Friday, November 26, 2004

agriculture?

does agriculture have anything to do with culture?
I thought I'd write about some cultural differences that I've noticed
Hope you enjoy it, Tessa!

-taking a taxi: you just stick your hand out into the street.. maybe a taxi will stop and maybe just a random car will stop if the driver is looking for some extra cash. I was also warned that taxi drivers carry baseball bats and they don't play baseball. There's no seatbealts in cabs. I always look for one, but they laugh.. "you don't have to wear a seatbelt" ha ha. silly me. what was I thinking? It's not illegal to not wear a seatbelt, so why would you wear one?
One morning I was running super late and I wanted to take a cab and there were 3 drivers standing there and 2 had a beer in their hand. (it was 9am) So I picked the one that didn't have a beer. But then I thought after that maybe he's just the fast drinker of the group.

Russians are very superstitious it seems. maybe we are too, but I feel kind of overwhelmed with the rules here. maybe just cause there's so many, or maybe cause they're new to me.
-you can't sit on the ground or by monuments or on steps. bad for your health
-empty bottles must be places on the floor, and NOT the table. otherwise it means you'll have no money.
-if you're passing jewellery between people, you must set it somewhere and then the other person picks it up. No direct jewerelly exchange. not sure why.
-black cat = bad! (we have this one too I think)
- if you forget something and you come back to get it, you must look in the mirror and smile. or it'll be bad news.

also, it's impossible to buy cd's in Kaliningrad that aren't pirated. Pirated cd's cost about $6 CAD and are available in all cd stores. It looks like HMV, except for everything is pirated. When I discovered this, I was very excited. I bought some Thievery Corporation, (Anna, it's so great!)

I already talked about the lateness thing. Odds are, if you're meeting a Russian, you can't be impatient, cause you'll go nuts. And don't expect an apology after waiting for an hour, either.

Drinking on the street is okay. bringing a beer with you into the cab is okay. Or a cooler or a bottle of vodka. No problem. brings the concept of pre-drinking to a whole new level.

No Recycling. I asked somebody from Ekaterinburg if there's any recycling and he said, "of course! we burn our garbage in the forest" Maybe I'm a bit extreme, but here I feel like some type of environmental freakshow.
Recycling vs. burning garbage? Not using the energy produced from the fire for anything else? Why didn't we think of that? We could just burn everything, people! paper, glass, mercury, muclear waste, scrap metal, batteries, plastic, rubber. Why the need for the 3 R's when you can "just burn it!" (that'll be my new recycle slogan) Plus, that would be one hell of a fire. I'll bring marshmallows.

-they don't drink alot of water here. More tea. tea tea tea. coffee. mostly tea, though. i guess cause they have to boil the water anyways, might as well make tea out of it.
Also, there's no place in the city where you can buy a coffee to go.. like Tim Hortons or second cup or starbucks or 7-11 or Mcdonald's. I'm not a fan, I'll admit.
No travel mugs either.

Today we went to an orphanage to hang out with the kids. Galia, max and I taught a group of 7 teenage boys how to play rummy. (I'm teaching rummy to the world!)

Okay, that's all that comes to mind right now, so I'm signing off. Good night. See ya later. Enjoy the pictures.




Sunday, November 21, 2004

No more witch talk!

Mid-Project was really great. We stayed at this house (like a bed and breakfast but much more Russian and we had to cook for ourselves) on the spit. (like a skinny piece of land in sticking out of the mainland)

And throughout this post I”ll probably sound really cheesy and cliché, but it was actually a really wonderful heartwarming experience. Maybe I should be a script writer for the carebears..”if we just work together and love each other, everything will be okay!!”

Somehow I feel much closer to many people in the group, and some conflicts we were having before (it kind of felt like our team was falling apart) were settled.

Plus, the spit is beautiful. One day we went hiking along the sand dunes. One side is the Sea, and about 1km away is the gulf. So we saw both beaches. In between there were sand dunes and a forest. We had some free time to walk along the beach. The waves here huge and the weather was freezing, but the air was so refreshing or breathtaking or some other word that I can't think of but should write here to describe the air. I could have listened to the waves for hours. I wished that everybody in the world who I care about could have been standing there taking it in with me.

I strayed a bit too far and was late meeting the group (although I didn’t realize it cause they decided the meeting time after I wandered off) So some people thought I was eaten by a sea monster, but at least I was having a swell time.

I even got over my fear of peeing in the forest. Apparently, I’ve been very adament about not ever doing this my entire life. When I was five, according to my dad, I made my dad’s construction crew stop the job so the foreman could drive me 20 minutes to the nearest bathroom cause I was just much to dignified for the forest toilet. So, this time I figured out the entire process on my own, and I realized that it’s not actually that bad, and the forest is probably much more sanitary than public washrooms anyways.

