Because they tried to raise our rent . . .

Or “How I Came to be President of RGGU’s Union of International Students.”

 

Those of you who know me know I am not the most politically active of people.  But you also know that I can’t stand not doing something if something has to be done, and I would much rather do it than do nothing, and let it bother me.

 

So.  As you have probably been able to tell by my photos, the Foreign Student Dormitories at RGGU are not the most luxurious of places to live.  But this is Russia, I live in Central Moscow, and I pay far less than I would to rent a room on the outskirts of town. 

 

Besides the location, the best thing about living in these dorms is the international community within it.  Last night sitting in the kitchen were seven people from seven different countries, all talking and laughing in English, French, German, Italian, and Russian.  Russian is the standard language in the dorm.  We’re all here to learn it, we all want to practice it, and we are all great targets on which to focus our language practice.  And, as per standard in a foreign dorm, most of the people here are smart.  And interesting.  And funny.  And wonderful to be around. 

 

This is home for now.  Parts of it are great, other parts could be a lot worse.  So what if the faucet in the kitchen leaks, or our showers aren’t always cleaned, or the hallway lights on the other floors don’t always work . . .

 

The administration of the university has not been the most forthcoming in making our home welcoming, comfortable, or in some instances, sanitary.  For the first couple of weeks here, I didn’t really say much or do anything – I had arrived after everyone else, and my Russian is not as good, so I was trying to learn the system and understand it a bit better.  But one problem spawned more, and bigger, ones.

 

Three weeks in Russia and some sort of revolutionary spirit in me was stirred.  I printed some flyers; I hung them in the kitchen and by the elevators of every floor in this building.  “We have to live here for a long time, let’s live well!” they said.  “So let’s get organized!” 

 

On Sunday night, October 5, Americans, Canadians, French, Germans, Austrians, Norwegians, Fins, and Brits came together in our first Union of Foreign Students Meeting. 

 

Will this be a success?  I have no idea.  All I know is that there are some things that we can change for the better around here, and so far no one has made any attempts to do so.   I don’t know if working together of students will work towards our benefit, but at the very least taking action makes me feel more comfortable that our living circumstances in this country and at this university are under our control.

Inter-Cultural Shock

There’s a lot in Moscow that is hard to get used to.  The street life is fast; it wears you down.  Everywhere you look is an unbelievable display of abject poverty and incomprehensible wealth existing side by side.  Lines are long, bureaucracy huge, life just plain more difficult than it is at home. 

 

But I got used to it when I was here last time.  On my return, the culture shock hasn’t been too bad. 

 

The inter-cultural shock between my friend Judith and I, on the other hand, is quite acute.  Judith, as you remember, is the astronaut from Alabama.  She is a NASCAR fan.  She stays up until 3 o’clock in the morning watching Auburn college football, she goes into every tourist shop on Starii Arbat, she’s a connoseur of science fiction and Star Wars fantasy novels (we spent two hours in a book store on Saturday tracking down Russian translations of some of her favorite works).  She’s getting her absentee ballot sent over here so that she can vote, completely and entirely, Republican.

 

I’ve never known a hard-core Red-Stater, and I’ve never known someone to whom I literally can say nothing about topics that interest her (some of you are aware that my knowledge of college football is not brilliant). Sometimes our lives and interests are so different that I, literally, have no idea what to say. 

I never thought I could be friends with someone like that.  But I am.  And I’m so happy to be so.

 

Judith’s is an American culture that is completely different from my own.  It is one with whom I would have never been acquainted with, had I never traveled abroad.  Sometimes, when you are overseas, you learn just as much about the place you are from as the place you are.

 

And you also learn that you the cultural differences between your two peoples do have elements of commonality.  You both love Diet Coke.  You would both walk around in tennis shoes any day given the choice, but you’re ready to surrender to the scene and buy some tall black Russian boots.  Finding a gym is one of the necessary ingredients to finding peace of mind in your life.  You love getting up on Saturday and hitting the streets to dive into whatever adventure comes your way.  You can go to five book stores in a day, and be sad that you didn’t have enough time to hit six. 

 

My fellow Americans – what separates us is not as strong as what unites us.

 

I’m fascinated by these mini-lessons, and I can’t wait to see what else I find out.

Refocusing my vision

I’ve received a couple of complaints about the lack of photos on this blog.  My apologies, and I will try to do better in the future.  See, it’s weird being back in a country where I’ve already been, and already played tourist.  I didn’t take a ton of photos downtown, or at VDNKh, or around Red Square, because I already took all those photos five years ago.  They are in my album at home.

 

Coming back to Moscow after having already been here is interesting.  I see a lot in this city that I didn’t see before.  But sometimes it means I also forget how beautifully different this landscape actually is, how breathtaking it is when you see it for the first time. 

One Tuesday night I stopped with Judith in front of a church so that she could take some photos.  The church was right next to Planet Fitness, my old gym.  I’ve walked by that church a hundred times.  I’ve seen it at every hour of the day and night.  But only when I was around her did I remember the magic of what it was like to see it for the first time.

 

And only then did I realize I forgot my camera.

‘Ray Bucknell!

Professor Troy McGrath gave me a coffeemaker to use this year. 

 

For this act alone he would have garnered enough points to be my hero for life.  But the fact that he happens to be an American professor on this campus, a Bucknell grad (class of 1984), and interested in helping me with my project quickly gave him enough points to be elevated to the top of my list of most favorite people.

 

As an American student at Bucknell, I was incredibly spoiled – I was surrounded by fantastic teachers who were interested in interacting with and making themselves available to students.  This isn’t the way things work with professors over here.  Some are nice, some are interested in trying new things.  But they are difficult to nail down for concrete discussions about concrete work.  Lucky for me, Troy has been a breath of fresh air from all of that.  Be it via telephone, text message, or Facebook, I can actually talk to him.  And when we schedule a meeting, we are both on time. 

 

That alone would be great too, but the fact that I have some interest in and support for the World Classroom Project over here has been invaluable.  It’s hard when you are trying to bring a novel idea into fruition in the midst of one of the most frustrating bureaucracies with which I have ever dealt.  The help has been great, and multiply that value times ten when you find someone who has experience with international education projects, the Russian university system, and what to watch out for so that you can work through (around?) it.

 

Add 75 to this value when you know someone who knows Russia, has family here, and is able to be of great help when you have questions about anything, from where to get x-rays to check up on a broken elbow, where to go to synagogue for Yom Kippur services, and how to get a television to your room so that you can get some great passive language study in. 

 

Russia is a country where you can never have too many friends.  And this one is close to the top of the list.

 

Coffeemaker

Because they were nice . . .

Or “How I came to be a student of the International Relations Department”

 

I’ve been struggling ever since I got here to get into a class with Russian students.  I didn’t mind that I was late to the class and had already missed a few weeks.  Chances were that I wouldn’t understand most of what was going on anyway – it was just the principle of being in an environment where something interesting was being discussed at a high level of Russian.

 

After two weeks of waiting for deans and professors of various departments to be in their offices, answer their phones, or respond to their e-mails, I finally met someone who was kind enough to sit down with me for fifteen minutes, explain the schedule, and give me information on some courses.  At the end of this, when she asked me what I wanted to take, I asked, “What are you teaching?”

 

Bol’shoi spasibo, Viktoria Zhuraleva of the International Relations Department.  This week, finally, I start courses in World Politics and Russian IR in the 20^th Century.