Gotta write this fast, since I want to remember and relate as much as possible. Though I’d rather be reading The Stand – I’ve got it on my computer here and I’ve started my sixth reading! Muah.

So I haven’t updated in almost a week – gasp! This is because we had our big group trip, starting last Thursday night and ending early this morning (Wednesday). Everyone in the Middlebury program in Irkutsk went, so four Midd kids, five kids from other schools on our program, and our RC Elisabeth. It was up there with the Leonya visits in terms of amount of fun had so far in Russia.

We left at around nine Thursday night on a train for Ulan-Udey, a town whose size I am unaware of on the other side of Baikal from Irkutsk. It is a big part of the Autonomous Buryatski Republic there located. Russia has lots of different smaller units instead of our ubiquitous states – they have stuff like oblasts (fairly regular) which are divided into okrugs (if I’m getting this right). Also there are autonomous okrugs (very small) and autonomous republics (usually representing some nationality inside Russia). I may have gotten okrugs and oblasts backwards. Anyway it’s not that important to this story!

We spent all night on the train, which was fun except for I lost my quilt and was freezing once I finally tried to sleep which was late in the night, of course, so I was very tired the next day. We rolled into Ulan-Udey at like eight-thirty, met our guides (who were very funny, terribly athletic, and creepily lecherous by American standards – in other words, Russian), and then had two free hours which I used to sleep. Then we started our wandering around which began with seeing a big Lenin monument which consists of a replica of his head about the size of a small cottage on a pig pedastal. Though I am not a communist any more, I still have a soft spot in my heart for Lenin and like him, and if you think he was a monster than, as Garrison Keillor says “Hell to you and take an enema!”

After that we drove around (I liked that and listen to music) and say various religious sites of interest, like Buddhist temples and an Old Believer village/church. We also visited some cottage where like twelve old women lived with a young boy and girl. Here we listend to, frankly, an uninteresting lecture on traditional Russian peasant life, and ate. Eating is the first of our recurring themes on this trip. The second was shortly thereafter established, wherein Russians offer us any alcohol ranging from rum to vodka to moonshine vodka and Elisabeth, bless her soul, has to patiently explain that our new glorious program rule forbids us from drinking when the RC (her) is together with us (the students). What’s this supposed to accomplish, Midd? Tell me. Midd doesn’t even try to forbid us from drinking when we’re NOT with Elisabeth, which would of course be ridiculous. It really seems to me they’re forbidding the safest situation for us to drink in – which is also legal! Anyway. The third recurring theme was the creepy lechery, and it was represented in this situation when the babyshkas staged a mock marriage between Susanna and one of our guides. Let’s just say Russian standards for gender inter-relations are different, and feminism does not exist. I’m not going to rip on them for that – this is of course ridiculous. Behavior is taught. “Good” behavior is behaving the way you were taught to, which is what these Russians are doing. I will not back down an inch on this, despite the fact that I consider myself a feminist (and a staunch one). The point is that when American and Russian ideas about behavior in this sphere encounter one another, the result is often uncofortable (and admittedly, little more). Much the same with the word “nigger”, though I’ll talk about that later.

So other highlights included the all-day drive over terribly rough roads to the mounrtain we hiked up and swimming in Baikal (it was probably five or ten degrees colder than the coldest water I’ve ever been in before, making it high thirties).

The hike was really amazing. It ranks up there with working on that gravity drain in Guatemala as some of the hardest work I’ve ever done. It was about three or four hours up, often on rocky slops of forty to sixy degrees. I was coated in sweat when we reached the top, sore as hell (I still am!), and really enjoying myself. Listen carefully, children.

Then we ran back down it.

One guide hung back some with other people. The other one started literally running down those forty-to-sixty-rock-encrusted slopes, telling us to cut and leap as though we were skiing. He says to Natalie and I (after we’ve left the others behind) «полетели» - here meaning, «let's fly». That's exactly what we did. We fucking ran down that mountain in maybe an hour. I hit several trees. Natalie and the guide totally wiped out. The guide's wipe out came after we were most of the way down. Natalie and I are panting and going «Oh God» alternately in Russian and English, and he goes (quoting something? Possibly Брат Два) «Are you crazy? No, we're Russians.» And then he sprints off and leaps off this giant rock and crashes into the ground and shreds his pants.

