Devinez qui vous aurez le plaisir de voir apparaître dans vos cuisines à l'heure du souper à partir du mois de septembre?
Oui, vous avez deviné! C'est Mym!
J'ai été acceptée à la maîtrise en études internationales à l'Université de Montréal. Yippeeee!
C'est drôle, je pensais que c'était un programme d'un an, mais finalement, c'est vraiment un programme de deux ans. Deux ans de plaisir mymesque garanti!
In other news, Deanna came back from her trip to Kursk with a Chechen rock star (it's true, you can check him out on ChechenMTV.ru)
And we are leaving next Monday for Petrozavodsk. Well, actually, for some forested area close to Petrozavodsk. Probably filled with bears.
Oui, vous avez deviné! C'est Mym!
J'ai été acceptée à la maîtrise en études internationales à l'Université de Montréal. Yippeeee!
C'est drôle, je pensais que c'était un programme d'un an, mais finalement, c'est vraiment un programme de deux ans. Deux ans de plaisir mymesque garanti!
In other news, Deanna came back from her trip to Kursk with a Chechen rock star (it's true, you can check him out on ChechenMTV.ru)
And we are leaving next Monday for Petrozavodsk. Well, actually, for some forested area close to Petrozavodsk. Probably filled with bears.
It seems that with the addition of pictures, the right hand column has gone all wonky. Does anyone know which part of the code I need to fix?? Wei? Kostya? Buller?
Respected readers!
Many a good news are to be shared now!
We have moved out!
Into residence!
Close to downtown!
Life is better!
When things started moving, they moved very fast. We finally got the phone number of the contact person at MGLU (linguistics university), two days later we met with her, two days after that our Russian got half-assed assessed, two days later we moved into rez and started our classes.
We are taking only 4 hours of classes a week, since we are working full time at the center. And since there always needs to be one of us at the center, scheduling is one big big puzzle. What makes this even more complicated is that no one at the university seems to know which group we should be in, since no one knows what the level of the different groups are. So we go to one class, figure out if it’s right or not, if it’s not, we randomly try another one. Fun fun fun. I’ve only been to one class so far, mostly made up of Germans who speak almost without accent and really really well at that. They know very long words. I don’t know any very long words.
The German girls invited us to a little party in their room yesterday, and we got to know everyone. Everyone happens to be a girl and a nice one at that. We are liking life in rez. Especially since everyone actually speaks Russian with one another! Not English! Or German! But Russian! Which is just fantastic. We are sharing a room, and we share our bathroom and fridge with a girl from Finland who’s very nice and quiet.
After weeks of having no other entertainment than taking the metro, we are finally very busy. Tonight, our friend Sasha (the good Sasha) is playing with his band. Friday night, we have been invited to a party at the British Embassy.
We’ll be travelling soon with the center to other Russian cities. As they don’t have enough money to bring both D and me every time, we’ll have to take turns. D is going to Kursk (on the border with Ukraine) next week for a interethnic training seminar for the police. Then in April, we’ll both be going to Petrozavodsk (capital of Karelia, close to Finland), and we hope to be able to meet up with Sasha (our friend from Kostamuksha). That will also be for a training session with the police. I’m really excited, I can’t wait to see what the training seminars are like!
Otherwise, life is good, it’s +12 degrees here, the sun is shining and Moscow is starting to be much more pleasant.
Now, I shall shut up and show you the few pictures I’ve taken so far. Worry you not, I shall be taking more and posting them more often, since I am the proud owner of a brand spanking new USB cable.
Our Old Life (ie. apartment in Lyublino)
When we arrived here, we lived in the apartment of our coworker’s son, whom we still have yet to meet. We shared one bedroom and had a cozy little kitchen.
We also had a strange washing machine, which destroyed any item of clothing with much gusto, from underwear to jeans.
Here is how the machine works (well, that’s what I understood from the instructions manual) :
Put the machine on top of the little wooden plank on top of the bathtub and break your back in the process.
Plug in the machine (make sure you’re not stepping into a puddle of water, as sparks do fly from electrical plugs in our apartment!! I know it from experience)
Somehow try to get water from the tap into the machine’s tube.
Add clothing and soap.
Put timer on machine for 4 minutes.
Empty water, fill again. Repeat process, but for 8 minutes. Since the machine’s timer only goes to 6 minutes, wait for 6 minutes, and then add two minutes to the timer.
Empty water, fill again. Repeat process for 2 minutes.
Empty water, fill again. Repeat process for 1.5 minutes.
Empty water, fill again. Repeat process for 1.5 minutes.
