Happy Passover!

After a week of gray, rainy, chilly days, the sun is finally out. Hopefully this time it will stay. I talked to my host mom about the weather and mentioned that I wanted it to be sunny for when my family is here next week. She looked to the ceiling of our kitchen and prayed for good weather. Maybe that will work, who knows...

Once again, not much noteworthy happens during the week. I can't actually remember anything worth mentioning. This weekend, though, was the beginning of Passover. Earlier in the week I found the kosher food store, located next to the synagogue, and bought a box of matzah and some other kosher for passover food items. Generally, my diet isn't going to be very affected at home, as I mostly eat soup, potatoes, and eggs anyways. In explaining the holiday to my host mother, I just said it is "Jewish easter" and this fast is similar to their lent. That's basically how Russians see Passover. This morning, she told me all about an article she had read in some newspaper about Passover, and she explained to me how matzah is made.

For the first seder, I went to a student seder at the orthodox synagogue. It was the first time I was inside the synagogue and it is absolutely gorgeous. I'll have to go back again when it's not a holiday so that I can take pictures. The seder itself was fine, but slightly sub-par. Since it was a student seder, there were maybe 10 round tables filled with students. An Israeli led the seder in Russian, but as soon as we got to the festive meal part, he said goodnight, and we skipped the second half of the seder. But, I had two of my friends with me so we just enjoyed the free food. Most of the seder was in Russian, because I actually don't think so many Russians are familiar with, or can read Hebrew. Probably half of the students at the seder weren't raised in a Jewish home. It was a nice start to Passover, nonetheless.

Afterwards, it was my friend's birthday party so we all headed towards her house. Now that spring has begun, the bridges between the islands that make up St. Petersburg raise in the middle of the night. So, if you are on an island you don't live on, and the bridges go up -- you're stuck. So, I spent all of Saturday night at my friends house, leaving for home on the first metro -- 5:30 am Sunday morning. It was my first night doing the typical Russian stay out all night thing, although I'm not sure if that even counts because I was in an apartment, not in a club. Baby steps...

Sunday I woke up late, because I went to bed at 6:30 am. But, the day looked beautiful so I decided to get out of the house. First, I stopped by the Russian museum for an hour to check it out. Normally, I don't enjoy art museums but I actually really liked this one. It only has art by Russian artists, which I thought was interesting to look at; there are a lot of historical paintings. Also, they had a cool exhibit of Russian folk art -- toys, dolls, wood carvings, pottery, etc. I'll definitely go back in the future. The museum felt a little stuffy because it was so nice outside, so I got off the bus early on the way home and walked along the Gulf of Finland for an hour or so.

Sunday night, I attended second seder at the house of Alexander Lvov, a professor of Judaism at the European university in St. Petersburg. There were tons of people crowded around a small table, including a professor from U Mich, who was actually Heather Hogan's PhD advisor (Russian history professor at Oberlin...small world). The seder was mostly in hebrew this time, and extremely long. It didn't start until almost 11; I think we ate close to 1 am. I was exhausted, so I didn't talk extensively to people, although what I did hear seemed interesting. It's been very strange having passover not at home though, it's made me more homesick than usual.

One of the things that struck me at these seders were how things I associate with Jewish traditions might just be American Jewish traditions. Like food, for example. I'm used to having matzoh ball soup at seder. In Russia, you are still eating Russian food. Both seders had beet salad, pickles, and other traditional Russian dishes. The second seder involved a lot of hard liquor -- also something that's not as common in America.

Well, this week should be exciting. I have tickets to see Eugene Onegin tomorrow night, and this weekend I'm planning on going to the circus, and see the play of "Master and Margerita." My family flies in Sunday night and they'll be here all week, so I can't promise a blog update next Monday. Check anyways though.

Ok, enjoy the end of April! Wow, I can't believe it's here already.

Midterms and Pskov

The sun has disappeared completely from St. Petersburg and has been replaced by gray skies and rain. Great. I can't wait until the weather reverses. Although I guess I'm not missing that much -- I heard Oberlin was hit by snow yesterday.

