Updates and Upgrades

So, somehow it happened. I made it to the last week of my trip. And these last few days in Ryazan are flying by! It's been a big week so far. Check out my crazy work schedule:

lolz. so busy.

But it's all good, because an empty schedule just means more time for me relaxing at the dacha. Which is update #1. I love the dacha. And with sunsets like this every night, can you really blame me?

Update #2: Our school's "no electricity in the bathroom" situation got a nice little upgrade this week. Sangria bottle candle holder? Pretty schwanky.

Update #3: Guess who finally got registered this week (only 5 weeks late) and can now legally leave the country?! THIS GIRL! She also apparently got a sex change (Famale? Good one, Russia).

Day-Trippin' Moscow #SelfieStyle

I recently took a day trip to Moscow with my newest host, Dasha. She's 18 and is starting to apply for universities. Since most things in Russia are outdated by at least thirty years [read: general fashion sense (scrunchies are still cool?), stances on "liberal" social issues (they love dropping the N-bomb and hate gay people), and very basic concepts on infrastructure (which I am just not even gonna go into)], it's not surprising that they haven't quite made the leap to electronic applications yet. What this means is that for every school Dasha wants to apply for, she actually has to go there and fill out document after document after document after document after.. you get the point.

So while Dasha took care of her business, I was given a whole day to roam the streets of my lybimaya Moskva completely on my own. "Moscow? Unleashed?" I thought to myself. "What should I do?!" Realizing that I spent the majority of my time exploring Moscow last summer in a group, I decided to return to my favorite places. Alone.

I would like to preface this post by saying I'm not a #selfie person. However, in Russia, as I've mentioned before, nothing is more important than proper documentation. So here it is. My documentation, or what I like to call "A Girl, her iPhone, and 8 hours to kill in Moscow."

The journey begins at the main fountain in Gorky Park. It was a beautiful-to-too-hot kinda day, so this place was packed with people cooling themselves down by dipping a toe (or ten) into the water, letting their kids splash around in it, nommin' on overpriced ice cream and mountains of cotton candy, and watching the fountain's streams of water dance in tune to some classic Soviet jamz. Then at one point a guard came around an yelled at everyone about a "strict" no swimming policy. Which makes sense, since, you know, it's a shallow, public fountain. But as I've learned time and time again, Russians love to break the rules, so naturally, this man's harsh words discouraged no one, and the scene returned to its above described state immediately upon his disappearance, if not sooner.   

Next I headed to Kolomenskoye Park, which was a former royal estate way back in the day (I'm talkin 1500s or so) and super scenic. This place took my breath away. Not only are the ancient buildings (pictured: Ascension Church and Bell tower) absolutely stunning, but it was probably the cleanest air I'd breathed in quite some time, and my silly little lungs, confused by the unfamiliar substance, had no idea what to do with it all. 

To give the little guys a break, I bought myself some pirogi and popped a squat under a nice, shady tree. This lasted for about as much time as it took for me to get the above picture. As it turns out, ants love these little pies just as much as I do. To avoid becoming an apartment for ten-ants (lolz see what I did there?), I soon relocated to the only shady bench I could find not already being occupied by an elderly woman with 5+ plastic bags.

I could have stayed in Kolomenskoye all day. And if sunburn, dehydration, and fear of using porto-potties weren't real life problems, I probably would have. Getting on the metro, I had no idea where I wanted to go. I decided to go about making my choice the Russian way: leave it up to fate (and then if that doesn't work out, find a scapegoat and hold a grudge against it for a hundred or so years, never accepting personal responsibility). Oh Russia, I tease. LYLAS! 

 So I picked a random person and decided that when she exited, so would I. Luckily for me, this stiletto slut didn't have too far to go (and in 8 inch heels where could you go? really.), and exited at Teatralnaya Ploshad. From there I headed to the Bolshoi theater. I've been reading George Orwell's "1984," which just seems appropriate given, well, you know, Russia. So I sat down at the fountain in front of the theater and read for a bit, but then I became super convinced that the guy on the bench next to me was an agent of Big Brother and I decided it was time to go.

Then I wandered on over to say hi to Marx, but we didn't chat for long. He was too busy with his cool new friends (pigeons) to care about me or the times we never spent together. Also he's a statue. Soo that was a little awkward. And at this point of the day it's becoming clear I need to get myself into some shade, because the heat seems to be having an interesting effect on my sanity.

But finding shade? Who has time for that nonsense? NOT I. 

T-2 hours til departure. Must venture on.

 And venture on I did. To Red Square, of course! I could never get sick of staring at St. Basils. But I could definitely get sick of the crowds there. While I had definitely mastered the "pretend to be taking a picture of the beautiful thing in front of me while really taking a smug selfie and also capturing the beautiful thing behind me" creep-shot, I was not doing a great job avoiding bumbling tourists and their unleashed children. I swear those things and their sticky fingers just pop up out of nowhere sometimes. Or all the time. Anyway, I don't want to point any fingers (none of which are sticky), but SOMEONE (pigeon?) was distracting me, and while I'm not entirely sure what happened, I do know that my sandal was a casualty in the incident. A small child may or may not have been involved. All I'm gonna say is that I titled this post "Day-Trippin'" for a reason. 

