Daria's return, frosty adventures, and linguistics part 2

To begin with, Daria returned last Friday night/Saturday morning. The plane was supposed to land around 5pm, but due to a snowstorm in Germany (layover), it didn't leave Boston until later because they knew they couldn't land, thus arriving in SPB about 2am. This new arrival pushed the transportation costs to the airport and back from less than 300 rubles to about 2200 rubles because we were forced to take a taxi after the metro and busses close for the night. However, despite the late arrival, she arrived safely and it's great to have her back in Russia. The pets, grandparents, and me most of all missed her presence here and we're all glad for her return. (Added bonus, I got some of my aunt's caramel corn via air-Daria).

We rested all day Saturday sleeping half the day away. Before Daria's departure, she and I had been talking about replacing the bed here. We had a beautiful old futon-esque bed (where you store bedding underneath when it's folded up and therefore is more of a bed than what Americans think of as a futon which is more couch that can be a bed; these types of beds are common here in Russia and many European countries with small apartments), with a sturdy wooden frame, and it once had a solid straw/wood mattress (actually comfy straw, not unpleasant). However, it was quite old, possibly 50/60+ years. Therefore on Sunday, Daria and I went with Olya, Vova, and Nadia in search of bed and bought a new bed. We had hoped that the old bed would be moved to a different room since it would be fine for a two week stay, but grandpa decided to just throw the bed out. The new bed has done wonders for a better night's sleep. It is also futon-esque though so it's quite nice to sit on when propped up. The animals also love it quite a bit.

As for the frosty adventures, Daria met me after work today in Tavrichesky Cad. We had a wonderful walk through the park and we ventured down onto the frozen pond and walked all over the pond. There's also a strip where people cleared some of the snow off the top and you run on the snow and then slide on the ice-strip. There is a meme on vkontakte (Russian social website) that has a picture of such ice-strips with the comment "You know what to do." Well, Daria and I had a fun time running and sliding for a while. Additionally, we enjoyed watching people ski around and all the kids slide and/or sled down the embankment onto the canals/pond. Lots of wintery fun was had this afternoon in the park.

Daria skating on the pond.

You can also notice that I've learned how to put photos in the blog. In addition to the winter fun we had outside, I had a chuckle the other day about how people put frost on their windows to give a winter atmosphere. Here we get the real deal and it looks beautiful, especially as the light fractures and glistens.

Moving into the linguistics part 2 on a few things I forgot last week. First, I read an interesting article about how knowing more than 1 language is good at staving off later-life diseases like Alzheimer's.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/01/10/169066535/speaking-more-than-one-language-could-prevent-alzheimers

Secondly, I've been pondering over the past few months about business people learning multiple languages for their work. Many people around the world learn English for business, but why not encourage a majority/all of business people to learn two languages? Native English speakers should also learn languages like German or Japanese for business. With multiple people in a company knowing different languages, a company would be able to thrive with multi-national meetings/partners much better.

The last part of linguistics that I thought was interesting was that the word for 'pen' in Russian is ручка (roochka) which is also the same word for a door handle or a handle on a teapot. It is rooted with the word for hand рука. I hadn't thought about it for English, but we also share "hand" in "handle."

Until next time.

Holidays and Linguistics

So I'll start with how the holidays happened. We had this break that was a couple weeks long, and clearly which I did not write, nor did I learn how to post pictures or do links in the blog. I relaxed, took Karma on actual walks, watched TV through pirated streaming and watched DVDs of which every DVD had an intro about the evils of pirating movies and TV. I was a bad student and didn't do any Russian homework.

However, I wasn't a complete dud. I went out to the bar with some of my students so I practiced some of my Russian and they practiced their English. I also visited Olya, Vova, and Nadia. The day I visited them started with just Olya and Nadia. We went to a playground and Nadia was absolutely adorable playing and swinging and climbing up the steps to go down the slide and up the steps and down the slide and up the steps and down the slide. Wonderful. I spoke mostly English with Olya, but when Vova came home the conversation transitioned into as much Russian as we could muster and it was good. Nadia kept wanting to talk to баба (baba), the more endearing term "grandma" as opposed to the long form, grandmother. Vova kept trying to fake her out with the phone calls, but she kept asking to speak so they finally called and told баба that Nadia wanted to speak to her. It was mostly just short sounds and animal noises (grandma asks "what does a dog say?" Nadia replies "Af Af" -woof woof). Lots of animal noises for the phone call that Nadia insisted on happening. Wonderful day though.

