly be doing better. He did have a different groupie on his arm than the one we saw at the show so apparently there are still some perks when you’re struggling to make it.


http://picasaweb.google.com/alpert.david/CentrConcert#

The Communist Rally:

After buying the tickets for the circus we left the building and noticed a small rally going on across the street. We went to check it out and it turned out to be a communist rally in honor of the October Revolution of 1917 (that actually took place on Nov. 7 ) that thrust the Bolsheviks into power. The rally was a little underwhelming in number, but more than made up for it in spirit. We got free flags, but Jaime was charged 3 rubles (12 cents) by a dirty capitalist for a communist newspaper.


http://picasaweb.google.com/alpert.david/CommunistRally#


Nadia's goodbye:

Nadia was the in-country CCS director for 8 years. At the end of my first week she announced that she’d be leaving her post at the end of October to move to Atlanta with her fiancée. On her last Friday, we had a little goodbye party. Her replacement you’ll see in these pictures as well. Her name is Nathalia.




Soccer game:

We went to a soccer game between the Yaroslavl Sheeneek and the Kazan Rubeen one Saturday afternoon. It was freezing, as always, but still really fun. Sheeneek is similar to the word for tire in Russian, and since 1957 the team has been sponsored by the tire factory in Yaroslavl.

There's a picture in this album, the only picture of any of us volunteers, with a man we befriended named Nik. We were walking around the stadium to join the crazy Yaro fans when Nik stopped us after hearing our English. After a few weeks of people staring at us whenever we spoke English, we were able to anticipate when those stares were going to result in a conversation. So Nik approached us and in his own broken English he informed us that his daughter was studying English and asked us to talk to her on the phone.

He handed me the phone with his daughter on the other end and we talked briefly. She told me to ask her a question, and I asked her about the weather. She said it was fine. I disagreed and told her it was quite chilly. Clearly finding me disagreeable, she asked to talk to her dad again.

Megan then talked to her for a while later while Nik told us about his life. Turns out he was a member of the 109th Airborne Division with the Soviet army and served in Afghanistan from 1982-1985.

http://picasaweb.google.com/alpert.david/TheSoccerGame#


Circus:

Last Saturday night, as a last hurrah for Liz and Virginia (a middle-aged British volunteer who came here for two weeks) we went to the circus. It was a ton of fun. I was disappointed to miss out on kangaroos and bears riding motorcycles which apparently were in the last circus.



The Halloween Party

The night before Halloween we were the special guests at an English language school’s Halloween party. It was fun, if a little strange, due to the fact it was more a cultural lesson on Halloween in America as opposed to an actual Halloween party. We mainly judged contests. The teacher also corrected her students on the pronunciation of “witches,” inexplicably telling them it was witch-ers instead of the right way they had been pronouncing it.

http://picasaweb.google.com/alpert.david/HalloweenPartyAtStudioYes#

Random pics:

Finally, here are other random pictures from my 7 weeks in Russia.

Second trip to Moscow

Second Weekend in Moscow

Traveling alone was a rollercoaster- I had the biggest thrills and the lowest dips, usually one following the other. It first struck me on my Halloween train to Moscow that I was going to a foreign city in a foreign country with a foreign language where I could count the number of friends I had on no fingers. Granted I can read Russian, but the only times I can understand what I’m reading is when the words are English cognates, or when it miraculously fits with my toddler-level vocabulary. On the train I was more exhilarated than anything else by the prospect of flying completely solo for four days.

The first day did not disappoint. I set out with a destination (Cathedral of Christ the Savior) hazily in mind and encouraged myself to take any detour along the way that seemed even remotely interesting. Then after getting to the cathedral and touring the ground floor for a little while, I went to the underground museum. I sat there for over an hour and spent some time thinking about and jotting down my own thoughts on religion, something I’ve been meaning to do for a long time.

I was completely and absolutely free like I have felt at no other time in my life. This gap year has already removed (at least temporarily) all the old burdens of school and work. But taking a break from my CCS program also ridded me of the responsibility to prepare for each volunteer placement, and even more importantly of any ties or accountability to any other human being. I was completely alone. And it felt in a strange way, totally liberating.

I woke up every morning and could do anything I wanted. Hell, I didn’t even have to wake up if I didn’t want to. (Now it’s starting to sound more like college). But the feeling of absolute freedom was a lot bigger than sleep. Each day was one hundred percent mine.

But then the sun went down on my first day and all the tourist attractions closed. And I didn’t know what do with myself, with all those heaps and heaps of freedom. I ended up back on Arbat Street where my hostel was, for all my Angelenos think of 3rd street promenade with the artists and performers from the Santa Monia Pier. I saw a large crowd gathered around one performer and went up to watch with them. It turned out to be a comedian. After a few jokes, he had the crowd laughing hysterically. The only words I had understood were “McDonalds” and “cheeseburger.” I walked away. I was completely alone. And it felt depressingly lonely.

But there was no use wallowing in it. I had dinner at Hard Rock Café, (worst burger I’ve had in a long time), and then went out to find the bar, Propaganda, I had gone to the week before with Jaime and Megan. On the way out of the metro, I stopped a group of girls for directions. Luckily some of them spoke English. Unluckily, they did not know how to get to Propaganda. So instead they said I could go with them. After trying a few different clubs we ended up at one called Sorry Babushka for the night.

