June 12, 2007 || Meeting Masha/Tvarichesky Garden

June 12, 2007

Still so tired, that when I say down to write this again, I took a nap instead. У вы!

I made another lovely blunder again today; yesterday I tried to ask Marina if we were eating Swiss cheese (because that’s what it looked like), but the words for “Swiss” is much like the word for “fresh” and I mixed them up. I ended up asking "Are we eating fresh cheese?" So we had a good laugh after we got past the idea that maybe, some people (like those I knew in America) eat spoiled cheese on purpose. And when I returned home after a walk to Tvarichesky garden, Marina wasn’t home—she had gone to visit her grandchildren and greats, and taken my gifts with her (I hope I’ll get to meet them soon). Igor warmed up dinner for me, and sat with me while I ate. I wonder if Marina told him that he must sit and speak with me, to make me practice Russian (and oh! the practice I had today). Laura (a past student who stayed with the Silenkos) warned me that Igor was very hard to understand, because of his strong accent and his lack of a tooth here and there, and so I had tried to keep away from and not bother him, since I felt that taking in students was mostly Marina’s idea. Of course, I feel that most things are Marina’s ideas, since before tonight I hadn’t seen Igor do anything but sleep, eat, and watch TV.

But today we talked! ..kind of; with much hesitation, misunderstanding, and repetition; but we accomplished it. We talked about football (by which I mean soccer) and how Igor used to play, and how Russia’s team is doing poorly; where he was born and how he met Marina (I didn’t understand this part well at all, but Marina later explained to me that they were both on expeditions for work to the same place and met there); how in Kazakhstan he once saw a rocket take off, but there had been no warning of it beforehand, so he was amazed at how it was so huge and could fly… we even joked a bit with each other, and he is very nice… he kept reminding Marina (once she returned) and me to eat even though we were talking.

And at one point, he commented on how I wasn’t a vegetarian, seeing me eat chicken, and asked if I ate all birds (probably to make sure I was a vegetarian). I said no, and asked if he ate all birds, birds like pigeons too. He said no, and I thought—I THOUGHT he said, “Normally, I eat children.” Well, I like a good joke, and everyone was smiling, so I asked if he preferred little boys or little girls—and they suddenly stopped smiling. He didn’t say he ate children at all! Could you imagine having an exchange student ask your husband almost out of the blue if he liked to eat little boys or little girls better? Haha, well, either way, once everything got sorted out, we all laughed for quite a while. And when that happened, I found myself thinking, “Maybe this is why they take in foreign students.” It was a really wonderful moment, to have all of us laughing together, at the same thing, and all of us KNOWING why we were laughing (which doesn’t always happen with me here).

Today, I slept badly and woke late, because today we had our first excursion. I woke up, showered, ate breakfast, and watched TV with Marina. It was a show with funny acts—like a comedy hour, or a variety-style Premium Blend (but suitable for a View-esque audience), with performers like 2 musical brothers who “couldn’t” sing or play their instruments; 2 tap-dancing comical mimes; a comedian with a lisp (and he was probably gay, which surprised me, since Russia is known for its homophobia); and a funny song played on a trick guitar by a man who had two men dressed as women for backup singers. Marina made me stay and watch the end, then told me my “beach slippers” (my flip-flops) would be too cold for the excursion, so I thought I might be late. But I made it on time, and today I met my tutor, Masha, who probably speaks far better English than my Russian. She is very nice, and pretty, and eager to help; she tried explaining the boat tour to me, but I thought it would be boring for her to just repeat the guide, so we talked of other things—Che Byrashka, Shrek 3, Pirates of the Caribbean, our schools, Bulgakov, why I’m studying Russian, why she’s studying English, what she wants to do in her career, if we’ve ever visited other countries, etc. She is going to call tomorrow and hopefully we will go to an opera or a museum or something sometime this week. The most trouble I had was understanding when she asked me to call her “Ты” instead of “Вы” and at the bus stop, when she told me not to get lost. It was raining after the excursion, so everyone went home. I grabbed my umbrella and headed to Tvarichesky Garden, which was massive—sooo big and beautiful, in spite of the fact that it obviously hadn’t been well taken care of. The buildings within were crumbling and some quite covered with graffiti, and some of the ankle-high iron bars lining the walkways were rusted or broken (a bad idea to begin with, in my opinion) and some of the water appeared stagnant. But still, the grounds were lovely, and I saw all kinds of people: couples walking together, or walking their babies, teenagers hanging out, young adults jogging, kids in the playground areas being watched by their parents (or NOT being watched by their parents, who were sitting on benches nearby), friends talking, old men playing chess (and other men watching and helping), 2 militsia who looked as young as 15, and at least 3 groups of football players. We just don’t HAVE parks like these anywhere but maybe New York, Chicago, and San Fransisco, and here they offer so much relief (it’s nice to see a big patch of green every now and again).

So I sat and read (as the sun had come back out) until I thought it best to go home. Tomorrow I want to buy a bus pass and find a wireless internet café and hopefully get a plug adapter from Jessica so I can charge my computer.

When Marina got back home she told me how her family loved the gifts, the little girl got her hands all tangled up in the string (trying to follow the pictures in the book, I got a Cat's Cradle-type set for her) and that they said thank you very very much. Then she said that her granddaughter had figured out that the body butter was cream for the skin, but what was the little tube that smelled sharp, of mint for? For your lips? What color? It took us a while to figure out “clear”—I really MUST keep my dictionary around always. And when we figured this out, Marina was so excited that she had to call her granddaughter right then and tell her; and her granddaughter said thank you thank you again.

The floors here (I’m laying on the end of my bed writing so I can’t help but look at them) are all beautiful and wood, which reminds me of Uncle Pat… which then reminds me of everyone else at home, and it’s the same waterfall of nostalgia everytime I see even one thing that reminds me of just one person from home (например, one of my teachers reminds me of Mrs. Mann; everytime I’m served peas I think of the entire Diehl family; Liz, a fellow student, looks like Erycca and we talked about how she once tried to change her hair but it was so curly that it won the fight and she just learned to love it; I’ve actually seen a few people who I mistook for Bodie, etc.)...

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