Heather Worley Living in St. Petersburg, Russia
You know that nightmare you have when you show up in class and,
somehow, you missed the announcement that there was going to be a huge test
that day? That happened to me today. I'm not sure exactly how this
happened. I only get about 70% of what goes on in class, and apparently
that was in the cursed 30. Still, it seems like one of the girls who leads
my helping session would have mentioned it... Either way, I don't think I
did too awfully, although I can't be sure, since I couldn't read the directions.
But on the bright side, I now have, for your viewing pleasure, a photo
gallery! Jeff Williams has put it together for me. You can access
it at http://students.ou.edu/W/Heather.E.Worley-2/photogallery/.
And now for the rest of the week.
Sunday I watched part of a movie with my host mom while I was studying.
In the movie, a Finnish soldier, a Russian soldier, and a Saami woman are all
thrown together in the middle of nowhere, and none of them speak the others'
languages, so there's a lot of funniness arising out of people thinking others
can mysteriously interpret their body language and intonation. One of
the funnier moments is when the Finn is trying to introduce himself, and points
at the Russian to indicate he should do the same. The Russian says, "Poshel
ty," which means something like "Scram," but the Finn thinks
that's his name and calls him Poshelty for the rest of the movie.
Speaking of funny communication, Monday in my class on ancient languages
and cultures the teacher was talking about the rise of different forms of communication. She
mentioned touch, commenting that it's a very powerful form of communication,
using handshakes and sex for examples, among other things. This set the
students to giggling, and the rest of the hour was basically lost. It
was like 9th grade biology class again.
I can't figure out the attitudes concerning sex here. I think it's
confusing to me because modesty seems to be defined so differently.
No one seems to think it's inappropriate for people to be naked on TV,
or for girls to be wearing incredibly see-through outfits at all times
of the day. On the other hand, you even say the word "sex" and the
conversation goes kaput. It seems the attitudes regarding nudity are looser,
but on the other hand it seems that people are very prudish about sex in general.
In American culture the two attitudes are very closely linked, but I don't know
that that's as true here. Things like this are difficult to figure out
because people take them so for granted, and therefore they're nearly possible
to explain.
I also have a hard time figuring out when people are being rude. At home,
if you start a conversation while someone else is talking in front of a group,
you are epitome of boorishness, although you can get away with a comment quietly
whispered, as long as you don't spend the entire talk doing that. I think
it's the same here, because the speakers generally seem pretty offended and
uncomfortable when others start chattering, but that doesn't seem to stop people
from doing it. I've already mentioned the girls in class, who I dismissed
as immature, but the people in church are confusing the issue. About halfway
through the service, the lady in the row in front of me turned around to say
something to the lady next to me, and they spent the rest of the service talking
almost as loudly as the man preaching. It unnerved him so much he actually
turned to face the other side of the church. Unfortunately, one of
the little old ladies on that side was reading magazines about rock music.
I suppose this could just be little old ladies being little old ladies (because
grandmothers can't get away with almost anything in any culture). I
went to see a movie on Thursday, though, and there were a lot of people
in the theater who talked through the entire movie.
Since we had Friday off school, I went to see the Monument to the Heroic Defenders
of Leningrad on Moskovsky Prospekt (good history and a couple pictures-
http://www.lindsayfincher.com/russia/leningradmon.html) and some other
things in that area of town, such as the Chesma Church (http://saintpetersburgtours.ru/chesma.html).
A really interesting thing about any WWII monument in Russia is that the Nazis
are always called "the fascists," not Nazis, or Germans, or the
SS, just "the fascists." I think, in Russia, if you're
talking about fascists, it's obviously the Nazis, because they're the only ones
that matter in Russian history.
After walking around Moskovsky Prospekt, which is about as far as you can
go in that direction and still be in SPB, I was very grateful to be living
in my part of town. Everything on Moskovsky Prospekt is what I expected
Russia would look like before I came - gray and dreary and incredibly uniform.
My part of town, which is considerably older, has beautiful architecture that
is run-down, as opposed to this part of town, which has newer, ugly architecture
that is run-down. Apparently, the communists had a master plan to make
that the center of town, which didn't take, but they managed to build a
lot of ugly buildings before they realized that no one really wanted to live
there.
I asked my host mom if museums would be closed in honor of the day.
She said to call ahead to ask, because most people don't really celebrate the
Great Octobrist Socialist Revolution (now called Birth of the Russian Nation)
Day anymore. They just have it to make old people happy. She thinks
in twenty years, it's likely no one will celebrate it at all.
Saturday the sun came out, and I was so excited that I decided to take a walk
to enjoy it properly. Apparently the rest of St. Petersburg had the same
idea, because I've never seen Alexandrovsky Park so crowded. Everyone
seemed to be in a really festive mood - kids buying balloons in the park,
people actually smiling...it was bizarre.
As I mentioned, I went to church yesterday, and in addition to the weirdness
with interrupting, there was some weirdness with the service getting off track.
The girl speaking was talking about the Beattitudes, and asked what it was that
is difficult about our lives. One of the little old ladies said, "A
small pension." And somehow the service degenerated into a discussion
about the evils of capitalism. It was a rather uncomfortable moment for
me and Allison, and also for the girl talking, who felt that everyone had sort
of missed the point of what she was saying.
Also interesting - some seminary students were visiting our church, and
one of them got up to talk, and his accent was so different from what I'm used
to that it took me a moment to realize he was a native Russian speaker.
Then the girl leading the service mentioned that he's from Baku - completely
different accent from the standard SPB accent. Sometimes it's hard to
remember that not all of Russia is like SPB - in fact, only St. Petersburg is
like St. Petersburg. Everyone keeps telling me that it's nothing like
Moscow, and neither one of them are anything like the small cities or the countryside.
I suppose it's sort of like how D.C. isn't really like anything else in America
- like Oklahoma or Georgia or California or New York...
Well, that's the story for this week. Love to all back home -
Heather:)***************************************************************
Povtorenie mat' ucheniya. Repetition is the mother of learning. (Basis of Russian
pedagogy. :)
Next Story: A busy weekend