Heather Worley Living in St. Petersburg, Russia

Hey everyone -
 
About five minutes ago I found out about something very funny that has happened...at least, I think it's funny.  It's actually pretty normal for the cyber-age.  Some Russian ex-pats in America got the link to my website, and so now I have a few emails from people I have never met before, telling me they enjoy reading an American perspective on Russia.  This totally fascinates me. 
 
I only have about ten minutes before I have to leave for class, so I'll have to put off replying to them until later, but thank you very much for writing.  There is a stereotype that Americans are incredibly ignorant about other cultures, but the truth is that we're only one degree more ignorant than some other people, and a little less than others.  My whole reason for writing this regular email home is that I think people everywhere know too little about the rest of the world.  I'm hoping that I can share a little of my experience and, by doing so, allow some others to experience Russia vicariously through me, and maybe open up some dialogue between people from different parts of the world. 
 
It's especially scary to think the massive misunderstandings that exist between the world's two largest nuclear powers...the baby Boomers, I know, all remember Khruschev's speech when he banged his shoe on the podium, scaring the bejeebers out of the western world.  What most people don't know is that Khruschev did not want to blow up the world; he says he meant their economic system would far surpass ours, leave ours in the dust.  Isn't the massive amount of misunderstanding there frightening?  Isn't it frightening that we thought Russia actually wanted a nuclear war, and they thought the same thing about us? 
 
Anyway, that's another topic for another day.  I must run to class.  Thank you, everybody, for letting me take up yet more of your inbox with my rants.  On to this week...
 
Love to all -
Heather:)
 
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This hasn't been an incredibly eventful week, but it's been a good one.  Maybe those two facts are connected.
 
I spent Tuesday morning trompming all over my island looking for new shoes.  My favorite shoe store was closed "for technical reasons."  (This is an aspect of shopping here that I forgot to mention.  Technical reasons include everything from inventory, to having forgotten to pay the energy bills, to the police shutting them down because they discovered drugs on the property.)  And none of the other shoe stores had anything I wanted.  Our only class Tuesday was cancelled because our teacher was sick, so Adrianne, Funmike and I went to second-hand stores instead.  It was good fun.
Wednesday I had class.  Not too exciting.
 
Thursday, again, I had no class, so I decided to go to the Post Office.  Since it's such an undertaking, it's best not to have too many plans ahead of oneself.  I managed to get the package sent, although some new FDA regs are kind of worrisome to me.  If you don't include some sort of code on the customs form when you send food products to the States, they'll return the package or destroy it.  I'd already spent so much time getting there I decided to risk it.  The employee didn't reject my box, although she seemed very suspicious about the saffron.  (Incidentally, I checked the FDA website provided by the post office to obtain these supposed food codes, and I didn't see anything looking like what I needed.)
 
After leaving the Post Office, I decided to go into Isaakevskii Sobor (Isaac's Cathedral), since I was right nearby.  It's a really beautiful cathedral, bearing a striking resemblance to the US Capitol building.  (I heard the Capitol was modeled after it.)  The Soviets turned the cathedral into an anti-religion museum, making fun of various religious beliefs and traditions, so the Orthodox Church was very happy to get it back and turn it back into a church again, although it's only used for Easter and other big holidays.  It's a museum the rest of the time.  When I told my host father I'd gone, he said when he was little he remembers going there on field trips.  Included in the tour was the first Foucault pendulum ever built.  The swinging motion of the pendulum somehow proves that the earth is round (sorry I don't know all the details...).  Evgeny said the guide would always say, "See!  The Earth is round!  We've proved it!"  His comment was, "We knew the earth was round.  Everyone had known that for years.  The church didn't deny that..."
 
Friday I had a lot of classes.  When I got home from class, Anya was just leaving for her dance class, so Evgeny and I ate dinner together.  While we were eating, Natalya called.  She wanted him to come pick her up in Moscow because she has a lot of stuff to bring with her (the original plan was that she was coming on a train).  She also told him we should drink to the two-year contract he signed at work, so he got out some flavored vodka and we toasted his new project.  Then we got to talking about stuff (as always happens in Russia when the toasts start), and I heard a good chunk of his life story. 
 
After he graduated college, he got a job working in a factory.  He worked with a team of young people who were designing a small machine that welds oil-line pipes from the inside.  He said they weren't paid much, but their project won some sort of design contest or something, so they received awards, including free rides on public transportation.  He still rides free to this day. 
 
