Refrigetator-AdventureIn class today, we were discussing hypothetical additions to the classroom. I meant to say I'd like to add a "refrigerator filled [...with food]" but I misunderstood the word. Learning a language is all about expressing yourself, right? I had misinterpreted the ice cream ad pictured at right (it's nice to be able to illustrate this), but now that I know the word it's actually even funnier. The ad says:
Adventure with Taste!
For the record, Russian ice cream (Extreme cones included) is really good!
So much to say, as always.
So, things have been up and down the past couple of days, but I'm happy to say that the hot water is finally back, as of today! Tomorrow morning I finally get to take a real hot shower, for the first time in almost three weeks.
There are many echoes of the Soviet past here, in everything from the bureaucracy of everyday life to the way the buildings are constructed. Russia is a harsh place, but the people are basically good as in any other place.
Some more scenes from last weekend:
Selling souvenirs in Izborsk. They had a lot of wood-carved stuff, and it was pretty cool. I didn't buy much, but I did buy a bottle of homemade kvas that was amazingly good the first day and then turned rancid. I got lots of great pictures though!
From Saturday, in Pskov. This picture appears to be very random, but there's something hilarious and very Russian happening here. This scene is a bride and groom in their wedding clothes, and it's POURING rain. (The bride is mostly obscured behind the woman in the foreground--unfortunately, this is the only picture I got.) The happy couple had only moments before this picture was taken released two white doves into the sky, despite the downpour. Some Russians, just as some people in any world culture, just love traditions, and this is one of them. On a nice day around the parks of Saint Petersburg, you'll see similarly dressed couples out for photo-shoots. They're really everywhere!
The spring in Izborsk. On the right is a local resident, and the others are Smolny people (second from the left is one of the tutors, a Russian native)--the other two being students in my class. The water was delicious, but from what I know about backpacking, I was wary about drinking very much of it without treatment. I haven't heard of anyone who drank it getting sick though, and the locals use it for everything.So I'm thinking about getting a haircut. It's getting a bit long.
A quick word about Russian hairstyles. Check out the dude on the left of this photo from ГОГОЛЬFEST. Yeah, that's right. The dominant hip style for young Russian men seems to be the mullet (yes, really), but this guy seems to be taking it to a whole new level. I thought briefly today about the idea of going much shorter with my hair, but the last time I did that was in second grade and it was awful. My hair doesn't do anything interesting except poof. When it's really long it gets slightly wavy and if it's at all short (or just randomly at other times) it gets poofy.Regarding my return to America, it's looking more and more like I will return several days earlier than planned, for various reasons including the fact that the trip to Eilat will no longer work out. However, I'd still like to spend two or three days in Israel while I'll have the opportunity, so I'm investigating that possibility. Then I'll fly to New York, and probably straight on to LA sometime around the 14th or so, unless I make some sort of stop in Washington DC or perhaps Chapel Hill NC to see family that I would otherwise not see for quite a long time (and don't see often anyhow).
With all that being said, let me know if you want anything in particular from Russia or from Israel!
Now I'm going to get more personal here.
I finished reading Salinger's Catcher in the Rye for the first time earlier this evening, and I have to say it couldn't have come at a better time. Most American students seem to read it sometime around the tenth grade, but it was never required for any class I was in.
A quick word about literature and required reading:
No matter how accellerated the academic program or how mature the student, you can't expect young people to be ready to have a mature interpretation of a work of literature if they can't relate to the experiences in it. With that being said, however, there is undoubtedly great value in reading for everyone. Furthermore, the experience of reading literature will be quite different for the twelve year old book nut, for the searching young adult, for the middle-aged person, or for much older people. Your own experience has a lot to do with what a work of art or literature means to you.
I'm happy to say that being here not only makes me rediscover the joy of connections with people, but also with academia and literature.
And now for some Holden Caulfield:
"Lawyers are all right I guess--but it doesn't appeal to me," I said. "I mean they're all right if they go around saving innocent guys' lives all the time, and like that, but you don't do that kind of stuff if you're a lawyer. All you do is make a lot of dough and play golf and play bridge and buy cars and drink Martinis and look like a hot-shot. And besides. Even if you did go around saving guys' lives and all, how would you know if you did it because you really wanted to save guys' lives, or because what you really wanted to do was be a terrific lawyer, with everybody slapping you on the back and congratulating you in court when the goddam trial was over, the reporters and everybody, the way it is in the dirty movies? How would you know you weren't being a phony? The trouble is, you wouldn't."
Now here's the thing. A year ago, perhaps, I would have quite agreed with Holden. Now, however, I'm not worried so much by such questions. I don't think this is the kind of thing you can ever "explain" to someone--it's something that people just have to work out. It's very meaningful to me personally to look at this quote and see the grasp for maturity in it, and to realize that my perspective on it now is utterly unlike anything I could have conceived when I thought similarly.