New Years itself consisted of me hanging out with the grandparents while Daria was off in the US for interviews. We had a nice dinner of festive foods like winter salads while Karma feasted on some ham that grandpa kept giving from the table. And of course they gave me the lions share of the champagne, which doesn't work for me. Russian grandparents always make the younger generation eat and drink more. There are pictures in the meme world of "before grandma's house" and "after grandma's house" that change from thin to fat. Well, they kept making me drink the champagne until I put a stop to it and had the rest with a mimosa in the morning. But it was a nice New Years with good celebration, present exchange, watching Putin give the Presidential speech, and the talk show hosts to follow.

During the holidays I met up with a friend from the US who is Russian and who came for some of the holidays. It was nice to see a good friend whom I haven't seen since college graduation, even if it was for a short time and grabbing a coffee.

I also tried to venture out for things, but the weather was too warm for things like skiing and skating as it even reached +5 C over the holidays (although currently it has dropped back to -20 C). I should have skipped the TV and ran out to throw a frisbee wearing shorts and flip-flops.

Overall it wasn't an adventuresome holiday like I had hoped, going to visit places like Stockholm or Copenhagen, but it wasn't a bad holiday either.

As for the linguistic aspect of this post, well . . .

I guess, first off, I've realized exactly how big my vocabulary is. Usually I'm able to grade my language appropriately, but every once in a while the only way I can describe a more basic word is with bigger words. This doesn't work. This then requires the use of a translator to give the Russian equivalent. I only hope the context isn't lost as it sometimes can be. However, I really have seen a big difference even in the everyday English that I normally use and the specialized jargon that I know. Every once in a while I come across a word that is a beautiful word, but we rarely use.

For example, I posted of facebook about teaching the word "macabre" which resulted in teaching Russians their own word макабричевскии, although I'll bet, it's a new word for them, coming in from French and English influence. None of my students, the school administrators, Daria's grandparents, etc knew this word. It has to be borrowed from English or French and then Russianized, but they didn't know what it meant. We got past that, but still.

Other examples come when sometimes someone will ask me about a definition and the only example I can think of is one or two levels above them, not something to describe what they would know.

And then, the macabre came out b/c the lesson in the book was about Jack the Ripper and other macabre topics, so I took the instance to teach them about Edgar Allen Poe, the piece "Masque of the Red Death" and the song by Thrice "The Red Death" about the poem.

My intermediate students learned about 35 new words (how much they remember I don't know), but I loved a few easy explanations like "opulence" - very rich, "inebriate" - very drunk, or "ebony" black." A difficult passage quickly turned to something understandable.

As for my own linguistic ventures, well I'm having a horrible time with the variations of one verb that depending on how you change it is either "teach," "learn," "teach yourself," and a few others and then moved into the past and/or perfect. This verb is killing me. 9 structures not including conjugation (for I, you, he/she/it, we, you, they) of each structure. This one word is my Russian bane.

Overall I think I'm doing well with my Russian though and I do try to speak as much in Russian as I can.

However the best news is that Daria returns to Russia in a couple hours. And with that news, I shall end my post.

Mid-holiday mumblings and (Happy???) New Year!!

The last week of work for 2012 was intense. Thankfully it was bookended with two nice nights out with some of my students. Saturday the 22^nd I went with my intermediate class to a bar called “Suare,” which started at 6pm and which lasted quite late into the night. I left my phone at home, in my backpack from Friday (whoops) and didn’t call grandpa or grandma and they were a little worried about where I was, especially since I came home after public transit stopped running and I was walking alone. Many apologies to grandma and grandpa. However, I will say it was a nice time with my students and since it was outside of class I tried speaking what Russian I could with them.

Then the workweek came and I taught 2 extra classes (and by 2 I mean 4 lessons, but for two classes that meet twice a week). They were both teen classes and the MW class was fine and we seemed to have a lot of fun. The TTh class was also fun, but a lot more challenging. Had to separate a couple of the boys. The highlight of that class though was on Christmas, I was reviewing their vocab from the lesson with a game of hangman and one of the words was “shelter” as in homeless shelter. One of the boys that I separated on Thursday kept saying “Chester” for some reason beginning when the board was blank. When the board looked like       - - e - - e r, it only egged him on. Then the board read - - e - t e r and later  - h e - t e r. Almost “Chester.” Eventually one of the girls got “shelter,” but it was a hilarious way to end the lesson. My intermediate class wanted to celebrate Christmas so they brought cake and pie and candy. I brought champagne (much cheaper here than in the US). I also brought champagne to my Pre-Intermediate class on Wednesday to celebrate both the New Years and finishing the test. My Intermediate class told me it’s bad luck to celebrate before a test, so Tuesday was a Christmas party and Thursday after the test we ate the left over candy (no left over pie) and had more champagne and Tang Tea (courtesy of my parents’ package). They greatly enjoyed the tea so I feel I should share it with my other classes as well.

