Huh, it's been a while, hasn't it?
...Yeah...
I'm very sorry, but I've never been good at keeping diary-type things, and that's back when I never had new, exciting things happening most days to stop me even having enough time to write the stuff!
But, I've just started part 2 of my Year Abroad in the great city of St Petersburg, so let's see if I can maybe restart this thing.
------------------
So I've been here 3 days now, and I guess the best way to go about it is through the magic of recap! If you want to imagine a wavy screen transition here, then I'll put a little slot to place it for you:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Transitiooooooooonn
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There's not really much out of the ordinary to report about at Heathrow Airport other than the fact I met up with some people from Manchester, so I guess I'll skip ahead to landing in Petersburg.
So we landed in Petersburg, which is good, since that's where we were meant to go and made our way through the good old-fashioned rigamaroll (...That can't be how you spell it, but it's a silly enough word that I don't actually care) of getting through an airport. Fortunately for us, everything actually went pretty damn smoothly. The lady at passport control could almost have been considered not 100% absolutely apathetic about her job!
Anyway, we met up with the RLUS people and were given little packs of information about what we had to do the following day, over the semester and just to survive in general. For some reason I was surprised to see a man's name listed as my host, though that's almost certainly a side-effect of most people affectionately referring to our host families as "бабушки" (grandmothers/old women).
Anyway then, much like Tver', they ferried us to a couple of minibuses, only the trip didn't take 4 hours and we did actually stop once or twice in regular traffic! On the journey I thought to myself "Please don't go over a bridge, please don't go over a bridge..." Because after a certain time at night the bridges of the city raise up and it's impossible to get from one part of the city to the other while they are raised.
Anyway, so we crossed over a bridge and after a short while reached the place I'd be staying, where I promptly got out of the minibus, grabbed my bag and followed my host, Vladimir. Very Russian name, I know, but it gets better.
When we got up to the flat I was also greeted by his wife, who I later learned is named Olga. Yes, really, Vlad and Olga, it's brilliant. They showed me to my room and left me to unpack, which I did, partially to be organised and partially because I was still worried about trying to interact with them in my heavily-rusted Russian. But I needed to pee, and had no idea where the toilet was, so I had to bite the bullet and ask where it was. And now I know, so that's good.
After this I had a bit of a chat with Olga, and I learned...
Well.
Last year, one of the people who was in 3rd year posted a Facebook status saying that his family had a shower in the kitchen and that it was really awkward. My one, sincere hope for my stay in St Petersburg was that I wouldn't wind up in a house like that.
...Guess where the shower in this house is!
Anyway, I asked Olga what was for dinner, to which she responded by looking thoughtfully at the pot bubbling on the hob, turned back to me and replied "...Uh, something tasty. I'll call you when it's ready." (In Russian, by the way, they don't speak any English, apparently.)
So I went back to my room and read for a while until I was summoned to the kitchen, which is all of 5 steps from my room. Did I mention this place is tiny? It is. The toilet-room is pretty much the size of a standard cubicle in a public toilet. Perhaps even a little smaller.
I went and sat and ate the something tasty (and it was, she didn't lie! It was rice and chicken and sauce and...Yeah, I'm not sure what I'd call it either, so she had a point) while Olga sat opposite me and watched the television. We chatted as well, and I felt very proud of myself that I was still capable of holding Russian conversation when I put my mind to it! (At least at that point, but later evidence proves otherwise...) I talked a bit about myself, asked Olga a bit about herself and learned that they have 2 cats, Topsik (I think. I thought she said Toxic at first, which seemed insane) and I didn't catch the other cat's name.
Anyway, I went back to my room to relax for a while and I met Topsik right then and there because he was sitting on my bed, staring at me with that special look both cats and Russians have which simply says "...What the hell do you want?", so when a Russian cat does it, it's extra powerful.
I read, I used the computer (There's Wi-fi here, it's a miracle!) and told my Mum that I'd arrived safely and everything and finally went to bed. Thanks to jetlag I still wasn't tired until around 3am, but I slept nonetheless.
Yeesh, and that's only the first day...
So, the second day began with a hearty breakfast of Каша (Porridge), before Vladimir said it was time to go. Turns out he works at the Benedict School as (we think) a caretaker, so he and his coworker gave me and two girls (Henny and Lizzie) a lift to the School. We sat for a while waiting for others to turn up, which they did. They took our passports for registration and then we were led into a hall for an introduction from our RLUS representatives (already proving they were more worth than the ones in Tver'...) and some of the important members of the school, which went pretty much exactly as you'd expect. We then had a short proficency test so that they could decide which groups to shove us in. Thus ended our first day at the Benedict School, at around 12.30. So we went to get lunch which was about as authentically Russian as it gets: McDonalds. When the lady at the till asked "Fries?", I rather flusteredly responded "Yes, please", to which she responded with slight bemusement at first before processing the order. It only occurred to me as we were moving to the tables that she was asking what size I wanted...
I wish that was the worst I had been at Russian that day, but that comes later.
(Alright, this is what I wrote, like, 3 days ago and I haven't added to it since, so I'll try to keep non-important info brief from hereon out.)
Got some Russian Simcards with people, all went well, the guy spoke English, quite surprisingly. Also got a nice, cheap Nokia in case of theftery.
Went back to the hostel where most people are staying and chatted until Amie turned up and, in passing, said she was going to a Japanese class. At the mention of the possibility of studying Japanese my ears jumped up and I accompanied her to the place where we can learn it 'n' shit. When we were in the office, we tried to explain the situation in Russian (THIS is where my Russian was the worst for that day, so when I was trying to make the case of "No, really, I DO speak Russian!" I think they less than believed me...)
We sat a placement test and I did fairly poorly, though that's not a huge surprise, while Amie did pretty much perfectly, since she really only needs to improve her Kanji at this stage. We were invited to try out classes happening later that day, which we did. Hers was at 7, and mine at 7:30, and all throughout mine the teacher translated the sentences into both Russian and English. This wouldn't normally bother me, but when the sentences are "This is a book." "Mr Miller is American", I feel a teeeensy bit patronised. She also introduced me to the class with the statement "He speaks Russian poorly", so that didn't help.
After class two of my classmates, Tamara and Sasha, caught up to me and chatted with me on the way back to the metro. They also told me what stations to get, which was very kind of them, though I had a map anyway even if they hadn't. The class ran until 21:45, and the best part: That's going to be happening every Monday and Wednesday from this point onwards! Yaaay...
Got back to the Metro station near my accommodation (about 15-minutes of walking) and remembered only that we had turned left to get there from the house that morning. I didn't remember the street name, or which direction we'd come from, so I set off walking. I really need to get better at not being so damned worried about inconveniencing people, because if I'd just called Olga I'd've been home so much sooner. Anyway, I wandered around for about half an hour before finally calling her and asking what street it was. It wasn't far, but I still got home around 11pm.
The next day was Tuesday, and classes began. Made my way to the school without much incident and the lessons were alright, I suppose. We had a lesson on topical discussion in Russia, one on Grammar and another on general speaking. Speaking sounds like it's going to be nasty later on, gonna have to do debates and even lead at least one...
I don't actually remember what I did with the rest of my day on Tuesday...I think I might've just buggered off back home and done bugger all, I seem to recall being tired.
Wednesday we had grammar again and film, which was good! We sat and watched a film while she told us what was going on every now and then, and it was a good film, too! Looking forward to seeing how the rest of it goes.
Went and bought lunch and hung around with people until around 7, at which point I went for the second Japanese class, which went much like the first one. Actually, I turned up late, and she was all "Oh, Joe, you're just in time, you're going to be writing on the blackboard!"
And I didn't much like the sound of that. Turns out she just needed me to write hiragana on the board and the romanised pronunciations of them (e.g. か, 'ka'). After the lesson I managed to muster up my courage and tell her that she didn't need to keep explaining everything in both English and Russian since I understood the Russian, and I expected that trying that I would have ended up saying "Me can spaek Russkii, I...shit, how do you say promise....erm...Radish? No..." (all in Russian, obviously.)
Weirdly enough, when I started saying this, she actually said "Yes, you speak Russian quite well!", which just led me to further wonder why she felt the need to explain to me what "That book is mine" means...
Riding the wave of confidence, I asked Olya upon my return (at 22:30 this time, though that's about as early as I'll ever be able to make it after Japanese) how to use the bizarre kitchower and whether I needed to alert everyone to the fact that I was about to use it. Turns out it's very simple, and I only need to say I'm going to use it if somebody's in the kitchen. The kitchen door has a lock, so really it has the same privacy as a bathroom. All is well!
Thursday was our group's day off, so we decided to look around the city a little. However, we were in the odd situation that we wanted to explore, but not everyone had the day off, so we couldn't go and find anything TOO culturally interesting...Nevertheless, just by walking around a bit we found St Isaac's cathedral, the Bronze horseman, the Winter Palace and Nevskiy Prospekt! Turns out there's a lot of stuff in Petersburg.
Sadly, I was an idiot again, and I can't yet get my pictures from my phone to blogspot, but I'll try things and maybe, just maybe, I'll find a way.
On ze Friiiiiday/yesterday, we had lessons again, which was a weird feeling. Thursday felt like a weekend, and Saturday actually WOULD be the weekend, so it was a bit like being directly between two weekends, and have I said weekend enough? I think it could use a few more weekends to really reach some kind of weekend-based record for this blog. Or at the very least fill my weekend quota.
Weekend.
The lessons were topical discussion again, translation, and conversation. In conversation we had a quiz about St Petersburg held by Jordan (who everyone agrees was a rather unorthodox quizmaster. The first question was "where do I live?"...). Apparently I won, and got a free map from the teacher, though I get the feeling it might've been an arbitrarily chosen victory...
Afterwards we went to the shops again and did shop-based things before getting some lunch (lunchtime has now changed to be, like, 4pm, it's kinda strange.) What with it being a Friday and all, people were feeling all geared up to go out pubbing and clubbing, but I've never been one for clubbing, and I wasn't really feeling the pubbing either. In fact, once I got home, I pretty much wound up going to bed around 9pm.
As for today, since everybody had gone out, people weren't doing much. Around 3pm I went and tried to find a place where apparently some people were meeting up for food and chatting about the night before, but I have absolutely no idea where it was. Turns out the nearest Metro Station was actually closed, too, so I had a little bit of an exploration of the Metro system.
Anyway, failing to find the place and giving up due to the rain, I went and hung out with people at the hostel again before coming back home and writing this blog post.
YES! I'm caught up! Sorry if this post wasn't very entertaining, but I just wanted to get it written at this point. Trying to be witty takes time, and if I'd stuck with that, I'd probably still be writing this post come June when I'll be leaving.
In any case, thanks for readin' this! I'll try to post a bit more regularly than I did in Tver'. Cheerio!
