Heather Worley Living in St. Petersburg, Russia
I'm trying to remind myself right now that people everywhere
are rude to foreigners, and not just in Russia, but there are moments when that
is hard to remember. For instance, when my host father asks me TWELVE
TIMES where I'll be staying in Pskov, and TWELVE TIMES I tell him in the student
dorms. And then when he asks TWELVE TIMES what kind of bus we're going
on, and I tell him TWELVE TIMES a normal, usual, between-cities bus - not a
special group tourist bus. And then he asks TWELVE TIMES what other people
are going in the group, and I tell him there's not a "group," it's
just three of us students from Nevsky going on a normal, usual, between-cities
bus and we will be staying in the dorms in Pskov and there will be excursions
for us there, arranged by the university there. And he says, "Well,
how will everyone in the group know when to get off the bus at their hotel?
Will there be an employee on the bus who tells the group when to get off, like
there usually is on tourist buses?" And I tell him, for the hundredth
time, I'm sure, "There is no group. It is just three of us students
from Nevsky. We are taking a normal, usual, between-cities bus, not a
tourist bus. We are not staying in a hotel. We are staying in the
student dorms in Pskov."
And then there are those times when they act amazed that I can make tea for
myself. Or warm up cold cereal on the stove. Even though I tell
them all the time that I love to cook, and do so all the time at home, in fact
have been doing so longer than just the five years I've lived apart from my
parents. Or when they're surprised that I know the word "chyort,"
only the second most common Russian expletive, which if you don't know when
you come to Russia, you are sure to learn within your first 24 hours here.
And then there are those times I'm in a cafe and order one pastry in perfect
Russian, not even any stutters, and for some reason two end up on my plate -
the second one not only apple, when the one I asked for is banana, but also
a completely different kind of pastry. So then I have to say, "And
what's this?" "The apple one." "I didn't order
apple." So they have to take it back and change the receipt.
Do they really think I'll decide that it's too much hassle to say I didn't order
an apple one? It's not like they heard wrong - the words for apple and
banana don't sound anything like.
I think knowing the language makes the foreigner treatment worse, because then
I'm fully aware of when I'm being treated like a child.
I've been meditating a lot lately on why people treat foreigners like they're
stupid. I keep coming back to an idea that anthropology majors love to
call "the other." It someone who you consider to be so different
from you, that you never even consider that there might be something in common.
Such as when you read the amazement of American slave-traders that their captives
sometimes cried - who wouldn't cry when they're yanked from their homeland,
separated from their family, starved, beaten, and can't even understand what
people around them are saying? The answer is - an animal. Slaves
were such an "other" that the traders didn't even look at them as
people, and so they were amazed when the captives cried.
Foreigners are an "other," and so it's okay to be rude, to sigh loudly
when we ask perfectly normal questions, to laugh at things we don't know, to
mock us when we speak, to interrupt because you think you know what we're going
to say, to say "you don't know anything" simply because we haven't
read Crime and Punishment in Russian...
And the funny thing is, everyone does it. Absolutely everyone. People
here whom I dearly love do it, too.
I've done it.
I caught myself doing it one time when I was really frustrated at my boyfriend
- he rolled through a stop sign on his driving test, and I told him that everyone
knows you can't do that. I had to apologize, because not everyone knows
that, I know a lot of people who actually rolled through a stop because they
thought it was "not a big deal" so they got an automatic failure,
just like he did. I was just frustrated at him for acting like a whiny
baby (which he actually was doing), so I yelled at him for something he probably
should have known, although not knowing it didn't actually make him an idiot.
The reason it's really easy to do this, even to someone you like, is that we
categorize people. Our closest friends we don't really categorize - they're
just friends. We know so much about them that we can't really lump them
into a neat category. But someone we just sorta know - they're our work
friend, or our church friend, or our boss, or our teacher, or our tennis buddy,
or our foreign friend. We are always shocked to think of them as a whole
person, and can't imagine them having a life outside of the environment we usually
see them in. The only reason I realized that people (myself included)
think this way is because one time I caught myself NOT thinking this way.
Someone said, "Oh yeah, your Indian friend, right?" and it took me
a moment to answer the question...I had to think, is he "my Indian friend"?