I ended the week on Friday meeting my Pre-Int class at Pickwick’s Pub and enjoyed some nice English Ale of a quality that I haven’t had in a while. I was also better about both calling grandma and grandpa and getting home at a reasonable hour to take Karma out for her late night walk. I had let her go a little too long on Saturday. No accidents, but not good to make her wait that long.

Speaking of Karma, she has been enjoying actually walking since the weather has warmed up. I don’t think -7C feels so bad to be out in for 15 minutes after she knows sometimes it reaches -21C. The past few days we’ve even been above freezing and she has pranced around in the snow and run circles and barks at the snowman in the park. I think she’s getting a little more used to the northern climes. Or maybe the energy got so pent up she just had to get out and use it. Either way, we’ve taken a few longer walks and played in the parks.

Ella also has more energy and for the last week she meowed every morning for 15-20 minutes waking people up. We give her meat and she’s not satisfied. Then she runs up and down the halls or comes into the room and paws your face until you get up. Not the most pleasant wake up call. But when she’s not acting crazy she plays her cute card and gets forgiveness.

Yesterday after church I walked around downtown taking daytime pictures (I promise I’ll get some photos up during this break; I’ll learn how) of the festive city. I went back out at night to get some nighttime photos. During my daytime walk I went to the “holiday festival/fair” where there sell lots of crafts, you can ice skate, and one of my favorite things from 2010 is the hot mead they sell there. Well, I didn’t order any. I was too embarrassed of speaking despite the delicious looking pastries and the smell of the hot mead. I wanted lunch and instead I ate at a chain café called Teremok where I knew I could pronounce what I wanted. It was anti-climatic. And watching the people skate around, I wanted to skate with Daria and felt completely slighted by this bi-continental holiday.

To add to the lesson of "var" I did get to enjoy some delicious vareniki this week. You wrap something up in dough (ours was cabbage) and you boil it for about 5 minutes. During the summer, it's more popular with blueberry filling. It was then topped with fried onion. Mmmmmmm.

Well, I should see if I could help prepare anything for New Year’s Eve. Not feeling very festive though. Talk to you all in 2013 I guess.

Daria's departure and some random thoughts

So this week saw a big change in the Russia experience. As I was reading through the post I realized this is also reads more like a news update so feel free to allow your head to have the voice of a radio newscaster giving you minute updates.

Daria flew back to the US to do interviews for her internship next year. We knew there would be interviews, but we had hoped they'd all be in January because logically that makes sense. You know, as in organizations receive your applications in November, inform you in December whether or not you have an interview, interview you in January after the holidays . . . . Well, one group in Boston decided that Thursday, December 20th was a great time for interviews, and in the competitive fight for placement, you must take every interview you get so Daria flew to Boston on Tuesday and doesn't return until mid-to-late January. This completely changed our holiday plans, and I don't know what I'm doing now. I have a few ideas, but nothing concrete. I'll also admit that for some reason I took this departure especially hard. I knew it was coming, and it's not the first time we've been apart for a long period of time, but it was hard. She was in France for a year when we were in college, I lived in CA and Daria was in CT for a year after college. Both of these we had some intermittent visitations, but there were still large periods of time between seeing each other. Two years after we were married, Daria spent 6 weeks in Mexico and I stayed in Berkeley. And then even this past summer I was in a foreign element in Moscow as Daria stayed in SPB. I don't know why I took this one harder than the rest, but I did for some reason and it sucked to put it bluntly. Thank God for skype.