The point is this trip almost killed me and was a crazy amount of fun. Also niether of our guides were sweating or breathing hard at any point on this trip, and they were both carrying heavy packs (I was carrying a light one, just my backpack). It was the most impressive display of physical endurance I have personally witnessed, and I know some serious athletes at Midd and knew some in the Boy Scouts.

Anyway that trip was a whole lot of fun.

In which Fraz learns the subtleties of Mediterranean culture

My prepaid cell phone sent seventy-five blank text messages to Miles this morning, and I’m not happy about that. Seventeen cents a text—I don’t even take the metro unless I absolutely have to. That’s not really an experience particular to Spain, but it’s on my mind anyways.

Here’s something particular to Spain: old ladies who love the monarchy. I was reading El Mundo, which is a more conservative paper, in the living room the other day, and the big, above the fold article is about these protestors who, during the King’s visit to Catalunya, burned his picture. Now, this was an event, and all the other newspapers covered it, but what was funny was that this paper gave it the most prominent section of the paper, and was absolutely livid that this could happen.

Now, I’m an American, as you may know, and the only monarchs I am at all familiar with are the British ones, who seem to be made fun of constantly, so I find this indignation on the part of El Mundo kinda funny. I turn to the old lady with whom I’m living (who I’m calling Rosa from now on, because any nominative phrase that refers to her is always far too long) and say something to the effect of “It’s so interesting to me that something involving the monarchy could spur a legitimate political debate.” Thank God I was that vague, because she shoots forward in her chair, her eyes burning with passion and her index finger gesticulating towards heaven, and starts going “Oh I know! You see, up in Catalunya, they’re all Republicans---but not like you’re Republicans that you have, they hate the monarchy! They say that Spain is a Republic, and that the king shouldn’t have political power, and that’s why they don’t want him to be the leader of the army any more.”

At this point, it’s important to know that, usually when I’m being spoken to, I continuously nod and stuff to show that I’m understanding. Nodding was the incorrect thing to do here.

“But no!” she says, responding to a particularly poorly timed nod. “The King is very important! He’s a national leader, he’s a symbol of unity!” and she keeps going on in that vein, while I’m all the while falling over myself, trying to correct my mistake, which I can’t do because I’m speaking Spanish and I don’t have that level of subtlety yet. But hey, I got no problem with the King. I’m an American, I love kings. Spain can totally have a king; the Republican flag is ugly anyways. I eventually get this point across (leaving out the fact that the main reason I think the King should stay is because I think it’s adorable) and she calms down, satisfied that I am adequately monarchist. This entire episode caught me off guard, though, since she’s really pretty progressive in all of her other politics, so her devotion to the King totally caught me off guard.


I don’t know why I was that surprised, though, since everything else about my experience in this house makes me feel like I’m living on the set of some movie. The apartment is one of those “Welcome to Europe,” belle époque buildings, with little balconies on the windows that look out at the (butter yellow) cathedral, and the interior windows are centered around a little courtyard, in which Rosa hangs the laundry out to dry. As she does so, she can talk to her sister, who lives on the floor above and actually does that thing where she throws the shutters open and says hello to you in the morning.

Lunch is an equally theatrical affair, since there is always at least one family guest, and oftentimes many more. The other day, we were eating with one of the daughters (like early forties) and a granddaughter (sixteen), and, since I had been to the bullfights the day before, the conversation turned to bullfighting. The daughter asked me what I thought of them, and I said something about how interesting it was so see a ceremony that had been around for centuries. This was apparently the right answer, since this woman was all about the bullfights, and she starts rhapsodizing. She is soon interrupted, however, by the granddaughter, who says that she can’t believe that they still have bullfights, and how fundamentally cruel they are. This, of course, sets off the daughter, who launches into an obviously oft-delivered rant, going on about how bullfight bulls live longer, more pampered lives than regular bulls, and how you can only be a hypocrite if you’re against the fights but eat meat, since on the whole the bull’s life is so much better. The granddaughter, in response, goes “Yes, but then it dies to the sound of…” and then she actually does the dramatic slow clap from gladiator.

I love them all.