We quickly determined that it was easier and safer to just wash our clothing by hand. Since it is a long and tedious process, we basically wear dirty clothes and hope it doesn’t smell too bad.
Our apartment was located in a very nice neighbourhood with lots of families, young children and little in the way of alcoholics, crackheads or seedy-looking men. The only bad thing in it was the most miserable stray dog I have ever seen in my life, a mother with dangling tits and no more hair on her body, but she still managed to seem happy begging for food for her little puppies. Also, at the market close-by, they sell meat out of the trunks of cars. We didn’t try.
This is the view we had from our corridor :
The snow has since melted, and the snow field you see on the bottom right is now a disgusting muddy open field junkyard.
This is another view from the corridor :
« Mym, I never thought I’d tell you that, but in the hallway, next to the garbage chute, there’s a naked headless robot baby holding a vodka bottle.
Our friend Roma braved the weirdness of our apartment bloc and visited us.
But the apartment was most definitely too far from the center, so we moved.
Views from the city
I haven’t taken many pictures from the city yet. Here is the obligatory red square shot.
These shots are from an afternoon walk around Kitai Gorod. The juxtaposition of nicely restored builings and other run-down buildings and streets is pretty striking.
In other news, I’m sad I didn’t take one of my film cameras with me, as point and shoot pictures aren’t quite my thing. *tear*
More pictures can be seen by clicking on the « impressions » tab.
And below is a video showing the view we had from our kitchen. I don’t know if it works, as my computer is pretty uncooperative.
Many a good news are to be shared now!
We have moved out!
Into residence!
Close to downtown!
Life is better!
When things started moving, they moved very fast. We finally got the phone number of the contact person at MGLU (linguistics university), two days later we met with her, two days after that our Russian got half-assed assessed, two days later we moved into rez and started our classes.
We are taking only 4 hours of classes a week, since we are working full time at the center. And since there always needs to be one of us at the center, scheduling is one big big puzzle. What makes this even more complicated is that no one at the university seems to know which group we should be in, since no one knows what the level of the different groups are. So we go to one class, figure out if it’s right or not, if it’s not, we randomly try another one. Fun fun fun. I’ve only been to one class so far, mostly made up of Germans who speak almost without accent and really really well at that. They know very long words. I don’t know any very long words.
The German girls invited us to a little party in their room yesterday, and we got to know everyone. Everyone happens to be a girl and a nice one at that. We are liking life in rez. Especially since everyone actually speaks Russian with one another! Not English! Or German! But Russian! Which is just fantastic. We are sharing a room, and we share our bathroom and fridge with a girl from Finland who’s very nice and quiet.
After weeks of having no other entertainment than taking the metro, we are finally very busy. Tonight, our friend Sasha (the good Sasha) is playing with his band. Friday night, we have been invited to a party at the British Embassy.
We’ll be travelling soon with the center to other Russian cities. As they don’t have enough money to bring both D and me every time, we’ll have to take turns. D is going to Kursk (on the border with Ukraine) next week for a interethnic training seminar for the police. Then in April, we’ll both be going to Petrozavodsk (capital of Karelia, close to Finland), and we hope to be able to meet up with Sasha (our friend from Kostamuksha). That will also be for a training session with the police. I’m really excited, I can’t wait to see what the training seminars are like!
Otherwise, life is good, it’s +12 degrees here, the sun is shining and Moscow is starting to be much more pleasant.
Now, I shall shut up and show you the few pictures I’ve taken so far. Worry you not, I shall be taking more and posting them more often, since I am the proud owner of a brand spanking new USB cable.
Our Old Life (ie. apartment in Lyublino)
When we arrived here, we lived in the apartment of our coworker’s son, whom we still have yet to meet. We shared one bedroom and had a cozy little kitchen.
We also had a strange washing machine, which destroyed any item of clothing with much gusto, from underwear to jeans.
Here is how the machine works (well, that’s what I understood from the instructions manual) :
Put the machine on top of the little wooden plank on top of the bathtub and break your back in the process.
Plug in the machine (make sure you’re not stepping into a puddle of water, as sparks do fly from electrical plugs in our apartment!! I know it from experience)
Somehow try to get water from the tap into the machine’s tube.
Add clothing and soap.
Put timer on machine for 4 minutes.
Empty water, fill again. Repeat process, but for 8 minutes. Since the machine’s timer only goes to 6 minutes, wait for 6 minutes, and then add two minutes to the timer.
Empty water, fill again. Repeat process for 2 minutes.
Empty water, fill again. Repeat process for 1.5 minutes.
Empty water, fill again. Repeat process for 1.5 minutes.