As mentioned in the last post, Daria and I went to a family dinner on Friday night. This was followed with a Saturday dinner with Language Link at a restaurant called "Tequila Boom," a name I can only assume comes from the cocktail of half tequila and half ginger ale. I will say it was nice to have some Mexican food (something I do miss dearly and there is a reason I ate a lot of it my last week in CA), and in a place where tequila is expensive because of taxes on all foreign alcohol, it was also nice to have some tequila/margaritas. Some of the food tasted legit, other parts lacked, but hey I was spoiled in CA. The corporate parties before New Years are a really big thing here as many of my students have missed class b/c of their parties and Daria and I got to witness a couple parties when she and I went out to the Paulaner Brewhouse before she left. Our Language Link party was a lot of fun, Mariachi hats were passed around, an MC organized different events for the various parties in the restaurant, and it was kinda nice just to blow off some steam with fellow coworkers.

A few random thoughts to share. First, it's funny that Karma has become the protectorate of the house. Apparently grandma doesn't think there's any reason to set the alarm because we have a "staffordshire" (another name for a pitbull). Yeah we lock the door, but the alarm hasn't been set. It's good to know that Karma is well-loved :-) in the house. Ella is also well-loved, demonstrated by the endless supply of cat food in the fridge.

Yesterday, on my walk back home, I saw some people out playing on the pond in таврический сад as the pond has long been frozen. I decided to venture out as well so I walked around a little bit on ice. Ice never quit got thick enough in Tahoe for us to dare walking out and I must say there is something exciting and exhilarating knowing that underneath there is liquid water. My first experience of this was 2 years ago walking on the Gulf of Finland.

The weather here is crazy. Wednesday and Thursday it was -23C in SPB. In western Siberia it hit -40C and eastern Siberia -50C. In a 24 hour period from Tues - Wed 21 people across Russia froze to death. Not homeless people, but those with homes whose heating went out. This brought the total from Friday - Wed to 45 nearly doubling it. It is currently -19C and the forecast for this coming Wednesday says +4C. Yeah, that's right in the matter of a couple days we're going to swing from temps below that of a freezer to the temperature of a refrigerator. Seriously, when I've wanted my room-temp water to be cool I stick my cup between the two sets of windows and it cools my drink in less than half the time than if I put it in the freezer and yet in a few days it'll be shorts weather. In Michigan shorts did come out in March when it got above freezing. I guess Karma will be happy for an actual walk, if I can manage the time, since even with her coat her walks the past few days have been "pee, poo, back to the door."

Last thought. So a few posts back I spoke about the deliciousness that is mead. Because of the Latin script the name of the most common mead escaped me. That is until I read part of the label in back where it was in Cyrillic. The name is Medvarus. Мёд or "Med" is both honey and the drink mead. вар or "var" is part of the root for boiling and is found in many words like the ones for brewery (a beer boiler) and for dumplings to the festive "kettle" the samovar. I had this "aha" moment when reading this feeling like, oh hey, the name of the brand is just the name for meadery and since the script was in Latin, they were just being cool by adding "us" as the ending of Latin words (and well-known for a grade school joke mentioned in "Life of Brian" that I won't repeat here for some of my audience). Nope, Daria corrected me. рус or "Rus" is the ending as the short form or Russia. So there you have it, the name Medvarus is "Mead - ery/boiler - Russia." What a better portmanteau than my name Tahodoga.

I'll try and do another Holiday filled post before Christmas, but we'll see. If not, whatever holiday or days you celebrate may they be joyous and wonderful. Since I celebrate Christmas (although it'll probably not be on the 25th for me this year), I will say Merry Christmas!!!

Sonic Wintry Musings and other trinkets

While of course I hear things every day, this past week has been especially focused on sounds. Actually, most of them from Sunday, but we can say it has carried on throughout the week.

However, for comparison sake let's begin with First Advent. About 2 weeks ago, Daria and I went to the Anglican Chaplaincy for First Advent (something I knew about 7 years ago, was on hiatus 4 and 2 years ago, and while it has been back longer, we learned about it back in October). The service is very basic with standard Church of England script and led by a Finnish Lutheran Pastor on account of his availability and the CofE/Swedish & Finnish Lutheran Concordat ("agreement" for those of you none theological people). Anyway, this small service is very similar to the one I grew up with: fewer than 20 people and an attempt at music with an atonal congregation; spirit filled, but not musically inclined.

Contrast this to Second Advent at the Catholic Church in Russian (so I only understood parts of it), which was in a space with perfect acoustics where the choir was heard at the same volume and same beauty no matter where one stood in the church. The priest has a divine voice to boot. It was so moving that despite my lack of understanding of the words, I was carried away to an ethereal space. My friend Tripp at the GTU is doing his Ph.D. in sonic theology. I could not help but think of him, and I believe that experience could give some people a theogasm. It is precisely the role that music and sounds ought to have in a spiritual experience. This is not to say the Spirit wasn't moving throughout the Anglican Chaplaincy service, but the AC transposition came through words, whereas the Catholic experience was through music and so regardless of language, one was with the Spirit.