Saturday, 22 February 2014
Tuesday, 24 December 2013
A warm welcome back to England...
Please re-read the title of this blog with as MUCH sarcasm as possible.
I know I haven't posted on the blog in MONTHS, I've been busy doing too much stuff to have time to tell you about the stuff I did.
I will try to post updates about my (now completed!) time in Tver' over the Christmas break, but for now I want to tell you about the most frustrating day I've had in my entire life so far: My journey back home.
So the day started at 5am. There was a bus service travelling from a hotel in Tver' to the Moscow airports. The latest bus I could take which would get me to Domodedovo in particularly good time would depart at 6:30am and arrive around 12. My flight was at 5pm, but I thought "Meh, I can entertain myself at the airport, I have books." With this in mind, I got up at 5, tidied up the last few things from my room, and dropped off my sheets, my entrance pass and my keys to the Babushka at the door, who gave me a smile and a "Всё доброго!" (all the best!) which was an especially nice surprise, especially considering I had just woken her up at a rather unreasonable hour.
Arriving at the hotel there was another man waiting for the bus and we had a few minutes until 6:15, the designated meeting time. 6:15 came, no bus. 6:20 came, no bus. 6:25 came, take a guess? That's right, no bus.
So the other guy called a number saying "Hello, there are two of us waiting for the bus to the airport, we were told to meet at the Volga hotel at 6:15...Uh-huh...Uh-huh...Interesting...Right. OK, bye."
Not in the most reassuring tone of voice, neither.
"Apparently the next bus will only be arriving in 2 days."
"...Riiiiiiight..."
Fortunately for me I was way, way early for the flight, so I was thinking "Alright, just get the train and you'll still be there in good time." while the guy called another contact, with uch the same sort of response as previously.
It was as he was calling his mysterious 3rd contact that a car pulled up nearby and the driver yelled "AIRPORT!!", which we took to mean he would take us there. Either we were right, or this guy had nothing better to do, because that's precisely what he did.
We arrived at Domodedovo at around 10, 2 hours earlier than planned, but as I said, I had books.
After posting a quick Facebook status to the effect of "Ha, look at me, already at the airport 7 hours early, what a silly man I am." and went and sat in a rather expensive cafe just so I could charge my phone there (after all, in case of an emergency I'd want a good amount of battery power, right? Bear that in mind.)
So at around 11:30 I got a call from my friend Mark, who was also leaving the same day. He called saying he'd seen my status and suggested I meet up with him and Frances, who would be there in under an hour. Of course time flies far more with friends than pages of the Hunger Games in Russian, so we met up and...Well, we mostly waited and chatted and tried to calm Mark down (one of the world's many nervous fliers.)
Having seen Mark off on his way to his earlier departure, at the check-in we met up with a bunch of the students from Yaroslavl', which was great, since I hadn't seen them since we flew out to Russia all those many moons ago. We caught up a bit and made our way through the whole process.
Some things to note were: My suitcase being slightly over the allowance but being put through anyway (Thank God, I don't think it was physically possible to store anything from it in my backpack), being stood behind 2 people in the queue who apparently had the most difficult to examine passports in the world based on how long it took them to go through, and a security check which involved a body-scan, but during which they DIDN'T confiscate/inquire about the liquids in my washbag, despite not having been plastic-bagged...
When we got to Duty Free (I think around 3 hours before our flight was due) we heard the announcement that the flight was delayed by about an hour.
Not a problem. Inconvenient, yes, but I had left myself 2 1/2 hours between the flight and my train home, so I'd still have time (HA! Retrospect is a bitch sometimes.)
After a ton of waiting, we were finally allowed onto the plane, at which point the pilot made a series of apologies.
"The long-haul plane we were meant to be operating today had a technical fault yesterday, so we have to make do with this short-haul plane and a staff who had to be drafted last minute. We also have ice on the wings, so we'll need another 10 minutes or so to de-ice them for the flight."
Including that I'd have around 1 hour 10 minutes to make my train, no problem, right?
The flight was smooth, and we laughed and gallavanted our way through the hours before arriving at 8:10pm. 20 minutes before my train.
Of course, I had resigned myself to not getting the train I had booked, but it's alright, I'll just get a later one. It'll cost a lot, but hey, I'll be home, right?
Right?
Theeeeeeeeeeeeeen it all started going so much more wrong.
We got off the flight and through passport control quickly enough before making it to baggage belt 3 for Moscow.
5 minutes passed, didn't see my bag.
10 minutes passed, no bag.
20 minutes. Still. No. Bag.
Shit, what if it's got lost? It's not the end of the world, but I'd rather not have the hassle.
I looked round at the others of our group whose bags also hadn't been collected when Helen told me "Did you hear that announcement?"
"No, what was it?"
"Apparently there's a second belt of luggage from Moscow down at 10."
If you're not familiar with Heathrow airport, baggage belt 3 is quite a far way down a long hall from belt 10, but at least my bag was there. I waited around, saying goodbye to some people before finally leaving with Helen, thinking "It's alright, I can still get a train, I'm sure."
I think it's around this time I lost my amazing Russian hat, my gloves and the scarf my sister knitted specially for me. I don't know for sure, all I know is I don't have them now...I think I put them down while waiting for baggage and then failed to pick them up again. Of course, this didn't bother me at the time because I didn't notice.
On the way out, Helen was met by her parents and I was introduced. Helen's parents very kindly invited me to stay at their house and get a train the following day if it was simpler but, because I thought everything would be fine, I declined the offer.
I got onto the Wi-Fi and checked the remaining trains to Leeds. 20:30, my missed train. 22:00, the next train.
And the final train.
The time was 21:30.
So I dashed over to the terminal for the Heathrow Express and typed my way to Paddington. Put in my card.
"Your card has not been accepted, try again."
I tried again.
"Your card has not been accepted, try again."
Why?!
Tried a different machine, everything went fine. Ran down to the express and jumped on. I had to get to King's Cross for the train, and I had around 20 minutes.
I was trying to text my Mum to tell her that I'd have to be very, very lucky to get up to Leeds that night, but try and guess how much success I had. Go on, guess.
If you guess "No goddamn success whatsoever", you'd be absolutely right.
So, with all this going on, I was getting really quite frustrated, worried and overall upset.
It was around the moment that I solved a rather awful logic puzzle relating to my life based on 3 facts:
1) I had 15 minutes to get to King's Cross, buy a ticket and get on my train.
2) I was at the Terminals 1,2,3 stop on the Heathrow Express.
3) It takes 15 minutes to get from the Terminals stop to Paddington.
So yeah, kinda not mathematically possible to get to King's Cross on time, right?
As I got off the Express, swearing under my breath, I realised my hat, gloves and scarf were gone. I dashed back to my seat on the Express but, obviously, no luck.
At THIS point it was becoming a struggle not to shout as many expletives as I could at every person who existed in my vicinity.
But I'm not even close to done yet.
So, after a bit of cursing, pacing and fighting back tears/nervous breakdown, I grabbed my phone and called who I thought was Mum. Thank God I'd charged my phone, or else all hell might've broken loose.
Turns out it was Rach. At least it was a friendly voice, and I told her where I was and she told me to do what I was planning to anyway and call Mum.
So I called the home phone (apparently only JUST in time to catch my Dad just before he left the house armed with sleeping bags, food and plans to get all the way down to Peterborough to collect me) and partially explained the situation.
I only partially explained the situation because, before we could get close to making a plan, the call cut off.
I had no more credit.
Now, this was a problem, because if I had my old O2 sim-card, I could top-up fairly simply and redial.
But I didn't, I had a Russian MTC sim-card, which was great in Russia, because I could call my fellow MTC friends free of charge. Less so in England.
What's even better is that I had no way of topping up my phone without being in Russia.
So the plans had to change a little. I don't know London even slightly (I think there's some important woman here somewhere or something, and I hear there's some big clock, but that's about it), so I placed my hope of finding a hostel or hotel with the taxi drivers outside.
"Do you know any hostels or hotels near here?"
"Er, no, sorry mate..."
*next taxi*
"Do you know any hostels or hotels near here?"
"...No, I don't." (Said with a look as if to say "why the hell would a taxi driver know how to get to places?")
Well f*cknuggets.
Please bear in mind, each problem I encountered led me more towards pure, unfathomable rage at everything, so much so that in my mind I was yelling every single thing I thought, and I was getting very close to being unable to keep the yelling contained. (I'm pretty sure the few people at the station were directly avoiding eye contact with me for fear of being assaulted by the almost-teary-eyed madman that I seemed to be.)
I found a change machine nearby and headed to a pay phone to call my parents again.
We cut past any "Hello, what's the situation?"s and immediately formulated a plan. My half-brother Nick would pick me up at Leytonstone and let me crash at his place for the night. Dad gave me his number, which I carefully put into the notepad on my phone and hung up.
Feeling relieved that there was a plan, I promptly pressed "Отмена" on my phone.
Anyone who knows their Russian and how phones work just cringed right now, I'm sure. For those who don't: Отмена means cancel, so all the details I had just carefully written down were gone forever.
Fortunately for me, I'd got a load of change (which I had internally raged at because there was no space for it in the coin bit of my wallet (what with it still being filled with unused rubles). Something along the lines of "Oh of COURSE you're not going to fit in anywhere are you, you little shits? OH GREAT! YOU'LL JUST SLIP THROUGH THE GAP IN THE NOTES AREA, WON'T YOU?!?")
so I redialed.
"I'm sorry, but the number you have dialled is busy. Please hang up and try again later."
Presumably phoning Nick to confirm everything. So I couldn't call to get Nick's number because they were too busy using Nick's number.
Fortunately I had Rach's number, so I called her instead, got the number and ran for the metro.
"OK, you've got a plan, you've got the metro, everything's going to be fine, right?"
Well yes, almost, but the nightmare day couldn't possibly just let it end like that, it had one last nasty trick up its sleeve.
I got to the ticket machine, angry, tired, hungry and ugly, and jabbed at the screen with as much hatred as is humanly possible to put behind one's forefinger.
"Single ticket to Leytonstone: £4.50"
Ok, that's fine. £1, £1, £1, £1, £1.
All the coins came back.
"Sorry, you've paid too much, try again."
So that bit which says "Tickets/Change". Half of that's a lie, then?
Fine, whatever.
"Single ticket to Leytonstone: £4.50"
£1, £1, £1, £1, 20p. Falls through.
Try the 20p again. Falls through.
Try again. £4.20 falls out.
"Sorry, you took too long, try again."
When I get really angry, I have a nice little gutteral grunt that I make from my throat, through my mouth, nose and gritted teeth and there has been no day on which I have made that noise quite so much in my life.
Fine.
One more goddamn time.
"Single ticket to Leytonstone: £4.50"
£1, £1, £1, £1, 10p, 10p, 10p, 10p, 10p.