We quickly determined that it was easier and safer to just wash our clothing by hand. Since it is a long and tedious process, we basically wear dirty clothes and hope it doesn’t smell too bad.
Our apartment was located in a very nice neighbourhood with lots of families, young children and little in the way of alcoholics, crackheads or seedy-looking men. The only bad thing in it was the most miserable stray dog I have ever seen in my life, a mother with dangling tits and no more hair on her body, but she still managed to seem happy begging for food for her little puppies. Also, at the market close-by, they sell meat out of the trunks of cars. We didn’t try.
This is the view we had from our corridor :
The snow has since melted, and the snow field you see on the bottom right is now a disgusting muddy open field junkyard.
This is another view from the corridor :
« Mym, I never thought I’d tell you that, but in the hallway, next to the garbage chute, there’s a naked headless robot baby holding a vodka bottle.
Our friend Roma braved the weirdness of our apartment bloc and visited us.
But the apartment was most definitely too far from the center, so we moved.
Views from the city
I haven’t taken many pictures from the city yet. Here is the obligatory red square shot.
These shots are from an afternoon walk around Kitai Gorod. The juxtaposition of nicely restored builings and other run-down buildings and streets is pretty striking.
In other news, I’m sad I didn’t take one of my film cameras with me, as point and shoot pictures aren’t quite my thing. *tear*
More pictures can be seen by clicking on the « impressions » tab.
And below is a video showing the view we had from our kitchen. I don’t know if it works, as my computer is pretty uncooperative.
Good Old Kapusta Called, He Wants His Khachapuri Back
9 Comments Published by mym(e) on 2.3.07 at 4:31 AM.
Russians need more names! There are simply too many Sashas and Mashas and Pashas… In my case, I know too many Sashas. There is Good Sasha from Kostomuksha, and Good Sasha from Moskva, but also Bad Sasha from Moskva. This causes problems. For example, I received a call while I was at work the other day. My phone screen said “Sasha – Moskva”. I thought it was the bad one and hung up. It turned out it was the good one, wanting to meet up for the evening. So we’ve renamed Bad Sasha into Good Old Kapusta (Good Old Cabbage), a tribute to kvashennaya kapusta, a foul tasting form of pickled cabbage.
D and I met Good Old Kapusta while trying to find an apartment. We had tea, chitchatted for half an hour, told him we didn’t want the apartment and left. Everything was fine until then. Then he started sending us text messages saying how great we were. I didn’t answer him right away, mostly because I didn’t know what to answer. Then he invites us to his place. Since I didn’t answer right away, he sent another message five minutes later asking why I DIDN’T answer him. All in all, I think he must’ve sent 10 messages within a day saying randomly weird things. So we sent him a text asking him to stop sending us messages. And this is where things became creepy. Apparently, we immediately became the worst hypocrites, double-faced people he knew. He’s been sending us random stupid creepy messages once every few days, at once insulting us and demanding that we answer him. His technique for making friends is all in all rather bad.
The good thing is that we met a Good Sasha to make up for Creepy Good Old Kapusta Sasha. We met Good Sasha and a bunch of his friends last weekend, when we had a little get together at his place, and then proceeded to go out to a club called “Krizis Zhanra”, where they practice “feis-kontrol” (face control). We went in the club in pairs, thereby reducing the risk of “feis-kontrol”. Katya and Zhanna and Sasha and I went got in fine. But D and the others got feis-kontrolled. She put up a fight and got inside, but only due to her unique brand of feistiness. I don’t quite understand the principle. Basically, you walk up to the door and they look you up and down. If they say nothing, you’re good. If they say “feis-kontrol”, you’re out. Crapooey. We want to go to a music venue tonight, but according to our guide, they practice feis-kontrol. I’m nervous. Leonid Fedorov is playing, I really want to go!
At any rate, we have now found a nice group of friends. As soon as Anna, one of Sasha’s friends, started talking about the problems of teleportation on Mars, where there is less gravitational force and how would our particles get back together, we knew we were among a good group. Which makes up for the difficulties of living in a city like Moscow. People are rather mean on the streets here, I find. On the subway, nobody moves to let you get out. The other day, we decided to go in town earlier in the morning. Right during rush hour. I don’t think I can explain in words just how cramped we were on the subway. Our station is one of the last ones at the end of a very suburban line, and no one gets off before getting downtown. So we get on the train and it’s already packed. At each station, more and more people pile in, somehow managing to stay clear of the doors, I do not know how. My face is pushed in some guy’s back, I can’t move my arms, I’m thinking I will die. So D and I decide to get off at the next station and wait out the rush hour a bit. Easier said than done. D tries to get off, she tells the lady in front of her “Izvinite” and tries to go through. The lady just looks at her and doesn’t budge one inch. To be fair, the lady probably had no place whatsoever to move to. So D just savagely elbows her out of the way and pops out of the subway car. But I’m still stuck in the crowd, desperately pushing the floor with my feet, trying to elbow people, nothing works. D takes one of my arms and pulls as hard as she can. Nothing budges. A man waiting to get on the car grabs my other arm and pulls. I finally pop out. I’m one meter away from the subway. One end of my scarf in on my neck, the other end is still in the subway. I pull on it, thinking I might have to sacrifice it, but it too somehow pops out. Breathe in, breathe out, all is good. Half an hour later, there is enough space in the subway cars to breathe, and we jump back on.
