Lessons-wise I'm experiencing infrequent peaks and persistent troughs, as ever. But I can now recite Goldilocks and the Three Bears in Russian so if you're ever in a jam and a Russian Mafia boss is demanding you recite a traditional fairytale, you know who to call. Tatiana is continuing to show herself to be a pretty great teacher. She told me I need to try to read a book in Russian to expand my vocabulary base, so on Friday I impulse bought a copy of The Hobbit (or Хоббит in Russian). Does anyone fancy bribing the lecturers at Durham so that 'porridge', 'Orcs' and 'misty mountains' magically come up on an exam next year? I'd be much obliged.
On Friday evening Andrew, Richard, Dasha and I had a little party in Andrew's flat. I might have already mentioned this, but the uni dorms have an 11pm curfew (just take a minute to imagine the eruption of laughter that would occur if it were to be suggested that British university students should adhere to an 11pm curfew... pahahahaha). Last weekend we arrived back at 11:10pm after a few drinks at bar (and a quick pit-stop to play on some monkey bars) thinking that an extra 10 minutes surely couldn't do any harm. We had to ring a bell and a very large and very menacing lady opened the door to let us in with a steely glare. She was not happy. So we've since decided it's best to play by the rules and thought if we can't go to the party we'll have to bring the party to us. We bought had some beverages and put on some tunes and put the world to rights. We even spoke a bit of Russian. Just a bit though.
And yesterday the lovely Tina, who's in my class in Durham and who also goes to Emmanuel, arrived in Ulyanovsk. Sadly, Andrew and I were not on best form to welcome her with energy and enthusiasm having consumed a little bit too much wine the night before but we managed to pull ourselves together in time to go and meet Ivan, Dasha and another pilot called Aleksei in the centre of town. We assembled by the Lenin Memorial and went in search of somewhere to get some food. Once seated I noticed an old lady wearing a shawl walking around trying to sell roses. Suddenly she tapped me on the shoulder, thrusted a red rose in my face and gestured towards a man sitting behind me who'd sent it over. And the next thing I know she has forcibly pulled me up out of chair (for a seemingly frail little thing she had some scary strength) and is pushing me towards him, telling me that I should repay the favour by kissing him on the cheek. I was torn between terror, mortification and hysterical laughter. No one stepped in at this point to rescue so I was left stood in front of him with Russian eyes burning into the back of my head from every angle. I awkwardly patted him on the shoulder and thanked him before returning to my seat to stare at the table until my burning cheeks returned to a normal human colour. Classic Russia.
Afterwards we went for a walk, which seems to be a popular way to pass time for young people in Russia - just wandering about with no particular destination in mind. Unfortunately (and I'm sure they won't mind me saying, for the sake of cultural observation) the conversation between Ivan, Aleksei and I became quite heated as they began to discuss their views first on the roles of women and then on sexual orientation. I'm not naive about how Russia treats these issues and I fully expected that a lot of my opinions and views would be out of place here but I was still absolutely floored by some of the things that were said, especially coming from people of my own age. Perhaps it was disrespectful of me to speak up when I'm not on home soil . And I understand that their opinions are very much a product of the society they've grown up in. But anyone who knows me would know that for me to have bitten my tongue upon hearing what I consider to be a flippant and baseless denouncement of an entire demographic of people... well... it would have been harder than impossible. Anyway, we reached an amicable conclusion, agreeing to disagree. And the moral of the story for me is that there are certain topics of conversation that I will be avoiding at all costs during my time here.
In other news, I've been using my free time to go running like I used to in Spain. Running around the campus is not quite as inspiring as running along the beach in Gijón but fresh air is fresh air. Also in the last fortnight Andrew has introduced me to the world of Game of Thrones. Yes, I am arriving super late to the Game of Thrones party. But I gotta say it - it kicks butt. So compelling and so relentless and holy moly Sean Bean. Obviously this contributes in no way shape or form to our Russian learning experience but for Sean Bean I would sacrifice anything. And on that note I'll be off.
BYE!
X
No comments:
Post a Comment