Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall...

Having lived in Russia since August, there is one thing I've learned that's more important than anything else: Thoreau was right. Up until I moved to Russia, I'd never been on my own, or more importantly...alone. I've had "alone time", but I have never truly been alone. In my twenty-three years of life, prior to Russia, I'd always been surrounded by friends and family; People that care about and love me. It's impossible to be alone growing up in a family of six, especially in a "small" house, and I'm eternally grateful for that. Even when I went away to college, I was surrounded by friends that I had made during 'June Welcome', and that eased the transition. While I was in Machias, my entire time there I was surrounded by close friends, that would do almost anything for me, and none of whom were more than a text away.

Fast forward to the present, I'm alone. I have some great friends here, but every night I come back to my flat...Alone. In my day to day life, I shop by myself, walk around by myself, cook by myself....And "worst" of all, I go out to eat by myself. To cope, I've developed a new habit; I have full conversations with myself. I spend most of my time walking around in a bubble. I couldn't understand what people around me are saying, even if I was listening. It's the strangest thing, to be able to spend most of the day lost in your own thoughts. I've become my own best friend. Once, I started looking at being alone as a chance to get to know myself, and become my own friend...I got dangerously close to developing a psychosis, kidding of course. Psychologically I'm probably much healthier than I was before. Thoreau moved into the woods and built a cabin so he could find himself, I moved to Russia.

This blog post isn't a pity party, I'm alone, but I'm not lonely. There is a huge difference. I can look at myself in the mirror and be happy with what I see. I'm nowhere near perfect, and I'm okay with it. No one is perfect. I can accept myself as the imperfect human that I am, and even with my imperfections...I'm a kick ass person to be around, living alone has taught me what loads of people already knew. If you can't be friends with yourself, why should anyone else? That's where loneliness comes in, if you're happy with who you are, and can be your own friend...You'll never be lonely. It's when you let society decide for you that eating alone is wrong and embarrassing, or that you shouldn't go shopping by yourself because only losers do that...That is when loneliness rears its ugly head. If you can depend on yourself, what society thinks or says is just a load of cock and bull.  Being alone and on my own 5,000 miles from everything I knew is the equivalent of saying "Alright, I never really watched MacGyver but he seemed pretty cool. I'll be like him, and put myself in a situation where I need to survive, but instead of 2 paper clips a rubber band, and a can of compressed air I only get myself."

So, try and get to know yourself today, maybe go speed-dating with yourself, or take yourself on a date, but whatever you do...Don't invite yourself in for drinks! Do you really want to think that you're of dubious morals????

Also, just so you don't pity me the way you pity a Cubs fan.....I'm going over to some friends for dinner

Kirovski: Home of the $3 Pineapple

Over the last few weeks, a few topics keep coming up in my classes. The standard of living in the US versus Russia, homosexuality, and inherent Russian and American cultural differences. These are all fairly serious things, and are really eye opening when you're comparing the two countries. First and foremost though, time for supermarkets.

Kirovski is my neighborhood supermarket, and I hate it with a passion. It's small, not that clean, the produce  is questionable, but nine times out of ten it's cheaper than shopping at Kupyetz the massive supermarket near work, or Stockmann's the import grocery store. They are usually 20-40% more expensive. And of course Monyetka, which is the equivalent of shopping in a favela.

Just an average day at Monyetka

There also happens to be two Monyetkas near my house each about a block away....One of them got in trouble for giving(selling??) rotten food to homeless people, the homeless people went on to sell said food,  I'm assuming for what could only have been heroin and bath salts. After all, I'm not sure who but heroin addicts and well anyone stupid enough to do bath salts would eat food from those Monyetkas. It's a rough life, bath salts and food from Monyetka.

More importantly, I went grocery shopping tonight. Now over this last week or two, I've been eying picking up some exotic fruit. Pears, apples, bananas, and mandarins just aren't cutting anymore. Last night I almost even bought a Pomelo, and I have absolutely no idea what that is. I refrained though, mostly because it looked like a grapefruit, and well grapefruits are edible only to people who aren't me.  

 

 Silicone breast implants for 75p/kg?

Well anyway, I went shopping on my way home tonight, I need some staples: cheese, juice, chicken, vodka.... Walking into the store, you need to go past the "produce" display. A 6 foot long shelf with baskets of mostly bruised/borderline rotted fruit and vegetables. Tonight though, the fruit gods must have come to Ekb. The bananas looked edible, the apples weren't bruised and gouged, and they had pineapples. Seeing pineapples isn't a new thing, I can buy close to any food I want here....Minus a few things like buffalo sauce and pepperoni, Stockmann's even has Betty Crocker cookie mix. Pineapples usually go for close to $8/kg in Stockmanns and Kupyetz. Starfruit goes for close to $30, and Cantaloupe is $10/kg. Pineapple at Kirovski? A cool 75p/kg or $2.50/kg, a measly $1.25/lb. I'm not sure how a pineapple can get from Costa Rica and only cost me $3, but in Russia it's best never to question. 

"Gudbye my deah....."

Well after a month of getting trounced by writers block, I sort of feel like the New England Patriots against Eli Manning... Even now it's close to impossible to keep from opening Cracked.com and losing myself in one moderately interesting article after another slightly moderately interesting article. I'm going to stay strong though, the handful of people that read this blog, they deserve at least twenty minutes of my semi-undivided attention.  And away we go....