Finally I own a little pink piece of paper.
I have never held onto such a little piece of paper so tightly as I did that ticket. There was no way in hell I was letting that ticket go after all of this.
...
So, after about 20 minutes I reached Leytonstone. My brother was at the station, we got Fish and Chips and went straight to his house. We let everyone know that everything was fine.
The day was finally over.
I'd managed to avoid curling up into a shrieking ball of misery in Paddington, which is always a bonus. I also hadn't murdered anyone, which was actually quite an achievement.
And best of all, home was...well, I wasn't there yet, and it was still pretty far away, but I only had to get past the National Rail to get it.
Thank. God.
The following day went smoothly. 4 hours of travel from Nick's house to ours in Skipton. On the way I received a text from MTC telling me how to topup credit using my phone.
Teensy bit late there, guys, but I was feeling happy enough that I just laughed it off.
So, what have we learned today?
If you ever get caught in a situation where things haven't gone to plan, don't tough it out on your own, call people, they'll be able to find other ways to help out. I'm so glad my family was so ready to help me no matter what, and how quick-thinking they were to adapt to the problems.
Getting angry is natural, but don't let it get in the way of thinking clearly. Clear thoughts and ideas are the only way to make rational, sensible and effective solutions.
And finally, don't kick a 24kg suitcase in frustration, it really hurts.
Merry Christmas, everybody, I hope that your days are at least smoother than that one.
I know I haven't posted on the blog in MONTHS, I've been busy doing too much stuff to have time to tell you about the stuff I did.
I will try to post updates about my (now completed!) time in Tver' over the Christmas break, but for now I want to tell you about the most frustrating day I've had in my entire life so far: My journey back home.
So the day started at 5am. There was a bus service travelling from a hotel in Tver' to the Moscow airports. The latest bus I could take which would get me to Domodedovo in particularly good time would depart at 6:30am and arrive around 12. My flight was at 5pm, but I thought "Meh, I can entertain myself at the airport, I have books." With this in mind, I got up at 5, tidied up the last few things from my room, and dropped off my sheets, my entrance pass and my keys to the Babushka at the door, who gave me a smile and a "Всё доброго!" (all the best!) which was an especially nice surprise, especially considering I had just woken her up at a rather unreasonable hour.
Arriving at the hotel there was another man waiting for the bus and we had a few minutes until 6:15, the designated meeting time. 6:15 came, no bus. 6:20 came, no bus. 6:25 came, take a guess? That's right, no bus.
So the other guy called a number saying "Hello, there are two of us waiting for the bus to the airport, we were told to meet at the Volga hotel at 6:15...Uh-huh...Uh-huh...Interesting...Right. OK, bye."
Not in the most reassuring tone of voice, neither.
"Apparently the next bus will only be arriving in 2 days."
"...Riiiiiiight..."
Fortunately for me I was way, way early for the flight, so I was thinking "Alright, just get the train and you'll still be there in good time." while the guy called another contact, with uch the same sort of response as previously.
It was as he was calling his mysterious 3rd contact that a car pulled up nearby and the driver yelled "AIRPORT!!", which we took to mean he would take us there. Either we were right, or this guy had nothing better to do, because that's precisely what he did.
We arrived at Domodedovo at around 10, 2 hours earlier than planned, but as I said, I had books.
After posting a quick Facebook status to the effect of "Ha, look at me, already at the airport 7 hours early, what a silly man I am." and went and sat in a rather expensive cafe just so I could charge my phone there (after all, in case of an emergency I'd want a good amount of battery power, right? Bear that in mind.)
So at around 11:30 I got a call from my friend Mark, who was also leaving the same day. He called saying he'd seen my status and suggested I meet up with him and Frances, who would be there in under an hour. Of course time flies far more with friends than pages of the Hunger Games in Russian, so we met up and...Well, we mostly waited and chatted and tried to calm Mark down (one of the world's many nervous fliers.)
Having seen Mark off on his way to his earlier departure, at the check-in we met up with a bunch of the students from Yaroslavl', which was great, since I hadn't seen them since we flew out to Russia all those many moons ago. We caught up a bit and made our way through the whole process.
Some things to note were: My suitcase being slightly over the allowance but being put through anyway (Thank God, I don't think it was physically possible to store anything from it in my backpack), being stood behind 2 people in the queue who apparently had the most difficult to examine passports in the world based on how long it took them to go through, and a security check which involved a body-scan, but during which they DIDN'T confiscate/inquire about the liquids in my washbag, despite not having been plastic-bagged...
When we got to Duty Free (I think around 3 hours before our flight was due) we heard the announcement that the flight was delayed by about an hour.
Not a problem. Inconvenient, yes, but I had left myself 2 1/2 hours between the flight and my train home, so I'd still have time (HA! Retrospect is a bitch sometimes.)
After a ton of waiting, we were finally allowed onto the plane, at which point the pilot made a series of apologies.
"The long-haul plane we were meant to be operating today had a technical fault yesterday, so we have to make do with this short-haul plane and a staff who had to be drafted last minute. We also have ice on the wings, so we'll need another 10 minutes or so to de-ice them for the flight."
Including that I'd have around 1 hour 10 minutes to make my train, no problem, right?
The flight was smooth, and we laughed and gallavanted our way through the hours before arriving at 8:10pm. 20 minutes before my train.
Of course, I had resigned myself to not getting the train I had booked, but it's alright, I'll just get a later one. It'll cost a lot, but hey, I'll be home, right?
Right?
Theeeeeeeeeeeeeen it all started going so much more wrong.
We got off the flight and through passport control quickly enough before making it to baggage belt 3 for Moscow.
5 minutes passed, didn't see my bag.
10 minutes passed, no bag.
20 minutes. Still. No. Bag.
Shit, what if it's got lost? It's not the end of the world, but I'd rather not have the hassle.
I looked round at the others of our group whose bags also hadn't been collected when Helen told me "Did you hear that announcement?"
"No, what was it?"
"Apparently there's a second belt of luggage from Moscow down at 10."
If you're not familiar with Heathrow airport, baggage belt 3 is quite a far way down a long hall from belt 10, but at least my bag was there. I waited around, saying goodbye to some people before finally leaving with Helen, thinking "It's alright, I can still get a train, I'm sure."
I think it's around this time I lost my amazing Russian hat, my gloves and the scarf my sister knitted specially for me. I don't know for sure, all I know is I don't have them now...I think I put them down while waiting for baggage and then failed to pick them up again. Of course, this didn't bother me at the time because I didn't notice.
On the way out, Helen was met by her parents and I was introduced. Helen's parents very kindly invited me to stay at their house and get a train the following day if it was simpler but, because I thought everything would be fine, I declined the offer.
I got onto the Wi-Fi and checked the remaining trains to Leeds. 20:30, my missed train. 22:00, the next train.
And the final train.
The time was 21:30.
So I dashed over to the terminal for the Heathrow Express and typed my way to Paddington. Put in my card.
"Your card has not been accepted, try again."
I tried again.
"Your card has not been accepted, try again."
Why?!
Tried a different machine, everything went fine. Ran down to the express and jumped on. I had to get to King's Cross for the train, and I had around 20 minutes.
I was trying to text my Mum to tell her that I'd have to be very, very lucky to get up to Leeds that night, but try and guess how much success I had. Go on, guess.
If you guess "No goddamn success whatsoever", you'd be absolutely right.
So, with all this going on, I was getting really quite frustrated, worried and overall upset.
It was around the moment that I solved a rather awful logic puzzle relating to my life based on 3 facts:
1) I had 15 minutes to get to King's Cross, buy a ticket and get on my train.
2) I was at the Terminals 1,2,3 stop on the Heathrow Express.
3) It takes 15 minutes to get from the Terminals stop to Paddington.
So yeah, kinda not mathematically possible to get to King's Cross on time, right?
As I got off the Express, swearing under my breath, I realised my hat, gloves and scarf were gone. I dashed back to my seat on the Express but, obviously, no luck.
At THIS point it was becoming a struggle not to shout as many expletives as I could at every person who existed in my vicinity.
But I'm not even close to done yet.
So, after a bit of cursing, pacing and fighting back tears/nervous breakdown, I grabbed my phone and called who I thought was Mum. Thank God I'd charged my phone, or else all hell might've broken loose.
Turns out it was Rach. At least it was a friendly voice, and I told her where I was and she told me to do what I was planning to anyway and call Mum.
So I called the home phone (apparently only JUST in time to catch my Dad just before he left the house armed with sleeping bags, food and plans to get all the way down to Peterborough to collect me) and partially explained the situation.
I only partially explained the situation because, before we could get close to making a plan, the call cut off.
I had no more credit.
Now, this was a problem, because if I had my old O2 sim-card, I could top-up fairly simply and redial.
But I didn't, I had a Russian MTC sim-card, which was great in Russia, because I could call my fellow MTC friends free of charge. Less so in England.
What's even better is that I had no way of topping up my phone without being in Russia.
So the plans had to change a little. I don't know London even slightly (I think there's some important woman here somewhere or something, and I hear there's some big clock, but that's about it), so I placed my hope of finding a hostel or hotel with the taxi drivers outside.
"Do you know any hostels or hotels near here?"
"Er, no, sorry mate..."
*next taxi*
"Do you know any hostels or hotels near here?"
"...No, I don't." (Said with a look as if to say "why the hell would a taxi driver know how to get to places?")
Well f*cknuggets.
Please bear in mind, each problem I encountered led me more towards pure, unfathomable rage at everything, so much so that in my mind I was yelling every single thing I thought, and I was getting very close to being unable to keep the yelling contained. (I'm pretty sure the few people at the station were directly avoiding eye contact with me for fear of being assaulted by the almost-teary-eyed madman that I seemed to be.)
I found a change machine nearby and headed to a pay phone to call my parents again.
We cut past any "Hello, what's the situation?"s and immediately formulated a plan. My half-brother Nick would pick me up at Leytonstone and let me crash at his place for the night. Dad gave me his number, which I carefully put into the notepad on my phone and hung up.
Feeling relieved that there was a plan, I promptly pressed "Отмена" on my phone.
Anyone who knows their Russian and how phones work just cringed right now, I'm sure. For those who don't: Отмена means cancel, so all the details I had just carefully written down were gone forever.
Fortunately for me, I'd got a load of change (which I had internally raged at because there was no space for it in the coin bit of my wallet (what with it still being filled with unused rubles). Something along the lines of "Oh of COURSE you're not going to fit in anywhere are you, you little shits? OH GREAT! YOU'LL JUST SLIP THROUGH THE GAP IN THE NOTES AREA, WON'T YOU?!?")
so I redialed.
"I'm sorry, but the number you have dialled is busy. Please hang up and try again later."
Presumably phoning Nick to confirm everything. So I couldn't call to get Nick's number because they were too busy using Nick's number.
