11/20/2007
I published this a while ago and then accidentally deleted it. It belongs before the last one.


So it looks I’ve finally decided to break that language pledge, to which my belatedly developed steadfast devotion has prevented me from maintaining this guilty pleasure of English indulgence I used to look forward to every week….well, if I were telling the truth, I guess that would only be three out of the twelve weeks I’ve been here. I wish I could say I’ve been too busy to write in this, but it’s really difficult to become too busy here. So yeah, I don’t really have an excuse, but I’m sorry! both to you and to my grandchildren, who, due to the disappearance of my camera in addition to this lack of entries, will now see no hard evidence in the future supporting my stories of Siberian chainsaw massacre survival (I’m not going to write about this experience but I think you can look in the blogs I’ve linked to left for the full story) and daily battles with cabbage and salmon pancakes. But now that I have a computer, in my last three and a half weeks I’ll try to regurgitate as much about my daily life and as many its-the-end-of-the-day-and-I’m-on-the-wrong-autobus-again-and-now-I-have-another-hour-until-I-get-home-so-I-guess-I’ll-try-think-about-Russia reflections as possible.I think soon after my last entry, the fallout that occurred after my credit card, migration card and camera all managed disappear across the space of four days monopolized my time. The first to go was the credit card. It seems like the ATMs here are as hungry as my babushka would like me to be. While absent-mindedly wallowing in accomplishment after successfully retrieving money during my first experience with a monolingual Russian-only speaking ATM, I soon realized that machine had decided not to give me back the card and I was a stupid American in an isolated Siberian city with only forty dollars in American Express travelers checks to his name. My parents and I found a way to wire me money from America through Western Union. Unfortunately, the first day I attempted to navigate this efficient western-but-made-complicated-by-Russian-unpredictability system (many banks only offer the service until 2 in the afternoon and on some days the computer program crashes at every receiving point in the city) was on a Saturday....I knew that banks in Middlebury,VT and Nottingham, NH rarely open on Saturdays, but I didn't know that this rule applied to 700,000 person cities.In those days I usually packed my camera with me, always planning to take some pictures of Irkutsk streets in the fall, and always not following through because a flashing a camera in public would automatically reveal my oblivious foreignerness and good targetness for pickpockets. On that day, however, I decided some productive picture taking would make up for my lack of successful banking of the morning. But no later than five minutes after my first picture (of café fiesta L), a ten year old bumped into me and ran away and I looked down into an empty, unzipped camera case. I arrived home depressed and determined not to lose anything else…so I removed my passport from its satchel in order to adoringly stare at one important document that remained safely in my possession. But I quickly realized it no longer clutched my migration card, which had been there that morning and usually fits snuggly between the final pages of the passport ….it probably disappeared at one of the banks.I’m still not sure what the purpose of the migration card is. It’s a tiny square piece of thin paper that all foreigners receive upon entering the country and then give to an official migration card collection officer upon leaving. I think it proves that you came into the country at a legal entry point…but if you have a legal visa, why should that matter? Anyways, these migration cards are distributed only at border crossings and can’t be replaced if lost, stolen, or if the border crossing officials happen to run out of them on your day of entrance….which is very bad because you need them to officially register in any city in Russia (which must if you plan to stay there for more than three days). Together with a registration document, your passport, and your visa, these cards are often required to do anything semi-official anywhere in Russia, including, as I discovered two days later, western union transactions.At that point, I had only 30 rubles in my wallet (about $1.20), and when unexpectedly asked for the card at a bank, the already typically unhappy Russian bank lady was not happy to see only a photocopy. I finally found one bank that didn’t care about my potential illegal immigrant status. I’m not sure I’ve ever felt so nervous when I watched the bank worker print the money from her money-printing machine, ceremoniously photocopy my passport, visa, and registration card and then flip several times through the pages of my passport (I thought she was searching for the non-existent migration card…those other three documents rarely like to do anything here without the fourth). But she eventually stopped the flipping and gave everything back to me…including the money.Everything worked out in the end.…though deus-ex-machinally. I got a new card on the border with Mongolia when we went there two weeks after the incident, and dad brought me a new bankcard when he came to visit. But without that series of fortunate events, I might have spent my last 20 rubles on my ride back to my apartment that day and remained on my bed next to my overactive heater until the end of the program or until someone called (my cell-phone also had exhausted its ruble supply). This collection of experiences served as a wake-up call about the potential consequences of my disorganization and how my very ability to survive here depends on certain products of Russian bureaucracy….I’m still disorganized though.That was a really long-winded and I feel bad for reviving this thing with such a detailed account of a bad experience. Other than that incident, things have been going really well. Mongolia was amazing (I made a hand written journal of that trip (both in English and Russian! (for one of my classes)…maybe I’ll post it later))). ))))))))))))))Russia is amazing too!! At the beginning of November, Irkutsk began to look like Vermont in February (which I really like)…it seems to snow every other day, I can already see people ice-skating on the little lake outside my window now. I guess I always expected Siberians to complain about winter, but they really take pride in what most would consider geographic unfortunateness. Whether or not we receive as much snow where I live as they do in Russia serves as the most common conversation item now. Of course, I always answer that New Hampshire and Vermont considered to be cold, snowy places. But they defensively respond that Mid-December temperatures will redefine my idea of winter.They also know how to protect themselves from the cold better than you and want you to know that…..and they are usually right. I had lunch at my babushka’s niece’s house yesterday and so that her daughter could practice her English with me. Though our conversation covered many topics and included only a brief mention of the weather, when asked by her non-English speaking mother what we were talking about, she responded “oh just about how cold he’s finding Siberia to be.” After hearing this, the mother left the room and returned with an authentic Russian fur hat for me! I’m not sure what animal its from, but it fits perfectly. Its somewhat rough around the edges because her husband wore it for some number of years, but he apparently doesn’t need it anymore. It’s definitely much warmer than my Middlebury bookstore hat.Such fur hats, fur coats, and fur lined high heels ride on the trolley more frequently now than even bottles of alcohol. Russians must to anxiously anticipate that first snow because it seems to usher in the most fashionable time of year. Also, even though they don’t have thanksgiving to mark the beginning of the holiday season, almost the day after we Middlebury students celebrated it (while continuing to speak Russian!) at the resident coordinator’s place, Christmas trees and garlands appeared overnight. The wooden neighborhoods downtown all look like gingerbread village.Hanging alongside the Christmas decorations are posters for next week’s election. For a while the only posters and television advertisements I saw were generic PSA’s saying things like “Elections December 2!” “Russia needs you and you need Russia” “We Believe in Russia! And we believe in ourselves!,” They always displayed a logo of a Russian flag and polar bear, which I thought just served as some sort of national symbol for the Russian federation. But it turns out that’s the official symbol of Putin’s “One Russia” Party. Gradually, new vote for Putin (or his party…these are the parliament elections…though all of the posters focus only on him) advertisements are finding themselves in the same places where the more generic ones hung last week. The only opposition advertising seems to come from the LDPR party whose propoganda tactics extend little beyond enormous head shots of a frowning mafia-esque man (the leader of the party I think) holding a clenched fist in the air. Under his slightly terrifying portrait always appears the party’s motto “not to be afraid.” I think I would also chose the polar bear. The news told me that Putin currently polls at 63% and no other parties are above 15%, but this one and only Russian news station I think is owned by Gazprom, Russia’s energy monopoly that is run by Putin’s government.