Consistency

Due to upcoming holidays (the First of May and Victory Day on the 9th) and other end-of-the-semester full study schedules, this is my last full week of classes as I'm used to this semester. I can't believe it! But, I've never described my weekly class schedule to you, so you probably don't know what I'm talking about.

Here's the basic frame of my week of classes, listed in a fairly uninteresting format:


Monday: evening with some translators

Tuesday: morning with the International Management Studies group; evening with some other translators

Wednesday: morning with the first-year БТП students (with a major called "technological safety in the processes and production of the oil and gas industries"); then a hop over to the lyceum for some sort of class followed by English club with the lyceum students.
(Russian class for me with a tutor in the evening)

Thursday: morning to lunch with two groups of Public Relations students--I've had these students consistently for the entire year; evening with the university English club.

Friday: afternoon with the business students at MIBI, a business school.

Sunday: reserved evening for some students working on their language skills before heading to America on the Work and Travel program this summer.


With that frame in place, I also scout for some other classes to go to at the university or at Rostok, the elementary school. But, that's the basic, that's the routine, that's the schedule that gives my time here in Ukhta some sort of comfort in its order and consistency and familiarity. I like these weekly groups that I go to because I've been able to create a relationship with them (as groups or with some students, as individuals). I get to make more jokes and references with them and have a chance to see some progress in their speech, or at least in their willingness to talk to me. I mean, other groups that I go to can be good, too--they invariably ask me a bunch of interesting and sometimes very forward questions--but then I leave and possibly don't meet with them again.

So, thinking that this is my last week of this sort of time I've created for myself in Ukhta is not the smallest deal. It took me a while (I guess about 5 months) to finally get a hold of a schedule I am pretty comfortable with in a town that I feel fairly comfortable maneuvering in. Before this schedule, I was sometimes super busy and felt that I had no time to myself and sometimes I hung around, swimming in time. Basically, I couldn't find a balance. It's been easier for the last two months, being able to find more comfort in my time and space and place. Now it's time for a little more change (in the next few weeks) and then a lot-a more (in the next few months), but hopefully I'll be able to hang onto that comfort of consistency that I'm holding onto now.


Okay, time to get some color on the blog:

MIBI class and me on a field trip to the regional museum. Here we stopped at the Eternal Flame in town. 

3:40 AM

For some reason, this morning I woke up at 3:40. After turning a little in bed, I rolled out, attracted to the orange glow of my curtains. It was already dawn and quite bright. I wasn't able to sleep for a little over an hour, but happily watched the sun rise for a few minutes around 4:30 before I put on some blinders and drifted into strange adventures with some friends, family and my rabbi.

If you're interested in checking out the patterns of the sun up here Ukhta, go to this site. It has some fun charts to look through.

The streets where I live

The streets of Ukhta look different than they did one month ago.

A month ago, I was surprised by all the activity on Lenin Prospect (the main street in Ukhta and, for that matter, the name of the main street in many other Russian towns). Marshrutkas (the vans with a large number and a list of destinations taped on the window that usually shuttle people around town) along with larger buses lined the streets, one after another. In the spirit of International Women's Day (or in the spirit of earning money on Women's Day), the vehicles had been converted: instead of carrying people, they now carried flowers. The owners kept the engines of their new flower shops running to keep the plants looking lively and called out to the pedestrians to attract them inside.

Those buses left after Women's Day, making more space for the sellers who are regularly on the side of that road: Solo sellers with tables or without, buckets of potatoes, open boxes of dried fish, jars of assorted berries, packets of honey, pairs of pimi (deerskin boats) and valenki (felt boots), handmade woolen scarfs, mittens and socks and most recently a table full of vegetable and flower seeds. A truck usually stands there also, a man inside selling milk products from a small rectangular whole in the back. Also, there's a trailer that converts into a well-lit stand for cheese, meats, butters and some pastries. I have only bought four things from these street sellers these last seven months: cranberries in a jar to make cranberry sauce on Thanksgiving day; one pair of very thick, large woolen socks; a white woven scarf; and some sweet pastries with tvorog (that cottage-cheese stuff I've mentioned before) inside.