Sunday evening, we went to the philharmonic again. However this time it was in the big hall and it was not with our friend playing. The opening concerto was a Mozart piece and after the intermission we had  a symphony from Brookner. What I enjoy about the philharmonics here is that they are easily available to the people. My ticket for a good seat was 400R or about $12. While there are various prices for seating, Russia keeps the prices of the arts down enough that people who are lower middle class can enjoy the arts quite a few times a year, and I would say even completely lower class people, if they so chose, could enjoy the arts at least half a dozen times a year without hurting their finances. While it is true that Daria and I were inhibited by time to see things in San Francisco, let's face it, we were also inhibited by money. I give many thanks to both the government and the private benefactors here that cover the costs so that we can cheaply enjoy the theater and philharmonia. The other exiting thing about the philharmoia experience was that I was able to read most of the booklet. I knew enough vocab and grammar to get the context and then used the context to bypass words I didn't know. I may not be able to speak it, especially verbs in the perfect tense, but I was able to read it, and I felt this was a proud accomplishment.

Well, winter has fully arrived, and with winter comes clearing the snow and massive icicles, some as long as 3 meters quite wide, from the roofs. Men stand atop buildings tied with a cable and armed with a shovel. I don't have a fear of heights, but I don't even know if a cable would calm my fear of a slick icy roof from 4 or 5 or more stories. They mark off the sidewalk where they clear and the men shovel the snow off. It lands with a muffled "thwop" that snow does unless it hits the roof of a bus stop and then it's a thunderous clamor as the metal or plexiglass takes the blow. And for the ice they use the butt of the shovel handle to break it up and try and knock the icicles down which shatter like glass. Despite seeing this all winter every year, I'm amazed at how many people still often stop to watch this spectacle. Although I also stop often because it is mesmerizing.

With winter settling in that also means frozen canals. The small canal near where I work has long been frozen over. This canal may be about 10-15 meters wide. However, the largest canal, Fontanka, perhaps 30 meters wide or so, is slowly freezing (and yes I realize for those people on the west coast, these canals are wider than most of the rivers we know). For the past two weeks I have watched the ice slowly creep over the water the way ivy creeps on a building. It moves in two directions: the first is where it has frozen completely across, but you can still see water and the ice gets closer and closer to the bridge my bus passes over. The second is from the sides as the ice on the embankments get thicker and thicker. Both directions there are noticeable changes and 10 days ago the ice was about 200 meters from the bridge but now it is under the bridge so on the south side of the bridge there is no visible water, but the north still has plenty of visible flowing water. It is a beautiful thing to watch progress.

I also want to give kudos to pigeons, sometimes snubbed the flying rat by people who think of them as dirty city birds. People don't admire them for their beauty, although I've started to notice some very pretty blends of purple and green with the grey-blue or even white pigeons. Additionally, in "Home Alone 2," which has played in the office a couple times this week along with its predecessor, the "crazy lady" is the one who spends time with pigeons. However, last I checked pretty much all other birds have flown south or holed up for the winter. There are some ducks who didn't migrate, but most are gone, yet the pigeons remain to brave the truly subfreezing weather. They even gather around frozen water such as the ponds and canals which tend to be colder than other parts of the city. I think the pigeons deserve some respect for withstanding what other birds and animals avoid.

And to wrap up this post, tonight we had dinner with Daria's grandpa's cousin. The spicy food (read flavorful more than hot, although both are more rare - spice that is as there is plenty of flavor- here than CA/USA) was a nice treat, the conversation was way over my head, but what is worthy of note is the fact that the cousin's husband repairs old books/bindings with old school stitching and an old school press. That was truly something wonderful to see.