We still haven’t found a new place. It’s impossible to get a seat at McDonald’s, little babushkas elbow you to grab the chair you’re obviously waiting for. The subway is nuts, and so is everyone else. But things are looking up, we’re starting to know enough nice people to make life enjoyable. There is Sasha and his friends, and there is also Danielle, from LJ, whose birthday is this weekend and we’re going skating! :o)
D and I met Good Old Kapusta while trying to find an apartment. We had tea, chitchatted for half an hour, told him we didn’t want the apartment and left. Everything was fine until then. Then he started sending us text messages saying how great we were. I didn’t answer him right away, mostly because I didn’t know what to answer. Then he invites us to his place. Since I didn’t answer right away, he sent another message five minutes later asking why I DIDN’T answer him. All in all, I think he must’ve sent 10 messages within a day saying randomly weird things. So we sent him a text asking him to stop sending us messages. And this is where things became creepy. Apparently, we immediately became the worst hypocrites, double-faced people he knew. He’s been sending us random stupid creepy messages once every few days, at once insulting us and demanding that we answer him. His technique for making friends is all in all rather bad.
The good thing is that we met a Good Sasha to make up for Creepy Good Old Kapusta Sasha. We met Good Sasha and a bunch of his friends last weekend, when we had a little get together at his place, and then proceeded to go out to a club called “Krizis Zhanra”, where they practice “feis-kontrol” (face control). We went in the club in pairs, thereby reducing the risk of “feis-kontrol”. Katya and Zhanna and Sasha and I went got in fine. But D and the others got feis-kontrolled. She put up a fight and got inside, but only due to her unique brand of feistiness. I don’t quite understand the principle. Basically, you walk up to the door and they look you up and down. If they say nothing, you’re good. If they say “feis-kontrol”, you’re out. Crapooey. We want to go to a music venue tonight, but according to our guide, they practice feis-kontrol. I’m nervous. Leonid Fedorov is playing, I really want to go!
At any rate, we have now found a nice group of friends. As soon as Anna, one of Sasha’s friends, started talking about the problems of teleportation on Mars, where there is less gravitational force and how would our particles get back together, we knew we were among a good group. Which makes up for the difficulties of living in a city like Moscow. People are rather mean on the streets here, I find. On the subway, nobody moves to let you get out. The other day, we decided to go in town earlier in the morning. Right during rush hour. I don’t think I can explain in words just how cramped we were on the subway. Our station is one of the last ones at the end of a very suburban line, and no one gets off before getting downtown. So we get on the train and it’s already packed. At each station, more and more people pile in, somehow managing to stay clear of the doors, I do not know how. My face is pushed in some guy’s back, I can’t move my arms, I’m thinking I will die. So D and I decide to get off at the next station and wait out the rush hour a bit. Easier said than done. D tries to get off, she tells the lady in front of her “Izvinite” and tries to go through. The lady just looks at her and doesn’t budge one inch. To be fair, the lady probably had no place whatsoever to move to. So D just savagely elbows her out of the way and pops out of the subway car. But I’m still stuck in the crowd, desperately pushing the floor with my feet, trying to elbow people, nothing works. D takes one of my arms and pulls as hard as she can. Nothing budges. A man waiting to get on the car grabs my other arm and pulls. I finally pop out. I’m one meter away from the subway. One end of my scarf in on my neck, the other end is still in the subway. I pull on it, thinking I might have to sacrifice it, but it too somehow pops out. Breathe in, breathe out, all is good. Half an hour later, there is enough space in the subway cars to breathe, and we jump back on.
We still haven’t found a new place. It’s impossible to get a seat at McDonald’s, little babushkas elbow you to grab the chair you’re obviously waiting for. The subway is nuts, and so is everyone else. But things are looking up, we’re starting to know enough nice people to make life enjoyable. There is Sasha and his friends, and there is also Danielle, from LJ, whose birthday is this weekend and we’re going skating! :o)