Fortunately I had Rach's number, so I called her instead, got the number and ran for the metro.
"OK, you've got a plan, you've got the metro, everything's going to be fine, right?"
Well yes, almost, but the nightmare day couldn't possibly just let it end like that, it had one last nasty trick up its sleeve.
I got to the ticket machine, angry, tired, hungry and ugly, and jabbed at the screen with as much hatred as is humanly possible to put behind one's forefinger.
"Single ticket to Leytonstone: £4.50"
Ok, that's fine. £1, £1, £1, £1, £1.
All the coins came back.
"Sorry, you've paid too much, try again."
So that bit which says "Tickets/Change". Half of that's a lie, then?
Fine, whatever.
"Single ticket to Leytonstone: £4.50"
£1, £1, £1, £1, 20p. Falls through.
Try the 20p again. Falls through.
Try again. £4.20 falls out.
"Sorry, you took too long, try again."
When I get really angry, I have a nice little gutteral grunt that I make from my throat, through my mouth, nose and gritted teeth and there has been no day on which I have made that noise quite so much in my life.
Fine.
One more goddamn time.
"Single ticket to Leytonstone: £4.50"
£1, £1, £1, £1, 10p, 10p, 10p, 10p, 10p.
Finally I own a little pink piece of paper.
I have never held onto such a little piece of paper so tightly as I did that ticket. There was no way in hell I was letting that ticket go after all of this.
...
So, after about 20 minutes I reached Leytonstone. My brother was at the station, we got Fish and Chips and went straight to his house. We let everyone know that everything was fine.
The day was finally over.
I'd managed to avoid curling up into a shrieking ball of misery in Paddington, which is always a bonus. I also hadn't murdered anyone, which was actually quite an achievement.
And best of all, home was...well, I wasn't there yet, and it was still pretty far away, but I only had to get past the National Rail to get it.
Thank. God.
The following day went smoothly. 4 hours of travel from Nick's house to ours in Skipton. On the way I received a text from MTC telling me how to topup credit using my phone.
Teensy bit late there, guys, but I was feeling happy enough that I just laughed it off.
So, what have we learned today?
If you ever get caught in a situation where things haven't gone to plan, don't tough it out on your own, call people, they'll be able to find other ways to help out. I'm so glad my family was so ready to help me no matter what, and how quick-thinking they were to adapt to the problems.
Getting angry is natural, but don't let it get in the way of thinking clearly. Clear thoughts and ideas are the only way to make rational, sensible and effective solutions.
And finally, don't kick a 24kg suitcase in frustration, it really hurts.
Merry Christmas, everybody, I hope that your days are at least smoother than that one.
Saturday, 12 October 2013
Faust! I'm gonna liiiive forever!
So, it's been a while, huh? I actually have a recap-blog post in the works, but I want to write about the play I saw today before I forget everything about it.
So, as the title says, I went and saw Faust this afternoon/evening with Akvile, Myriam, Anne and Robin. I'd studied Faust in a module last year, so I wasn't too worried about understanding the Russian as long as I remembered the story, and it worked!..Riiiight up until the intermission...
The first half of the play was good, Mephistopheles' actor was absolutely fantastic - as bouncy and mischevious and down-right fun just as he ought to be. Faust, similarly, did well being grouchy but somehow passionate. The scene with the ghost was especially amazing, because the stage had a large number of windows and doors built into the walls of the stage which opened and slammed shut loudly and frantically, building the emotion and the terror of the scene.
However, some of the characters were missing, such as Faust's...whatever he was. I'd say roommate, but I seem to recall he had a different role. In any case, due to the relatively small cast and his altogether unimportant role, he was replaced by a monologue from Faust. A more important person who was missing, however, was the witch who makes Faust younger, enabling him to be attractive to Gretchen. Now I know what you're thinking: "But then how the heck does the rest of the play work?"
This was a stroke of genius from the director, in my opinion, because throughout the entire play Mephistopheles had 2 interesting characteristics (besides his rather dapper red suit): He always wore a single black glove and carried a cane which gave him a pronounced limp (L-I-M-P, pronounced "limp".) In the scene of Faust's rejuvenation, the glove and cane were passed to the older actor who played Faust, so in this version it seems Faust and Mephistopheles swapped bodies for the sake of the story! Very clever indeed!
Up until this point I had followed the story well enough to at least know where we were in the story, though some parts confused me which I don't recall being in the original play, such as the scene in which Faust and Mephistopheles show each other a mirror and, in turn, recoil in horror from their reflections...
But that's NOTHING compared to the second half...
So in the original, Faust and Mephistopheles sneak into Gretchen's room, plant some beautiful jewellery and make their escape, she finds it and is overjoyed.
In THIS version, Gretchen, or possibly her friend Margaret, and 3 other girls (and I STILL don't know who they were meant to be, the prevalent theory is hitherto unheard-of sisters) are throwing a piece of lacy material around and giggling childishly. This continues for several minutes.They then use the material and pretend that it is a baby...And then throw it around again as the piece of material...Then the scene of Mephy and Faust hiding the necklace occurs. Can you guess what the necklace was? That's right, the same goddamn piece of fabric.
Reality is apparently very flexible where they live.
So Gretchen (a NEW one this time, meaning there's possibly 2 Gretchens on stage) put the material around their necks, oohing and aaahing at how pretty it is and then...Start suffocating. That DEFINITELY didn't happen in Goethe's version, so for a terrifying few minutes the girls spasmed and choked as a large number of people dressed in black danced chaotically around them.
Then a woman dressed in a red, floral bodysuit appeared on-stage and started mimicking Gretchen's movements as she and Faust started...I THINK Faust was charming her and she was resisting, but it was getting pretty violent at times...
So between the red woman, the flailing people in black and the multiple Gretchens who may not have been multiple Gretchens, I was lost for a good 15 minutes. Things started getting back on track, though, when Faust presented Gretchen with a bottle of a colourless liquid saying "Just a little drop will do the trick!" (If I remember correctly, this is a sleeping draught intended for Gretchen to use on her mother so she can sneak out with Faust at night.) At first Gretchen refuses, but the red lust woman (...Did I really just type that?) urges her on as the woman playing Gretchen's mother (who didn't look to be much older than Gretchen, but I WAS sitting fairly far back) walks on stage.
The poisoning scene was actually done very dramatically. The people in black (who I assume represent evil spirits or general wickedness) danced around the mother and sang harshly and angrily. They then all drank from small bottles and spat simultaneously in the air above her (not like "Ptooi", but more sort of "Fusshshh", if you know what I mean.) She then started choking and spat out some water of her own. (It actually got pretty damn high, I was impressed!) This happened a few times, as the music and the stomping and the shouting increased in intensity and then suddenly stopped as the mother fell to the floor, obviously dead.
Gretchen returns to find her mother dead and, as you would do, starts weeping, yelling at herself for her mistake and her foolishness. Just as she's getting up to recover, she spasms and clutches her stomach area as one of the spirits imitates a baby crying. Again, and again, faster and faster as Gretchen falls to the floor, writhing in pain as the cries grow louder and more frequent.
At this point I have to say, the young lady who played Gretchen was absolutely incredible! Her movements were so sudden and jarring that I felt quite distressed just watching her as she twitched violently across the stage. It just didn't seem that someone should be able to move like that!
Anyway, if you're not up to speed with yer metaphors and prefer things explained in plain English: Gretchen just went through the quickest human pregnancy humans have ever experienced, clocking in at under 1 minute. Once again, the fabric-baby is presented and Gretchen holds it.
Evil spirit people once again start their infantile crying (because, last I checked, cloth doesn't tend to get cranky) and Gretchen rocks gently back and forth, trying to soothe the baby with a lullaby that she can't help but utter shakily as she slowly loses her mind.
Once again, the crying gets louder, Gretchen starts singing louder, a bit more angrily, why won't the baby stop crying?! She stands up, walks with the baby as some of the spirits begin some singing of their own, a more sinister sounding version of Gretchen's lullaby as she walks along the stage. Once again, they build up to a frantic, manic crescendo as Gretchen slowly and calmly opens up one of the hatches in the walls and then *SLAM*
Silence as the cloth baby is thrown into the hatch.
And then came some of the most amazing insane acting I have ever seen. Gretchen looked at her hand and swatted at it, as if there was something on it she needed to get off. Again and again, she starts laughing, swatting at both of her hands. Then her arms. Laughing maniacally the starts swatting all over her body, trying to cleanse herself of all the nothing. My guess is she was seeing the blood on her hands. But again, the way the girl moved was just terrifying. If an actor laughs maniacally as they go insane and overdo it, people will start laughing as well, it's hard not to.
But there was nothing to laugh at with this. Gretchen was half-laughing, half-screaming as she swatted at herself and then at the walls, her movements reminded me more of some kind of insect that a human, such quick, tight movements.
Sweet mother of mercy, I loved that scene.
The following scene was the nightmare orgy, as I like to call it. (Well, I don't particularly LIKE to call it that, but it seems fairly fitting.)
Faust and Mephistopheles are getting deep into their dabbling in the magic world, and before he knows it, evil spirits are everywhere, seducing Faust and just plain jumping on him when they get the chance. The stage was used well, the harsh mutterings and stomping and music rose the tension and the strobe lighting showed the intensity of the scene. No dialogue was needed.
Eventually things calm down and Faust hears about Gretchen. He starts yelling at Mephistopheles, who remained sat, calmly, in his chair and told Faust...Something. I couldn't tell what they were saying, and the scene ran on for a lot longer than I remember being in the original play, but I know that Faust was really not a happy bunny.
The ending was quite surreal, as a THIRD girl was brought in to be Gretchen, post-insanity. The scene was partially as I was expecting, until the walls opened and the other 2 Gretchens and Gretchen's Lust woman were standing there. As far as I recall they were chastising Faust, saying "Don't say you were ever there for Gretchen!"
Eventually Faust gives up on his attempts to take Gretchen with him and as she is executed for infanticide, she finds her salvation.
So, overall I really enjoyed the performance. I was interested to see how they would do certain scenes, such as Mephistopheles' transformation from dog to human (which was simple enough: Mephistopheles' actor just pretended to be a dog. He also danced for a bit while he pretended to be a dog, which didn't make much sense, but was entertaining nonetheless), but I was overall a big fan of some of the director's takes on certain scenes. I wish I had understood more of what the actors had said, I may well have felt less confused at the time of watching it, but I'm still so glad I was able to see it.
I hear it'll be around again in November, and if it is, I heartily recommend anybody currently in Tver' to get a ticket.
Just make sure you know the plot before you go, though.
Have a good night, everybody.
Joe
P.S. If a dog on fire starts following you around the streets, don't let it into your house, it'll just end in tears.