Toward the end of the novel, Holden has a conversation with one Mr. Antolini, a former teacher of his.
"The fall I think you're heading for--it's a special kind of fall, a horrible kind. The man falling isn't permitted to feel or hear himself hit bottom. He just keeps falling and falling. The whole arrangement's designed for men who, at some time or other in their lives, were looking for something their own environment couldn't supply them with. Or they thought their own environment couldn't supply them with. So they gave up looking. They gave it up before they ever really got started."
Now here's another thing. I have had very similar thoughts in my head in the past few months. It's terrifying to think that you might never be in the right place and to keep your eyes so wide open with looking around that you can hardly see and you end up tripping over yourself because you can't see the ground. I'll return to this subject in a bit. Antolini continues:
"Once you get past all the Mr. Vinsons, you're going to start getting closer and closer--that is, if you want to, and if you look for it and wait for it--to the kind of information that will be very, very dear to your heart. Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them--if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's history. It's poetry."
This is one of the most powerfully comforting and encouraging things I've read in a long time, and it reminded me of how great literature can be. It was pouring rain out when I read it, and I read it again because it was just so meaningful to me. The truth is, I'm not half so troubled now as I was a year ago, though I certainly do have my troubles.
"Something else an academic education will do for you. If you go along with it any considerable distance, it'll begin to give you an idea what size mind you have. What it'll fit, maybe, and what it won't. After a while, you'll have an idea what kind of thoughts your particular size mind should be wearing. For one thing, it may save you an extraordinary amount of time trying on ideas that don't suit you, aren't becoming to you. You'll begin to know your true measurements and dress your mind accordingly."
And maybe that's about where I am now.
Now here for something different. This is a poem my dad sent me in an email last week:
INTO MY OWN, by Robert Frost
One of my wishes is that those dark trees,
So old and firm they scarcely show the breeze,
Were not, as 'twere, the merest mask of gloom
But stretched away until the edge of doom.
I should not be withheld but that some day
Into their vastness I should steal away,
Fearless of ever finding open land,
Or highway where the slow wheel pours the sand.
I do not see why I should e'er turn back,
Or those should not set forth upon my track
To overtake me, who should miss me here
And long to know if still I hold them dear.
They would not find me changed from him they knew--
Only more sure of all I thought was true.
Robert Frost, what a romantic you are. I get that, though. However, what most intrigues me is that last stanza and the couplet at the end. It makes me wonder about whether I'm changing while abroad. I think a lot, and really, I'm not sure I agree with that last bit of the poem. It's true, these lines of Frost are quite idealistic, but what a curious thing to contrast at the end the idea of remaining the same (yet more so) with the idea of total independence. People have a way of always wishing they were elsewhere, as Salinger pointed out, and I'm certainly no stranger to that feeling. However, being abroad (it's been almost five weeks now, and I'm nearly halfway through my summer abroad) as long as I have now, I've come to realize how important to me are the connections I have back home and the people who have been close to me. So it's true, I am learning to be more sure of all the things I tried so hesitantly to hold on to in the past, and that's a very good thing.
To close, I was never ready to go to college. Two years ago, I was graduating from high school in a ridiculous ceremony at Disney Hall in Downtown Los Angeles, but I was happy to see everyone all together, including my grandmother and grandfather and my cousin and my immediate family. I wasn't thrilled to be going to Tufts, but I was getting more excited for it, and I was really really looking forward to spending a week in Australia in July. Looking back on that time, I had so very much less experience with life, and I was so much more unsure as a person. As much as I probably think too much now, I REALLY thought too much then. When I got to college, I really couldn't deal with the parties, the drinking, the culture, the academia, the people--anything, really. But as a good friend told me, maybe that's what college is for--learning how to be ready for college. There's an interesting way to think about it.
I know that I should be living in the moment here and making the most of the incredible place where I am, but part of that whole process is realizing just how important those connections are to me.
I'm looking to the future, to August 2010 when I return to Tufts, and I'm wondering excitedly what sort of person I'll be. I'll be a lot more mature, I know, and much better able to handle myself as a person. I'm already doing better academically, and though it's still hard sometimes, I'm certain that I'm where I need to be. I always knew that I needed to go abroad--I've known it since I was in high school, or maybe even earlier. It's hard, but I'm doing what I need to do, and if I hadn't gone, I wouldn't have been on the right track to learn how to be happy. When I return to Tufts, I can't wait to see what it will feel like to finally be there and be ready for it. I can't wait to give it a try. I can't wait to see everyone, and to get interested in academics.
Japan is also going to be great. I'll be a lot more in control of my personal space there, and I'm also more interested in Japanese culture. That language might be even HARDER than Russian though. I never actually believed anyone when they told me that Russian is hard. Hah. HAH. Yes, YES, Russian is hard!!
I'm nearly halfway through my summer abroad, and it's proving to be what it needs ot be. Onward and forward.
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