This past week hasn't been very interesting. I had midterms for my two Smolny courses, both of which were extremely ridiculous. For my politics class in English, we had to write an essay entitled "30 years after WWII: my view." For my world music class, we had to listen to 12 different pieces of music and pick what country we thought they were from. One student convinced our teacher to write the possible countries on the board, and when we noticed we had only studied 2 out of the 6, the teacher replied "this is more a test of your musical intuition." Needless to say, this has not been an extremely academically challenging semester.

Yesterday, I returned from an overnight in Pskov, a small Russian town south of St. Petersburg. It was an excursion with my group and while I didn't enjoy all of the sightseeing, it was fun to simply hang out with the entire group -- something that hadn't happened for a while. Pskov is a pretty old city and we did a walking tour of it in the rain, which was unpleasant. The next day we went to Izbork, an even smaller city, where we saw old churches and fortresses. It was actually kind of incredible because it really felt like we were looking at ancient Russia. Most of this part of Russia was swamp land, which was extremely apparent where we were. Standing in these ruins looking at the murky ground made us feel like we were in Ancient Rus', possibly trying to ward off a Mongol attack. Then, we went to a monastary near by, which in my opinion, looked slightly like Disneyworld. Sorry for the lack of pictures in the past month, I'll try to have some new ones up by the end of this week.

Other than that, not much has happened. Friday night I was left home alone (my host mom was very afraid that in 24 hours I would starve, so she cooked about 3 days worth of food for me). It was kind of nice to feel like I had my own place, so I invited some friends over and we made real American chocolate chip cookies. They were delicious and my host family really enjoyed them as well.

I think the craziest part of our trip to Pskov was simply riding our bus on small Russian roads for hours at end. They were possible the worst roads I have ever traveled on. And the worst outhouses I have ever had to use.

Ok, well I'm going to go try to find the kosher store so that I can buy some matzoh to eat next week. I wish everybody a happy Passover (if you are celebrating it), and if not, have a good week!

Hannah

The weather is getting warmer!

Finally, it seems that the snow has stopped. My host mother says you can never be too sure -- it could snow in June here! But, I'm hoping for the best. It's been so nice to wear light jackets, sneakers instead of boots, etc. The downside is that the weather is great that I spend entire days walking around the city. Which isn't so bad, except it takes a lot of time away from doing homework and stuff like that. Also, the fact that it stays light so late at night has not helped my sense of time. I walk around until 9 pm and don't notice because it looks like 4:00 outside! And that's only going to get worse...soon it will be light at 2 am!

This past week, the orchestra I've been playing with had a concert. We had mostly been practicing tango music, but it sounded pretty empty, so I was a little confused. At the dress rehearsal (which was also the first time I heard that we were playing a concert), the conductor came out with an accordion. I guess he's a semi-famous accordionist and all the music we were playing was for him to solo with. My friends insisted on coming to my concert even though I told them it probably wasn't worth it. We were all in for a surprise because I didn't realize that the concert was a tribute to the accordion and had about 20 different groups performing. There were more accordions there than I had ever seen in my life. My friends had to sit through about 2 hours of listening to groups of accordions playing all kinds of music. I was shocked backstage as I watched 30 people walk in a line past me with accordions and balalaikas (Russian traditional instruments).

Another exciting moment of this week was that the olympic torch relay came through St. Petersburg! I went out to a corner where it was supposed to pass and waited for hours with hundreds of people. All in all, the torch went by very quickly, but it was worth the shared experience. It's not every olympic season that I'm in a city where the torch is going to pass through. It was interesting to see so much enthusiasm for the Olympics that are being held in China, when most Russians have such strong prejudices against the Chinese.

Yesterday, we had a group trip to see the opera "Ruslan and Lyudmila" with music by Glinka. It's based on a Pushkin poem, which is supposed to be enjoyable, but the opera was about 5 hours long and extremely boring. It was my first time in the Mariinski theater, though, and I was very impressed.

I'm sorry these entries have been getting shorter...I think I'm just getting busier!

