Patriotic penguins, tiny toilets, and Russia’s privacy policy

It’s only been a couple of days since my last post, but I’m already overwhelmed by everything I have to write about. Everyday feels like a few days all shoved together. I don’t know if it’s my jetlagged mind or just the fact that we do so much everyday, but it’s been really hard to place everything in time. It feels like I’ve been here a few weeks, when in reality it has only been about five days since I left the States.

We had our first big Moscow site-seeing adventure yesterday, but due to large amounts of rain it was more like a ‘look out of the foggy window of a bus and try to make out shapes of buildings’ kind of a thing. But it was still helpful to find out where exactly in Moscow we are located and review all of the amazing things we get to see on our future excursions (which will hopefully take place on non down-pouring days). But still, we got to drive by all the buildings I’ve heard so much about in my classes and I just got so excited. There were tears in my eyes at one point, which I successfully passed off as rain on my face, because this experience is truly amazing. I was either thinking that, or I was crying due to exhaustion. But seriously, there is so much incredible history behind everything here that I honestly couldn’t help becoming an emotional nerd for a moment, especially as we caught a short glance at St. Basil’s Cathedral. It is glorious. I can’t wait to see it from the street and not from a rain-covered window on the wrong side of a moving bus.

As a brief side note, tomorrow is Den’ Rossii (Russia’s day), which is a new, kind of laughed at holiday amongst many Russians. But essentially there will be concerts in Red Square, which will be televised, along with celebrations everywhere. There is no work or school, and because it is taking place on a Tuesday this year, Russia just went ahead and turned this weekend into an extended holiday so many people had today off as well. This has kind of thrown a wrench into a lot of our plans, largely due to the fact that the opposition (Russians against Putin’s reelection) is planning a demonstration. The details of it, like most plans made by all Russians, are continuously in fluctuation, so it’s been really hard for our group of 30 students to plan going anywhere. Large groups are automatically seen as opposition groups, and gathering in them in public places is prohibited. Although the protests are “legal,” they are strictly monitored by the politsia, who arrest participants arbitrarily. Even people caught walking past them have been arrested. We were going to walk around the Kremlin tomorrow, but due to all of this, that plan was thwarted. Instead, I think we’re going to tour the Arbat and possibly watch fireworks at the end of the day.

Back to the events of yesterday though, which are what I intended to be the main point of this post, we finally met our host families! So far I’ve only met my Russian mother, Sveta. She is a sweetheart, and I feel like I really lucked out, because I feel like we will get along really well. She’s a woman in her forties and works at a kindergarten down the street. She blows kisses at me every time we say poka (goodbye) and doesn’t try to overfeed me like most Russian hosts. She’s hosted about ten American students before, so she’s really good about making sure I understand what she’s saying, and not intruding on my privacy. I don’t know if I already mentioned this, but privacy really doesn’t exist in Russian households. There’s not even a Russian word for it.

I’m not going to go on a long ramble about why that is, but a lot of it stems back to the days of Kommunalka, or communal apartments. The mentality of this remains, especially since apartments are still very small and there’s a lot of people who need to live in not a lot of space. But that’s also just living in a big city for ya.

So last night after getting home and giving me the grand tour of the apartment, Sveta beckons me into the living room area to keep talking to me. I walk in and she’s ripping her shirt off, changing out of her outside clothes (since Moscow is a freakishly dirty city, people come home, put on tapochki or slippers, wash their hands immediately, and change out of their street clothes). So I’m just standing in the doorway, kinda shocked, just thinking, ‘woah, nice to meet you.” This was definitely a golden example showing the value Russian’s give to personal space.

The other example would be the toilet. In Russia the toilet is in a separate room from the shower and sink. And this room, in my apartment especially, is tiny. It’s basically just a toilet. Like, my knees touch the door when I use it. A major thing you start to notice about Russia is the quality of things. Let me rephrase: the poor quality of things. Toilets in the US are typically made of porcelain- our porcelain thrones, if you will. In Russia, toilets mostly consist of some sort of crappy plastic material. Let’s just say they’re not too sturdy. At orientation we actually heard a story about a guy who was living in the dorms, and was using the toilet one time when suddenly it LITERALLY split in half beneath him. That is not a sight I ever want to have to even imagine, much the less live through. I am not joking when I say that this has become my number one greatest fear during my stay in Russia. And that’s saying something considering the other seriously scary shit that goes down here. But back to the privacy issue, you can imagine that in a room that small there really is no hiding anything.

But apart from the toilet trouble, I love my apartment. I have three pet birds, whose chirping I still find charming (will keep you posted), a fridge full of wonderful Russian food at my disposal, and a room filled to the brim with stuffed animals and Russian books. What more could I ask for? Oh yeah, I get to use the family’s wifi (Russian’s typically have a weird view on this and won’t share) AND I have my own TV, on which I’ve already watched several hours of Russian MTV and strange game shows. Right now I’m watching some show from the 70s featuring the tro-lo-lo guy. Pretty sure it’s actually called “Mr. Trolo.” He’s just singing and swaying about. I wish we could all be that carefree. We’d end a lot of the world’s problems. Which I feel protected from at night since I have a large stuffed penguin wearing a Russian flag watching me sleep. Sweet dreamsss.