Well, he's very obviously Indian, in fact his nationality is a frequent topic
of conversation between us, I just didn't have him categorized as "my Indian
friend" in my head, he was just "my friend."
So here I experience the other side of this. People assume a lot of things
about me because they have me categorized as "their American acquaintance."
For instance, they assume I don't like tea, without asking if I do, because
they know Americans don't drink tea as much as Russians do. They are surprised
when I know my way around my own neighborhood, or know who Dostoevsky or Yeltsin
is. They translate for me, even though I don't need them to, and explain
jokes even when I've said "I get it" and have been rolling on the
floor laughing for five minutes already. They are shocked to learn I've
tried vodka, so I don't need it explained to me that it is a very strong drink,
stronger than beer, of course, so be careful when you drink it. They start
a lot of obviously bad advice with, "Russians don't...". (I.e.
"Russians don't stay out late in the winter...we're really amazed you American
students do. It's just not safe." Well, the truth is, some
Russians do stay out late in the winters, because the one time a week I'm out
past dark, I and whoever I'm with are the only non-Russians wherever we go.)
They are amazed I know what a chadra is, because Americans aren't supposed to
know that Arabic women dress differently from westerners. They start a
lot of sentences off with, "Navernoe, ty ne znaesh' eto, no..."
("In all likelihood, you don't know this, but...") and invariably
follow it up with something incredibly silly, like "...the Ukraine used
to be part of the Soviet Union, which was what Russia used to be called before
1991, but it's not anymore." In short, they think I'm stupid and
sheltered in absolutely every respect SIMPLY BECAUSE I DON'T FLUENTLY SPEAK
RUSSIAN. Because I'm of a different nationality, they treat me as if I'm
different in absolutely every single way.
I'm sure you think I'm exaggerating, but I'm not. Annie and I were talking
about this. She said she's frustrated because to people here, she's just
"the American." She's not nice, or mean, or smart, or stupid,
or creative, or boring, or funny, or patient, or pretty, or ugly, or tall, or
short, or even the girl in the blue sweater - she's just "the American."
And some people never get past that. Given, it's hard for people to understand
that she's smart and nice and sometimes funny when she spends a lot of time
struggling to express even a basic thought, as one sometimes has to do when
learning a foreign language; but if they would be patient enough to let her
express a complete thought without interrupting to finish it for her, they might
find these things out. They would know that she doesn't like Britney Spears
(what? you mean membership in the fan club doesn't come automatically with American
citizenship?), that she does speak a foreign language besides Russian (French),
and that she rides the metro every day so she doesn't need you to explain it
to her, thank you. But because she's American, they automatically assume
all of these things about her without even asking, so she's less of a person
to them.
It's okay to take someone's culture into account (which is called "being
considerate"), but don't shove them into a box they don't fit in (which
is called "being inconsiderate"). If, for whatever reason, you
just feel awkward about things, just say so. I found out that with a group
of Korean guys I used to hang out with, it was best just to apologize once a
day in case I'd said anything offensive, explain that I didn't know a lot about
Korea, but if I'd done something offensive, please say so. This opened
up a lot of dialogue, and paved the way for some real friendship. Sometimes
I'd even say, "Americans all think Koreans are like such-and-such...what
do you think?" That would give them a chance to talk about their
culture and also themselves - it acknowleges their cultural background, but
at the same time doesn't confine them to it. So, my sermon for today is:
if you ever in your life meet anyone from a foreign country, remember that they
are a real person - just as complex as you, simply different in ways you're
not used to.
***************
So, stepping off my soapbox, and moving on to Pskov. I wish there were
a lot of cool stories I could tell about cool things we saw, but the truth is,
we spent most of the time hanging out in the dorms. The weather was just
too bad.
Our bus left at 7:00 on Saturday morning (ack). I found out when I met
the other people at the metro station nearby that (a) Ben forgot his tickets,
and not having time to go back for them, he just couldn't go to Pskov, (b) there
were six Belgians who are interning with another school also going along, and
(c) our advisor had roped her son Pasha and his girlfriend Natasha into going
along, because if an employee went the school would actually have to pay them.
The Belgians don't even speak Russian, so I suppose some kind of leader was
necessary.
On the whole, these revelations made me frustrated with the institute: it's
not that I didn't want to go with a group, it's just that I always feel that
the international office tells us absolutely nothing about what's going on.