Now some of you may have received some misinformation (from friends, family, possibly your very own ears) that I am one of the top 5 worst singers ever to walk this earth. But I’ll have you know that when the mic was shoved in my face after the mc caught me signing Foreigner- Cold as Ice with him, there were no bottles thrown at me. The main problem was that the rapper chose to give me the microphone right after the chorus ended, just in time for the second verse to start. And I did not know anything but the chorus. But I winged it fine (read the music was loud enough so that nobody had to hear me) and my time in the spotlight at Sorry Babushka ended without incident or applause.

We left the club around 2:30 and then headed to T.G.I. Friday’s, one of their favorite places to grab a late-night bite. I’m pretty sure it was my first time eating at a Friday’s. Pretty strange to go to such a quintessentially American restaurant for the first time and see Russian on the menu. Thankfully the menu was also in English, and the chicken tenders did not disappoint.

I met up with the girls and one of their boyfriends again on Monday afternoon. The boyfriend raps, and I got to listen to a few of his songs. The lyrics were good, but his English pronunciation was a little off mark. He told me that people thought his song “God of the stage” was instead “God of the sex,” which is different but I guess works too. It was pretty cool to talk American music with a Muscovite my age.

They showed me around the city, we stopped at a café for a late lunch and went ice skating. It was probably the second time I’ve ice skated in the last 10 years, but I made it out only falling once and didn’t embarrass myself.

I spent Tuesday, a national holiday for the Day of Union, at the Victory Park dedicated to the Great Patriotic War (WWII). And then I went back to Hard Rock to pick up my credit card, which might have been sort of, kind of misplaced for the weekend, and caught my train back to Yaroslavl. The rollercoaster of elation at my freedom, and depression at my loneliness continued throughout the weekend so I was very ready to get back to a more even-keeled Yaroslavl. Still a fun, successful trip.

First weekend in Moscow

First Weekend in Moscow

My first weekend in Moscow also marked my first “real” hostel experience. (In St. Petes Jaime and I just shared a double that was pretty similar to our hotel room in Yaroslavl). My first weekend when I went with the three other volunteers (Megan, Liz and Jaime), we stayed at the biggest hostel in town, appropriately named Hostel Godzilla. There were multiple co-ed dorms of 8 on each floor, meaning that on some busier weekends 30-40 people share two bathrooms and one shower. Luckily, the hostel wasn’t too busy. We still were able to meet some interesting people.

In no particular order- we met a New Zealand couple in their 20s who had just finished traveling through Europe and were leaving on the long Trans-Siberian railway. Basically you sit on a train for six straight days and watch as barren Siberia passes outside the window. Then you get off for a break for a couple days and get back on to finish in any number of places such as Beijing or Vladivostok. (Russians say they don’t get the appeal of the trek. I agree with the Russians).

Staying in our dorm was a world traveler from Vancouver who frequently goes on long trips to a number of places for up to two years, living and working in different places. He named India as the toughest place to live in because of the dirty squalor and the profound cultural differences. He also mentioned that he hasn’t known any foreigner to stay longer than a month and escape without getting sick. Also in our dorm was a group of middle-aged Belarusians one of whom had an impressive collection of beer labels from around the world. Unfortunately one of the Belarusians both snored like a walrus and reeked like he ran into bed straight from an hour on the treadmill.

Finally there was the gay Cuban dancer who now makes his home in Moscow. I practiced some of my rusty Spanish with him, and he offered to get Jaime and I work visas, not twenty minutes after meeting us. I was intrigued but decided I better save any shady business deals for my second trip to Moscow.

We spent our first full day in Red Square and got to go see Lenin’s Mausoleum, where Vladimir Illyich Lenin’.s body has laid embalmed in state since his death in 1924. This is the case despite the explicitly expressed desire by Lenin before his death, and his widow afterwards, to be given a proper burial with his mother in St. Petersburg. (Pretty loud and clear example of the power of the state over the individual during the Soviet-era, especially when propaganda purposes could be served).

Before entering the mausoleum we had to first wait in a long line in order to get in another line to check cameras, purses, phones and bags. I decided to be productive while I was in line and give my mother a call. We were talking for a while when the line started moving, I talked distracted on the phone, people started pushing and shoving ahead of me and I found myself stuck on one side of the crowd control fence, with Liz, Megan and Jaime on the other. I pointed them out to the guard and tried to explain that they were my friends, he yelled “Nyet!” at me, I yelled back at him, and then with no hesitation he gave me a slight lovetap on my upper thigh with his flat nightstick. I was absolutely furious, but all I could do was stand and stew there until they let more people in.

As for the mausoleum itself, it was beyond impressive. First we walked past graves of men who contributed significantly to the Soviet cause, and then we were led into the actual mausoleum. It’s very well designed to impart upon the viewer the austerity and solemnity of it all. The interior of the building is all floor-to-ceiling black linoleum, sparsely lit with expressionless guards posted at every turn to point you (silently) in the right direction in case you have trouble following a slow, large crowd of people.

And then finally after quite a few turns as you progress slowly underground, there’s V. I. Lenin himself. He’s dressed in a smart suit, tucked into bed so only his torso and up is showing, all in a see-through glass case that the tour makes a lap around. My first reaction was the predictable feeling that “this can’t be real. He can’t be real.”

It was hard to fathom first that here lay the body of a man who once thought and breathed and lived as simply as any other person. And even more, this man was so important in the course of history, sparking a revolution and changing the fate of nations.