Also, I feel the need to tag on here that we went to the opera last night, and because we’re under 27 and bought are tickets at the last minute, we got to sit in the center of the second row for 14 Euro a pop. Life is good.

fun in madrid and other novelties

so the other night was this thing called la noche en blanco. fraz, this girl alaina and i went to the park and museums cuz they were open all night and admission was free. at about 1:30 in the morning miranda calls me and is like "hey lets go see a daft punk concert at 6 in the morning". I thought why not, i´m in madrid with no homework and the subway is already closed and won´t open until 6 anyway so lets go. we met miranda and her friend iris in sol (our habitual hangout which is kinda like the grill/midd express/zach and fraz´s room all rolled into one except on a huge gigantic scale.
anyway we found this small pizzeria at 3 in the morning and sat down and had a cheap but amazing bottle of wine. that´s whats so cool here, wine costs less than bottled water. so as soon as we sat down the place began to fill up and live music began playing. they played the girl from impanima and i thought about that cold whorish day where gabe fraz and i all ate pineapple while huddling around the heater and listening to that song all the while wishing we were back in our nice warm climates.
we left the restaurant and proceeded to get lost at 430 in the morning in the only neighborhood that is deemed unsafe by middlebury for americans. its called lavapies meaning foot wash or something. so we´re lost in the middle of this immigrant neighborhood and everyone is just buzzed enough to the point that this doesn´t really bother them. 1 hour later we arrive to iris´ house and proceed to wake up the old lady next door who yells at us and asks rudely when the $&%& we are going to sleep. we leave at this point to go to the concert however upon arriving realize that due to "problems" the concert has been cancelled. miranda was disappointed and i guess so was i, but all in all it was a really cool experience--taking the metro home at dawn and going to sleep as my old lady neighbor is getting up. really cool exploring and adventuring, fraz and i think we´re doing a good job of livin it up, zach would be proud.
side note, so we´re forming expressions in spanish that translate to english, but mean absolutely nothing in spanish ex. enferma is our new word for sick becasue it really means sick, but not like dude that wave was sick.
my new spanish roommate arrived. he´s the epitomy of southern spaniard which is surpisingly simmilar to a southern american. i can´t understand a word he says, he´s dirty, with greasy bleached hair, and he´s 34 living in student apartment housing. what does he do? i have no fucking idea, he´s some kind of parcel delivery guy which probably means he works for the mob. i locked my room this morning hoping that not only my computer, but also my underwear are present when i return. see ya guys, or in one of our new expressions "tarde perros"-later dogs

Not much to add about Russia or me today. I spent all day in the house, reading books and listening to music. Picked up the Illiad today. I’ve wanted to read it for a while now. Originally I was listening to it on audiotape (last summer?) but lost some tapes and didn’t listen for a while and forgot where I was. I loved Troy, I don’t care what you say, and Brad Pitt was a cool Achilles (who I am like, obsessed with). Dad wanted someone more “manly” and less “pretty”, like Arnold Swartzenegger. Or however you spell that. I ridicule that idea. Brad Pitt is manly, I don’t care how jealous various “alt” guys are and digusted by his man-candy status. What a dumb thing to critisize. Fight Club was awesome. Troy was awesome. Hell, even Ocean’s Eleven was pretty awesome.

This is not very much about Russia.

I don’t really know how to amuse myself. This is also true at home, of course, but there at least I can hobble around by playing video games, hanging out with my friends, or even, God-forbid, when I’m really desperate, doing my homework. It’s dawning on me how long it’ll be before I get more history. History classes here (currently in two) don’t count for several reasons. Here they are, in decreasing order of weight: 1-They’re in Russian, and it’s hard for me to do anything complex; 2-I still doubt that Russian historiography is where I like my historiography to be. I’m willing to be proven wrong, but don’t expect to be. I guess that’s just two, not several. But the descending order part was spot on!

I don’t mean to rip on Russia. No one should read these entries as critical of Russia or my experience in general. I’m just bored and minorly at a loss over how to occupy myself.

I’d like to start today by relating a couple of anecdotes from our trip to Arshan, which I left out before.

The first involves Buryati! Buryats are the sort of local ethnic group. They’ve been in the area a turrible long time, guvnor, and Russians like to explain that they’re the equivalent to our indians (in fact I think the ones we met self-identified that way). Though, since they still comprise some part of the population in their historical stomping grounds, I’m not sure how well the comparison holds. Anyway they have their own langauge and stuff.