A month ago, Adrianne, Justin and I told them we wanted to go to Pskov on the
7th and 8th, and that's the last I heard of it. So I assumed we were making
our own plans, and then I found out three days before we're going that they've
arranged excursions, bought tickets, and there's a whole group. Like I
said, I like going with a group better, but it's really nice when you know things
like this ahead of time.
We arrived in Pskov around lunch time to a light snow and very slushy roads.
We first went to a grocery store for food, and then checked in at the dorms.
We made lunch while we waited to see if the weather would clear up a bit, and
then a couple hours later we all went to see the Pskov Kremlin (city walls).
It was cool and old and picturesque, but it was also incredibly foggy, so we
couldn't see much more than 50 meters away and our feet were completely soaked
the whole time. So we headed back to the grocery store after a while,
bought food and alcohol, fixed dinner, and spent the evening hanging out in
our rooms.
Around 11:00 or so, some of the girls from the school in Pskov dropped by and
asked if we'd like to go to a club with them. I wanted to go, but my boots
were too wet to wear. Four of the Belgian guys went, and they came back
about an hour later, dragging Tom, who somehow managed to get completely drunk
off of one shot of whiskey.
Sunday morning we woke up early to get on a bus to go to Pushkinskie Gory (Pushkin
hills), the ancestral home of Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin, the greatest Russian
poet ever. We toured his family's estate, Mikhailovskoe, and a neighboring
estate he used to hang out at a lot, Trigorskoe. I thought it was really
interesting, but I think I was the only one. The Belgians don't really
know enough about Russian culture to care too much, Justin doesn't like museums,
and Pasha and Natasha had been there before. Even our guide decided that
it was so cold we would just go to these two and then be done with it.
As Stijn (pronounced like "Stan") said, it seemed like we did a lot
of traveling for not a whole lot. But that's just the way traveling is
in the winter, especially the Russian winter.
So we went back to the dorms, cooked dinner, hung out and talked, and the Belgians
and a Hollandish girl living a few rooms down taught Justin a lot of nasty phrases
in Dutch. It was good times.
Our train back to St. Petersburg left at 2:00 a.m., so we yakked until then
and then got a cat nap on the train. Most of the Belgian students had
to go to work when we got back to St. Petersburg, which I think is rather unfortunate.
I came home and slept until 1 a.m. and then spent the rest of the day feeling
exhausted nonetheless. Overall, it was a really fun weekend. The
Belgians were a lot of fun to hang out with, very friendly people, and I got
to see some of Pskov despite the weather.
*************
In other news:
I'm sure everyone has heard about the bombing in the Moscow metro. What
you have not heard, I'm sure, is that Allison Taylor was in Moscow at that time
and didn't leave her contact information with any of us, so we were worried
about her the whole time, even though the chances of her actually being awake
at 8:00 a.m. are incredibly slim. She's safe and sound, thank goodness,
but we all wanted to strangle her nonetheless.
They're going to raise taxes on vodka, but (and this will come as a surprise
to most Americans) according to the latest poll, most Russians don't really
care - they don't drink enough vodka for it to make a difference in their budget.
The dollar dive is also not a worry for most Russians - according to a different
poll, most of them don't have any savings in dollars. In fact, almost
2/3 don't have any savings at all. These statistics aren't unlike statistics
on Americans, I suppose, the difference being that America has a credit economy
- we don't have savings because we've spent it all in advance, whereas the average
Russian doesn't have savings because their salary can't last them more than
a month.
It's really cold in Saint-Petersburg right now. The thermometer out my
window reads -15C (which I think is about 0F). I feel really sorry for
the little stray kitties who live in our apartment complex. But I like
the cold, because when it warms up, the icicles begin falling. These are
huge icicles - many of them about two meters long and heavy enough to kill people.
In fact, last week a nanny was walking along the street with two little kids,
and an icicle fell on her, killed her, and broke the skull of the little child.
It's best not to walk close to the buildings, and in my part of town some sidewalks
are roped off because a huge icicle is still hanging overhead, waiting to fall.
***************
Well, on Monday school starts, so my next issue will be the beginning of Volume
Three: The Second Semester.
Keep me up on life in the United States! Love to everyone -
Heather:)
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