So, as the title says, I went and saw Faust this afternoon/evening with Akvile, Myriam, Anne and Robin. I'd studied Faust in a module last year, so I wasn't too worried about understanding the Russian as long as I remembered the story, and it worked!..Riiiight up until the intermission...
The first half of the play was good, Mephistopheles' actor was absolutely fantastic - as bouncy and mischevious and down-right fun just as he ought to be. Faust, similarly, did well being grouchy but somehow passionate. The scene with the ghost was especially amazing, because the stage had a large number of windows and doors built into the walls of the stage which opened and slammed shut loudly and frantically, building the emotion and the terror of the scene.
However, some of the characters were missing, such as Faust's...whatever he was. I'd say roommate, but I seem to recall he had a different role. In any case, due to the relatively small cast and his altogether unimportant role, he was replaced by a monologue from Faust. A more important person who was missing, however, was the witch who makes Faust younger, enabling him to be attractive to Gretchen. Now I know what you're thinking: "But then how the heck does the rest of the play work?"
This was a stroke of genius from the director, in my opinion, because throughout the entire play Mephistopheles had 2 interesting characteristics (besides his rather dapper red suit): He always wore a single black glove and carried a cane which gave him a pronounced limp (L-I-M-P, pronounced "limp".) In the scene of Faust's rejuvenation, the glove and cane were passed to the older actor who played Faust, so in this version it seems Faust and Mephistopheles swapped bodies for the sake of the story! Very clever indeed!
Up until this point I had followed the story well enough to at least know where we were in the story, though some parts confused me which I don't recall being in the original play, such as the scene in which Faust and Mephistopheles show each other a mirror and, in turn, recoil in horror from their reflections...
But that's NOTHING compared to the second half...
So in the original, Faust and Mephistopheles sneak into Gretchen's room, plant some beautiful jewellery and make their escape, she finds it and is overjoyed.
In THIS version, Gretchen, or possibly her friend Margaret, and 3 other girls (and I STILL don't know who they were meant to be, the prevalent theory is hitherto unheard-of sisters) are throwing a piece of lacy material around and giggling childishly. This continues for several minutes.They then use the material and pretend that it is a baby...And then throw it around again as the piece of material...Then the scene of Mephy and Faust hiding the necklace occurs. Can you guess what the necklace was? That's right, the same goddamn piece of fabric.
Reality is apparently very flexible where they live.
So Gretchen (a NEW one this time, meaning there's possibly 2 Gretchens on stage) put the material around their necks, oohing and aaahing at how pretty it is and then...Start suffocating. That DEFINITELY didn't happen in Goethe's version, so for a terrifying few minutes the girls spasmed and choked as a large number of people dressed in black danced chaotically around them.
Then a woman dressed in a red, floral bodysuit appeared on-stage and started mimicking Gretchen's movements as she and Faust started...I THINK Faust was charming her and she was resisting, but it was getting pretty violent at times...
So between the red woman, the flailing people in black and the multiple Gretchens who may not have been multiple Gretchens, I was lost for a good 15 minutes. Things started getting back on track, though, when Faust presented Gretchen with a bottle of a colourless liquid saying "Just a little drop will do the trick!" (If I remember correctly, this is a sleeping draught intended for Gretchen to use on her mother so she can sneak out with Faust at night.) At first Gretchen refuses, but the red lust woman (...Did I really just type that?) urges her on as the woman playing Gretchen's mother (who didn't look to be much older than Gretchen, but I WAS sitting fairly far back) walks on stage.
The poisoning scene was actually done very dramatically. The people in black (who I assume represent evil spirits or general wickedness) danced around the mother and sang harshly and angrily. They then all drank from small bottles and spat simultaneously in the air above her (not like "Ptooi", but more sort of "Fusshshh", if you know what I mean.) She then started choking and spat out some water of her own. (It actually got pretty damn high, I was impressed!) This happened a few times, as the music and the stomping and the shouting increased in intensity and then suddenly stopped as the mother fell to the floor, obviously dead.
Gretchen returns to find her mother dead and, as you would do, starts weeping, yelling at herself for her mistake and her foolishness. Just as she's getting up to recover, she spasms and clutches her stomach area as one of the spirits imitates a baby crying. Again, and again, faster and faster as Gretchen falls to the floor, writhing in pain as the cries grow louder and more frequent.
At this point I have to say, the young lady who played Gretchen was absolutely incredible! Her movements were so sudden and jarring that I felt quite distressed just watching her as she twitched violently across the stage. It just didn't seem that someone should be able to move like that!
Anyway, if you're not up to speed with yer metaphors and prefer things explained in plain English: Gretchen just went through the quickest human pregnancy humans have ever experienced, clocking in at under 1 minute. Once again, the fabric-baby is presented and Gretchen holds it.
Evil spirit people once again start their infantile crying (because, last I checked, cloth doesn't tend to get cranky) and Gretchen rocks gently back and forth, trying to soothe the baby with a lullaby that she can't help but utter shakily as she slowly loses her mind.
Once again, the crying gets louder, Gretchen starts singing louder, a bit more angrily, why won't the baby stop crying?! She stands up, walks with the baby as some of the spirits begin some singing of their own, a more sinister sounding version of Gretchen's lullaby as she walks along the stage. Once again, they build up to a frantic, manic crescendo as Gretchen slowly and calmly opens up one of the hatches in the walls and then *SLAM*
Silence as the cloth baby is thrown into the hatch.
And then came some of the most amazing insane acting I have ever seen. Gretchen looked at her hand and swatted at it, as if there was something on it she needed to get off. Again and again, she starts laughing, swatting at both of her hands. Then her arms. Laughing maniacally the starts swatting all over her body, trying to cleanse herself of all the nothing. My guess is she was seeing the blood on her hands. But again, the way the girl moved was just terrifying. If an actor laughs maniacally as they go insane and overdo it, people will start laughing as well, it's hard not to.
But there was nothing to laugh at with this. Gretchen was half-laughing, half-screaming as she swatted at herself and then at the walls, her movements reminded me more of some kind of insect that a human, such quick, tight movements.
Sweet mother of mercy, I loved that scene.
The following scene was the nightmare orgy, as I like to call it. (Well, I don't particularly LIKE to call it that, but it seems fairly fitting.)
Faust and Mephistopheles are getting deep into their dabbling in the magic world, and before he knows it, evil spirits are everywhere, seducing Faust and just plain jumping on him when they get the chance. The stage was used well, the harsh mutterings and stomping and music rose the tension and the strobe lighting showed the intensity of the scene. No dialogue was needed.
Eventually things calm down and Faust hears about Gretchen. He starts yelling at Mephistopheles, who remained sat, calmly, in his chair and told Faust...Something. I couldn't tell what they were saying, and the scene ran on for a lot longer than I remember being in the original play, but I know that Faust was really not a happy bunny.
The ending was quite surreal, as a THIRD girl was brought in to be Gretchen, post-insanity. The scene was partially as I was expecting, until the walls opened and the other 2 Gretchens and Gretchen's Lust woman were standing there. As far as I recall they were chastising Faust, saying "Don't say you were ever there for Gretchen!"
Eventually Faust gives up on his attempts to take Gretchen with him and as she is executed for infanticide, she finds her salvation.
So, overall I really enjoyed the performance. I was interested to see how they would do certain scenes, such as Mephistopheles' transformation from dog to human (which was simple enough: Mephistopheles' actor just pretended to be a dog. He also danced for a bit while he pretended to be a dog, which didn't make much sense, but was entertaining nonetheless), but I was overall a big fan of some of the director's takes on certain scenes. I wish I had understood more of what the actors had said, I may well have felt less confused at the time of watching it, but I'm still so glad I was able to see it.
I hear it'll be around again in November, and if it is, I heartily recommend anybody currently in Tver' to get a ticket.
Just make sure you know the plot before you go, though.
Have a good night, everybody.
Joe
P.S. If a dog on fire starts following you around the streets, don't let it into your house, it'll just end in tears.
Friday, 27 September 2013
27th of September
A very small update from me today. Today is a very special day, not because I've done anything (genuinely, just been sat in my room all day), but because on this day in 1989, the single greatest person ever was born: My sister, Rachel!
It's a really weird feeling at this point, because I think this is the first time in my life that I'm not with Rach on her birthday or on a day particularly close to it, but thanks to the internet I can still make sure she feels the love.
So have an absolutely marvellous birthday, Rachel, and make sure it's only filled with good times and lovely people like yourself!
Though as long as you're feeling better than this guy, you can't be doing too badly...
It's a really weird feeling at this point, because I think this is the first time in my life that I'm not with Rach on her birthday or on a day particularly close to it, but thanks to the internet I can still make sure she feels the love.
So have an absolutely marvellous birthday, Rachel, and make sure it's only filled with good times and lovely people like yourself!
Though as long as you're feeling better than this guy, you can't be doing too badly...
Tuesday, 17 September 2013
Sweet Mother of Мёд
Hey, guess what phenomenon is still alive and thriving as much in Russian Universities as it is in British ones?
That's right, Freshers' Flu! It currently has me in its nasty, germy, little claws, so I've been feeling quiet and somewhat out of it the last few days. This does NOT help when you need to speak a foreign language such as Russian to get anything done.
Funnily enough, though, it DID help me do a dialogue in oral class yesterday in which we asked one another how we were feeling. I get the feeling this opening to the lecture may actually have been somewhat prompted by me because the lecturer remarked after the dialogue (in Russian): "Is what you just talked about true? I thought so, you didn't seem very well."
In any case, you're probably wondering about the title of this blog (moreso if you don't speak Russian (in which case "Мёд" (pronounced "Myod") means Honey.)
But that'll have to wait, I have to catch you up on some other things.
So on Saturday I experienced the wonderful, somewhat terrifying place that is the Tver' market. On the way to said market, we encountered a smaller market where people were selling something quite distressing: Little, baby animals. I may be jumping to conclusions, but I can imagine these animals haven't exactly had the happiest possible upbringing up to this point in their lives. There were animals shoved into little boxes for people to admire and take them out and everything and the boxes really were too small for them. In one case there was a turtle which clearly didn't even have enough space to turn around! A part of me wanted to get all the animals to safety but that would either cost me all my money and then some OR, if I were to go with the sudden release option, get me in an enormous amount of trouble with the Russians and most likely do the animals far more harm than good, so I stayed quiet.
They were pretty damn adorable, though...
But I digress, after that we reached the proper, actual market, and let me tell you, it was pretty big! There were food stalls, clothes stalls, game stalls, tool stalls, a stall which seemed to be selling animal pelts for whatever reason. I'd planned to by a шапка ("shapka", Russian hat) and...Well, I DID buy one, but my brain didn't convert the rubles quickly enough before I agreed to buy it, so I wound up spending around £70 on it...I definitely regret spending that much before researching the PROPER amount for a hat, but I won't be too bothered as long as it keeps me warm in winter and doesn't disintegrate within the space of a few weeks. Heck, if I'm lucky, it's a really good quality shapka which will last me forever and was actually a reasonable price for the quality.