On the way out we passed by more guards whose job it is to just stand there. This might honestly be one of the most boring jobs in the world. At least the guards at Buckingham Palace get to stand out in daylight, and have people try to distract or entertain them, but these guys spend their shifts in dark corners underground and unacknowledged, serving a man and a cause that was swept from this country 17 years before. We then headed back outside and walked past the graves of Soviet heroes and former premiers including Andropov, Chernenko, Brezhnev and good ol’ mass-murdering Joe Stalin. (Nikita Khrushchev is buried in a less respected cemetery elsewhere in Moscow, because he was forced from office by a coup).

Other highlights from my first weekend in Moscow:
• In Red Square (Krasnaya Ploschad)
o Walked around the majestic St. Basil’s, practically every inch of which was painted in a dizzying array of colors which for some reason reminded me of Willy Wonka and his chocolate factory
o Walked through G.U.M., (pronounced goom and stands for State Dept Store) which has upscale stores like Louis Vutton, Dior, Zara and my favorite- a gigantic chocolate store.
• In the Kremlin Jaime and I walked around Cathedral Square and hustled through the Armoury museum, the treasure trove of the tsars.
• Went to Gorky Park and rode a roller coaster in the amusement park there
• Ate a delicious dinner at a Georgian restaurant
• Upon the recommendation of a Londoner staying at our hostel, went to a bar/club behind the old KGB headquarters appropriately named Propaganda. Taking his advice, we approached the bouncers speaking English. Here’s the actual transcript of our conversation.
Bouncer has just bounced the two guys in front of us. He says something to us in Russian somewhere along the lines of, “You can’t get in/ We’re full/ You’re underdressed/Leave.”
Me (in English): What?
Bouncer (also in English): Where are you from?
Me: Los Angeles.
Bouncer: USA Today?
Me: Los Angeles Times.
Bouncer: Go ahead.

• On Sunday we went to Ismalovsky Park which has an amazing swap meet, open air market. Spent the entirety of the morning, walking around and enjoying the atmosphere. I bought one fur hat.
• Jaime and I separated from Megan and Liz to check out VDNKh, the old Soviet propaganda mall, which is now just a boring old, regular mall.
• We also squeezed in a visit to the Museum of Contemporary History which might’ve been more enjoyable if there was more English. I still was fascinated by the little bits of propaganda that remain almost 20 years after the fall of the Iron Curtain.
o The one example that stuck with me was from the exhibit on World War II (the Great Patriotic War to Russians), that spoke about how the victory of the Red Army over the Nazis was due in part to Stalin, the bravery of the Red Army and the spirit of the Soviet worker back home.
• Finally before leaving, Jaime and I, after a mix-up, ended up with a whole rotisserie chicken wrapped for some reason in a tortilla and no utensils. So we did what any two sensible young men would do. We sat underneath the statue of Lenin at our train station and between chilling gusts of wind, ate the entire chicken with our hands.

Trips to Moscow and what I'm missing at home

The ticket lady at the train station laughed so hard at me she started crying. I laughed with her too, which I guess means I was also laughing at myself. We were both a little overwhelmed by the massive language barrier, even though I had the foresight to write down the dates and type of ticket I wanted for the ride to and from Moscow. And eventually I did get the tickets, making it back in time to the hotel for the start of dinner.

So I’ll be headed back to Moscow (Mockba in Russian) this weekend for 4 days. Yes, I do mean back. I spent last weekend there with Jaime, Liz and Megan. This time though, I’m headed off alone. Tuesday, Election Day back in the States, is a national holiday here. Not entirely sure which holiday, but regardless I asked to take Monday off and am going to get a longer look at Moscow. We’ll see how traveling and living alone goes. I’m sure I’ll have a few stories to report.

To change gears, a couple things I’m missing from back home:

First of all, the Lakers. The Lakers won the season opener over the Portland Trail Blazers by 20, and my only knowledge of this comes from an ESPN.com recap. Not sure, if I would’ve gotten to see the game at William & Mary, but nevertheless it is one of the first openers that I haven’t watched from the comfort of my couch in quite a few years. Should be a fantastic season, and I’m going to do my best to keep up with it.

Next, of course is the election. As some of you may know, I can at times be quite the political junkie, so it’s hard to be watching such a historic election from such a distance. Although I do my best to keep up to date when I go online and read articles on slate.com and cnn voraciously. But still, I miss the media frenzy that is building up as we approach Election Day, and the media coverage of the issues that really matter to voters- like Joe the Plumber’s household income. I will be voting soon for the very first time. I’ll take some pictures of the big event, before I fax my ballot stateside.

Finally, Halloween. It’s not celebrated here, but we’ve been trying our best to do Halloween themed-crafts at the Hospital for Kids and we’re also headed to a Halloween party for 12-14 year olds at a local English language school tomorrow night. And Friday, Jaime and I are trying to throw a Halloween party at the Hospital for Kids. Halloween night, Friday, will be spent on a train and getting settled in my hostel in Moscow. Not perfect, but anything beats my last Halloween which I spent finishing up college apps.



And to wrap up this post here's a picture of one of the recent chess matches between Jaime and I on my brand new set that I got in St. Petes!

"If peeing in your pants is cool, consider me Miles Davis'"

Monday afternoon my volunteer placement was the shelter. Megan and I brought stuffed chickens made out of cloth with pipe cleaners for feet and googly eyes for the craft. But we were with very little kids, most under 7, so we ended up doing most of the work.

