Heather Worley Living in St. Petersburg, Russia
The Year of the Monkey has begun! (Or will soon, technically.)
First of all, a big welcome to Linnae and Peter, who up until just recently
have been living many of these adventures with me. I miss you guys!
I've had a whiz-bang of a new year so far. Last Sunday when I woke up,
my right eye was runny, but since I hadn't left the house since the Wednesday
before (Christmas Eve), I decided to go out anyway. It cleared up while
I was out with Allison and Adrianne. Same thing on Monday, so I started
taking some Allegra and it cleared up. Tuesday it was basically fine,
and Wednesday it was a little red again, but not bad. I figured it was
the mold in my old room.
I spent New Year's Eve at the house of a friend, Zhenya. When I got there,
he, his brother, and some of his brother's friends were watching an illegal
copy of Lord of the Rings I in his room. It was voiced-over in Russian,
and then voiced-over again with goofy names, Russian pop music, and a lot of
word-play. It was so much at once, that, especially at the beginning,
they could barely understand it, let alone me. These illegal copies, somewhat
"modified," are really common in Russia, and usually really funny.
At 11:00, we all trooped into the bolshaya komnata, where a massive feast was
set out - chicken, cold salads, bananas, tangerines, chocolates, shampanskoe
and vodka. A New Year's concert was on TV, and then just before midnight
Putin gave a speech. We all lit sparklers (yes, in the house!) just before
the clock struck twelve, and then when they went out we did a champagne toast.
Then Vova (Zhenya's father) said, "And now the war starts in the courtyard,"
meaning the fireworks. They were pretty frightening, mainly because they
reverberate off all the big buildings. The funny thing is, fireworks are
illegal in city limits, but that doesn't really stop anyone. People were
even setting them off on their balconies!
After that, everyone was sort of in and out for the next two hours, although
for the most part, we stayed in the bolshaya komnata, talked, and watched the
New Year's programs, running to the windows every once in a while to watch the
fireworks. Zhenya's babushka kept trying to feed me - although, actually
everyone was, just she moreso than everyone else. Zhenya asked why I didn't
drain the vodka glass after a toast, and I said, "Because when I do that,
Russians always refill it." He said, "Yeah, so, are you afraid
of getting drunk?" Men here always say this, but I've noticed that
Russian women do the same thing and just don't get harassed for it like American
women do.
Vova taught me to take a vodka shot the proper Russian way, and then said I
was a "real Russian muzhik (man)." Then Galya, his mom, taught
me to dance, and Vova said I was a real Russian woman and demanded to see my
passport. Babushka told me she liked me, but every time she sarted to
say anything to me, Vova would say, "She can't understand, mom. I
can barely understand you." (She's a little short on teeth.)
I could understand her pretty well, though. Sometime around this time,
Vova insisted that I carrry around a stuffed yozhik (hedgehog) with me, which
he named after himself.
Russian joke: If you wake up in the morning with a yozhik on your head, you
either have joined the army or you fell asleep in the forest.
We all went to sleep around 2:00 or 3:00. I woke up a few hours later
and my eyes were running, so I got up every few hours to wash them out.
Everyone else got up around noon or so, and so of course they started trying
to feed me again.
I stayed until around 4:00, attempting to nap off and on, my left eye worsening
the whole time. I kept asking Zhenya to take me home, but he didn't want
to bring me here if Natalya and Evgeny weren't here. Everyone kept asking
why I was so sad, and I was trying to explain that I wasn't sad, my eye just
hurt, a lot. Zhenya ran to the apteka (pharmacy), but the drops didn't
help much, and my eyes just kept running more and more. Vova gave me some
"Russian medicine" to take my mind off it (vodka and beer).
He asked me if it's better in Russia or America. I tried to clarify what
he meant, and he said, "Everything! Zhenya told me you said the chocolate
here is better." I said yes, that, and the beer. He said, "And
the men." I said, "Yes, the men, too." And then Galya
(Zhenya's mom) got on to him for harassing me.
Finally, we decided to leave. His parents told me they liked me, come
back soon, and they were sorry for not inviting me earlier but they were hoping
to finish the repairs first. As we were waiting at the marshrutka stop,
Vova ran out with the yozhik so I'd take it home with me.