Arabian restaurants and the cat circus

So this past weekend was fairly eventful, I would say. Despite trying to get student rush tickets to the opera twice - and failing both times - I managed to have quite a large number of interesting Russian experiences.

Friday night, after a failed attempt to see Carmen, I went with two friends to a restaurant called "1001 nights." Obviously, a slight middle eastern theme. My one friend had tried to go with her family the week before, but they were closed. We walked in, and had to go through 5 rooms before we found anyone that gave us any hope that this was a functioning restaurant. The entire complex was decorated like middle eastern/arabian buildings. The walls were painted to resemble light stone, with light blue decorations everywhere and fake pools of water. The restaurant itself was huge -- there were 2 banquet tables for 14 people each, and many more smaller tables. We were the only people there. We had to assume that it was a front for some sketchy Russian business, but even if it was, the food was great. After a week of meals consisting only of cabbage and potatoes, spicy eggplant was a nice change. We were thoroughly enjoying our empty restaurant until this guy came out with a microphone and welcomed us ladies to the restaurant. I guess he had been hired as the entertainment, but we were the only people there. So, for the next 40 minutes, he sang, just to us. We heard Arabian and Russian pop songs, plus some jazz standards. It was extremely awkward to sit there with a restaurant performer staring at us the entire time, but once again, the food was good.

Our weather is starting to get really nice -- today for the first time I wore a fleece to school instead of my huge down coat. Saturday was an especially sunny day, so I went for a long progulka (stroll) by myself. Along my walk, I stopped in the Nabokov's apartment (not so interesting, most of the exhibit was of his butterfly collection) and in Rimsky-Korsakov's apartment (more interesting, but still quite small. There are concerts sometimes held in Rimsky-Korsakov's apartment, so I'm going to look into maybe attending on of those.

But! The most exciting part of this past weekend was going to the famous Moscow cat theater! I am a big fan of circuses in general, so the idea of the cat circus seemed incredible to me. It wasn't as enticing to my friends, but I found a few who I could convince to come with me. First of all, I was a little embarrassed to go to a box office and ask for tickets to the cat circus. But, it's an extremely normal thing for Russians. My host mother said "Oh, that's a good thing to see. It doesn't come around here all the time." I guess Kuklachov's cat circus is often abroad doing international tours. I would suggest youtubing some clips to get the full effect.

All in all, it was an enjoyable circus. Sometimes the cat's trick seemed to be sitting. For example, a clown would balance on something with a cat on his head. But there were some really impressive cat tricks, like cats tightroping, or climbing across a rope upside down. My favorite was the cat that could traverse tightropes with just it's front legs -- basically by hanging by it's armpits. That was cool. I'm really glad that I got a chance to see this very pivotal part of Russian culture. It's not everyday you can go to the cat circus.

Sorry it's late!