It was my first time at the shelter, and I was particularly fond of a little 3 year-old boy named Sasha. He ran away from me initially, screaming his little head off, but then he warmed up to me. Later on after we finished the craft, I was playing with him on the rug, tickling him while the young girls were playing with Barbie dolls, when I accidentally set my hand on a wet spot of the rug. It has been raining on and off in Yaroslavl for the past couple of weeks, so I really didn’t think anything of it.

A few minutes later though, still playing around with Sasha, he got closer to me and I caught a whiff of the unmistakable, putrid stench of urine. I alerted the translator with us, and she looked for the counselor who had apparently just left the room. One of the older girls asked the translator what was wrong and she admitted that Sasha needed a change of pants.

At this point Sasha, who I had left on the rug when I went to talk to the translator, stood up and started examining his pants, and I’m pretty sure it just dawned on him in that moment. He made a sad, pouty face and Megan started taunting me, saying that I made a poor, helpless toddler wet himself.

Sasha eventually got changed, came back in the room with his pants around his ankles. Not noticing the pants, I gave him a wave and shouted out “privyet Sasha” (hi) and he gave a happy wave back, flashing the room in the process. But Sasha was changed and all was good again.

Pictures!

I'm not sure if this will work out. I spent a ton of time tinkering and trying to figure out a way to get a Picasa web album to upload to Blogger, but I'll have to settle for providing you all with the link.

http://picasaweb.google.com/alpert.david/Yaroslavl#

Hope you don't have to log into anything to view it. Just a small taste and if it works, I'll make more albums later.

Other highlights from the trip to St. Petersburg

Outside of our frantic exit, the rest of our time in St. Petersburg last weekend was a blast. We stayed a block away from Nevsky Prospekt, the main boulevard in St. Petes that is often compared to Champs d’elysee in Paris. Our hostel, recommended to us by the Aussie sister volunteers, was nice and clean, although the entryway reeked like the volunteer placements.

We were also a block away from the world famous (and enormous) Hermitage museum which we visited on our first day. I was enchanted by all the old rooms in the Winter Palace, and loved hearing about all their former uses under the tsars. And it was amazing to see the Hall of 1812 commemorating the Russian victory in the second Napoleonic War. I got to see a massive painting of the Battle of Borodino which was a major focus in War and Peace, and scan the wall with portraits of generals for names I recognized from the novel. Elsewhere in the museum I found a new favorite artist, Hubert Robert, who painted scenes featuring Roman architecture.

After a pasta dinner at the hostel cooked by two recent college grads from Boulder, Jaime, Liz and I headed out to the Prostata museum, famous for supposedly housing Rashputin’s 30 cm member. Alongside the exhibit were doctors offices (gynecology, urology and proctology) which just added to the overall weirdness of the museum. Personally, I wouldn’t recommend it if you’re ever in St. Petes. We left the museum in under 20 minutes looking for some St. Petersburg’s nightlife of the non-strip club variety.

We ended up at a bar called Belgrad (Russian for Belgrade), so named because it is a combination of the two proprietors’ last names. We hung out on the dance floor where the dj was playing all sorts of American hits including the great MC Hammer. The one casualty from the night was my camera, which I dropped on its lens trying to take a picture of the crowded floor where Jaime’s beanie was lost. But not to fear. The camera is currently in a repair shop in Yaro, and I should have it back sometime this week.

We got back to the hostel after 1 and headed back out shortly after with two German girls who wanted to see the bridges. St. Petersburg is famous for its low bridges which are drawn up and down at night, generally between 2 and 5 am, to allow ships to pass through. We didn’t catch any bridges in the act, but we did take a good number of jumping pictures, one or two them even successfully, with the open bridge in the background.

On Sunday we went to the Russian museum. It was nice, but I had a sore throat so I wasn’t in much of a mood to tour a museum. We also headed out to the Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood, St. Petersburg’s famous church built on the spot where Tsar Alexander II was murdered by terrorists. It has some absolutely gorgeous onion domes, one, a smooth and solid gold, another with swirls of white, blue and green, and a third, speckled, pointy bits of white, blue, green and gold.

Then in a maze of souvenir stands behind the church I bargained a painted, Soviets vs. Americans chess set down from 4000 rubles to 1500 rubles ($60). I felt proud of myself for capturing a little bit of my dad’s haggling magic before talking it over with Jaime and realizing that it was probably worth only 15 or 20 bucks.

Sunday night we headed to a ballet at the Mariinsky Theater. It was ridiculously difficult to find, but we made it and it was pretty entertaining. I was feeling sick still and a little tired, so I might’ve taken a little nap here or there, but it was still a cool experience. And then afterwards we happened upon a Mexican restaurant only a few minutes after we had talked about how we were craving it. It was far from the best Mexican food I’ve had, Baja Fresh still takes the cake, but it was a great change from the Hotel Kotorosl food.

Monday we journeyed to the Peter and Paul fortress. We were feeling a little cheap so we didn’t go into any of the museums, but decided instead to wander the grounds. And then we got what might have been the personal highlight of the trip.

We were walking outside the fortress, between the stone walls and some body of water, when we noticed old men stripping down to speedos. I won’t deny them that the sun was out, but it couldn’t have been warmer than 40 degrees. One of the translators had warned me that it was an old pastime of Russians to tan standing up, because they believed it gave them a fuller tan. Still in near-freezing weather it’s something that must be seen to be believed. I approached two of the bold tanners and asked for a picture with them. Thankfully they were only joking when they insisted I strip down as well, but they waited an awkward beat before telling me they were kidding.