When Zhenya and I got home, Natalya and Evgeny still weren't home, so I asked
him to stay until they came home. Natalya called around 6:30 and said
they'd be home soon, but by then my eye was so swollen and painful that I decided
I needed to go to the doctor. I called our advisor, and she told me where
there was an emergency eye clinic. Zhenya accompanied me, and we finally
got home around 10:00. It turns out that I have a viral infection in my
eye, and it will probably take at least two weeks to go away completely.
Meanwhile I have some drops and pills and stuff. They seem to be working
pretty well so far. At least when I wake up, my eyelids are no longer
completely crusted together, with the skin around my eyes puffy and sore.
Poor Zhenya - he'd slept a total of about six hours in the last two days, and
then he spent most of New Year's running a stupid American to the emergency
room. He apparently had a pretty bad hangover - he said because he mixed
different kinds of drinks. He insisted on having beer at midnight in addition
to vodka and champagne. He also drank quite a bit - almost a whole bottle
of champagne himself. I taught him "Beer before liquor, never been
sicker. Liquor before beer, you're in the clear."
I also found out some other interesting things about this country on the way
to the doctor's office . For instance, you can buy cigarettes singly
from kiosks. Winnie-the-Pooh eats not honey but jam and condensed milk.
In help-wanted ads you are allowed not only to specify age, sex, and attractiveness,
but also whether the new hiree has to sleep with her boss. (The first
three I know are true...the fourth I'm still trying to decide whether I
believe.)
I figure I should write about my experience at the doctor's office. First
of all, there was the line. Lines in Russia work like this: you come in,
say "Kto poslednii?" (Who's last?), and once you find the last person
in line, you say, "Ya za vami." (I'm behind you.) And then you
do what you like: sit, stand, fill out forms, buy postcards, go to the bathroom,
etc. This works just fine, unless, as sometimes happens, someone sees
a line and simply stands in it, without the ritual. You might not be standing
behind the last person - lines are not always straight, and the last person
is not always standing in the line.
This happened at the post office a couple weeks ago. Post offices are
confusing anyway, because there are always at least three windows - picking
up packages, sending packages, and zakazni correspondence, whatever that means
- but not always three employees waiting on the lines. Also, people pick
up their pension checks at the PO, and there's always a pensioner or two in
the wrong line, or, sometimes, the wrong room. This isn't too bad at the
smaller post offices, but the Glavnyi Pochtamt' (Main PO) is just confusing
anyway, with thirteen windows, all open different hours with different lunch
breaks, and all with a different function: pension checks, sending international
correspondence, sending international packages, sending big packages, sending
books, etc. (If you have books in a package with other stuff, everyone
gives you a sort of "Duh, everyone knows books have to be separate"
sort of look. But if you ask why, they say, "Because...", realize
they don't know why, get a puzzled look on their face, and then finish with,
"...we don't know why, they just do.")
Anyway, when I went with Allison, she ran off to mail a package with books,
so I held her spot in line at the international packages line. I didn't
ask who was last, but a girl to the side of me had noted when I came in and
vouched for me later. The man in front of me got bored and started wandering
around, but he remembered I was behind him and who was in front of him.
However, because he and the person two in front of him were both wandering around,
the woman in front of him had a hard time figuring out where her spot in line
was. Also, the man behind me went for either and box or a drink and never
returned, and the man behind him realized he was at the wrong window and switched
lines without telling anyone that's what he was doing, so the people behind
him were confused about their place - they remembered Allison but not me, and
they didn't know we were together. Also, his new line was right next to
ours, and they were both about twenty people long and rather windy. Altogether
an adventure, but no one's feelings were hurt. We actually got a good
laugh out of it.
So, anyway, the doctor's office at the glaznoi travpunkt (eye trauma center)
has a similar line, of course. On Saturday for my return visit I was behind
a lady in a blue sweater who didn't really look sick. She was with her
husband. Her turn came up, but she kept letting in people in front of
her. The posted rules are that children under three, people with burns
sustained less than 24 hours before, and people who are bleeding can cut (vkhodit'
bez ocheredi). She let in a wailing little kid (allowable), but then a
couple of other people who weren't obviously hurt. I wasn't paying particular
attention because I was reading. But the woman behind me was upset.
