As I was riding the marshrutka home on Thursday evening, I thought about the literature lesson that I had just had with Olga Lopsonovna. Our topic for the week was Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita (basic plot – one day, the devil visits 1930s Moscow disguised as a foreign professor of black magic, leaving the asylums full and all kinds of things turned upside down). I think what made the lesson so interesting was the fact that had it occured 50 years ago (or even later), she probably would have been fired and probably would have been expelled. Bulgakov first wrote a draft of the novel in the 1930s, but ended up burning the manuscript in fear of the reactions that would surely come from those in power (an act that is mirrored in the novel by the actions of the Master). He didn’t finish his final draft until the 1960s, and even then, it wasn’t accepted by the heavy-handed censors of the Soviet Union. If I understand correctly, the first uncensored version was released in serial form in the journal “Moskva” in 1981 – as Olga Lopsonovna was just getting ready to finish her degree at the university. Ironically, after reading this novel that year, one of the topics she had to pass in order to get her degree was Научный Атеизм – Scientific Atheism. It was at this point in the lesson that I learned that her grandfather had been a Buddist monk, whose own brother turned him over to the soviet authorities who were trying to silence the religious leaders of the country. Apparently, the university she was studying at could only get one copy of the journal in which The Master and Margarita was being published, and so many students were interested in reading it that the pages were pretty much in tatters by the time it got to her. I can’t even imagine going through college with such restraints of what can and cannot be read. Two of her classmates were expelled that year for writing their final papers on a forbidden topic (I don’t remember at the moment what that topic was, but it was something that you and I wouldn’t even consider harmful to write).
Think about this – it was extremely difficult in the soviet days to find a copy of the Bible. Whether you’re a religious person or not, having a copy of the Bible handy can be very useful when you’re studying literature. So many major (and minor) pieces in the western literary tradition refer to stories and people in the Bible. Faust, The Divine Comedy, Shakespeare’s plays, Milton’s poetry – the list goes on and on. If you’ve never had access to the original stories, how can you recognize the allusions? What strikes me as incredibly ironic is the fact that many of the Russian writers of the “Golden Age” of Russian Literature (aka – 19th century) make allusions to religious texts all the time. Yet reading any of the biblical stories to which they refer would not have been possible for a large portion of the 20th century.
One of the main themes in the novel is the story of the relationship between Jesus and Pontius Pilate – the topic of the book which the Master destroys. If that wasn’t enough to flag the book as subversive, there’s also all the references to the Faust legend and the obvious jabs at the crippling bureaucracy of communist Moscow. It’s not hard to see why the soviet critics weren’t such big fans of Bulgakov’s novel. The history behind the novel is one of the things that draws me to it. Whenever I take a class with Dr. Towner, she makes us write down on the first day what kind of books we like to read. I remember putting down “books that piss off authority figures.” I do believe that this book falls nicely into that category, and I’m glad I took the time to read it again for Olga Lopsonovna. There’s nothing like talking about a book with somehow who absolutely loves it.

Long time no see...