The week of Women's Day, other people were also making themselves known on the main street and around town. Russia's regional elections took place on March 13th, and the lead up to this voting day looked like the Russian flag - strips of white, blue and red - flying over a bear: the symbol of Russia's main political party. People supporting the party were on the streets handing out information, billboards were pasted with the portraits of supporters around town. The largest poster hung on the side of one apartment building on the main street, sporting a huge portrait of Prime Minister Putin. Even an ice sculpture of the party's bear still stood from before New Year's in the iceland in front of one of the shopping centers in town. Now, a month later, most of the signs and fliers have been taken down, the ice has melted and not many people are talking about politics with me.

Yes, the ice has melted. Mostly. Right after I realized I was quickly nearing my five-month anniversary of wearing my long and thick down coat, I took it off and realized the seasons were changing. A week and a half ago, we were still ice skating on the rinks. Now, that's impossible. (An indoor ice-skating rink is currently being built in town, but for now, the sport is still seasonal in Ukhta). During the winter, I even saw kids ice skating on the sidewalks, because, in reality, their was a sheet of ice covering the entire town, roads included. But, that's gone now. And, this change happened pretty fast, making Ukhta feel like a huge science experiment on the properties of water. We went from frozen, to slush, to flood, to walkable but still hopping some puddles and dodging some mud patches within the last 10 days of daytime-above-freezing temperatures.

Last week, my dormitory turned into a castle, difficult to get to because of the surrounding moat. And, I'm not even joking. Getting to class one morning was an obstacle course: 1. exit the 12 doors to the street; 2. look down so as not to get water falling from the roof in your eyes; 3. find the longest peninsula of land to hop across the moat;  4. look up to make sure the remaining snow pile on that steep roof will not fall on your head; 5. step through the slushy parts so as not to walk straight through the puddles; 6. grab ahold of the birch tree branches while balancing on the icy curb to cross that long puddle in front of Building L; 7. hope for the best (meaning dry feet). The next day walking to school was much easier. I just put on my tall rain boots, and off I went, teaching shoes under my arm, trudging right through the puddles. This seemed to be a popular solution in town, especially with the newly fashionable rain boots with heels. Those without rain boots, though, have either had to be creative or have stayed inside this whole time.

Now, there's a sign hanging in the dormitory--"Subotnik" (субботник)--calling for community cleanup. Subotnik refers to unpaid community work on Saturdays that was common in the Soviet Union. The students are required (but in no regulated way, I think) to go outside and help clean up around the university housing. The last few days I've seen them moving the piles of snow around in an effort to spread it thin and make it melt.

Spring is here. 

Good days for sliding

I received a phone call almost every Sunday morning for the last few months. It was my friend Valera, breaking the news: "it's too cold to ski today." Ukhta had a very chilly February. Temperatures reached down to 40 below (that's Celsius or Fahrenheit) a few times and froze pretty consistently around -22 F
(pun intended). We decided that it would have to be warmer than -4 F if we wanted to get out to the woods and feel the chill pressing on our faces when we locked our skis into the cross-country tracks running downhill. So, we waited.

During the months of waiting, I slid around a few times on the ice-skating rink only 100 meters from my place. Iolanta had been an figure skater in childhood, but hadn't been on a rink in years. One night in January, I was walking around sorta bummed that I had spent the whole day indoors, heard music coming from behind the university's athletic center and followed it. The rink looked so inviting. I called Iolanta and we beelined there. The workers handling skate rentals got a kick out of my New York State driver's license that I handed them in exchange for the skates. Since then, they always welcome us by name and are happy to chat.