I really loved my time in St. Petersburg, and wished I could’ve stayed longer. It’d be a fun city to study abroad in, especially if I take Russian at William + Mary.

The St. Petes (Marathon) Sprint

I stood at the counter waiting impatiently while the cashier purposefully (and slowly) tied up the to-go bags containing Jaime’s and my orders of chicken schwarma and rice. After a couple more good knots she handed the bag over and Jaime, Liz and I headed outside of the dive restaurant and back to the metro area to try to find our train station. We were heading back to CCS and Yaro after a fun and action-packed 3 day weekend in St. Petersburg.

We searched to get our bearings, but couldn’t find the train station that was supposed to be a block away from the subway stop. We had a half hour til the train left, plenty of time to sit and have a leisurely meal before boarding. But first we needed to find our train.

The first woman we stopped mentioned something about crossing a canal, so we thanked her and left to ask someone else. The next man said something along the lines of “which train station?” which probably should’ve set a couple alarm bells ringing, but we just decided instead to split up and ask 3 new strangers for directions.

The girl I found kept saying something about the metro even after I showed her my train ticket, so I took out the metro map a station employee had for some reason given me earlier in the day when I was asking her if the station we were at had a bathroom. The girl looked at the map and pointed to another metro stop. Two stops, and one line transfer away. And the girl said in a mixture of Russian and broken English that our train station was there. Damn.

Now’s as good a time as any to pause the story and give some background before I speed it up. So how did we end up at Sennaya Ploshad instead of Markoskaya? Earlier in the day on our to the Peter + Paul Fortress, I had commented that the metro stop we were at was the same one we needed to go to later to catch our 5:24 train. Jaime asked if I was sure, and I was pretty confident considering it had been only 50-something hours since we had arrived from Yaroslavl at the same station, so I told him yes.

Another thing to note: Before we had left the hostel to head to the train station, we had gotten into a little argument. Jaime and Liz wanted to leave early, and I said it was much too early and wanted to take advantage of the free internet at Hostel Zimmer Nice one last time. So they headed to the bakery across the street while I did the customary Gmail, Facebook and CNN check. (GObama!) So yes it was my fault that we were both at the wrong station, and that we hadn’t gotten there ten minutes earlier. But there was no time for fingerpointing or apologies. There was only time to run.

Liz checked her watch. 29 minutes til our train left. We dashed back into the metro station, hurriedly bought 3 tickets and ran down the escalator. We caught our breath on the first metro ride and reassured each other that we would make it, because with nowhere to sleep in St. Petes and CCS expecting us for volunteer placements at 9:30 the next morning, we really had no other choice.

Off the first train, some more running and we dealt seamlessly with the tricky leg of our journey back, the line transfer. We shouted the turns at each other as we finessed our way through the rush hour crowd, arriving to the right platform with only seconds to space before the doors on our subway closed and our last chance zoomed down the line. One prepubescent boy squeezed on after us and had to yank his backpack in after the doors closed on it.

Subway riders are used to people sprinting down the escalator to catch a train. They are not used to people sprinting up the escalator to get out of the station. But they made way when we came barreling up the never-ending escalator as we shouted “EEZ-VEE-NEE-TYEH” (excuse me) and “zhe-de”(train) in response to their startled stares.

We got up to the top of the station and in my haste to get out, I smashed my left knee on the bodybuilder-heavy glass door. Too much adrenaline pumping to feel any pain at the moment, but I’d feel it later. We sprinted now giving every last drop of speed and energy we had left. I stopped to ask a policeman for directions and between the panting and heaving I was just able to get out “gde zhede vakzal?” He pointed dead ahead and I wound up and shot off again down the packed street.

Now I love weaving through a dense crowd. During cross country races, the only thing that gave me a bigger thrill than quietly hunting down a fellow runner and blasting past him was successfully executing a difficult weave cutting in and out of the small, millisecond gaps.

But all my previous running and weaving experience had taken place in short running shorts. Never before had I run with a heavy backpack on my shoulders and a duffel bag weighing at least 10 pounds in my hand. (Jaime and Liz had packed smarter and lighter, limiting themselves to just a backpack).

I was able to move the duffel pretty easily, passing it from hand to hand and lifting it above the head of a waddling toddler girl as I whizzed by. No as much luck with the backpack. Forgetting it was on my back, I turned sideways to try to thread my profile through a miniscule gap. Slam! I hit a helpless woman with the side of the backpack. I continued running and shouted an apology (eez-vee-nee-tyeh or sorry) five strides later when I had fully processed what had happened.

And I continued shouting eezveentyeh as I booked it down the crowded street. One image that was indelibly seared into my memory is the snapshot of two women yelping and turning to clutch each other like something out of a cartoon as I ran past. I also thought for a moment about dropping some rubles into the hands of a paraplegic beggar, more for the good karma, I’m ashamed to admit, than out of any philanthropic urges, but I decided that I didn’t have time to stop.

Finally, I rounded a corner and saw the train station. I had completely lost sight of Jaime and Liz, so I stopped and shouted, “It’s here! It’s here!” into the crowd of Russians as my heart pounded overtime in my chest. I caught sight of Jaime and frantically waved him over, but he said Liz couldn’t run anymore and I noticed Liz trailing him, winded and beat.