Wow, it's been awhile since my last post. Not only has it been an incredibly stressful week, but I also made a slight miscalculation regarding the balance of my bank account, and when this was coupled with a late stipend check, I suddenly found myself in a pickle. Whereas running out of cash in America can be solved with the temporary use of a credit card, I have to have cash. Bus fare, groceries, blini - while all cheap, require real money (and usually exact change). Anyway, long story short, I haven't had the extra cash to do more on the internet than quickly check my email. So prepare yourselves - this post's gonna be a long one...
Thanks to the organizational (and language) skills of my Polish friends, we were able to reserve a few lanes for bowling on Saturday. I think there were about 20 of us all together - Poles, Belgians, Americans, and Ruslan the Russian. Let me start by saying that bowling is a much classier affair here than at home. While smoking is allowed (as it is everywhere in this country), there was no fog of second-hand smoke to wade through. And no plastic cups of bud light - real glass mugs of imported beer. The place was also a lot smaller, owing to the fact that it's not a popular a past time as it is in America. There were about 8 lanes in one section of a casino-like night club. A really fancy place. We played for about 2 hours. I would have kicked some butt but my skills quickly diminished after the first game. I'm going to blame the Belgians - they drink like fish (you would too if you came from a country was such good beer), and this quality tends to wear off on others in social situations such as this. Anyway, even with the slight handicap, I still walked away with some high scores - I tied with Yoris for first on our lane. Unfortunately I also managed to somehow crack my thumb nail. Not quick sure how that happened, but bowling being the contact sport that it is, I'm not surprised.
Anyway, that was about all the excitement for the weekend. The rest of it I spent reading, seeing as how I had two books to finish by Wednesday, a Morphology test on Tuesday, and the impending arrival of the "zachyotnaya" week - the week for all final grade determinations. Monday I received a call from an English teacher at one of the local schools, who wanted me to come talked to her students about life in America. I made an appointment for Wednesday afternoon. What I failed to remember until I had hung up was that my Tuesday afternoon class had been moved to Wednesday this week - and I had just put myself in the situation of having to be in two places at once! I didn't have a phone number to call the lady back (stupid me), so I had to go find Tatyana Yurievna the next morning to see if we could change our class time again. I hate doing that - it makes me feel like a bad student. Anyway, she found a slot in her schedule for Friday afternoon so that I could go talk to these kids on Wednesday. The meeting was - interesting. I was asked some really strange questions - everything from, "Do you like the band Kiss?" to "Are there really cowboys in Texas?" They want me to come back a couple of times before I leave. I told them I would - they're pretty cool kids. I also think I may have found a place to leave all the books and extra DVDs that I can't fit into my bags. Might as well give them to someone who will appreciate them.
I'm starting to get a bit apprehensive about the last few weeks of classes. For the most part, I think I'll do okay - the only exam I have is in Morphology, and I think I can pull off a good grade if I study hard enough. What I'm really worried about is my grade in the Practical Course of Russian Language. The grading for it is "zachyot" - which means they keep track of everything you've been doing all semester. While I've improved significantly since the beginning, the grammar is really killing me. I never really had a strong grammar background in Russian, and therefore make tons of grammatical errors in my essays. I don't know how I'm going to pull it off. Maybe Evgenia Alexandrovna will take pity on me, knowing that I'm not at the same level as the rest of my classmates (all of whom have been studying Russian in depth for at least three consecutive years). But it's stressing me out. Three more weeks...
Oh, I guess it would be good to announce that I'm officially legal again. My passport finally came back. One thing really pisses me off though - they didn't make it a multi-entry visa like I asked them too. While I don't have time to go to Mongolia any more, they just made it impossible, even if I wanted to get away for the weekend. Grrrr. How long have I been talking about taking a trip there, and wanting a multi-entry visa? I hate it when people don't listen to me. But I guess it wouldn't do me any good anyway. I'll just have to go some other time...
Anyway, I gotta head to class. In my fervor to make up for all the lost internet time that my lack of funds caused, I've just wasted a full hour and a half. Geez. Hannah, out.

Turkey Day

My first Thanksgiving in a foreign land turned out better than I thought it would. Though my search for a turkey yielded a 2.5 kilogram filet-o-turkey rather than a whole bird, I think that was just the right amount of meat for us, so it was alright. The fact that I found any turkey at all is amazing – it’s not really a popular meat here. What was really worrying me was how I was going to cook it. Without a body cavity, how does one stuff a turkey? After consulting Grandma and others, we settled on covering it in butter and the spice mix that Misha the spice man said was good for poultry, and stuck it in the oven for a couple of hours. Luckily Adam’s computer has a Fahrenheit to Celsius converter, so we even figured out what 350˚ is on my oven (~177˚). I was afraid it would be a bit dry but it was really tasty. I found a jar of cranberry jam at the market as well, another rather serendipitous find that I wasn’t expecting. Though a little sweeter than the usual cranberry sauce, it tasted really good with the turkey.