Things have been getting busier and busier, so I apologize for the lack of blog updates. This week is our midterms week for Russian as a second language classes, which on top of being a bit sick, has not made for a fun time. I think everyone is getting sick though, because the weather is so wacky. It was warm for a little bit, but the past two days, there have been giant snowstorms in the morning, and then sunny, clear afternoons. It’s almost April! I really hope the snow stops soon . . .
My normal life has also become extremely busy. It kind of feels like Oberlin, where I don’t come home until 10 or 11 every night. One night a week I am now helping with an English discussion club at the Jewish community center. There are about 15-20 people who show up for this club, and another American girl who helps out with me. Every week there is a different topic that the participants find out about beforehand so that they can practice vocabulary if they want. This past week, our topic was “careers.” Working at the discussion club basically involves sitting around for an hour and 45 minutes talking about the topic, which has its ups and downs. I don’t know how they do it, but I think it would be extremely hard to get a group of Americans to sit still for that long and talk about one topic, but the Russians have great powers of concentrations. I, on the other hand, find myself getting a little bored. But, it has its benefits. The participants are all different ages, so sometimes the things they say are really interesting. Last week there were 3 girls who are freshmen in college, who talked about how they are extremely patriotic people and never want to work anywhere except for Russia. This surprised not only myself, but the other Russians there, because most people want to work abroad for the money. My other job for this discussion club is to bring in some Jewish elements to the discussion. About 70% of the people have some Jewish connection, but people don’t really know much about Judaism so I try to add some interesting tidbits into the conversation.
I also joined a small string orchestra in the university. The orchestra itself is pretty bad, but the people are so nice that I keep going. Like any Russian club, there is a break in the middle of rehearsal that runs into more of a 45 minute tea and snacking time. After rehearsal, a bunch of girls go out for more tea and they have invited me along. They are all really friendly and it’s a great chance to practice my Russian. Last Thursday it was a girl’s birthday in the orchestra, and the break was extended to add room for cake and champagne. Needless to say, after that, no one wanted to rehearse more.
This past weekend I also met with the friends of one of my Russian teachers at Oberlin. The daughter, Mariam, is applying for college in the US and needs to practice her English. I went over to their house and they were so friendly. Her mother cooked a ton of food and was so excited to meet me. They are Armenians, not Russians, but have lived here for a really long time. I heard many stories about their lives, was invited to bring my entire family to Armenia to visit them, and asked so many questions about myself. From speaking to Mariam, it’s really obvious how well she would do in a US university. Her way of thinking just doesn’t match with the Russian educational system, which teaches people not really to think, but to repeat facts. She told me many stories about what her classmates say in history classes, and how she gets in trouble for trying to make them more open-minded. She also told me a story about how they were all supposed to pick what they wanted to do when they were in 8th grade, and how she got in trouble for changing her mind a few months later from wanting to do chemistry to physics. If Americans had to pick their profession in 8th grade, our world would be a very different place . . . This week I think I’m going to go to a museum with her on my day off, so we’ll spend half the time speaking English, and the other half speaking in Russian. I’m really looking forward to spending more time with her and her mother.
All in all, this past weekend wasn’t very exciting. But, Friday night I went to a birthday party for a friend at some night club. We didn’t want to stay out all night, so we took a gypsy cab home at 2:30 am. The conversation I got into with the driver was a great example of Russian personalities. It was the middle of the night and he starts asking me about the American primaries and who we want to win. After giving his opinions on the candidates (he thinks Hilary won’t win because she forgave Bill for his sex scandal, which made her look weak to the public), he went on to other topics: Michael Jordan, Michael Jackson, the benefits of racism. It was a pretty amusing ride home. Even though the gypsy cabs can be slightly sketchy, they are a great way to break into the mind of the normal Russian.
Well, I should get going – I have two midterms today! Other than that, I found out that I got into Aspen music festival for this summer, so I will be spending the summer in Colorado. Let me know what kind of plans everyone has for the summer!

Can't come up with good titles.