But, back to skis.... March's weather has been so beautiful. The temperatures have been sliding up and down between 17 F and 33 F this past week, to the delight of almost everyone. (Some people have told me that they would rather the temperatures stay really cold, so that we don't have any of this melting mess). So, last Saturday, my friend and I finally got out to the woods with skis, poles and boots. Although I had told him that I can ski (I mean, I can), I was slip-sliding all over the place while just trying to skate. Fell three times, but each time with laughs. The sun was shining and we were far enough away from the city and factories that the air felt fresh. I was so happy to be standing in snow, surrounded by pine trees. It's very rare that I leave the city for the forest outside of Ukhta, and I was craving nature. At a fork, we went left, and bushwhacked a little to get a good view of the city from a hilltop. We took our skis off and ran up a steep hill where there was an even better view, and lots of pieces of thick cardboard. Of course. I have seen this on multiple occasions. Cardboard sitting at the tops or bottoms of hills here, just waiting for someone to sit on top of it and speed-slide down a slope. So, we sled.

Funnily enough, I was invited to ski the next morning, too. By eight a.m., I was sitting with a teacher from the lyceum and her friend in a turquoise cottage in Airport, a town aptly named after the nearby airport that flies and receives a plane once a day, to and from Moscow. By nine, we heated up the cottage, and got on the skies--this time, classic style. We slid slowly, stopping many times to talk or admire the forest. The teacher in front found some cardboard in the woods, stopped, ripped it into a suitable size to be sat on and shoved it up her coat for later use on some hill. The cottage had gotten really cozy by the time we came back, so we sat and relaxed before heading back to our days in the city. The two women sang songs in old voices, sliding back and forth between tunes in Russian and those in other languages: Belorussian, Ukrainian and Komi.

These are good days for sliding.

Women's Day!

I get a little confused on days like this. Today is Saturday, a regular weekend day. But, the ladies at work asked if I could come into work today to celebrate. Of course I said yes. What are we celebrating? International Women's Day.

With a name that starts with International, I'd think that the 8th of March (the official day of the holiday) would be something I knew more about before I came to Russia. I'd heard that the day existed and knew that March is considered Women's History Month in America, but that's about it. For me there was no big fanfare or hurrah. Here, there's no way anyone could not know about it. In fact, International Women's Day is a national holiday--which basically means no school, no work. Leading up to the holiday, I am congratulated everywhere I go with a "Happy Upcoming Holiday" (you can't say "Happy Women's Day"-- or any other holiday or birthday for that matter--until the actual day of the happening) and sometimes a tulip or two.

The holiday itself wasn't what confused me. What confused me was why we are celebrating today--the holiday isn't for another 3 days. When I was invited into the office, I thought we might collect on the weekend solely to party in celebration of us-women. Maybe we'd run free through the halls of our institution like rebels on an off day just because we could. What I didn't realize until midnight last night when a friend said he would need to go to bed to get enough sleep before work, was that today is a work day. An official work day for all. That's why I was invited into work today.

So, my daydream of women bouncing off the walls of an otherwise empty large Soviet-style cement building on a Saturday did not come true. The logic of the Saturday workday is this--if everyone goes to work today, then no one will have to go to work on Monday. And, as we already have Tuesday off because of International Women's Day, we can all have a three day weekend: Sunday, Monday and Tuesday.

And, regardless of work, we also partied. At noon in the international office we ordered a 2 kg pizza from the cafeteria on the basement floor of the building and loudly celebrated. Nadya and I then took a taxi over to her husband's work where there was a large performance of singers, dancers and jokesters. We had to show our passports to get into the business building. The guards looked at mine, said, "what is this?" then asked me to show my Russian passport, not my American one. After this performance, we booked it back over to the university by hailing a car to take us over. A man pulled over, took us to the main campus and only made us pay 40 rubles. A formal taxi in Ukhta charges 60 rubles ($2 American). At the main campus, we had our third party of the day--sushi and tea with co-workers of an office connected to ours.

