In Which I Start Classes

I've been in Russia for not a lot more than a week, but I think I'm starting to get somewhat used to how things are here. Communicating with my host is still rather difficult, but it works out in the end. She turns out to be a really funny lady – the other evening she thought I had gone to bed at around 8, and called up another host babushka to find out what time I needed to be at the university in the morning. She's also a very good cook, though I get the feeling that I'm going to get rather sick of Russian food before too long here. It's good, but one can only have so much sour cream before it gets to be too much. I've also been getting to know the other students in the program – there are eight of us in all, and I am the only guy. For some reason the Middlebury College School in Russia has only one guy in Yaroslavl', none in Moscow, yet three or four in Irkutsk. I think it's because the guys all wanted to be tough and go to Siberia for a semester (or a year). I, however, am not so silly. I'll stay where it's somewhat warmer (not that winter is warm here). Anyways, of the eight students, three of us are from Macalester, which makes things somewhat more comfortable. I think it helps me to have someone here whom I know fairly well – I don't feel quite as isolated and uncomfortable as I think I would otherwise. We've all done a pretty good job, I think, of sticking to our language pledge (which says we can't speak English in the University, during program events, or when there are Russians around). It's not as hard as I would have thought to have conversations more complicated than simply saying that we like tea. We sometimes do throw in an English phrase here or there, but I would estimate that 95% of what we say to each other is in Russian.

We started classes the other day – I'll have five classes in all: Grammar, Phonetics, Conversation, Culture, and Politics. All of the classes are taught by Russian professors from YarGU (which stands for Yaroslavski Gosudarstvenny Universityet, or Yaroslavl' State University). I had Culture and Politics on Tuesday, which was the first day of classes for us. Culture will be interesting, I think – so far we've been talking about Russian idioms, and we had a reading about what stereotypes Russians have about themselves and about others. Politics seems like it will be quite amusing – our professor is really really enthusiastic, and very energetic. I think that class will be mostly about the structure of Russian politics – how the State Duma works, how the presidency works, what the constitution says, and so forth. I think it will be interesting to hear about that from the perspective of a Russian university professor. And it turns out that we'll be here for a parliamentary election, and our professor told us she would take us to a polling center on election day. Our grammar class is taught by the same professor who teaches Culture – her name is Svetlana Yurievna Rodonova. She speaks quite quietly, but she is very understanding when we don't understand something, or when we're having trouble trying to say something in Russian. Our conversation class is taught in groups of four, which should force us to talk more than some of us would in a larger group. We haven't had phonetics class yet, but it starts this week.

For those who want to be able to talk to me on the phone whilst I'm here: I now have a Russian cell phone, and as far as I know it won't cost me anything to receive calls on it from people even if they are in another country. So, and this particularly applies to Mom and Dad, though anyone else who wants to is certainly welcome to call me: send me an e-mail in advance to set up a time, and then try calling my cell phone. Apparently there are ways to get international phone cards that cost only five cents a minute or so for calls to Russia, though I am no expert on that matter. My number is 8-915-978-6427. I'm not sure if any of that is the city code, or what – it's probably best to ask the phone card people if they know anything about phone numbers in Europe / Russia.

By the way - the picture is of the statue of Lenin right outside the University, on Red Square.