They caught up and after some wild scampering around the station, Jaime found our train. We got on and collapsed on our shelf-sized beds that would be home for the next 12 hours. We had made it with about 5 minutes to spare. We started dripping sweat, our overworked and overheated bodies no longer cooled by the 40 degree weather outside. But we’d wash up later.

We fell to laughing and laughing and couldn’t stop. And then we started in on the delicious schwarma feast that Jaime had been running with the whole time. The knots that the cashier had tied in the bags luckily prevented the loss of any chicken, although all the food had been shoved to one side of the to-go containers. Still, it was the best schwarma I’ve had yet.

P.S. Sorry again to the woman I hit with my backpack!

At peace with War and Peace

So that is that. 1386 pages later I am done with both an epoch and an epic. I brought my sister Linda’s copy of War and Peace everywhere with me with the intent of finishing it before setting off for Russia. It saw the beach, a trip to Mexico (much to the amusement of the friends I traveled with), a trip to Cooperstown, countless car rides and lazy intervals between naps on the green bean bag in the playroom at home. But I wasn’t able to finish it before leaving and had no space to pack it, so I had to sadly leave for the gap year without having absorbed the last few morsels of Count Leo Tolstoy’s wisdom.

Once in Yaro, Jaime came to the rescue by pointing out that the CCS collection of books left by prior volunteers included a copy of War and Peace, which for the uninitiated charts the lives of five families of the Russian aristocracy through the two Napoleonic wars of 1805 and 1812. I stole it into our hotel room and 3 weeks later, I’m finally done.

The coolest moments to be reading the book were when real life intersected with the epic novel; the Russian army at war with Georgia in 2008 as I read about the Russian army attempting to repulse the French invaders in 1812, Tolstoy describing the Rostov family fleeing a burning Moscow for Yaroslavl, seeing the hall of 1812 dedicated to the victory over Napoleon in the Hermitage museum, and two statues at a park of Generals Barclay de Tolly and commander-in-chief Kutuzov in St. Petersburg.

If not the most entertaining, it was by the far most important book I’ve ever read. (But it was also definitely very enjoyable). Tolstoy masterfully paints a panoramic portrait of Russian life at the time, switching seamlessly from discussion of the day-to-day life of his fictional characters to his philosophy on the historical presentation of Napoleon and Tsar Alexander I.

And it is the latter of the two focuses, Tolstoy’s philosophizing, that makes me say the book is so important to me. The last 40 pages of the book, part II of the epilogue, were as dense as any textbook. Using simple examples to illustrate his points, the author lays out his beliefs in turn on the greatness and indescribable power ascribed to mere men like Napoleon by the historians of his day, the constant tug-of-war between free will (conscience) and the laws of necessity (reason), and the forces (hint: not great men or ideas alone) that move nations.

I want to end with a few quotes/excerpts that struck me as good enough to write down.

From the epilogue part II: All knowledge is simply bringing the essence of life under the laws of reason.

On the supposed greatness of men like Napoleon: And it never enters anyone’s head that to admit a greatness, immeasurable by the rule of right and wrong, is but to accept one’s own nothingness and immeasurable littleness.

Count Pierre Bezuhov asking the bigger questions in life: “What is wrong? What is right? What should one love and what should one hate? What is life? What is death? What is the power that controls it all? he asked himself. And there was no answer to any of these questions, except the one illogical reply that in no way answered them. This reply was: “One dies and it’s all over. One dies and either finds out about everything or ceases asking.”

Village of sweetness Part 3

I’ve said since I was in the first grade that I would one day like to be the president of the United States. (And I’m fully aware that such a brazen admission of ambition on the internet could one day be used against me in a campaign). But I’ve also said more recently that I’d like to one day live in a town where everybody knows each other’s name. And I think back again to a piece in a 2005 copy of the New Yorker which is my only theft to date, by Ian Frazier called “Out of Ohio’” Frazier was looking back fondly on his childhood in the small town of Hudson, Ohio and between the names, stories and anecdotes he described small-town living as “unfairly sweet.”

Before leaving on this gap year, I wrote my own 6 page tribute to my Los Angeles and my upbringing that tried to capture the bits and pieces that were truly unfairly sweet, before my memories washed away in a sea of nostalgia. Something about this small village stole me right back to driving on the 101, to my mind wandering and thinking about my childhood and my city, to sitting in the waiting room at the doctor’s office and reading Frazier’s article for the first time.

And I know that my afternoon there wasn’t an accurate portrayal of what life is like there. I know that despite the homegrown lunch feast, the villagers aren’t self-sufficient. (I asked). I know that the villages’ residents have their own problems, issues and secrets, that with all the young people moving out and into the cities, they really aren’t at all removed from the hustle-bustle of urban life. I know that life there isn’t nearly as pure and simple and sweet as it seemed to me this afternoon.

But none of that knowledge stops me from thinking about giving up all future ambitions, presidential and otherwise, sinking into anonymity and moving to a tiny village whose name I can’t pronounce, an hour outside of a small city, five hours northeast of the capital of Russia. And that’s why when Nikolai’s van started pulling away, I was sad to leave.

Village of sweetness Part 2

After we finished with a few cups of tea, we headed outside to tour the village’s cathedral. The whole region of villages consists of somewhere around 300 people, little more than my graduating high school class, but the villagers in one village still built a massive cathedral in the middle of the 18th century. It is shaped like a ship and goes from West to East, just like the Volga River it was built parallel to, and has a summer cathedral with a large tower, a winter cathedral, and a bell tower. It is so impressive that these villagers sank so much time, effort and money into building such a beautiful building, especially when one considers how very modest their own homes are in comparison.