So now, with only 3 more months to go, my life seems like it is starting to fall into place. This being my 8th semester of college, I’m more interested in exploring the community and opportunities available to me in St. Petersburg, rather than sitting in endless classes and writing papers.
This past week I had a meeting with a woman, Irina, at the JDC to talk about volunteer options for me this semester. Starting this week, I’m going to go help out with an English discussion group at the Jewish community center, for people who like to practice their English. Every week there is a different theme and the teachers plan activities and discussion questions for the meeting. All in all, it seems a lot like what I do at camp, so it shouldn’t be so hard. She’s also going to invite me to Jewish youth events for students my age, so that will be a good way to meet some Russian friends. She gave me a presentation about the JDC which was actually really interesting. I don’t know if I have mentioned this, but Judaism in this region has always been an ethnicity, not a religion. So, while people were forced to identify as Jewish, it held more of a negative connotation than the idea of a heritage they could actually embrace. Part of the JDC’s work in St. Petersburg is to get Jews active and affiliated with communities, but another part of it is to create a self-sufficient community. Irina showed me a statistic that over 60% of the Jewish population in this area is middle/upper class, so part of their work is to encourage these people to support the community so that they can have their own benefactors, instead of always using foreign ones.
This past Saturday I had lunch at the people’s house where I had dinner the Friday before. There, I got to meet some of these Jewish businessmen and other Jews in the community. Menachem and his wife always invite a wide variety of people to their house for Shabbat. This lunch included: me, a woman from Chicago who was here visiting, a couple from Canada (originally from South Africa) who were also visiting, 3 Russian businessmen, a secretary from the JDC (who was never an active Jew but saw an advertisement for a Jewish secretary 13 years ago and has been working there since), and a Jewish, Russian violinist who was very fun to talk to. It was an interesting combination of a traditional Shabbat meal and a traditional Russian one, with the men taking shots of vodka and toasting to various things. Everyone is excited to meet me and very thankful that I want to volunteer, even though I haven’t done anything yet.
Also this week I met with a new viola teacher, since I hadn’t really been enjoying my 1st one. This guy seems good, we’ll see how my next lesson goes. He’s a teacher in the conservatory and my lesson was actually in the conservatory this time. It was interesting to go inside the conservatory and observe the students and the environment compared to Oberlin’s. It definitely made me notice the lack of musical environment that I am in this semester (although I went to two orchestra concerts this weekend). The best thing about the lesson was that I got there by marshutka, which is a small minibus that runs on a more specific route, but is harder to take because it stops wherever you want it to, therefore you need to know where you want to go. But, I got to and from my lesson successfully, so now I am less afraid of that mode of transportation.
Tomorrow I am going to check out a string orchestra in St. Petersburg University that I might play with. Hopefully that will be good. All in all, I’m glad to be able to participate in things I’m interested in – I think it will really add to this semester.

Saturday-Monday

I don't know if I had mentioned that this entire past week (Sunday-Sunday) was the Russian festival of Maslenitsa. This is their version of Carnival, when they pig out of bliny (russian pancakes) until the beginning of Lent when they have to give them up. This is also the last remaining pagan holiday, so their are old pagan elements left over. The holiday also represents the end of winter, so at the end of the holiday, they burn a big straw doll to end winter and welcome the spring.

We had been told that there would be bliny everywhere, but truthfully, we didn't see them. Saturday afternoon, I set out with my friend Margo, wanting to find wooden bliny carts in parks and street corners everywhere. Sadly, we found none, and had to go to a restaurant and order bliny. Nice walk though...

Saturday night, I was supposed to go to a Mussorsky concert with my friend Katie who loves "Pictures at an Exhibition." It was performed at the Mariinski concert hall, which is very modern and actually not so nice inside. Also, the magazine we had read advertising the concert failed to mention that it wasn't the full orchestral version of the piece, so we listened to scenes of an opera, and a brass ensemble version of "Pictures" in a mostly empty auditorium.

Oh, Saturday was also International Women's Day, which means all the women get flowers and technically men are supposed to do all the work. As there are no men in my household, this didn't affect me.

Sunday was a bit more exciting. We had heard that there was actually an end of Maslenitsa festival on this island that is mostly a park. It's kind of far outside of town, but as we traveled further out on the metro and saw hundreds of kids also headed that way, we knew we were correct. The festival was crazy -- basically a carnival, but held in snow and freezing temperatures. There were stages with dancing, contests (like which woman can dance best with a broom, perfect to recreate gender roles the day after Women's Day), bliny eating contests, blacksmiths, etc. There were also rides, stands selling straw dolls to be burned, and kids on sleds everywhere. It was really fun to get to see, although we were so cold we couldn't stay until the doll burning. I have pictures of things, but my camera sadly isn't cooperating with my computer right now, but hopefully I'll fix it soon. It felt like a true Russian experience.

Today was fantastic! 40 degree weather and blue skies! I hung out with Katie on the icy, snowy waterfront near our house, basking in the sun in our down coats. Still fun. There were people walking all over the frozen water. It was so nice to have pretty weather, it made us very excited for the spring.

Also, forget to tell you the story my friend had about seeing a man hail an ambulance on the street. Turns out you can do that in Russia.

Ok, well I should go. I'm not sure if I'm addressing all the things that people are interested in, so if you have any topics you'd like me to cover, please, comment on my blog and let me know!