On Wednesday, one of my Upper-Intermediate classes had a lesson on stereotypes, and different English accents. Being from Maine, I'm privy to one of the best and most iconic accents in the world (well I'm not sure if any of that is true)...The Down East accent. As much as I enjoy the accent, and my innate ability to understand it, I don't speak it. My Maine accent is generally some dropped R's and using words like "Ayuh". However, when it comes down to the nitty-gritty, and if I'm with the right people, speaking like a Mainah is second nature. So, I introduced a few words including my personal favorite "MA!".....Also, I had to explain the term "Upta Camp", it was a really simple translation...Dacha. I didn't need to introduce 'wicked' though, I'd been using it for awhile...and to put it mildly, it confused the hell out of my students. It wasn't until Wednesday I explained what "wicked" meant, and that it didn't mean evil. It explains why I got so many funny looks.

 

"Upta Camp"

Well, here's some background, since August I've been using a British series of text books to teach English. Which, up until last week I'd never even imagined there might be any conflict between my own speech and my British text books. Well.....all of the pronunciation is in Standard British English or S.B.E. I on the other hand I'm only fluent in S.A.E. or Standard American English. There are all sorts of stupid little nuances between the dialects, such as an unnatural over-usage of the Present Perfect Tense, when the Past Simple tense could be used.  "Oh darn, I have cut my finger!" vs. "Fuck! I cut my finger!" Also the sentences would finish "Oh darn, I have cut my finger, can you fetch me a plaster?" vs. "Fuck! I cut my finger, can you get me a Band-Aid."

Taken straight from one of my text books

Notice the key differences between what I can only assume is S.A.E. on the left and S.B.E. on the right. Well key point to all this, is British people talk funny, and enjoy drowning. S.B.E. has different stresses on words, and in it you don't pronounce R's, and say things like "ad-vert-az-ment". I say "ad-ver-tize-ment" as do most of you. There are loads of silly Britishisms I don't quite grasp.  Such as during training I was eating lunch with a British intern, we were talking about something, and it went like this:

British Intern: Blah, blah, blah, blah, caw.

Me: What???

BI: (Repeats herself)

Me: I still don't understand, "caw?"

BI: Yes, caw.

Me: Caw?

BI: Yeah, caw.

Me: I'm not sure I'm understanding you correctly, you're saying "caw", right?

BI: What else would I be saying?

Me: Not a bird noise?

BI: I'm not, I'm saying caw.

Me: Yeah, caw. That's what crows say.

BI: No, "caw"

Me: I think I'm missing the core concept here, crows say "caw", and you're also saying "caw".

BI: I'm not saying "CAW!", I'm saying "caw". 

Me: You just said "caw" twice.

BI: No, I said, "caw" and "caw".

Me: I'm not hearing a difference there, you're saying "caw! caw!"(I start flapping my arms and cawing).

BI: NO! I'm saying "Caw".

Me: Yeah that's what I'm doing (I keep cawing and flapping my arms).

BI: I'm still not saying that, I'm saying "caw" (She pretends to drive a car).

Me: Oh! "car", you've been saying "car" this whole time.

BI: Of course I said "caw", why would I start cawing???

Me: Because you're British I guess, I'm not really sure.

BI: I'm never eating lunch with you again.

 This is most certainly not a car...

 I learned real quick though, that my life would be much easier if I just learned to use a British accent for some concepts in the book.  So for the last seven months, I have been working on my S.B.E. Initially I assumed, using a British accent wouldn't have any drawbacks, or have any long term damage.  Well....

I went to use my Down East accent, and it was gone. I couldn't keep it for more than a few words without switching into my British accent. I've spent the last week watching awful Stephen King movies, movies based in Boston, listening to Bob Marley, and the Humble Farmer...To little or no avail, my Down East accent is still buried under seven months of blasphemy. So my students have no real concept of what it means to be from Maine... Now don't get me wrong, I've got the Yankee "stick-to-it-ness" in my DNA, so my own personal anti-British Revolution is going to continue until I can talk like a Mainah again, and my it becomes nothing more than a bad memory....Sort of like the 2003 ALCS.

I can't find any pictures of Red Sox players crying in the dugout, so this very positive memory will have to do

As a reference point, you got well more than twenty minutes of my semi-undivided attention...

Russian Resolutions......

Well, as most of the people that read this severely neglected project know; I'm back in Russia until some time this summer...I'm not really sure when. I'll write the story about my 47 hour escapade from Portland to Yekaterinburg another time. I don't know if I can write about it without an attack of PTSD.

For 2012 I made exactly zero resolutions for myself, they never work anyway...Plus I don't think any of them have been important, frankly I can't remember the ones I made for 2011. I bet I stuck with every damn one of them and succeeded with flying colors.

Although, despite my awesomeness I realized: It would make more sense if on December 31st we made backwards resolutions, and just pick the things we did well. Instead of signing yourself up for failure, just pat yourself on the back for something you did over the course of the year that wasn't terrible. For example: You gained twenty pounds over prior 364 days, you can be happy you didn't gain 30lbs. Now if you had made a resolution to lose weight? You failed pretty hard, disappointing huh? 

 Aren't you so proud?

 If you make a backwards resolution, sure you gained 20lbs but hey at least you aren't that guy. Right?

However I'm going to not reflect on 2011, I missed that boat...It's time to move on to 2012 Baby! So instead of New Years resolutions, I'm going to make Russian resolutions. A Russian resolution doesn't have the same have the same self-esteem crushing impact of a New Years resolution when it fails. You may ask yourself why? The answer is pretty simple, if it's Russian, what are the odds that it is destined for success?

   This lasted right??

So for my Russian resolutions:

1) To pay more attention to my blog, or start writing it so poorly that no one cares when I miss a post.

2) Learn enough Russian to be able to order sushi or pizza for delivery.

3) Make a website or Facebook page for at least 3 of my classes.

4) Keep my apartment mostly clean.

5) Do my laundry much more often than I did last year, even if it does suck washing it by hand.

6) Unlock my iPhone

7) Get glasses and or contacts

8) Successfully accomplish a minimum of one of these, I can live with a 14.5% rate of success.

We'll see how it goes......