The weather was freezing for hiking, but I came up with a clever idea to bring some cognac so we could do some shots at lunch and warm us up. When I shared my idea originally, half the people thought I was nuts, and the other half thought I was joking. The Russian supervisor thought it was a good idea, and we bought it. It was called “five star” and a huge bottle was $9. Tasted kind of like scotch, and unless you’re my grandpa, you could see how unpleasant shots could have been. By the way, a label named “five star” is very misleading. But it sure warmed us up!! Body AND Soul.

Overall, the biggest challenge was the cooking. Every meal was cooked from scratch. You might think this wasn’t a huge deal, but groups of 3 cooking for 16 was something I’ve never done before. For one thing, “there are many ways to skin a cat” (as Eckhart would say) and it’s sometimes difficult when other people tell you that you have to do something a certain way or the whole will come to a screeching halt. You’re pretty confident that your way is okay, because you’ve been doing it that way for many years and watching your mother and the Urban Peasant and roomates and professional cooks in a restaurant doing it your way for years and the world is still in one piece..(sort of.)

We bought all the food before, and had to figure out what was bought for each group and make sure not to use the food that was bought for another meal. Breakfast today we were supposed to make crepes (Canadian, right?) except there was no milk to be bought anywhere in the town. Russian reality I guess. Even Turin, Alberta (Population 43 on a good day)has a store where you can buy milk!!) So we thought about us Canadians going to wander around asking any Russian farmers if they had 5 litres of milk to spare. We chickened out, but the thought of it made me crack up.. just imagining.. us after a couple beer harassing some people in the middle of the night.. got milk?? Like about 5 litres? From like one of those cows or something?

The last lunch, somebody grabbed what they thought was a chicken that belonged to the group. When really, it was somebody elses duck.. So they start cooking it and halfway through some lady (the owner of the duck) came in and started telling them that it was hers it wasn’t even a chicken!! The Canadians just nodded and smiled at the lady. It was pretty funny.. we were going to tell them that it was Canadian tradition.. we always steal somebody’s food, cook it up and then serve it to them.. All without consulting the victim first. It’s a part of our culture..

We did some fun activities like spiderweb, where as a team you have to get everybody through a giant spider web in the forest made from string.. and nobody can touch the string. Then we did a game called nuclear meltdown where you have to try and manouvre cups around that are being held by strings which everybody is holding. And then half the group goes blind. Challenging things that were kind of frustrating at times. People yelled at me, “WATCH THE CUP!!” And I was thinking about how on earth I could do that having a scarf tied around my eyes (I was chosen to be blind.) We learned to trust each other. The importance of trust in a team is something I overlooked, but now I see how important it is.

We also had the opportunity to participate in Russian “bagna” It’s like a sauna, except you have these bundles of birch leaves and you wack eachother with them. It’s like exfoliation meets massage meets nature meets rage. It’s supposed to be really relaxing, but the person who wacked me was not very well trained in bagna wacking and went a bit out of control leaving my back with unusual sores.. like a bruise but red and small and not as painful. Like all the blood cells in my back just broke and left me with red markings. I came out of my room and was showing off my back, like “hey guys, you all have this, right?” And they’re like “um. NO that’s not normal at all” So next time, I’ll let an experienced Russian do the wacking. All in all, I felt so good afterwards. It smells great and you’re just sitting there sweating, relaxing, talking, wacking eachother, drinking beer. It’s an activity I definitely wish I could do more of in the future.

We had to write letters to everybody in the group telling them what we liked about them and what we thought they could improve on. This was interesting too, just to see how people see you. I was expecting people to tell me to shut up during group activities, cause I sometimes wonder if I’m too opinionated or loud. (for some reason with this group, I’m not shy at all) And people were like, “you know, you should really open up more because sometimes it seems like you don’t want to share all your ideas.” It’s kind of like things you might hear at your funeral, and it left me feeling good having had the opportunity to be completely honest with everybody and boosted my self-esteem reading about how people notice the things I do and who I am.

Now, I’m feeling pretty positive now, and I guess that’s a good way to start my 5th last week in Kaliningrad.

Banana picture to come.

Saturday, November 13, 2004

But you're a musician. Not anymore. (Witches love lazy saturday afternoons.)