The cathedral is surrounded by a graveyard on all four sides with paths cut in between. There’s a grave for a 7 year-old at one spot, and a little ways away, Jaime noticed that another grave claims that its owner lived to be 121, from1857-1978.

We first entered the summer cathedral, which had some frescoes still faintly visible on its walls. They began renovating this cathedral in 2000. We then entered the former winter cathedral, which made the summer cathedral look fully functioning by comparison. The winter cathedral had dirt in place of a floor, wood and other construction materials in piles strewn everywhere, and little to suggest this was once a house of worship.

The current winter cathedral was next door. It was very small, and we stayed in there for only a moment before heading up the many rickety wooden ladders to the top of the bell tower. From the top of the tower we had a panoramic view of the flat Russian plains. For some reason Willa Cather’s O Pioneers jumped into my head as I was taking panoramic shots of the prairie.

On our way down the wooden ladders, I thought about the faith and devotion that went into the bricks and clay and egg-based mortar of this building. And I thought more and decided that this cathedral in some ways has just as much religious significance as the Sistine Chapel or the Western Wall in Jerusalem.

We spent some time in the backyard of the house where we ate lunch picking different kinds of round blue berries, eating them and spitting out the big seeds. And after a few of us took turns in the outhouse, we headed to the lake named ram’s horn in Russian that divided one village from another. We played a little with the well that many villagers still use for fresh water, and then we crossed the wooden planked bridge to go to the other town.

While walking along the main road in the other town, a man shouted at us. Nadia answered him in Russian and we kept walking, thinking the exchange over. But the old, unshaven and red-faced man followed us out of his garden and kept talking. Nadia translated that he remembered Nadia from one of her previous volunteer groups, and trusted her, so we were invited into his house. We went in, all the volunteers exchanging excited and confused glances, and the man showed us his massive stove that heated the entire house. Nadia explained that it was so big that you could sleep on it when it got really cold in the winter.

The man, who we later found out was named Alexander, posed in front of the stove for pictures. Then to no one’s surprise explained that he was drunk and had been celebrating a friend’s birthday for the last three days. In short order Alexander mentioned that his wife was in the hospital, that Americans and Russians should be friends, that his father died in the war and nobody knows where he is buried. Through the course of our stay in his house he added that people are easier to recognize in beards, and repeatedly challenged Nadia on her translations despite knowing no English.

He then offered to play us a song on his accordion. While he went to look for it, coming in and out of the kitchen repeatedly, we played with one of his cats, who Meg nicknamed Circles, because he kept walking around in circles. Another cat came in as two dogs barked outside, and Alexander finally returned with the accordion. He sat down and played us a few songs, sometimes singing boisterously. Eventually, Nadia told him it was time for his last song and we made our escape.

Village of sweetness Part 1

We just got back from our Wednesday cultural trip to one of the villages about an hour outside Yaroslavl, and I had to sit down right away to capture my thoughts before they escaped me. So now I’ve set my iPod to play RJD2- Ghostwriter on repeat and I’m ready to write…

We all fell asleep on the ride over and I was woken up by the jolting bumps of the road turning from the usual sloppily paved variety to dirt. We got out of Nikolai’s van with him yawning at us and mocking us and went into a wooden home from the 19th century where our lunch feast was set out for us. There was borscht, potatoes with mushrooms, whole pieces of fish (head, fins and all), beet salad, small herring, chili, white bread, dark bread, rolls stuffed with potato and cabbage, apples, sweet cream cheese frosted rolls and candy all set out for us. And all of it came from the village of Peter and Paul.

The fish had been caught that day. The vegetables were grown in the ladies’ gardens. The breads were baked by the lad y who was our tour guide and her friends who helped her out earlier that morning.

We sat and just ate and ate and ate for probably an hour. Nikolai joked that it was rude to leave a table without eating anything on it. And I joked back to our 71 year-old driver that it was the responsibility of the eldest to finish what was left. The beet soup borscht which had tasted so awful back at the hotel yesterday was delicious today. I ate all of my potatoes and half a plate more and wasn’t at all bothered by the mushrooms. I even dared to try the fish, picking at the blackened skin and scales with my hands like I was told to and spitting out the bones. Nadia told us that workers in villages like this were typically judged by how much and how well they ate. Christine commented that she had never seen me eat like this. And we ate some more. It was the perfect last meal before fasting for Yom Kippur tonight and tomorrow.

Random stories from the first couple of days

From the section Cultural Differences, the award for weirdest phrase in my Russian phrasebook goes to…

“I don’t mind watching, but I’d prefer not to participate.”

***

I came down a few minutes late for lunch on Saturday and was greeted by the normally silent and stoic waiters following me with a cell phone camera. They let me walk into the wrong dining hall where the wedding was being set up and then followed me on foot into the alternative dining hall. They said something in Russian to me and when they realized I only spoke English, the guy holding the Sony Ericcson camera phone told me in English to say, “I love Russia” into the camera.

After obliging and finally being seated at the table with the remaining 4 volunteers, the longest tenured volunteer explained that during parties it is customary for the waiting staff to drink with the guests, and the guests are even offended if they don’t. Apparently our waiter got started a little early.

He later came back after being reprimanded by his supervisor and apologized in broken English, introduced himself as Andre, and proceeded to offer me some vodka.