Whatever it was that happened, it was nothing a little ice cream couldn't remedy. So I went into GUM (goooom), the shwanky shopping mall on Red Square, for some self-medication. Last summer, Mustache, our most feared and admired literature professor, made the comment that you can't say you've lived in Moscow without having eaten ice cream at the fountain in GUM. I've done it a dozen or so times already and I have to be honest, I don't really get it. I mean, it's good ice cream. It's also like three times more expensive than ice cream you can find on any other street in Moscow without having to wait in line. But I'll give it points for a nice atmosphere, and the ice cream contained just the right amount of sugar to fuel the rest of my journey.

Next, I crept on Joseph Stalin and Comrade Lenin, two gossipy teenage girls, I mean politicians, who I was pretty surprised to find sitting next to each other. After all, there's not doubt that Stalin eventually found out through the grapevine all those things Lenin said about him back in the day.

HISTORICAL FUN FACT: before Lenin's death he wrote a Testament, in which he stated that Stalin was unfit for leadership of the party, warning that given too much power, Stalin would become intolerable (#nailedit!). He also told the party a bunch of Stalin's secrets he had shared at their last slumber party like how he had made out with a hotdog and got diarrhea at a Barnes & Noble one time. Ok, Ok, so obviously that last part didn't actually happen (although wouldn't a "Mean Commies" parody film be kind of fun?). The point I really wanted to make was that after all that nonsense Stalin put the country through, like, you know, killing everybody off and then burying Lenin's envisioned ideological plan with the rest of the bodies, I'm sure that this little reunion of theirs contained at least one reaaal awkward "I told you so." Just look at that tension.

But then wait, another Stalin? Alright, now I'm convinced I'm seeing things. And I am not amused.

 

Time for one quick drive through of Aleksandrovsky Sad, 'sad' meaning 'garden,' not the emotion.

Although at this point I am not looking too perky, I will say that. That double-Stalin vision is still really freaking me out. Good things it's just about time to meet Dasha at the metro station.

 I made it to our meeting destination with time to spare! Waiting for Dasha, a very gap-toothed Asian man approached me. For whatever reason, I'm always getting asked for directions, which is hilarious since I'm typically the one who needs them, so I just assumed that this man was going to ask me how to get somewhere, and I was fully prepared to utilize my newly perfected "Russian direction giving" strategy of always just saying "Pryamo, Go Straight!" regardless of where they're headed. But no, he opened his jacket, pulled out a shiny black rectangular object, and whispered, "iPhone 7? You want?" 

Um, excuse me? I may have just spent a day scrambling my brain cells in the heat of the Moscow sun, and I may not be able to tell if I have achieved foot tan greatness or have just been unsuccessful in my foot scrubbing regimen, but I KNOW I am not crazy enough, even at this point, to fall for that one. 

And so the day ends with this girl, her iPhone FIVE, and a full wonderful day's worth of Moscow memories.

konets.

It's Only Natural

 Much like the delectable scent produced by Ryazan’s premium plasma-TV factories and oil refineries, many things here are now just natural.

For example, it’s only natural that when I come to work the floors will be flooded and the power only works in one room. And since that one room is not the bathroom, it’s only natural that we have to pee by the light of a candle.

It’s only natural that in a town of about 520,000 people we run into the same guy literally everywhere who, regardless of whether or not we invite him to tag along (and we never do), he somehow ends up spending the day trying to make awkward conversation with us.

Further, it’s only natural that if you smile and laugh too much while a Russian is telling a story, they get really insecure and tell you to stop being so cruel.

It’s only natural that what Russians consider a “private” spot to change into your swimsuit on the beach is really just the frame of an old bus stop covering inhabited by drunken speedo-donning old men who can’t tell the difference between English, German, and let’s be honest, probably their own two feet.

It’s only natural to be teaching a lesson and have the school’s resident stray cat come in, pat your students down for food, find none, and in retribution sit on top of your open books, refusing to leave.

From that of course, it’s only natural for me to strongly desire to be able to beat this cat with the same monkey wrench it so intensely loves throwing into my lesson plans all the time.

It’s only natural that teaching English has strengthened my awareness of stupid idioms, but not at all discouraged their use. Clearly.^^

It’s only natural that when you order ethnic food in Russia, it will taste like Russian food. No matter what. Also, pizza and sushi are almost always sold at the same restaurant. Naturally.

It’s only natural that, although whenever I’m at Misha’s he offers us nothing but beer, nothing in a beer bottle in his house is to be assumed to actually contain beer. Lesson learned.

Further on the topic of past hosts, it’s only natural that when I complained to Lena (my 23 year old host who insisted on holding my hand every time we crossed a street and once woke me up at 8am to grate a giant stump of carrot) that there was no food at my next host’s home, she responded by saying “I am ashamed of my countryman” and swiftly wrote him an angry message/essay on what it means to be a proper Russian host (which naturally only shamed me).

To be honest though, this guy wasn’t a great host. To him it was seemingly natural to wait until I came home from a long day in the sun, ready to shower and fall asleep immediately, to tell me, “Oh by the way, I’m leaving for Petersburg tomorrow, so you have to pack your bags. You’re moving out in an hour.”

While it’s possible that he warned me of this earlier in the week, it’s only natural that the details of the plan were lost somewhere in my attempted translation of his convoluted use of a language I’m pretty sure he just made up. Someone needs to tell him that mixing Russian with English, Spanish, and Bob Marley is not in fact natural, and he needs to cut that shit out. Because it makes no sense and I hate it.

Finally, it's only natural to reward those of you who put up with this post with some pictures of nothing other than RUSSIAN NATURE. It's only natural.. (I swear I'm done now)

 Oh yeah, Russia, yeah.