AH I'm in good spirits cause I just received Mr. Andersen's latest and greatest cd in the mail, and am listening to it RIGHT NOW! I think Galia likes it too, mostly cause she hasn't complained yet. (thanks Jeff, it made my day- I'm not happy about livesets being on at 8am here though)

The AIESEC interviewing was very..interesting. Cheslav and I pretended we were important and intimidated young AIESEC hopefuls. We asked everybody what they thought their strengths and weaknesses are. We were kind of surprised that very few could name strengths and all but 2 were unable to name their weaknesses. One girl said she was lazy and another one said she wasn't very clever.
I think I learned alot about how to behave in an interview. One girl was like "I can't answer these questions because I just woke up.. I'll have to think about them" (she came half and hour late too) And some economic majors couldn't name any economic problems in Russia... (50% of GRP is black market, political corruption, banks and insurance companies and the government aren't trusted by anybody blah blah I guess maybe it's just more obvious to a foreigner? I don't know I guess I can't really name any of Canada's economic problems off the top of my head)

Last night, I went to this Renaissance music concert. It was pretty good, mostly cause halfway through this very serious song, they started making farm animal noises, and then that lead into a song where everybody was making cat noises. I thought I was going to pee myself laughing. Lots of the songs were english and french, and they served free hot wine at intermission. So, um, the second half was much better..

Some Polish students came up to us and just wanted somebody to speak english to. They had no Russian translator and nobody spoke any Russian. They thought they were seeing My Fair Lady, which was actually playing across town next weekend, and somehow managed to get into this Renaissance music concert in a museum.. i'm so glad I have Galia to do the talking around here..

Last night, we were invited to her little cafe/shack in the woods for supper and karaoke. We sang the song "We are the world".. and we were mimiking this french tv show where they had a puppet of George Bush singing "we f*ck the world". I think we sang it in elementary school choir.. "we are the world, we are the children, we are the ones to make a better day so let's start giving" we www.sorryeverybody.com is awesome by the way. thanks for the link, mr. mcqueen.

I learned that there is a divide in our group.. THOSe who can't sing (canadians) and those who can (russians) Don't worry, that didn't stop us. I don't expect another invitation..
This was the first time in my life where I actually participated in karaoke, it was almost as funny as when Galen and Chester were facilitating. Galen breaking off into a story about his life mid-song.."so this one time.." takes the cake.

Track 22 is making me really want to get up and dance, so I'm signing off.

Peace love and Boris Yeltsin.

Wednesday, November 10, 2004

Witchy

Today is Wednesday. I slept in, didn't eat breakfast, the bus wouldn't stop for me cause it was full, (it's like a van-bus that can only seat 8 people.. it's always full it seems) One of those days. I'm sure everybody can relate. So I'll update the blog, instead of working. I predict this will make me feel better.

Monday was a holiday, because it was the celebration of the Russian Revolution of 1917. Sunday Bloody Sunday, I think U2 wrote a song about this. But the government wants to abolish the holiday, and move the Nov 7 holiday to Nov 4, celebrating an obscure day in 1612 when Moscow was freed from Polish occupation..(you all remember this day, right? 1612.. it was raining out and you forgot your umbrella?)
The majority of Russians are opposed to this. Apparantly, there's tons of gatherings on this day (the 7th). I'm not sure if people are partying to celebrate the Bolcheviks or to celebrate not having to work. (I know I was celebrating the Bolcheviks fersure)

There's also some controversy as to whether or not they should remove the huge Lenin statue in the middle of the centre square. Lenin was kind of a big jerk, depending on which history books you read, and maybe doesn't deserve to stand in the middle of the square looking down at everybody. But his influence is significant, cause it kind of affected alot for Russians and the rest of the world. Personally I think it's more exciting for tourists to keep it up. And really, that's all that matters, right?

Speaking of Lenin, and him affecting alot of things of historical significance, yesterday was the 15th anniversary of the Berlin Wall coming down. Anna says we should drink to that. I agree. Prost!! Deutsch Vergnuegen Ueberall!!

By the way, how can you use a banana as a compass?? Just put it on the berlin wall (if they hadn't torn it down exactly 15 yrs ago that is) and see which side has a bite taken out of it..

Tomorrow I am going to AIESEC (like a student internship organization.. they have one in Kaliningrad AND at the U of A and at a billion other cities..) to interview people to see if their english is good enough to go to an english working environment. Should be interesting I think. Maybe I can get bribes.. (which is apparantly common in the russian system so I shouldn't be joking about it)

I'm looking forward to getting yelled at in Russian for trying to take pictures of bananas at the grocery store.



Monday, November 08, 2004

Witch way is it?

Oh no, it's been awhile and now I have lots to say again. Sorry Mr. McQueen!

I experienced Russian Halloween. Not quite as elaborate as Canadian Halloween. The only costumes I saw were myself, wearing a strange hat and Galia wearing devil ears. I didn't see any traces of candy or ghosts, except at a play put on by the English language club. So that's not really an accurate representation. (I wish I had seen more Baba Yaga (i inquired about this strange character thanks to Amanda. Baba Ganoush and Yoga? It's the only way I can remember it.
I give Canada 1 point for having Halloween madness integrated into their culture.