We were in this cafe, because Natalie had ordered these things that took forever to make. Also it was the only thing on the menu any of us were familiar with (we can read all the names, but most weren’t Russian for “Duck with Sauce” or whatever – they were just proper nouns). So we all had them. They were like big pelmeni, which are meat tortellini. Anyway as we waited these two Buryati men we’d already noticed drinking vodka invited us over to their table. So we drank vodka with them and attempted to converse. The more talkative one demonstrated many times that he could say “Fuck You” and flip the bird fluently. He also explaned several times how, when he had been younger, he’d considered Americans his enemies. But now, he said, he knew he’d been wrong and was happy to drink with us. Also he displayed some anti-semetism and told us his friend was a lama. The friend claimed he was a translator. Apparently not into or from English, though.

The other story is about how, when we returned to the little cottage we’d rented, there was a big padlock on the door! We didn’t know what to do, but then a little boy appeared and let us in. While the others went to our rooms, I realized we’d want to be safe, and, after much discussion, convinced this boy to lock the padlock again after I returned inside. I couldn’t understand why he had seemed so dubious until about five minutes later when one of the girls wanted to go to the out-house. We were padlocked in, and for a minute it looked like I was gonna have to start kicking out window panes. But the kid, presumably knowing I was an idiot (and after such a short aquaintance!), had hung around in the yard and respodned to my semi-frantic tappings. He let us out.

Yesterday it became evident that I had a cold. I passed the whole day avoiding any folk cures, and thought I was home free around ten that night. I was wrong! So the first thing was that I had to drink tea with jam in it. I know I bash the jam water a lot, but jam in tea is entirely different and entirely delicious, particularly the new jam they unveiled last night. However, after this I had to lie on my bed and cover my eyes (but NOT the bridge of my nose!) while my sister shined a heat lamp on my face. Periodically I also had to open my mouth so she could shine it in there too. Then I got to rub something on the bottoms of my feet and my ncck, which I never felt, and something ELSE on my forehead and nose, which turned out to be basically Icy-Hot. Then I had to were socks and wrap a towel around my face and neck to keep the fumes in? It made up for lack of unpleasantness in being one of the more bizarre experiences of my life.

Leonya and I have a good time. It’s a lot of fun to hang out with him, and good conversation practice (when we’re not simply yelling one of our ever-more-common catchphrases, or when he’s not speaking English in a ridiculously strong Russian accent on purpose (he doesn’t have a bad accent normally, but likes to speak with a almost Borat-like one for kicks, and it is hilarious)).

We saw the film “Mongol” today. It was about Gengis Khan. I don’t think it was very accurate. But it had lots of blood and some cool bad-guys who seemed vaguely druidic? The plot of this movie was that Gengis Khan (while he was still Temuchin) got kidnapped a whole lot his entire life, and then eventually took over the mongols because they were all afraid of thunder and he wasn’t. The movie was dubbed, either because it was originally Mongolian (maybe?) or because the director decided to film it all in Mongol for artistic reasons. I assume the first explanation.

Le falta Family Guy

So we´re still in this kind of orientation period where we´re constantly kept busy, so we tend to have the problem of not knowing what to do with ourselves once we don´t have anything scheduled. After class the other day, I was walking with Miles, and it was just like "I don´t really want to do anything, but I don´t want to go back to my house and do nothing. What I really want to do is sit in the dorm and watch Family Guy." That´s whats so different here: we all live at opposite ends of the city, so we can´t do that casual dorm drop in with no obligation to do anything interesting. But we kept walking, and wound up at some little street cafe and had a thing of Sangria. We hung out there for a while, then Miranda called, and we did the same thing with her somewhere else. It hit me that this is our analogue to sitting around watching family guy here. You can just sit down somewhere, get a glass of something for like two euro, and just chill. I gotta say I´m a fan.

I´m also a fan of Madrid at night. Like, can we talk about it? I´m hesitant to make any judgements about the city, since I´ve been here for three days with no work to do, but I´m quite the fan. We´ve kind of gone out the last couple of nights, and it´s so cool to just discover little places to hang out. It´s kind of hard to communicate why I like it, but it´s just a much more exciting atmosphere, but at the same time still mellow and cool. It´s a kind of a perfect blend of our dorm parties, about which I agree with Eddy, and the massive sketch parties. There´s lots of excitement, yeah, but not that kind of popped collar "whoa bra" college douche/"I´m visibly anxious to prove I´m cool" freshman excitement. It´s like a lot of people having tiny dorm parties together.