Being thankful for dog booties, trains, and Robert Frost

Last Saturday we had Thanksgiving dinner with Olya and Vova and Nadia. On Friday Daria had gone over to help prepare the pumpkin pie (completely from scratch - I mean everything including the pumpkin from the Lisij Nos garden), and the cranberry sauce. On Saturday we went and cooked the turkey (we found a whole bird, 3 kilos - about 6.7 pounds), and made mashed potatoes from scratch, and a salad. We washed this all down with some mulled wine. I've never made the turkey myself, and frankly I really only eat turkey at Thanksgiving, but we did a pretty good job. We stuffed it with diced apples (no stuffing), as well as had diced apples around it in the pan; salt and pepper. That's it, but it was good. The cranberry sauce was the best I've ever had as the mashed potatoes I'd say came in some of the top. Another reason not to buy boxed things. Golden potatoes, good natural butter, good milk, a little salt. Never cared much for mashed potatoes, but these were good. And the pumpkin pie was a great way to end the meal. There was much to be thankful for and it was nice to enjoy a small delicious meal with some good friends. Didn't spend the day with family or even celebrate on the right day, but we did have Thanksgiving. And Olya and Vova know quite a bit about it already because of the TV show "Friends" who have a T-day episode every season. We watched a few as it seemed appropriate. However, it must be noted that while Vova is more than happy to bbq the meat out at the dacha, he was a little shocked that I was helping cook the bird and make the mashed potatoes.

To resolve Karma's feet and the salt issue we took her the local pet store (well one of about 4 within a 5 min walk from our apartment, but the best of the 4) and got her outfitted with new booties. They let us try them on in the store, the owners/employees daughters helped us get them on Karma the first round and they were just wonderful to her. While she still prefers nothing on her feet, she is much more comfortable with the new ones because they're shaped to curve with the feet/leg. The booties we bought in the US/brought with us are just straight and don't adjust well with the dog. Karma walks a little funky when you first put them on, but then she runs around just fine with them on and she's comfortable walking long distances in them. We've also discovered a park not far from here is small and has only one entrance so we can let her run off-leash and guard the entrance. It is such a pleasure to watch her run through the snow, take a nibble every once in a while to taste the snow and then continue running. As for Ella, well we've been sparingly giving her her meds and she seems fine and healthy with just the special food. I'm happy to report about two healthy pets.

Last week I reported that winter was coming and that it came Saturday according to social media. Well, yes it has. We have an average high of -3C and an average low of -6C. Snow flurries most days which are followed by trucks to clear the road. I want to make this clear, they are not plows. The trucks get parked with an open bed in back and then a few track front loaders scoop up the snow and dump it in the truck. When full, the truck drives out of the city and dumps the snow and the loaders fill up another truck bed. Today as I was walking through таврический сад there were teenagers playing on the frozen pond. While I don't think I'd trust it to be frozen enough, they clearly thought it was able to handle them to run out into the middle. I just hope it held after I left. And for those of you who didn't get my facebook post, last weekend from Friday-Sunday, on a stretch of highway about 100 miles long between St. Petersburg and Moscow over 10,000 cars were stuck for 3 days because of the snow storm. Part of that can be blamed on weather, part on old soviet era infrastructure, but I personally put most of the blame on "why didn't they take the train?????" There is a great rail system here in Russia. Even the old soviet era rails are still pretty dang good. The more modern ones are wonderful. So, why weren't those people taking the train????? And, dear Americans, when are we going to get good trains? Start small like between the Bay Area and Lake Tahoe/Reno: winter skiing, summer activities on the Lake or in the Bay depending on which direction, maybe some gambling. I see a win for everyone involved.

And to wrap it up, last night I used "The Road Less Traveled" by Robert Frost in my lesson. With a few new vocab words, it is an appropriate poem for intermediate students, and they quickly gathered the meaning of the poem when they knew the new vocab. They seemed to have loved the poem and it was a great way to end a long, hard day. Let's just say the Russian lesson kicked my butt, and I was glad to have a fun class with a great poem ending the class to end my day. I was exhausted and the two roads in the yellow wood with some great personalities is reenergizing.

Winter is Coming (зима приходит)

Winter is Coming. Tomorrow apparently, according to students I've talked to and things I've seen on vkontakte (in contact), a Russian social networking site similar to facebook, although many Russians also have facebook. Forget that winter officially starts on December 21st.

Although, I must ask why this Saturday. It has been snowing straight for the past 48 hours. Lightly, but constantly. The high today is -7 degrees C (about 20.5 F) with the low at -8C (18.5F) with gusts of wind hitting 40 kph (25mph). Today on my walk to and from work my mustache froze. My beard would have if it wasn't covered with the scarf, and it was difficult to see when the wind blew snow into the eyes. It's a good thing I'm a winter child if this isn't winter and winter is coming on Saturday. Although the weather is supposed to be about the same tomorrow so perhaps winter began yesterday, but people feel like it saying it starts on the weekend.

