Banya

Perhaps two of my favorite pictures from this past weekend:

X-Treme Russia

This weekend I had, perhaps, my most brilliant idea ever (even though Ithaca and I decided that the whole weekend seemed like the perfect setting for a horror film about Americans who end up getting killed in the Russian countryside).
What follows is a recounting of our amazing Russian adventure…

The Characters
The Americans:
Meganka (Me)-The one from the very hot place.
Dylan- The one from the place that no one has ever heard about.
Ithaca- The one from Old Russia
The Russians:
Jenya- A Russian engineer finishing up his degree at VSUES. He has helped to plan and create a system of atomization in the assembly line for Russian car companies.
Sasha- A 25 year old woman who has lived in Vladivostok for all of her life and has a two year old son.
Alexander (Sasha)- The friend, and colleague, of Jena.
Julia- The girlfriend of Alexander.

The Back Story
Thursday night my friend, Jordan, came into my room and wanted to warm up some Russian milk, add sugar to it, and then drink it so that we could sleep off more of our sickness. We soon realized that they had already closed the kitchens for the night, and so we went on a mission to try and find a hot water heater or a microwave. As luck would have it, when we were in one of the other American's room, we ran into a Russian by the name of Jenya. Jordan had previously met him, but he was super excited to meet another American, and he proceeded to ask me a million questions. Once he found out that we wanted warm milk but had not way to heat it, he had us follow him to his room where he quickly started taking care of us. He heated our milk, and then when we were done with that he washed our cups and made us tea. He made sure we were comfortably seated, and as soon as I coughed one too many times, he forced me to take some medicine that would make my throat feel better.
Eventually, Jordan and I told him that we needed to go to sleep finally. But, before we could leave, he said something to Jordan and next thing I knew I had promised him that I was going to go somewhere with him on Saturday. When we left the room, I asked Jordan what had just happened, and she told me that I was going to go to some Russian cabin out in the country side, although even she wasn't that sure where. {She wanted to come along but this weekend she had to fly to Moscow to take the LSATs...so it wasn't really an option for her}.
Friday, I receive a text from Jenya telling me that I should check my e-mail because he's sent me some more information about our adventure. And after reading it, I got very excited. Roughly translated I had been invited along to stay at a little bed in breakfast type place near by an old mountain, which millions of years ago had been underwater and was a huge coral reef. The plan was to go explore some of the caves and then see a waterfall before heading back to Vladivostok on Sunday.
So I quickly convinced my confidants (Dylan and Ithaca- who almost stupidly backed out because they often think my ideas suck), and we all, somewhat wearily, decided that we would see where Jenya (a Russian guy that I had just met and they had never seen) was going to take us.

Act I
8:10 AM, Jenya came to my room and I introduced him to Dylan and Ithaca before we followed him to his Prius, which was parked outside of the university. Thankfully, Jenya was so excited that we were Americans and he was very patience that we were able to talk in a mixture of broken Russian and English as we started driving away from Vladivostok. He told me that we had to stop to pick up another girl on our way, and so next thing we know we’re driving on some back road with a mixture of different shack type houses and cute little country homes with gardens along the side. Eventually, on the left there was a girl standing by the fence with some bags and she hopped into the car. Her name was Sasha.
From Sasha’s house, we make our way back the highway and stop at a grocery store to get food for the weekend. Here there was some confusion, as Ithaca Dylan and I didn’t know if we were each buying our own food or if one person was going to buy a lot and then get reimbursed, but our sub-par Russians skills eventually cleared it all up. However, as we were carrying the food out of the store, Sasha and Jenya both realized that we had nothing good to drink. So we went back into the store for some ‘Russian drinks’ and some juice.
In the parking lot, we met up with Alexander and Julia, and Dylan hopped into their car. This was the true beginning of our adventure.

Act II
None of us really knew where we were going exactly, or how long it was going to take, but I mentioned to Sasha that I definitely would need to pee before we got too far on our way, so we took a pit stop at a roadside café/kiosk. We took some time to eat some sandwiches and drink some tea, and then we were soon driving deep into the Russian country side.
Jenya was a wonderful conversationalist, and we talked about everything from genetically modified food to our hobbies. He and Sasha I think really like the opportunity to practice some of their English.
Then, randomly, Jenya pulled off on the side of the road next to these twiggy trees that had hundreds of small strips of fabric tied into them. They explained to us that it’s a Russian tradition to make a wish and then tie a piece of fabric on a limb of one of the trees. So that’s exactly what we did.  

      

Once we got back in the cars…we got lost. Thankfully, however, Alexander asked these people on a motorcycle for directions and they led us to the correct ‘road.’