***

One kid, Kiril, at the Hospital for Kids winks almost constantly at all the volunteers. Don’t know why, or what he means by it, but I’ve stopped questioning it and just wink back.

***

Although we’ve yet to hear it yet, the old volunteers informed us that Akon- Smack That used to be a staple of the breakfast mix in the hotel’s restaurant. The music in the restaurant deserves a post all its own a little later. We’ve been trying to keep track of every song we recognize.

Had some McDonald's today

Most delicious meal of the trip so far, even though it was about an hour after lunch. 9 piece Chicken Mcnuggets, medium fries, large Diet Coke and a vanilla ice cream with some caramel topping. Now we just walked to a free internet cafe called Vanilla Sky on the bank of the Volga River. I had some green tea and Jaime had some salmon sushi. The opposite bank of the river has a ton of trees on it and it serves for a really nice view as the Sun is going down.

Week 1 update Part 2: The CCS Program and the people I work with

Before reading this post, scroll down to read Week 1 update Part 1.

The CCS program

Cross-Cultural Solutions Russia has been operating for 8 years in Yaroslavl. Our director is Nadia, who announced on Friday much to everyone’s surprise that she will be leaving at the end of October to move to Atlanta with her fiancée. We have 3 Russian translators, Olga, Katya and Asya, who come with us to our different volunteer placements and 2 drivers, Vladimir and Nikolai who take us to our placements and cultural activities.

We wake up on weekdays to shower and eat breakfast by 9:30. At 9:30 we leave for our first volunteer placements, and we are typically there for 2 hours. We come back for lunch at the hotel at 1, and go out to our second placements at either 2:45 or 3:45. We come back and unpack our bags for dinner, also in the hotel, at 7. The schedule changes for our Russian lessons twice a week, Monday’s cultural lecture and Wednesday’s cultural excursion. Last Wednesday we went to Rostov, another city in the Golden Ring that is famous for its enamel artwork. On Monday we’ll get to hear a lecture about Russian fairy tales. Weekends and nights are free for us to travel and go out into the city, respectively.

Volunteer stays in Yaroslavl can range from 3 weeks to 11. There were 3 volunteers who were here when Jaime, the two other new volunteers and I got here last Sunday. The 2 Australian sisters in their mid-twenties, Mish and Vera, had been traveling around Europe for 6 months. They left on Friday for home, but Jaime and I plan to see them when we head to Australia in January. The other old volunteer is Meg from Seattle. She is doing a study-abroad program here through her small college and will be with CCS for 11 weeks, leaving the same day as Jaime and me.

Liz from Kentucky and Christine the schoolteacher grandmother from the UK, both started the same day as Jaime and I. Liz will be here for 6 weeks, and Christine will be leaving this weekend at the end of her second week.

The people I volunteer with

CCS tries to make an effort to keep you at the same volunteer placements so that you can form a bond with the people you work with. They partner with somewhere around 13 organizations so it takes some effort to make that happen. This past week I went to the Hospital for Kids four times and Boarding School #1 once. Last week there was no working with the elderly because of a holiday, so with those placements back in play and the sisters gone, we’ll be spreading out a little bit more.

This week I will go to the Hospital for Kids four times, and once each to Boarding School #1, Leninski Elderly, Frunzenski City Camp and the botanical garden. At each placement save the garden, we bring art projects (always “crafts” here) that we pre-prepare and have made examples of for the kids and elderly to make. Russia is unique in that the psychologists and doctors here believe that focused, task-oriented playing is better for the kids, so there is less mindless playing and more jobs to be done. This past week the crafts we made included a braided bracelet out of lanyard wire, a button bracelet, ironed pegboard bead designs and animals out of lanyard string and beads.

The Hospital for Kids is really not a hospital at all. The children who live there range from the abused, like one boy who had to be taken out of his home because his abusive parents poured gasoline on his arm and burned the skin off of it, to the petty thiefs, like another boy who stole 1500 rubles off a woman (around $60) and used it to buy food.

The kids there are all really fun to play with. When we get there and the kids see us, one little boy named Sasha shouts “Americanse!” The kid who stole the money from the old woman spent a half hour crying in a corner earlier this week because somebody stole his balloon, and continued crying after it was returned to him.

One of my favorite kids is an older boy also named Sasha, who I call “No Smoking Sasha,” because “no smoking” was the only thing in English he knew how to say besides “my name is,” “hello” and “what is your name?.” Now No Smoking Sasha and I spend some time when I go to the Hospital teaching each other English and Russian. I’ll point to something and say the word for it in English telling him “pa Angleeski” (In English) first. And then I’ll ask him “pa Russki” and he’ll tell me and we’ll correct each other’s pronunciations.

Wrap-up

All in all it’s been a great first week. We got to go to a hockey game one night between the Yaroslavl Locomotive and a team from Moscow. Yaroslavl won 5-2. Last night we were kicked out of the hotel because of a wedding, so we went to a Soviet-themed restaurant. Jaime and I are getting along great. We are able to go from being cordial roommates to best friends pretty seamlessly. It was a little sad to miss Rosh Hashanah, but I plan on fasting for Yom Kippur. Shanah Tovah. I’m still at the stage of learning Russian where it’s still exciting to go out into the city and attempt to sound out and read everything I see. I only understand the words that sound like English and the few Russian words and phrases we’ve been taught, but it’s still fun.

Well now, I’m off to lunch! Goodbye.