Somehow, though, I'm less than optimistic.
Anyway, I hear you cry "But Joe, what about the blasted honey?" Patience, my friend, there is still more to tell.
Sunday was shaping up to be quite a lazy day as well, right until Akvile reminded me about English lessons available at the library which she'd invited me to help with. So at 4pm Akvile, Anna, Sophia, Myriam and I headed on our way to the library. We got to the room where the lesson would be held and started arranging the room.
So, when does the teacher turn up?, I thought to myself, assuming that we were here to help the class with our conversational skills and knowledge of English. It is then that Akvile asked me a rather worrying question:
"Erm, so do you want to be, like, the main teacher or...?"
I'm sorry, what? Put the "main" bit aside for now, we're the teachers?! I deeeefinitely don't remember being told that that was meant to be my role! I haven't set up lessons plans or a syllabus or anything!
In the end, though, it was a lot better than I thought, since we just split up into groups and did the conversations that I had thought we were going to have in the first place. I talked with 3 very nice Russians, albeit very awkwardly, and left the session feeling good and having heard some good recommendations from them of things to do, one of which is to visit a nearby town called Старица ("Staritsa"). At this point a man from a completely different group chimed in and said "Oh, Старица is great, it's very good for practicing rock-climbing!"
This is important because, shortly after the lesson, this same man (Named Илья, pronounced Ilya) invited me to join him at Старица for some rock-climbing! Well, I'm not in Russia NOT to experience things, so I took him up on this offer, we exchanged numbers and, presumably, he'll contact me when/if this trip happens. Anna said she loves rock-climbing as well, so she'll presumably be joining me as well.
"For God's sake, man, what is so important about the honey?!"
Alright, alright, I'll tell you.
By the way, did you know that the ?! punctuation is called an Interrobang? Sounds like something a frat boy would say.
Okay, okay, sorry. So, the honey. This happened yesterday after oral class. I decided I'd pick up some things to help my sore throat, one of which was, you guessed it, honey. Just as I was eating lunch, Elke joined me at the table and proposed that she, Robin and I start sharing groceries and such, since it would probably save us all money in the long run. Robin and I agreed and we headed to ATAK to get food for the next week and, hopefully, a bit longer.
Definitely longer in the case of the honey.
Turns out that the honey at ATAK isn't just jars on a shelf, there's a neat little shack near the entrance with loads of different types of honey. Like, seriously, at least around 14, and I don't really know the difference between any of them. So there I was, at the stall, doing my best to speak Russian. The woman was very friendly and let me sample a bit of my arbitrarily-selected honey (Christ, how many times have I typed the word "honey" now?) However, my general social awkwardness, insecurity in speaking Russian in the real world and feeling slightly out of it (my sore throat had led to a poor night's sleep as well) led me to panic somewhat and buy a whole kilo of honey.
I somehow think I didn't need THAT much honey...It's quite pretty to look at, though! And I wouldn't be in trouble should Винни Пух ("Vinni Pookh", Russian Winnie-the-Pooh) ever pop by for a visit.
So we headed back with our heavy bags of various tasty things/things which, with some work, can become tasty. Robin and Elke needed to stop at the bank on the way back to sort out payment for their visas and, in Elke's case, accordion lessons. I'd done the payment via machine and...
Wait, did I ever talk about the visa payment?
Long story short: I needed to pay 1000 rubles (£20) for a visa extension which, for some reason, is done at the bank. I was given instructions to "ask for a visa extension and pay it at the bank", which I did. I asked a woman nearby who simply pointed in a vague direction out of the room and said "Terminal". Turns out this means the machines lined up outside, but being unfamiliar with the word, I thought she might have meant the little window outside with a person behind it. I asked HIM about it, another employee overheard and took me to...The same woman I had just asked. Strangely enough, she said much the same thing, but pointed more helpfully right at the machines.
I then flustered my way through the process as the same woman rapidly pressed buttons so that I couldn't see quite what she had done, but eventually I put in the money and got the receipt, so everything should be fiiiiiine...Right?
This is kinda important, though, because Elke and Robin tried to pay at the desk because I hadn't seen which of the thousands of buttons had been pressed to access the visa payment. Elke's accordion lesson payment was done smoothly at the desk (as was mine a few days prior) but the two people working at the desk seemed somewhat perplexed by the visa request. Eventually I was called over to help and all I had to say was "Well, I did it at the terminal, but I'm not sure..." and suddenly everything set into motion and, with little fuss, Robin and Elke's visa payments were done as well.
We got home and started sorting out the food items when I discovered: The Honey has spilled out of the box. Fortunately there was an extra little bag around the box so it didn't go EVERYWHERE, but it led to a fun half-hour by the end of which I had a honey-soaked plastic bag, a plate of honey, a bowl of honey and I STILL have around 4/5 of the big, plastic box of honey...
My life was a honey-based mess for quite a while, but it was all fun.
I think I've got it sorted now.
Still, I'd better have a sore throat for a lot longer if I'm hoping to use up the rest of this stuff...
In any case, that's about all I have to say for now. Thank you for reading, and have a nice day/evening, wherever you are.
Joe
That's right, Freshers' Flu! It currently has me in its nasty, germy, little claws, so I've been feeling quiet and somewhat out of it the last few days. This does NOT help when you need to speak a foreign language such as Russian to get anything done.
Funnily enough, though, it DID help me do a dialogue in oral class yesterday in which we asked one another how we were feeling. I get the feeling this opening to the lecture may actually have been somewhat prompted by me because the lecturer remarked after the dialogue (in Russian): "Is what you just talked about true? I thought so, you didn't seem very well."
In any case, you're probably wondering about the title of this blog (moreso if you don't speak Russian (in which case "Мёд" (pronounced "Myod") means Honey.)
But that'll have to wait, I have to catch you up on some other things.
So on Saturday I experienced the wonderful, somewhat terrifying place that is the Tver' market. On the way to said market, we encountered a smaller market where people were selling something quite distressing: Little, baby animals. I may be jumping to conclusions, but I can imagine these animals haven't exactly had the happiest possible upbringing up to this point in their lives. There were animals shoved into little boxes for people to admire and take them out and everything and the boxes really were too small for them. In one case there was a turtle which clearly didn't even have enough space to turn around! A part of me wanted to get all the animals to safety but that would either cost me all my money and then some OR, if I were to go with the sudden release option, get me in an enormous amount of trouble with the Russians and most likely do the animals far more harm than good, so I stayed quiet.
They were pretty damn adorable, though...
But I digress, after that we reached the proper, actual market, and let me tell you, it was pretty big! There were food stalls, clothes stalls, game stalls, tool stalls, a stall which seemed to be selling animal pelts for whatever reason. I'd planned to by a шапка ("shapka", Russian hat) and...Well, I DID buy one, but my brain didn't convert the rubles quickly enough before I agreed to buy it, so I wound up spending around £70 on it...I definitely regret spending that much before researching the PROPER amount for a hat, but I won't be too bothered as long as it keeps me warm in winter and doesn't disintegrate within the space of a few weeks. Heck, if I'm lucky, it's a really good quality shapka which will last me forever and was actually a reasonable price for the quality.
Somehow, though, I'm less than optimistic.
Anyway, I hear you cry "But Joe, what about the blasted honey?" Patience, my friend, there is still more to tell.
Sunday was shaping up to be quite a lazy day as well, right until Akvile reminded me about English lessons available at the library which she'd invited me to help with. So at 4pm Akvile, Anna, Sophia, Myriam and I headed on our way to the library. We got to the room where the lesson would be held and started arranging the room.
So, when does the teacher turn up?, I thought to myself, assuming that we were here to help the class with our conversational skills and knowledge of English. It is then that Akvile asked me a rather worrying question:
"Erm, so do you want to be, like, the main teacher or...?"
I'm sorry, what? Put the "main" bit aside for now, we're the teachers?! I deeeefinitely don't remember being told that that was meant to be my role! I haven't set up lessons plans or a syllabus or anything!
In the end, though, it was a lot better than I thought, since we just split up into groups and did the conversations that I had thought we were going to have in the first place. I talked with 3 very nice Russians, albeit very awkwardly, and left the session feeling good and having heard some good recommendations from them of things to do, one of which is to visit a nearby town called Старица ("Staritsa"). At this point a man from a completely different group chimed in and said "Oh, Старица is great, it's very good for practicing rock-climbing!"
This is important because, shortly after the lesson, this same man (Named Илья, pronounced Ilya) invited me to join him at Старица for some rock-climbing! Well, I'm not in Russia NOT to experience things, so I took him up on this offer, we exchanged numbers and, presumably, he'll contact me when/if this trip happens. Anna said she loves rock-climbing as well, so she'll presumably be joining me as well.
"For God's sake, man, what is so important about the honey?!"
Alright, alright, I'll tell you.
By the way, did you know that the ?! punctuation is called an Interrobang? Sounds like something a frat boy would say.
Okay, okay, sorry. So, the honey. This happened yesterday after oral class. I decided I'd pick up some things to help my sore throat, one of which was, you guessed it, honey. Just as I was eating lunch, Elke joined me at the table and proposed that she, Robin and I start sharing groceries and such, since it would probably save us all money in the long run. Robin and I agreed and we headed to ATAK to get food for the next week and, hopefully, a bit longer.
Definitely longer in the case of the honey.
Turns out that the honey at ATAK isn't just jars on a shelf, there's a neat little shack near the entrance with loads of different types of honey. Like, seriously, at least around 14, and I don't really know the difference between any of them. So there I was, at the stall, doing my best to speak Russian. The woman was very friendly and let me sample a bit of my arbitrarily-selected honey (Christ, how many times have I typed the word "honey" now?) However, my general social awkwardness, insecurity in speaking Russian in the real world and feeling slightly out of it (my sore throat had led to a poor night's sleep as well) led me to panic somewhat and buy a whole kilo of honey.
I somehow think I didn't need THAT much honey...It's quite pretty to look at, though! And I wouldn't be in trouble should Винни Пух ("Vinni Pookh", Russian Winnie-the-Pooh) ever pop by for a visit.
So we headed back with our heavy bags of various tasty things/things which, with some work, can become tasty. Robin and Elke needed to stop at the bank on the way back to sort out payment for their visas and, in Elke's case, accordion lessons. I'd done the payment via machine and...
Wait, did I ever talk about the visa payment?
Long story short: I needed to pay 1000 rubles (£20) for a visa extension which, for some reason, is done at the bank. I was given instructions to "ask for a visa extension and pay it at the bank", which I did. I asked a woman nearby who simply pointed in a vague direction out of the room and said "Terminal". Turns out this means the machines lined up outside, but being unfamiliar with the word, I thought she might have meant the little window outside with a person behind it. I asked HIM about it, another employee overheard and took me to...The same woman I had just asked. Strangely enough, she said much the same thing, but pointed more helpfully right at the machines.