The other sides were a little less traditional. Mashed potatoes are a must with turkey, but Adam decided to do things the Russian way and made them from a box. :-/. I hate box potatoes. They taste like cardboard. But that’s what happens when you leave guys in charge of something as easy and important as mashed potatoes. Aaron, his Belgian girlfriend Caroline, and their Chinese neighbor Yusi decided that since we are such an international bunch we might as well have an international Thanksgiving spread. So they made a whole bunch of dim sum. My, it was tasty. They made potato-filled ones for the veggie-heads who were coming and a bunch with ground beef. It was perfect. We also had a bottle of Chilean wine and (being Russia) vodka. All in all, it was a nice meal. We sat around eating and laughing, with Adam playing random American folk songs every now and then on Yusi’s broken guitar (the g-string was always out of tune, no matter what we did to it). Afterwards we toasted some pumpkin seeds that I had found in the Market, a less-than-perfect substitute for the pumpkin pie that I was unable to make (pumpkin can only be found here in September and early October, and only fresh ones). A little latter, Isa (one of the Poles) showed up with a tiramisu-ish dish she had made for our little celebration. Oh, I ate so much. By the time I walked home (through newly-fallen snow :-D), I was absolutely stuffed.

I was expecting to get a phone call from some of my family members, so I stayed up a little later than usual, watching Harry Potter. Around 2 I figured they had forgotten to call me, so I started getting ready for bed. Unfortunately, right about then the power went out in the building. Whilst fumbling around for the fusebox, I met some new Russian students. IGLU is hosting a tournament this weekend, so there are some students from other cities staying in our dorm. They insisted that I come have tea with them (I think they wanted to practice their English), so I ended up sitting over in their kitchen until about 3. Then I went back to my room and watched part of another movie. I finally succumbed to my bed at around 4, a bit bummed that I hadn’t gotten to talk to anyone at the farm on Thanksgiving.

Even with the anticlimactic ending, I think things went well this Thanksgiving – though I will be glad to be back at home next year. There’s something about being with all the extended family that makes Thanksgiving special, and it’s the one holiday that I’ve missed so far that I regret missing.

But then, I’ll be home in 25 days.pan style=""> Woohoo!

Thanksgiving-in-a-foriegn-land Tip #1

Don't leave any of the cooking up to the guys - otherwise, your mashed potatoes will be from a box.

Yay for subtitles!

I bought a copy of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban today – the movie, not the book (you may recall that I already purchased a Russian version of the book). I was thrilled to discover that not only does the disc have English and Russian language tracks and subtitles (and the Russian dubbing is actually rather good), but for some as-yet unknown reason, it also includes Swedish and Icelandic. Now I’m rather curious as to why the makers of this DVD found it necessary to include these last two languages. While I’m excited by the prospect of watching the movie in Swedish with Icelandic subtitles, I’m not quite sure how many people in this part of the world would find this feature useful. You’d think they might include Mongolian or Ukrainian or another neighboring language. But who knows – maybe the makers of this version were trying to convince Ikea that the grounds in Mother Russia are fertile enough for more of their stores.

Of course, the language options on this disc are nothing in comparison to the copy of Almost Famous that I bought in St. Petersburg. While the only spoken languages are English and Russian, the number of subtitles is astonishing…

1. English
2. Russian
3. Hindi
4. Polish/Polski
5. Czech/Cesky
6. Hungarian/Magyar
7. Icelandic/Islenska
8. Hebrew/Ivrit
9. Croatian/HRVATSKI
10. Bulgarian
11. Turkish
12. Danish/Dansk
13. Swedish/Svenska
14. Greek
15. Arabic
16. Spanish/Español
17. Portuguese/Portugues
18. Norwegian/Norsk
19. Finnish/Suomi

I was half expecting number 20 to be Elfish, but I guess that would really be pushing it.

On a slightly happier note...

I wanted this to be separate from today's other post because I really wrote that one last night and it wrapped up so nicely I didn't want to mess with it.
Look at your calendar. What is today? November 21! What does that mean? IN EXACTLY 30 DAYS I WILL BE ON A PLANE HOME!!!
Now don't get me wrong. Irkutsk is a nice place. I've enjoyed my time here, even if there have been a few downward plunges. But I'm ready to be back in Texas, eating some TexMex and listening to some good local bands play. If anyone is trying to find me on Christmas Eve, you'll probably succeed if you go see the Texana Dames at the Armadillo Christmas Bazaar in Austin. :-D. That is the only concrete plan I've made thus far. Everything else is by ear.
One thing that's kind of bumming me out about being this close to my departure date is the fact that I haven't made it to Mongolia yet. Well, I hate to say it, but I just don't think it's going to happen at this point. For one thing, my visa STILL isn't ready. In fact, my current one expires today, so until I get my passport back from the visa office next Monday, I'm going to be avoiding the cops like the plague (they don't usually mess with European-looking females, but you never know). Even if everything is in order and I get my new visa by next Monday, that's only three weeks before I leave. At this point, it's too close to the end of the semester (and the exams that that entails) for me to go gallivanting off across Central Asia. As much as it pains me to have gotten this far and not be able to get any further, that's life in Russia. It's so close to everything, yet so far away. Grrrrr. It would be one thing if it was my own fault, but it's not. I have the lovely ladies in the international students' office to thank for my troubles. Sigh. C'est la vie and move on, as always.
Anyway, I'm not letting that ruin my happy month-to-go milestone. Can't wait to see you all. Eat lots of turkey for me....