Women worked a half-day today, men a whole day. At least for workers at the university. (Teachers are probably an exception, working all the time).

So, now I still have three days of weekend ahead of me. I didn't know it was coming. On Tuesday, the 8th, I will go to the Miss University competition held at Ukhta's main performance center: "The Palace of Culture." The girls competing have been preparing for months. For the university, it's a big event. The rector with be on the judge panel. 

What does winter look like?

Here are some photos from my recent walks around Ukhta. Today, Nadya told me that it takes an American to point out how beautiful this city can be.

I love the look of winter here.

Along Chibyu River in Vzrosly (Adult) Park

I love Ukhta graffiti in Adult Park 

"Lenin is Always with Us," Lenin with a nice snow hairdo

Playing in Children's Park

Walking home from yoga

Outside of town - Zeryunova

What's under there? The building in the back is the main campus of the university. 

The wedding locks on the longest bridge in town

What does Sunday look like?

I wasn't sure that I wanted to wake up right at nine today (I was at a four-year-old's birthday party until late last night), but Iolanta's call for yoga pulled me up out of bed, into the super-warm clothing I put on every day and then out into the not-so-cold weather. Again, not-so-cold means about 0 degrees Fahrenheit - but, really, no joke, that doesn't feel too cold to me anymore. It's good walking weather.

That started my Sunday. Here's how it continued:

I wasn't able to balance on my hands with my knees resting on my elbows today in yoga. Жаль! But, hey, what's new?

Blini - you could call them crepes - waited for me next. Iolanta filled them with tvorog (farmer's cheesy/cottage cheesy??) and then fried them. I put berry jam and honey on top. I love this meal, especially in a friend's kitchen listening to family small talk.

Next, I was invited to sing with a small choir that meets on the eighth floor of one campus building with a great view of the snowy city and surroundings. This was my first day singing with them. I liked how we first sang around the piano, then in our own circle facing inward, then outward. After singing, four of us got tea at the new pizza place around the corner. It's the second Senor Pomidor in town.

Next, focused Russian. A few months ago, I asked an English teacher at the university to be my Russian language tutor. This was my first class back after the long vacation. She works a lot on my pronunciation of hard and soft sounds, gives me grammar exercises, listening and summarizing practice, and we watch segments of a 1961 Soviet comedy - "Devchata." Today, after pointing to an article that I read in one of the university's publications about students taking exams, Olga told me something fun. The night before exams, students, praying that they will do well the next day, often open the small corner window that's in all big windows here, and scream халява (meaning, give me a freebie) 3 three times while waving the little booklet which contains all of there grades, written and signed by teachers. They do this right at midnight. I will definitely make sure to open my window at midnight some nights for a chance to hear these calls.

Next, my weekly Sunday meeting with a group of four students who are preparing to go to America this summer for work. They will go with the program Work and Travel, which sets them up with employers in the US. Usually we meet in the cafe across the road from my apartment, but tonight I invited them to my place. I wanted to host, and found myself preparing by running to the store for the regular 5 liter bottle of water to make our tea with and then putting candies on the table--neither which I could have done without. Usually, our meetings just consist of questioning and answering, sometimes role playing, hanging out with the English language. They can have pretty interesting questions for me about how things are done in America, how people carry themselves, what type of laws are there, etc. Today, though, I read little puzzle stories, had them repeat them and then answer them. They sat on my couch for practically two hours with scrunched up, thinking faces. We finished up the evening by playing a game of Bananagrams. Great game! It's been a hit with every group I've taken it to.

So now, it's night time. I ran to the store right before 11 when it closed, but it was out of milk and eggs, both. There was something extra which I hadn't seen before, though: a dog, hanging out around the noodles and sausage section. No one seemed to be too bothered. It was probably too cold for it to hang out on the streets, so I don't blame it for sneaking inside. I would also. And, I do - very often. When I'm out for a walk, I sneak into stores for the sake of warming up my toes.

That's my Sunday.

Thanks for reading.