He also had a position in the Komsomol, the Communist Youth League.  From what I understand, it wasn't strictly political (i.e., not really part of the Communist Party), it was the leadership at his place of work.  He was on the Highest Committee of the Komsomol, so he was always travelling to other towns to make sure other Komsomol branches were doing their community service and projects and stuff like that.  He'd show up, check around, they'd sign agreements about special cooperation between their two factories to get work done faster, they'd drink, go to the banya, and then the next day it was on to the next place.  He was given free housing and he had opportunities to do things like travel to Tallinn for four rubles (about $4 in today's money).  He even worked with Valentina Matviyenko, SPB's current mayor.  They called her "Valka Stakan," ("stakan" means "glass") because if someone didn't want to sign an agreement, she'd say, "Okay, we'll talk about it tomorrow."  And then she'd pour some vodka, and before you knew it, the agreement was signed.  But he didn't like playing the political game, so he quit doing it.
 
He also told me his favorite skazka (fairy tale), about the two frogs who fell into the bucket of cream.  They were hopping in the forest one day and came across a bucket of cream standing in the stream to keep cool.  They didn't know what it was, and so they leaned over to see.  They both fell in.  After trying to hop out, to no avail, the first one said, "We can't get out.  We should just give up - take a deep breath and go down."  The second one said, "No, I won't give up.  I'm going to keep trying until I can't try anymore."  The first one went ahead and drowned.  The second one paddled and paddled, and swam and swam, and did everything he could.  Lumps began to appear in the cream, and then more and more...and they began to gel.  At the end of the day, he was so tired, he could hardly stay afloat, but he didn't give up.  Soon, there was a solid layer of butter on top, and he hopped on top of it and then hopped out of the bucket and on to a happy life.  So then we drank to the second frog, who never gives up. 
 
I was so wrapped up in the conversation with Evgeny that I didn't notice I was already late to meet Stijn.  I called him to apologize.  We met at Gostiny Dvor 30 minutes later and decided to go to the Morskoi Volk to see Valery and 3EX (the band we've all become groupies for), because Adrianne, Sarah, Lida, Katya, and Katya were all going to be there, too.  We had fun.  We danced and yakked, and Valery chatted with us on some of their breaks.  It was good times.
 
Saturday I found boots for very cheap! 690 rubles!  (About 23 bucks.)  And none too soon.  When I got home, the zipper on my old boots split, and I could barely get them off, let alone on again.  The Piterskaya Pogoda (St. Petersburg weather) destroyed them.  Shoes here are always wet, and they absorb all the salt from the sidewalks, which just eats through the leather.  I even polished them every day, and used water repellent, but it was in vain.  They started shrinking, and eventually holes appeared in the leather.
 
The new boots are not bad boots.  Fall lining (good, because soon it will be too warm for winter shoes), made in Russia, medium-height heel, pointy-but-not-elf-pointy toes...  Most people don't have confidence in boots made in Russia, but the problem with European shoes is that they're not comfortable on Russian streets.  The heels are too high and too narrow to climb over the ice mounds that grow under drain-pipes, and they don't keep out the water any better, either.  They are also much more expensive.  So I'm quite pleased with my purchase.  I actually found these at the shoe store I wanted to go to on Tuesday that was closed - the first one I tried!  I'd been planning on going to Nevsky Prospekt, and only stopped at this one because it was on the way to the ATM.
 
Sunday Anya and I went to a concert at Yusupovsky Dvoretz (Yusupov Palace), which happens to be the place where Rasputin (yes, the one in the Anastasia movie) ate his poisoned meal.  First we went into the small theater in the house, which seats about 60-70 people.  The guide told us about the history of the theater, we listened to a short concert of five pieces from various operas (bass voice accompanied by piano), and then they gave us a tour of the living quarters of the house.  We didn't see the basement where Rasputin ate, because that's part of a separate tour, but the rest of the house is truly fantastic.  It was, of course, nationalized after the October Revolution, but the restoration work on it is just amazing.
 
Monday, I mostly just ran errands, so as to get out of the house, and then went to the Children's Ecology Center.  They didn't have much for me to do, but they were glad to see me again.  I told them I'd tried calling many times, but the line was always busy.  They understood.  No worries.
 
When I got home, Natalya was back!  This was quite a nice surprise.  She's been at her mother's house in the village taking care of her for the last month and a half.  They sold her mom's house and moved her to Moscow to live with the other sister (the one I stayed with).  Evgeny had left Saturday morning to pick her up from Moscow, along with a car-ful of stuff her mom wants them to keep, but his car broke down on the way there.  They called Sunday to say they didn't know how soon they'd be back, so having them back so soon was quite a nice surprise.
 
Tuesday, my one class was cancelled.  It's PR week at school, so they needed our classroom for one of their conference meetings.  That means that in about twenty minutes, which will be noon Wednesday local time, I will attend my first class this week...

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Men'she znaesh', luchshe spish'. The less you know, the better you sleep.

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