Academics and Miscellany

Hello, everyone!

Well, things round these parts have finally settled into a sort of routine. Since last Monday, every morning I meet Irina and Emily on the fated corner of the last post, which corner I can now find with ease, and we take our beloved number 7 bus to our usual stop, after showing our bus passes to the grumbly lady with pink lipstick and a big fur ball on her head. (Number 7 is "our dear number 7" because, although there are several buses which could successfully convey us to our destination, number 7 is the only one equipped with a loudspeaker which calls out the names of the stops, which is helpful because the windows are not steamed up as I originally and, as it turns out, fallaciously, reported, but rather coated in sheets of ice much thicker than those which greet you on your car windshield some number of mornings during the winter.) We take the bus to campus, where, since Tuesday, we have been engaged in a battery of classes known as the RSL (Russian as a Second Language) Intensive. After Monday's placement exam we were divided into four groups, and each group attends three classes each day, but we take six courses in the group, so for some we met every day and others only once or twice during the course of the two weeks. My group consists of me, and my two good friends Emily and Courtney. Here follows what I'm sure will be a tremendously fascinating account of what those six courses are/were (we will continue to meet for some of these classes throughout the semester, but others were only for the language intensive. I'm unclear on which are which.):

1. Phonetics – The impeccably dressed and boyishly charming Kiril Kirilovich reads a phoneme in his sonorous yet shy voice, which he has us repeat over and over again in an effort to make us sound like native Russians. This call-and-response is accompanied by sidelong glances and muffled girlish chuckles among Emily and Courtney and myself.

2. Conversational practice and writing – Not exactly good for the self-esteem, this one. The goal here is to help us navigate the many idiomatic ways Russians have of communicating on a subject-by-subject basis. The result is the hard-edged Elena Nikolaevna teaching us five different words for the English word "class" and then telling us when to use which, and answering our questions with a sort of disdainful, shocked expression that unequivocally says, "Really? You're asking me that?? Well, I never!"

3. Grammar – The ebullient and endlessly charming Ludmilla Petrovna teaches us the finer points of Russian grammar in a manner that, while extremely enjoyable and inflating of the ego, does very little to forward the end of our mastering advanced grammatical constructions. A typical exchange consists of her telling us the rule and then, rather than explaining us the exceptions to the rule, of which there are invariably many, explaining that it's not our fault that there are exceptions, that we are her wise, beautiful, gentle, etc. girls, that Russian is a dreadful language and that these exceptions are simply dreadful, and best of luck to us darlings! Fortunately we covered at Swarthmore what we are covering now, so I can use class time jointly to review and refresh what I already know and bask in the praise of the red-headed and eccentrically made-up Ludmilla Petrovna.

4. Written language – In theatrically sing-song Russian, our professor attempts to teach us the nuances of academic and/or literary writing. She reads us poems and excerpts from literature, and then assigns us an essay. We usually have an essay assigned each day, so that's been difficult and I'm very grateful to have had some writing practice at Swarthmore to make this a bit easier. For our first assignment we were to use artistically abstract language to write a portrait of somebody, and the rest of the class had to guess of whom. I wrote rather a good little portrait of Elvis Presley, of which I am quite proud, and in which can be found such choice little tidbits as, "he began to eat food as rich as his voice was deep," and "his blue eyes sparkled like his blue costumes under the lights of the stage." Emily and Courtney appeared to have found all of this quite amusing, but the professor, I think, didn't quite get it. Alas.

5. AVK/SMI – I have no idea what those acronyms stand for other than boredom and gloom and unhappiness. We learn to read Russian newspapers. Mind you we learn how to read them. We don't actually read them. The course is taught by the one and only Kiril Kirilovich who, poor soul, is reduced to reading us the driest and dullest textbook that has ever been produced by the hand of man or beast, or for that matter vegetable or mineral, and then selecting for us as homework those of the exercises which, in his estimation, we might be able to stomach doing.

6. Lexicography (maybe? this is just my translation…) and word formation – this is my favorite course. (It would be, eh?) We spend two or three class periods learning about one root, and how it relates to different prefixes and suffixes to make different words. I like it. Grammar is a close contender for favorite class, just because I happen to be a bit of a nerd for such things as participles and word formation, but Vita, the professor at issue for this course, is a might bit better at professing than is Ludmila Petrovna, if maybe the worse for ego-stroking.