I then flustered my way through the process as the same woman rapidly pressed buttons so that I couldn't see quite what she had done, but eventually I put in the money and got the receipt, so everything should be fiiiiiine...Right?
This is kinda important, though, because Elke and Robin tried to pay at the desk because I hadn't seen which of the thousands of buttons had been pressed to access the visa payment. Elke's accordion lesson payment was done smoothly at the desk (as was mine a few days prior) but the two people working at the desk seemed somewhat perplexed by the visa request. Eventually I was called over to help and all I had to say was "Well, I did it at the terminal, but I'm not sure..." and suddenly everything set into motion and, with little fuss, Robin and Elke's visa payments were done as well.
We got home and started sorting out the food items when I discovered: The Honey has spilled out of the box. Fortunately there was an extra little bag around the box so it didn't go EVERYWHERE, but it led to a fun half-hour by the end of which I had a honey-soaked plastic bag, a plate of honey, a bowl of honey and I STILL have around 4/5 of the big, plastic box of honey...
My life was a honey-based mess for quite a while, but it was all fun.
I think I've got it sorted now.
Still, I'd better have a sore throat for a lot longer if I'm hoping to use up the rest of this stuff...
In any case, that's about all I have to say for now. Thank you for reading, and have a nice day/evening, wherever you are.
Joe
Tuesday, 10 September 2013
I'm learning the Accordion!!
Well, not yet, but from the sounds of it I will be soon! I just wanted the chance to use the title as my next blog post.
So let's have a recap of the events of the last few days, shall we?
You remember my lazy Saturday? Well, that evening ended in Akvile and Myriam's flat where a bunch of us watched the first part of a comedy film "Двенадцать столов" (12 chairs) and drank (not in a "Let's get smashed wooo!" kind of way, more just "We have vodka, why the hell not?" kind of way.) The story was about a dying old...woman, we think, who left her precious jewels inside the cushion of one of her 12 fancy chairs. A farce ensues involving her son-in-law, the conman he asks to help him find the chairs and the vicar who blessed her on her death bed to find these chairs and collect their fortunes! It's a fun film, but we're only about halfway through it because the first half lasted about 1 1/4 hours! We may be watching the rest tonight, nobody's really certain...
Anyway, plans were made that evening to go to Торжок (Tarzhok) the following day, and by golly we did! Setting off on a fairly grim Sunday morning from Tver' we travelled by Маршрутка (Marshrutka, kind of like a tiny bus) to the bus station where we got an Автобус (Avtobus, which was weirdly enough more like a coach...) to Торжок, and let me tell you, it was incredibly worth the 2 or so hours. I have pictures on my phone, but I don't have any means of getting them onto the computer! Whyyyyy?! So yeah, someday I'll be posting all the lovely pictures and mixing them into this post. In the meantime, just try to imagine them.
So the first thing we learned about Торжок, there's a hell of a lot of churches there. We visited at least 4, and I'm pretty sure there were more. The first church we visited was fairly large, ornately decorated and pleasant to look around for a little while. The second church (well, technically the third, the second church seemed to be inaccessible) was quite clearly Торжок's pride and joy: It was huge, blue, beautiful and more portraits of saints and other important religious figures than you could shake a crucifix at (though if you DID shake a crucifix at them I imagine you'd be forcefully asked to leave very swiftly). And yet, despite all that, it was not my favourite of the churches we saw that day, but that will come later.
We then visited the monastery, which was also brilliant. It was, as many monasteries are, very old and very tall. We talked for a little while with the very kind Russian woman sitting at the bottom (whom I had trouble understanding because she had false teeth which led to a multitude of those strange, somewhat gutteral "sch" noises as she spoke), gave her the admission money and headed to the top. The view was spectacular, and was only improved by the lovely weather we had that day, an enormous contrast to that of Tver'. After we'd had enough of being up really high, we went to the church located in the grounds of the monastery. As we went in, we were greeted by another set of Russian people, seemingly just random civilians themselves, with whom we chatted for a little while. The man was especially friendly, and was happy to have the chance to show off the English and German that he knew. He told us about yet ANOTHER church nearby, about which I'll go into detail later, and offered to show/tell us the way once we'd checked out THIS one.
So yeah, the monastery's church was also nice. Simpler than the rest, a lot fewer portraits and less gold, but it still felt holy, which is a good thing in a church. I didn't get any pictures of the churches, unfortunately, just because I was worried about offending somebody or doing something sacriligious and being exiled, which is a TOTALLY rational fear, by the way...Anyway, we left and met up with our good new Russian friend whose name we TOTALLY learned. I was a bit worried when he offered to drive us, especially since there wouldn't be space for us and we'd have to split up, but our group had common sense and I think it was a perfectly innocent invitation in the end anyway. One of the women with him also gave us a small stack of Christian newspapers which I think we all still have, so that should be good for some light(ish) revision!
But yes, the final church. My favourite church. The goddamn best church there...
Was incredibly unimpressive. It was, like, a really tall wooden shack with a few pictures in it, but...It was just beautiful in its simplicity. It wasn't overwhelming, it wasn't flashy, it was barely even decorated! But the tower was the most impressive of any of the churches we visited that day, and it just made me feel happy to be there! I believe other members of our party took pictures of the church, so I'll see if I can steal and repurpose them later on.
There was also a kitty outside which let us pet it, so that was pleasant.
After that the day slowly drew to a close, really. We tried to visit the Pushkin museum, but a rather gruff man in camouflage pants told us quite distinctly that they were closed, so I guess we'll just have to go back some other day! We took the train back home (which would have been half the price if I'd had my student card by then, but oh well, it was still only around 150 roubles (£3)) and...that's about it, really.
The following day (Monday) was partially eventful, partially not. Lectures happened as normal, but I got my Student Card! It's wonderful and weirdly official looking in comparison to the little plastic cards back at Manchester. However, I'm a bit worried about the paper inside tearing as life goes on...Oh well, I'm sure it'll be fine. Some of us also went to the library again in search of rumoured language lessons! There were details of a German group there, but sadly no Japanese...Not sure what's happening with the German group either, actually, I think there was meant to be something today, but I haven't heard anything about it...Other than that I don't think much happened. I found a Terry Pratchett book in Russian, but I didn't have any money on me at the time and I ran out of time to buy it today, so tomorrow it will be MINE! "Guards, Guards!" was the first Pratchett book I read, so it'll be extra meaningful to have it in Russian (though if someone sees "Thud!" in Russian, please let me know!)
As for today, as I said, we went back to the music school and we were actually allowed to see people this time! And our Russian didn't magically disappear into the ether! AND we signed something and talked to people who seemed to be willing to teach us, so I'd say a rather huge success! Elke and I have scheduled a first proper meeting/lesson for next Wednesday, so more news then! Apparently Elke misremembered her lecture schedule, so she won't be able to make regular meetings on Wednesdays, but that's alright because I think lessons are individual anyway, so I can keep the slot.
I think that's all the news that's fit to print...Upload...I dunno, so I'll leave it there, I suppose. So once again everybody, thank you for reading! Good night!
Joe
So let's have a recap of the events of the last few days, shall we?
You remember my lazy Saturday? Well, that evening ended in Akvile and Myriam's flat where a bunch of us watched the first part of a comedy film "Двенадцать столов" (12 chairs) and drank (not in a "Let's get smashed wooo!" kind of way, more just "We have vodka, why the hell not?" kind of way.) The story was about a dying old...woman, we think, who left her precious jewels inside the cushion of one of her 12 fancy chairs. A farce ensues involving her son-in-law, the conman he asks to help him find the chairs and the vicar who blessed her on her death bed to find these chairs and collect their fortunes! It's a fun film, but we're only about halfway through it because the first half lasted about 1 1/4 hours! We may be watching the rest tonight, nobody's really certain...
Anyway, plans were made that evening to go to Торжок (Tarzhok) the following day, and by golly we did! Setting off on a fairly grim Sunday morning from Tver' we travelled by Маршрутка (Marshrutka, kind of like a tiny bus) to the bus station where we got an Автобус (Avtobus, which was weirdly enough more like a coach...) to Торжок, and let me tell you, it was incredibly worth the 2 or so hours. I have pictures on my phone, but I don't have any means of getting them onto the computer! Whyyyyy?! So yeah, someday I'll be posting all the lovely pictures and mixing them into this post. In the meantime, just try to imagine them.
So the first thing we learned about Торжок, there's a hell of a lot of churches there. We visited at least 4, and I'm pretty sure there were more. The first church we visited was fairly large, ornately decorated and pleasant to look around for a little while. The second church (well, technically the third, the second church seemed to be inaccessible) was quite clearly Торжок's pride and joy: It was huge, blue, beautiful and more portraits of saints and other important religious figures than you could shake a crucifix at (though if you DID shake a crucifix at them I imagine you'd be forcefully asked to leave very swiftly). And yet, despite all that, it was not my favourite of the churches we saw that day, but that will come later.
We then visited the monastery, which was also brilliant. It was, as many monasteries are, very old and very tall. We talked for a little while with the very kind Russian woman sitting at the bottom (whom I had trouble understanding because she had false teeth which led to a multitude of those strange, somewhat gutteral "sch" noises as she spoke), gave her the admission money and headed to the top. The view was spectacular, and was only improved by the lovely weather we had that day, an enormous contrast to that of Tver'. After we'd had enough of being up really high, we went to the church located in the grounds of the monastery. As we went in, we were greeted by another set of Russian people, seemingly just random civilians themselves, with whom we chatted for a little while. The man was especially friendly, and was happy to have the chance to show off the English and German that he knew. He told us about yet ANOTHER church nearby, about which I'll go into detail later, and offered to show/tell us the way once we'd checked out THIS one.
So yeah, the monastery's church was also nice. Simpler than the rest, a lot fewer portraits and less gold, but it still felt holy, which is a good thing in a church. I didn't get any pictures of the churches, unfortunately, just because I was worried about offending somebody or doing something sacriligious and being exiled, which is a TOTALLY rational fear, by the way...Anyway, we left and met up with our good new Russian friend whose name we TOTALLY learned. I was a bit worried when he offered to drive us, especially since there wouldn't be space for us and we'd have to split up, but our group had common sense and I think it was a perfectly innocent invitation in the end anyway. One of the women with him also gave us a small stack of Christian newspapers which I think we all still have, so that should be good for some light(ish) revision!
But yes, the final church. My favourite church. The goddamn best church there...
Was incredibly unimpressive. It was, like, a really tall wooden shack with a few pictures in it, but...It was just beautiful in its simplicity. It wasn't overwhelming, it wasn't flashy, it was barely even decorated! But the tower was the most impressive of any of the churches we visited that day, and it just made me feel happy to be there! I believe other members of our party took pictures of the church, so I'll see if I can steal and repurpose them later on.