You say poTAYto, I say poTAHto

Since Chris finds it necessary to make us all jealous by describing all the wonders of the world of Swiss cuisine, from chocolate to cheese, I think it’s high time I put forth a food post of my own. Though I warn thee – read with caution. My diet isn’t not quite as gourmet.

It’s a good thing that I’ve not joined the fad and given up the consumption of carbs. Otherwise, I think I would have wasted away by now, because for the most part, my current diet depends heavily upon the consumption of carb-heavy foodstuffs. Let’s look at the last week’s worth of dinners – potatoes, rice, buttered pasta, potatoes, potatoes, pasta, and more potatoes. I usually throw in some tomatoes or the “salsa” stuff that the old ladies make that’s so good, but other than that, it’s basically just a lot of starch. Now, I’m not doing this because I can’t find anything else, and I’ve only just recently become conscious of how bad this diet is. But it’s just so dang easy. Every kiosk and corner store has loads of taters and rice and pasta for sale. But in order to get meat (I mean REAL meat, not sausage or “pashtet” – Russian pate) I pretty much have to walk on down to the market. Which is less and less enjoyable considering how cold it’s getting outside (current temperature at noon = -20C). On the weekends I can take a bus directly down there, but on school days, unless I want to go home and back, I have to walk because there’s not an easy-to-take bus route from the university. I know. I’m lazy. I should just suck it up, walk the walk or pay an extra 5 rubles for a bus fare. But I don’t, and I don’t know why.

And carbs taste good. The fresh baked bread is awesome – and only 9 rubles per loaf still warm from the oven. And I’m getting good at adding to my potatoes – different veggies and such. And I can’t forget all the blini and kasha – my usual lunch fare. At the “Blinnaya” café down the street from the university, I can get a double portion of blini with “cguschenyi moloko” (sweetened condensed milk), a bowl of rice kasha with butter, and a cup of tea (with sugar and lemon) for a grand total of 40 rubles. That may not sound like a lot, but as Erica once told me, I “eat like a bird”. I don’t have a big appetite, and this fills me up quite nicely until dinnertime. And the staff doesn’t even have to ask what I want anymore :-D (I can’t decide if this is a good or a bad thing).

Maybe I’m subconsciously trying to make up for the excesses of this summer. I went way over my personal budget when I was in Europe, and this is me punishing myself. At this rate, if I keep eating potatoes instead of “beefshteaks”, I will have gotten myself out of this financial rut by New Years. And then I can put my anti-credit-card resolution into play. Also, I kind of feel bad about the difference between my situation in the care of the McDermott Program and the finances of the local students here. Someone told me that a good student stipend in Irkutsk is 300-500 rubles per month (approx. 12-20 dollars). I spend about 100 rubles a day (if I don’t buy any DVDs or CDs) – and that’s ON the carb diet. This is one of the reason’s I’m not looking forward to returning to Dallas. Central Market and Waterview Park will quickly liquidate my bank account if I’m not careful. Of course, there’s always fresh tortillas and queso at Taco Cabana…

Worry not though – I’m not wasting away. I’m still here and going strong. And I’ve got good meal plans for this week, though probably not as good as most of you. The two American boys and I are going to try our best to give each other a taste of home on Thursday. As yall get ready to stuff yourselves full of all the things I can’t get for Thanksgiving (oh, what I wouldn’t give for a slice of pecan pie and one of grandma’s caramel brownies), just picture me scouring the city of Irkutsk for a decent turkey. I asked my roommate yesterday if she knew where I could find one and her answer was, “I think I can get you a live one.” Oh boy. I think this is going to have to be a post of it’s own…