On Monday we take a big exam to place us into RSL courses for the semester. Then on Wednesday the semester proper begins. We will be taking eight credits of RSL, and then up to twelve credits of anything else. The program requires that I be registered for twelve total to stay on, and Swarthmore requires that I be registered for fifteen for my financial aid to continue to transfer. I registered for Russian Literature of the 1920s and 1930s in Russia and the West for four, International Law for four, and Democracy and Dictatorship: the last century of the Roman Republic for four. All three of those courses are taught in Russian. This was incalculably stupid of me. But there are a bunch of other classes I want to take, and there is a two-week shopping period in which our registration can change. So things will probably have changed a lot by the next time you hear from me. I might sign up for piano lessons, I might replace International Law with Gendered Aspects of Human Rights, and there is a course in the music department that, pending knowledge of its prerequisites, I really really really want to take, called (more articulately in Russian) Russian History in the Mirror of the Opera Stage. There are also a couple of intro. level philosophy courses I might attempt, a course on international human rights protection organs, and a course on the literary museums of Petersburg. So, considering that that is about three million credits all in Russian, and further considering that there are time conflicts to take into consideration, it's basically as though I haven't registered for anything yet. I think I'll end up taking sixteen credits in all, so I'll have to settle for two of the above-mentioned courses.

I'll wrap up this rather uninteresting update with some of the mildly amusing adventures and accomplishments in my life over the last couple of weeks:

I successfully bought a bus pass. Turns out I bought the wrong bus pass, but I did get the one I wanted and asked for, I just wanted the wrong one.

Similarly, although I have now mastered the art of getting from the metro to my apartment, I have yet to figure out how to take the bus home from campus without using the metro. Baby steps. I have, however, successfully made my way onto Nevskij to meet up with people or go to cafes or shopping or whatever several times. Always taking the metro home, of course.

I finally figured out how to use ALL of the keys to get into my house!!! This is by far the biggest accomplishment of the last two weeks. Remember there are five or six of them, depending on whether my babushka is home, and they all work in different ways, none of which even remotely resembles an American key. I took a picture of them, which I will post on my blog when I get a chance

My babushka, much to her chagrin as she believes one ought not to drink cold beverages in winter, purchased for me some requested apple juice. It is "My family" brand, and on the carton is posed what appears to be a family of four Aryan-race Amway salesmen clad all in white who seem very pleased with the thought of making available to me that special happiness which only their apple juice can provide. Turns out they are right. It is, in fact, very good apple juice, much more resembling fresh-pressed cider than anything you'll find in the typical American grocery store.

My friend Emily got sick the other day, and her host mother offered to put a cabbage on her head to help her feel better. Better than a cat, I suppose, which is what other Russian host mothers have offered to do.

I saw on television this morning that there is a Russian television equivalent of the show Judge Judy. Just think about that. The two thoughts that popped into my head: 1. the Russian legal system works now, does it? and 2. it's a "show" about a "trial." put those words together and see what turns up.

I'm in Russia, where people drink tea. I was so looking forward to drinking lots and lots of yummy Russian tea. I even declined to bring some of my beloved Lady Gray to Russia with me, thinking I would be too busy drinking authentic Russian loose-leaf from a samovar. Everyone here drinks Lipton's. Everyone. Lipton's. It's everywhere. I have Lipton's every morning at breakfast, Lipton's at the internet café, Lipton's in hotels… Lipton's. But then one evening I was sitting in a café, (interesting side note: the café is called Кофе Хаус – Kofe Haus – Coffeehouse) ordered some black tea, and it came in a little teapot. So I poured myself a cup, and what should pop out of its spout but a tea leaf! A TEA LEAF!!! So I opened the lid of the teapot and found tea in there! There were leaves just happily floating and bobbing about! It was a good day.

Well, that post was pretty long, so I'll desist. But we've been on a couple of interesting excursions, the post regarding which is guaranteed to be much more interesting, so stay tuned and don't get scared or bored reading the subject line of the next email I send.

Love,
Annie