In Which I Get Some Culture

It has been a fairly uneventful week in Yaroslavl', though I did go out and get my first taste of culture here. And I have more on the way, hopefully soon. As far as classes go, everything has been going fine, and we started Phonetics this week. Our professor is a bit scary, and has decided that we are going to sing Russian songs on Fridays, about which, I'm sure you can imagine, I'm not terribly excited. Though the class should be interesting – we all need a lot of work on pronunciation and the like. Also, in a bit of fortuitous timing, the Russian Prime Minister, Mikhail Fradkov resigned in the middle of the week, which gave us plenty to talk about in my Russian politics class. It's unfortunate, though, how tame the class can be in some ways – we didn't really address the (almost certain) possibility that this is a completely staged move, and could just be a sign that Putin is going to choose the new guy, Zubkov, to be the next president. Granted, the fact that we didn't talk about that could be due to the fact that we don't possess the necessary vocabulary to do so. Oh, and a quick note about the names of the potential successors to Putin as president – Viktor Zubkov, who just was appointed prime minister – his name comes from the word “zub,” (pronounced “zoob”), which means “tooth.” And Dmitri Medvedev, who is a vice president, and also runs Gazprom, the state natural gas company – his name comes from the word “medved,” which means “bear.” The other name being thrown around is Sergei Ivanov, though his name isn't nearly so interesting. It's the Russian equivalent of “Johnson.”

Anyways, on Thursday evening I ended up going to a concert of the Yaroslavl Academic State Symphony Orchestra (if you think that's long in English, try it in Russian – Ярославский Академический Государственний Симфонический Оркестр), or YAGSO, for short. It was a performance of pieces by Glinka, Rodrigo, Kitka, and Rimsky-Korsakov, and it was really nice. The concert hall is quite small, but it's a nice space with fairly good acoustics. I can't say that they're a particularly good orchestra (I'd put them well below the BSO), but the tickets are dirt cheap, so I'm going to go as often as I can. A student ticket costs only 50 rubles, which is almost exactly $2. In a few weeks there's going to be a concert of Rimsky-Korsakov, Tchaikovsky, and Rachmaninov, so I'm totally going to try to go to that. I'm glad that I've been getting a chance to see the various cultural attractions in the city – there's a lot to be seen, so I may as well make use of the maximum of $50 I can get in cultural reimbursement from Middlebury. Hopefully next week I'll be going to see the Yaroslavl' hockey team, Lokomotiv, play against some other SuperLeague team. And next week we have an excursion for our culture class to go look at the architectural styles of the various 17^th century churches in the city. I'm really looking forward to that – I'll be sure to take some pictures.

On Friday we had classes as normal, and then spent the evening hanging out with some other American students in a bar / cafe until fairly late, at which point we decided to go to McDonald's, which turned out to be a strange experience. I ordered a Big Mac (Биг Мак), which tasted exactly like it does at home. The fries I tried, however, were disappointing, though perhaps that's just because we got there just before they closed. On Saturday I spent the afternoon hanging out at a cafe / bar, until heading back to my apartment for free dinner at home. After dinner I went over to the apartment of one of the students from the University of Nebraska, where we hung out until it was time to head home. A quick note: Russians apparently like their wine really sweet. We bought a few bottles of Chechen wine (bottled in Beslan, of all places) for 50 rubles apiece ($2), and they were like grape juice. Not my favourite, but I can't complain too much, considering the price. Anyways, that was about it for my week.