On Halloween, after not getting into the Matrix club (after waiting forever and finding out we needed tickets eeek)

So we went to our regular pizza place, "planet". Everytime I go there, I feel like I'm 12 and it's the first time I've gone to eat out without my parents. It's got a chuckie cheese vibe, but with more gambling and more smoking. The pizza isn't very good, and the music is the cheapest Russian dance/euro-techno/russian pop and it's to loud and there's neon lights everywhere. I say we need a new hangout, but the problem is "planet" has an awesome location and it's cheap, meaning a pizza and beer will run you about $4.

My last post was a slight tinge on the negative side. So this time I think I'll focus on good things. Never mind the complaining in the last 2 paragraphs. Think of it as more descriptive and not complaining..

Pink toilet paper. They have pink toilet paper!! And green. And they're scented. Kleenexes are scented too. I got some kleenex with oranges and apples on the box and it sort of smells like oranges and apples. So then I bought some with dinosaurs on the box cause I was so darn curious. Smells like oranges and apples too. False advertising if you ask me. Which you probably wouldn't.

It was Babooshka's birthday yesterday, so we ate some delicious cake and drank some homemade wine... You're supposed to toast to something and then take a big gulp. My gulping speed was a little slow, so BAbooshka kept motioning towards me to DRINK DRINK DRINK. By the end I just wanted to curl up somewhere and sleep. (maybe homemade wine is a tad stronger than regular wine. More like alcoholic syrup..)

I feel a bit closer to babooshka now. I even learned how to say Happy Birthday in Russian. (i forgot already) but I think she was very impressed. She's 66. Which is pretty young to be a great grandma. Maybe not. I don't know. So alcohol seems to be bringing me closer to the family. strange but true.

Last night Galia and I and Max and Anton (another counterpart pair--actually Anton is my work counterpart (who I complained about earlier) and Maxim the Quebequer (how do you spell quebequer?? quebecer?quebeker?) went for Sushi. It reminded me of Vancouver, and Max and I reminisced about our Canadian paradise. I thought about Douglas Coupeland and how he said in his twenties he traveled the world to find the best city and then after that he realized that his home town (Vancouver) was actually the best. Edmonton is also awesome though.

Anyways, this sushi place is great. And it's open till 6am. It was nice to go out with just a small part of the group and not all 13 of us! I find it way to stressful to go out with that many people.. to find a place that big and a table that big and organize the bill. TEAMWORK. this is all about teamwork I guess. The 4 people at one table was a nice change.

The other day, me and a few other people were sitting in our room and playing cards. And Nikita was chillin with us, cause we give him ample attention so he's like a little magnet to our room. Anyways, he drank like a liter of water and the bottle was like bigger than him and he kept spilling and he had to kind of bend over to concentrate.. we were joking around and saying "this kid seems to have a drinking problem".

About 2 hrs later, Val steps into our room to use the computer. Nikita insits on sitting in his lap. 30 seconds later, Val starts yelling at Nikita. Nikita peed on his lap. This was funny. Val didn't think so. One more thing to add the the list of things that one of us finds funny and the other doesn't. (Val is a cool guy, and I don't wish for anything bad to come his way, but come oN this is funny!)

So this weekend is a long weekend. Russian Revolution holiday something or other. Galia and I seem to be getting along quite well so far, which I'm feeling pretty lucky about. Anton has changed his ways at work, so there's alot less tension. I've convinced a techie guy from our group to come to my work and teach me some php MySql html goodness. too many acronyms if you ask me! (which you probably wouldn't) when I say teach me, I mean do the work for me while I wonder about important things like what "html" really stands for.

Nikita's decided that meals should be eaten on my lap. He does the infamous baby "mix saliva with the food so it turns into a nice goey paste and then smear it on anything within arms reach" and then puts jam into my coffee. He's so cute, I don't even mind. He teaches me russian and pees on Val's lap. How can get upset with him?

We have our "educational activity day" on Friday. Basically, 4 of us have the responsability to presenting a topic (ours is russian economy) in a creative, educational way for the entire day. It's an ongoing thing throughout the program.. and the idea is that we'll get better over time. We're going to make the rest of the group sell something on the street. Hands on Economy education. We think we'll make them sell some meat (you can buy a big bag of leftover parts at the market for $1) and some Canadian pins. Who knows? Maybe this will lead the group into some hands on penal/jail system education?

I'll try to make posts less long and more frequent. And to take more pictures of Steve's couch.

Friday, November 05, 2004


Oksana, my "sister" and I, after I did her hair and make-up.