Heather Worley Living in St. Petersburg, Russia
Wow, it has been a busy week. In the past week, I have:
1. Gone to see the Aurora (http://www.kostyor.ru/petersbourg/en/aurora.php),
2. Spent two afternoons in the Hermitage,
3. Helped translate get-to-know-you games into English from Russian,
4. Attended a Halloween party,
5. Seen some of St. Petersburg's smallest monuments,
6. and walked way too much. My feet hurt.
The Aurora fired the shot that started the October Revolution, which, due to
calendar differences, is now celebrated in November. It's no longer called
Great October Revolution Day, it's Birth of Russia Day or something quasi-non-communist like
that, but we still get school off.
The ship has been turned into a museum, with the history of the revolution,
it's role in the World Wars, etc. Reading about the history of the revolution
made me think about how poorly Americans understand Russia. Despite the
many awful things that happened later, the Russian Revolution was
one of the first times in Russian history that ordinary people were heroes,
and that they felt their voices were being heard on a level that mattered.
I think it's very easy to forget the power that moment had in the
lives of the people and to focus instead on the repressions that occurred under
communism, even though repression existed in Russia long before Lenin. I
think we get an unbalanced picture. I also think Russians used to get
a story that was unbalanced in the opposite direction, leaving out the bad and
only telling the good, only about half of which was true. I hope this
generation is getting the whole thing, because lost history begs to repeat itself.
I didn't make it out of bed in time this morning to get to church, so I went
to the Hermitage instead. I will never again go after 11 a.m., because
at noon all the groups of schoolchildren and suspicious tourists show up, and
they are no fun. (Some Brits were in front of me in line, and when a guide
approached them and said that if they bought a tour, they could go in the tour
entrance, which never has a line, and it would only cost an extra $10, they
thought he was trying to scam them. They didn't believe he was really
a tour guide.) In addition, when it's crowded, the coat check is a nightmare,
with grouchy garderobschitsas and confused tourists who not only don't speak
Russian and don't understand why they can't carry their coat with them, but
can't understand what to do when someone shakes their head, say "niet,"
and points to the next line.
I only spent about two hours inside, because after that much art my head starts
to spin and I realize I'm not absorbing any of it anymore. That happened
today while I was walking through the third(!) room full of Matisses.
So I got to see Matisse, Kandinsky, Malevich's Black Square, and a lot of Picassos.
If I had more stamina I could have made it to Renoir, too. Yesterday I
saw a lot of Spanish art, mainly Murillo and Jose de Ribera. In a way,
it's kind of funny to me that I can walk a couple miles and see all this great
art. Everyone in Norman was super-excited at the Weitzenhoffer gift, which
was truly phenomenal for OU, but it only has a few of Degas' studies and one
Van Gogh - a drop in the ocean of art. Comparatively speaking, the Hermitage
is sort of like the Atlantic (the Louvre would have to be the Pacific, I guess).
The translating of games was to help a group from the Children's Environmental
Center that is going to Finland this week for an ecology conference. They
do a lot of their communicating in English, because the Finns don't usually
speak Russian, and none of the Russian kids know Finnish. But they all
learn English in school. In fact, last week, while I was helping an older
group edit an article for a newspaper contest, one of them referred to English
as "the international language of youth." I'm not sure if they
feel this way because of rock-and-roll (or, more specifically, trashy pop music)
and movies, or if it's simply because if they meet another person their age
from any given country, chances are better that they will both know some English
than that one of them will know the other's native language.
During this same editing session, one of the girls asked me why I don't have
a patronymic (middle name formed from the father's first name), like Russians
do. I didn't know how to explain to her that Americans simply don't have
them. She said, "Well, I think they're very useful. What if
someone else has the same first name as you? Without a patronymic, there's
no way to tell you apart!" I said we have ways: last names, or, if
all else fails, physical descriptions. I think it's less of a problem
for us, though, since we generally have a larger variety of first names.
About 50% of the females of my generation in Russia are named Katya (short for
Ekaterina). Last week, Allison went out with a group of five Russian girls
from our school, all named Katya. After that are Tanya, Lena Anya,
and Sveta, comprising another 25%. The women of the generation older
than me are generally either Natalya (Natasha), Maria (Masha), Tatyana (Tanya),
or Marina. I think the boys' names might have more variety, but it's hard
to say, since there are only about 20 males at my school. I do know that
there a lot of guys named Aleksandr (Sasha) and Valentin (Valya).
The Halloween party was hosted by the freshman English classes at school.
Russians don't generally celebrate Halloween, although I think costume parties
on the 31st are becoming kind of popular. I had people asking me all week
what I do to celebrate (I don't), what people at home do to celebrate (kids
trick-or-treat, college students dress up and drink), and when exactly it is.
It was very authentic: silly games, such as eating apples without using your
hands, a costume contest, scary stories, and lots of candy. I snuck Anya
in, and she thought it was a lot of fun. When we got home, I introduced
her to google.com, so she could find websites about her favorite heartthrobs.
Yesterday afternoon we were supposed to have an excursion on Malaya Sadovaya
Ulitsa, but our student guide either failed to show or didn't recognize us,
so I whipped out my trusty dusty Lonely Planet and we went to Malaya Sadovaya
and looked at some cute little cat statues sitting on a couple of window-ledges
overlooking the street. I then walked all the way out to the bridge in
front of the engineering school to see SPB's smallest statue, Chizhik, a small
bird about six inches tall, which was erected in honor of a little ditty some
engineering students used to sing (Little birdie, where have you been?
Down at the Fontanka, drinking vodka!). While there, a man started talking
to me and Ben, who was with me. For some reason, he thought we were from
Poland. I guess he couldn't quite place our accent. Ben said a lot
of times if he asks for directions, people ask if he's from the Ukraine, so
he says yes just to humor them.
Which leads me to something else. For some reason, some of the students
from OU have taken to telling people they're Canadian, which I think is silly.
I usually get a positive reaction when I tell people I'm from America, and even
if I don't, I seriously doubt many people here dislike Americans enough to be
violent about it. The ones that would be dangerous are generally
easy to spot: they have shaved heads and swastika tattoos. Regardless,
I see no reason to lie about it. I'm not ashamed of where I'm from.
Just because I think America is dodderingly idiotic about foreign
policy doesn't mean I'm going to deny everything that's great about America
simply so someone who doesn't matter to me at all won't think something bad
about me. I could only see myself doing that if Russia and America were
at war and I was waiting for the embassy to ship me out: then, for about 24
hours, I would tell people I'm Canadian, because otherwise my life might be
in danger. Since that's not going to happen, I'm going to continue to
tell people I'm American, and if they have any sense they'll notice that I'm
actually being quite polite to them, trying to speak their language and learn
their culture, and maybe it will change some negative impressions they have.
I'm still taking questions, comments, and complaints of all sorts.
Love to all -
Heather:)***************************************************************
Povtorenie mat' ucheniya. Repetition is the mother of learning. (Basis of Russian
pedagogy. :)
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