There was also a kitty outside which let us pet it, so that was pleasant.
After that the day slowly drew to a close, really. We tried to visit the Pushkin museum, but a rather gruff man in camouflage pants told us quite distinctly that they were closed, so I guess we'll just have to go back some other day! We took the train back home (which would have been half the price if I'd had my student card by then, but oh well, it was still only around 150 roubles (£3)) and...that's about it, really.
The following day (Monday) was partially eventful, partially not. Lectures happened as normal, but I got my Student Card! It's wonderful and weirdly official looking in comparison to the little plastic cards back at Manchester. However, I'm a bit worried about the paper inside tearing as life goes on...Oh well, I'm sure it'll be fine. Some of us also went to the library again in search of rumoured language lessons! There were details of a German group there, but sadly no Japanese...Not sure what's happening with the German group either, actually, I think there was meant to be something today, but I haven't heard anything about it...Other than that I don't think much happened. I found a Terry Pratchett book in Russian, but I didn't have any money on me at the time and I ran out of time to buy it today, so tomorrow it will be MINE! "Guards, Guards!" was the first Pratchett book I read, so it'll be extra meaningful to have it in Russian (though if someone sees "Thud!" in Russian, please let me know!)
As for today, as I said, we went back to the music school and we were actually allowed to see people this time! And our Russian didn't magically disappear into the ether! AND we signed something and talked to people who seemed to be willing to teach us, so I'd say a rather huge success! Elke and I have scheduled a first proper meeting/lesson for next Wednesday, so more news then! Apparently Elke misremembered her lecture schedule, so she won't be able to make regular meetings on Wednesdays, but that's alright because I think lessons are individual anyway, so I can keep the slot.
I think that's all the news that's fit to print...Upload...I dunno, so I'll leave it there, I suppose. So once again everybody, thank you for reading! Good night!
Joe
Saturday, 7 September 2013
Lazy Saturday
So my first Saturday in Russia has been spent pretty much as a normal Saturday back home, i.e. doing very little at home. Finished my translation homework, watched Youtube videos and ate some bread and Nutella, though who knows what the evening may yet bring!
Besides, today's weather hasn't exactly been ideal for going out and seeing the sights, so hopefully I can do that tomorrow.
As for now, though, I'll give you a quick little catch-up on the last few days which haven't been quite as eventful as in my previous posts. I've just about got into the routine of Tver' Uni, which has some pretty amazing hours, all told! Lectures start at 10am and last until 1.30pm and we have Fridays off, so we have our fair share of free time! Back on our first day we had to take a short test so the lecturers can get an idea of where our russian ability lies. I've been told by a couple of fellow students that I'm in one of the more advanced groups (though I don't know why they know this, I don't recall being told much about the groups...) which is both a blessing and a curse. It's good, because I can feel proud of myself and I imagine it'll help boost my Russian ability immensely, but conversely it has led once or twice to a lecturer providing examples of work that seems to have been covered in the post A-Level classes at Manchester, but not in the post Beginners. Thankfully, Jordan has very kindly offered to help me with that sort of thing, so if more stuff crops up I'll just go pester him. It also makes me worry that my translation work is meant to test structures I haven't learned yet, but I'll find that out once we go over the homework, I guess.
Speaking of the lectures, the lecturers here are all really nice, especially our lecturer for oral class (with whom I was left to practice work thanks to the good old system of "Let's break off into pairs when there's an odd number of students in the group!", but I think I did pretty well) and I'm managing to understand most of what they're telling us, or at least the overall meaning which is the most important bit, I suppose. Our group only seems to have 3 lecturers for our 8 classes, whereas the others have at least 4, possibly 5. Either way, lectures are going pretty smoothly and the homework isn't overwhelming me just yet...
Beyond that I've spent a fair amount of time getting to know the people who are also staying in the Russian accommodation. I have yet to engage any of the natives living there with any meaningful conversation, but it's nice spending time with the other foreign students! I've also managed to get registered at the University library, which should really help provided I remember how it is you get there...I remember the vague area, so I'm sure a bit of exploration will get me there pretty simply (and maybe finding a few other cool places!)
Yesterday a group of us went to the music school to find out about possibly filling up our free time with learning how to play new instruments! It went...erm...interestingly. Akvile and Sophia were fine because they'd already been and got through the first phase (I believe they'll be studying the cello). However, the rest of us had a bit more trouble, since around half of us wanted to learn piano, but the groups were full, and 3 of us (myself, Elke and Rowan) decided we'd like to play the accordion...Or possibly another instrument that is very similar to the accordion but not quite, it doesn't have the piano-like keyboard (though I'd quite like the keyboard, so that should hopefully be quite easy to sort out once/if we proceed to the next step of the process). After a lot of erming and aahing and not really being sure what was going on, we talked to 2 of the teachers who, apparently, don't have the time to teach us, but there are some other teachers who might. In any case, we're going back on Tuesday so, if all goes as planned, we'll be learning to play the accordion soon enough!
We visited a little gallery right opposite the music school, which had a lot of really cool photographs in it! Obviously, though, cameras were forbidden, so I can't share them with you...We also found a new supermarket as well, and it's always good to have a big choice of those.
...
Well, I've now very briefly met some Russians from this accommodation as I was summoned to help with an internet connection issue (which was one of those lovely issues where your computer is being weird for no reason but then you call someone in to help and it was suddenly just fine. Strange to be on this end of that problem for a change) but they left before I could really ask them anything. Still, maybe if I see them around I'll be able to feel a bit less shy and engage them in conversation!
In any case, this post is far too long and nowhere near interesting enough, so I think I shall end it here! Thank you kindly for reading, and hopefully my next blog post will be entitled "I'm learning the accordion!!"
Until then, farewell!
Joe
EDIT:
Oh yeah, totally forgot about Анти-кафе! It's a neat little place we were taken to by a Russian student the other day. It's a little cafe with a bunch of board games and a PS3, I believe, and the system works thusly: You pay based not on what you order, but how much time you spend there. The first hour costs 2 rubles per minute (120 rubles per hour for all you hour-fanatics out there), and 1 ruble per minute for every subsequent hour. The upside to this deal, though, is that you can have as much food and drink from there as you want for free! You can also play any of the games for free, and it's a neat little place, if you ask me! Spent a large amount of my time there speaking French, though, strangely enough. Apparently every Monday at 6pm there are Russian films as well, so I'll most likely go along to at least some of those!
Besides, today's weather hasn't exactly been ideal for going out and seeing the sights, so hopefully I can do that tomorrow.
As for now, though, I'll give you a quick little catch-up on the last few days which haven't been quite as eventful as in my previous posts. I've just about got into the routine of Tver' Uni, which has some pretty amazing hours, all told! Lectures start at 10am and last until 1.30pm and we have Fridays off, so we have our fair share of free time! Back on our first day we had to take a short test so the lecturers can get an idea of where our russian ability lies. I've been told by a couple of fellow students that I'm in one of the more advanced groups (though I don't know why they know this, I don't recall being told much about the groups...) which is both a blessing and a curse. It's good, because I can feel proud of myself and I imagine it'll help boost my Russian ability immensely, but conversely it has led once or twice to a lecturer providing examples of work that seems to have been covered in the post A-Level classes at Manchester, but not in the post Beginners. Thankfully, Jordan has very kindly offered to help me with that sort of thing, so if more stuff crops up I'll just go pester him. It also makes me worry that my translation work is meant to test structures I haven't learned yet, but I'll find that out once we go over the homework, I guess.
Speaking of the lectures, the lecturers here are all really nice, especially our lecturer for oral class (with whom I was left to practice work thanks to the good old system of "Let's break off into pairs when there's an odd number of students in the group!", but I think I did pretty well) and I'm managing to understand most of what they're telling us, or at least the overall meaning which is the most important bit, I suppose. Our group only seems to have 3 lecturers for our 8 classes, whereas the others have at least 4, possibly 5. Either way, lectures are going pretty smoothly and the homework isn't overwhelming me just yet...
Beyond that I've spent a fair amount of time getting to know the people who are also staying in the Russian accommodation. I have yet to engage any of the natives living there with any meaningful conversation, but it's nice spending time with the other foreign students! I've also managed to get registered at the University library, which should really help provided I remember how it is you get there...I remember the vague area, so I'm sure a bit of exploration will get me there pretty simply (and maybe finding a few other cool places!)
Yesterday a group of us went to the music school to find out about possibly filling up our free time with learning how to play new instruments! It went...erm...interestingly. Akvile and Sophia were fine because they'd already been and got through the first phase (I believe they'll be studying the cello). However, the rest of us had a bit more trouble, since around half of us wanted to learn piano, but the groups were full, and 3 of us (myself, Elke and Rowan) decided we'd like to play the accordion...Or possibly another instrument that is very similar to the accordion but not quite, it doesn't have the piano-like keyboard (though I'd quite like the keyboard, so that should hopefully be quite easy to sort out once/if we proceed to the next step of the process). After a lot of erming and aahing and not really being sure what was going on, we talked to 2 of the teachers who, apparently, don't have the time to teach us, but there are some other teachers who might. In any case, we're going back on Tuesday so, if all goes as planned, we'll be learning to play the accordion soon enough!
We visited a little gallery right opposite the music school, which had a lot of really cool photographs in it! Obviously, though, cameras were forbidden, so I can't share them with you...We also found a new supermarket as well, and it's always good to have a big choice of those.
...
Well, I've now very briefly met some Russians from this accommodation as I was summoned to help with an internet connection issue (which was one of those lovely issues where your computer is being weird for no reason but then you call someone in to help and it was suddenly just fine. Strange to be on this end of that problem for a change) but they left before I could really ask them anything. Still, maybe if I see them around I'll be able to feel a bit less shy and engage them in conversation!
In any case, this post is far too long and nowhere near interesting enough, so I think I shall end it here! Thank you kindly for reading, and hopefully my next blog post will be entitled "I'm learning the accordion!!"
Until then, farewell!
Joe
EDIT:
Oh yeah, totally forgot about Анти-кафе! It's a neat little place we were taken to by a Russian student the other day. It's a little cafe with a bunch of board games and a PS3, I believe, and the system works thusly: You pay based not on what you order, but how much time you spend there. The first hour costs 2 rubles per minute (120 rubles per hour for all you hour-fanatics out there), and 1 ruble per minute for every subsequent hour. The upside to this deal, though, is that you can have as much food and drink from there as you want for free! You can also play any of the games for free, and it's a neat little place, if you ask me! Spent a large amount of my time there speaking French, though, strangely enough. Apparently every Monday at 6pm there are Russian films as well, so I'll most likely go along to at least some of those!
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)