Russian lesson: вчера шёл снег весь день. vchyera (yesterday) shyol (verb "to go" past tense) snyeg (snow - noun that takes one of the verbs "to go") vyes (all) dyen (day). "Yesterday, it snowed all day." Well I think the spelling is right. Open to corrections.

I will say my Russian is getting better as I have conversations with my boss, the administrators in the office, some students from other teachers (again I'm talking with them in Russ-lish on the street, etc), my students in my classes, etc. I'm also trying to talk to people in my vk (vkontakte: fb - facebook). As my Russian improves, I'm also glad to say my students' English is improving. I was very pleased with the results from the last test they had. I have not had a test (don't know if I will). I am proud to say that many students (from multiple classes) complained that the second test was very hard, much harder than the first test. Yet in one class only one student got a worse percentage and that I am sure is b/c s/he came in after a hard day since in class I've noticed that s/he understands the material (keeping anonymous in case my students are reading this however they can). The rest of the class all improved their percentages and everyone passed unlike the first test. The other class (I haven't given tests in all my classes) has also improved drastically but due to extra credit from the first test I cannot accurately report that improvement. And my classes that haven't had tests, I also see some good improvement.

Wednesday was the last day I wore my tweed country cap, or tam-o-shanter. Or any of the other non-tweed caps of the same style that I'm known for wearing. I've officially pulled out the knit hat, but we'll see how long I wear that. Daria's grandma bought me a real Russian winter hat for New Years (presents exchanged for NY instead of Christmas), but I'm allowed to wear it before if I need to. Well, by real I mean a Russian hat with ear flaps: it's artificial fur. I'm a little sad about that, not because I want to wear slain animals, but because artificial things feel weird against my skin and frankly as much as I hate, hate, hate the way we deal with animals for commerce, it's the methods, not the use of animals that make mad. I believe we can slaughter humanely and properly use leather, fur, wool, etc. A fur coat used for 30+ years by someone is good use (and some older people in Russia might have 30+ year old coats). Additionally, I feel here people actually use every part of the animal. And lastly, using oil to make artificial products kills the animals and the environment anyway. It's just more out of sight, out of mind. And believe me, you need either the animal fur or the artificial products here. So, yeah I think a new mink coat or fox coat every few years is wrong. I also think it's wrong to raise them in cages and take their fur without using the meat and bones. But a free-range type of farm/ranch and the whole use of the animal, I'm ok with a coat of ram's hair and skin. Even that mink one if done well. And keep the coat until it's no longer usable. Nonetheless, I have a true Russian hat to keep my head warm in the freezing weather.

таврический сад (literally Bull Garden, but call it a Tavricheskij Park), near where my business class is, the pond has completely frozen over. Pigeons were sitting on the ice and on the ground and weren't moving at all. On Wednesday it was mostly frozen with a thin layer of ice, but where the ducks' paddling stirred the water it remained unfrozen. Today I'd guess at least 1/2 an inch thick. Oh, and as I had difficulty not slipping in the slick snow with gripped boots, I give mad props to the guy riding a unicycle with bald tires through the park and over a bridge that definitely had ice on it and didn't fall for the duration that I saw him.

The salt on the road last night was not pleasant for Karma's feet. We wonder if it felt like a chemical burn. This morning she was not pleased about wearing her dog-booties (Paw-tectors) though so we don't know how to solve this. She did have her second bath in the tub after the walk though (both b/c of need and to wash the salt off).

To wrap up: Earlier Daria helped at the LGBT conference. Last weekend, through the Women's Crisis Center that she volunteers at, she helped with a conference (and poster display at the library) concerning stopping domestic violence against women and children here in Russia. She was also invited by the chair of the Psychology department at the University here to do some stuff in the department.  On Tuesday she got stopped for a short interview (lasted about 5-10 min) with the local news about the conference/poster display and after editing will be on the local news tonight about 6.30-6.45pm. Just gotta say that I'm proud of her :-)

So Advent starts this Sunday in the Western Church. Even though Eastern Christmas isn't until Jan. 6, Advent already began for the Orthodox because theirs is 40 days. Maybe for me, I'll say Winter is coming with Advent. My Latin is a little rusty (ok, a lot rusty), but I believe "Winter is Coming" is translated as "Hiems Venit" but for Advent, I'll say "Hiems Advenit."