Her 11-year-old son had a pretty nasty looking eye - looked to me like the same
thing I'd had - and she started yelling, "Why are you letting these people
through? He's sick, too!" The lady mumbled something about
her non-emergency status, and the rules, and the mother yelled back more of
the same thing. The husband cut in, defending his wife, and then the mother
tried to pull me into it. I just said I was behind the lady in the blue
sweater, that's all I knew. The mother grumbled some more, and then the
doctor stepped out to ask if everything was okay. We assured him it was,
and so the lady in the blue sweater finally just went in. I, technically,
as someone returning for a second visit, didn't have to wait in line, but since
there was no actual sign on the wall saying this, I figured it was just better
to wait rather than try to explain to someone in broken Russian that that's
what the nurse had told me on Thursday.
On Thursday (New Year), it was interesting, when I finally got into the office,
the nurse/receptionist asked my name. I told her, of course it confused
her, so I showed her my passport. As she began looking at my papers, I
sat down to consult with the doctor, and suddenly she says, five minutes into
my visit, "Ah, innostranka [foreigner]." I'm not sure if I should
be flattered that it took her that long to figure it out, or what. I get
this reaction sometimes, I suppose, because it's obvious I can understand them
and I can reply, but it's a little off - maybe she's Ukrainian? they think.
Apparently an American who studies Spanish for a long time and then Russian
often sounds a bit Ukrainian in accent. And if you can inspire this impression,
and then you make a grammar mistake, then they think you're just a stupid Ukrainian.
Or maybe Polish. Then, the more mistakes you make, or the more obviously
lost you are in a certain situation, the more it begins to occur to people that
you might be a real foreigner. I think, in this particular instance, they
were getting a lot of exhausted, sick, and depressed people - it being New Year's
and all - so little things like my bad pronunciation and slightly slow reactions
were not out of the ordinary.
Secretaries, by the way, also tend to be really frustrated with my name,
because it doesn't sound a darn thing like a Russian name. Women's names
in Russia generally end in A, so my first name sounds like a man's name, but
obviously not a Russian one, and my last name sounds Finnish or Estonian or
something - not nearly enough consonants.
Anyway, so at that point, I said yes, I'm a foreigner, American. Then
they wanted to know where I study. Then he looked at my eye with his little
machine, said it's viral, it will take a while to clear up but that I need to
continue the medication for a period of two weeks regardless of whether I'm
better before that, gave me a prescription, and then sent me into the next room.
The nurse gave me a little light gun that made a whirring sound to hold up to
my eyes for three minutes each. I'm still not sure what it was supposed
to do. She also wrote me a prescription for some tablets to clean my eye
with, using "vata," the first word I'd encountered in this visit that
I didn't know. Turns out it means "cotton wadding," like cotton
balls, etc.
I paid the 150 rubles, got a receipt, went down to the pharmacy, bought most
of the medicine I needed, and then went home.
At the end of my second visit, I asked for directons to the nearest metro
station, and the lady in the blue sweater and her husband offered to show it
to me. I thought this was quite nice, because the first time I'd gone
I was so blind that it was all I could do to follow Zhenya and not trip over
the sidewalk (sidewalks in SPB are really uneven), let alone note which way
we were walking.
My eye is almost completely better now, thank goodness. It's no longer
running, and the sclera is almost completely white agian. Hooray for not
looking like a drug addict! (Or a vampire, as Natasha has so generously
pointed out.) The nice thing about the timing of this illness is that
I didn't miss New Year's Eve, although I have missed the three days of partying
afterwards. (New Year's in this country lasts forever!) But no worries
- Russian Christmas is on the 7th, and then on the 13th will be Old New Year
(New Year according to the old calendar). They're not big holidays, but
who really needs a big excuse to party?
In about 48 hours, I'll be leaving for Moscow to see the sights. I'll
tell you all about that when I get back. Wish me luck!
Love to all -
Heather:)
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Men'she znaesh', luchshe spish'. The less you know, the better you sleep.
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