Speaking of which, that´s another thing I like about Madrid: it could just be me, but it seems like there´s a really legit mix of different ages here. We have yet to be in a place that´s just a bunch of young people. We´ll be sitting in a plaza, and there´s parents playing with their children, and old couples walking together; or we´ll be in a bar that´s kind of an older crowd that´s just chilling, rather than getting hammered. I am, to repete myself, a fan.


Oh, and after reading Eddie´s last post, I want to contribute a similar problem of my own. I´m at the point where I don´t have to translate everything I hear--it´s still hard to say anything, but if I´m just listening in class it´s not really work. The problem is, every twenty minutes or so I realize that I´m doing this, and it´s like trying not to think of something: everything instantly dissolves and, as if I´m trying to prove to myself that I really can understand what I´m hearing, I start translating everything. Then I have to make an effort to kind of zone out and start listening naturally again. It drives me crazy.

I post the most because I'm scared to leave the host or communicate with my host family or watch TV in Russian

Russia today . . . hmmm. Well, I worked some more with Leonya, where I tried to proof-read some things he had translated. Stuff having to do with corprate use monitoring software. I felt like such a traitor, since I know all these bros online who abuse the hell out of their corprate bandwidth. Actually, since I decided I just hate Spacebattles, I guess that’s okay.

More class. I decided I enjoy the class about Baikal best of all because either I understand and it’s at least half-way interesting, or I don’t and it’s hilariously hopless (the default answer to all questions put to us is “bears?” i say “bears?” all the freaking time in that class. it’s actually right like every time. though he seems displeased that i so blatantly abuse this forumal/loophole). I might drop Siberian History, though that ALSO feels like a betrayal since, you know, HISTORY. But it’s a lot of work, comparatively, and fairly elementary once I successfully spend seven hours translating thirty pages.

I think my host family might be annoyed with me because I don’t really interact with them, other than to refuse food. I mean, sometimes I make a little conversation (or, more commonly, respond a little), but mostly I prefer to read, do my homework, hang out with Leonya, and write numerous long blog entries. Blogging has really exploded these last two days, which I’m pleased with. My blog desires have always been two fold: write something that is at least interesting to me and get other people to read and comment. The ultimate success would be someone I don’t know at all becoming a regular reader. Anyway, whatever.

I guess I may be stealing other people’s blog fodder, but Susanna just texted me (SMSed, in Russian) to say that her host mother presented her with an entire glass of vermouth. She has only relayed that she didn’t know what to do – not what she DID do. A cliff-hanger! Once I took a shot of vermouth some bored Tuesday night in the Russian House. It tasted kind of like liquor made from old cleaning supplies, or possibly pickles. Also I was thinking a “Who Can Make the Worst Mixed-Drink!?” party would be fun whenver we’re all back at Midd. Everyone brings a disgusting mixed drink to the party and we see whose we hate most while we get smashed! I expect this idea to go over like a lead weight, but I’m excited at least!

SMSing is slowly but surely teaching me the Russian alphabet, which is something apparently no one bothers to learn the same way we learn ours in English? I mean, you can all recite the alphabet to find exactly where a letter is. Of course none of us can do this in Russian, and I don’t think Russians learn their alphabet that way. Once I asked Leonya where a letter was, and he sort shrugged like “how should I know?”

Apparently she drank it. Ew. Or, in Russian, “ew”.

Ah, the zen state of understanding which requires that I both be listening and not listening in order to keep up in class. I thought about this today while failing to understand what our teacher was saying (though I feel like there was definate progress today). When I do happen to understand, I am invariably floating on the tides of my teacher’s words. I’m understanding without trying. I have to be not thinking about something else (rare) and I can’t be thinking ABOUT understanding. Then I invariably focus on invidual words or sentences structures, comfortably decoding them while missing the rest of a concept. I have to efface as much as possible the membrane that is me, so that information, stripped of a linguistic coding, can pass seemlessly through my senses and into my me-ness. It’s a good time.

Also apparently before and during World War Two there were attempts to domesticate elk for use in both civilian AND MILITARY tasks. Soviet soldiers riding out to meet the Nazi menace on armored war elk. Wow. That would have made the movie with all the cavalry charges a lot more interesting.