              

Act III

After pretty successfully driving their small cars though all the puddles and divots, we came to a river. This being Russia, the bridge over the river would have killed the underside of most cars, so the next best option in front of us was to drive the cars across the river. I was very nervous and was half expecting this to be where we would have to turn around and give up our countryside holiday. But someone was smiling down on us and both cars made it across the river like it was no big deal.

     

And thankfully not too far after our forging of the river, we made it to our destination!

         

Act IV

While I still don’t really know the name of the place we were at, we all piled our stuff into our room and a very nice Russian woman, who was one of the owners of the place, showed us all around the property. She told us that we had arrived too late in the day to be able to do all the hiking we had planned on, but we decided that we would cook some food and then go on a three mile hike.

This was one of the times where I really wished my Russian was better than it was because I felt like the Russians were just taking care of us and we couldn’t do anything to help because we had no idea what was really going on. But we did start trying to make some form of conversation over the meal.

Before we left on our hike, the owner of the B&B (for lack of a better name) sat us down and drew us three different maps of where we could go hiking, and I think she was explaining all the cool things we would see. It was perhaps one of my favorite moments of the weekend because it was just funny to watch a bunch of us huddled around a woman drawing crazy lines and circles and mountain like things on paper. 

        

But, with our professionally drawn maps, we headed out in the forest, with everything from extra layers to flash lights in case we didn’t make it back before dark.

Act V

It’s hard to describe the places we went on our hike, especially since us Americans really had no idea what our final destination was/if we had a final destination, but it was great fun to just follow a bunch of Russians around. Eventually, after climbing up the steepest path up a mountain I may have ever seen, we were able to explore a few caves and just enjoy the amazing view.

  

   

  

During the whole hike we had a lot of good conversations about movies and different animals that live in our respective countries. We would teach the Russians a word in English for every new word we learned in Russian. One of the more memorable lessons include us trying to explain to the Russians that in English you have cheeks on your face, but you also have cheeks on your butt. They got a kick out of that, let me tell you.

I also got my own firsthand experience with Russian chivalry. So I had brought my small over the shoulder purse to carry my camera, some flash lights, and our passports in case we died and our bodies needed to be identified. However, about halfway through the hike Jenya decided that I could no longer carry my purse, and he carried it for me the rest of the way up the mountain and all the way to our room. Once I tried to take it from him, but he immediately took it back and told me it was nothing for him. As we were climbing down the mountain, which was perhaps ten times more dangerous and difficult than climbing up it, Jenya also let me use him as support so that I didn’t slip and roll away. And at any point if you were too far behind all the Russians would constantly call back and ask if you were ok. Just another example of how kind Russians are.

Act VI

Once we successfully got back to our temporary home just a little after dark, we started the relaxing part of our weekend. We buddled up in our coats and headed outside to cook shaslik, which is pretty much the Russian version of BBQ but without the sauce. This is also when the toasting to new friends and our amazing day began. 

 

And after we finished eating as much shaslik as our stomachs could possible handle, it was time for our first official Russian banya experience, which is basically like a sauna, but not.

Imagine wrapping yourself in a thin sheet and entering a small room with two stoves and having 200 degrees F of heat slap you in the face. I’ve never been in such a hot environment where it was hard to breathe before. Inside, they also have a bunch of branches with leaves on them that they dip in water and whack each other on the back with, which looks like some awful flogging technique but actually feels like a nice massage. However, any banya experience is not complete without also jumping into a cold body of water. So, Ithaca, Julia, and I all got up the guts to run outside after getting nice and toasty in the banya and we dove head first into a freezing cold pool. We then quickly put our sheets back on and ran back into the banya, which at that point felt like the perfect temperature.

When we weren’t sweating all of the water out of our bodies, we continued to toast with the Russians, discuss anything we could figure out how to explain, and sing/dance to a mixture of English and Russian songs. Dylan and I both had to make toasts at one point, and thanks to our wonderful Russian teachers back at Lewis and Clark we didn’t make a fool or ourselves. Dylan toasted the end of the Cold War, which all the Russians thought was pretty funny, and I toasted the beautiful Russian nature that we had spent all day exploring, which they thanked me for. Success

     

The next day we cooked up some mushrooms the Russians had found in the woods, with some potatoes, and then packed up and headed back to Vlad. Needless to say, Ithaca and slept a fair amount of the way back. But when I was sleeping, Jenya and I continued to try and talk about things. One of the more interesting things we talked about was Russian sky-diving. It’s only 30 dollars here. 

Perhaps it will be our next adventure???

This One Time in Vladivostok...

1. My roommate, Katya, invited some of us Americans to a cafe. From what I understood after talking to her, we were all going to hang around, eat some cookies, drink some juice, and look at some of her artwork on display there.

What we actually ended up doing, though, was going to a cafe (where there were cookies and juice, so at least I understood that correctly) and sitting through a informal 'Learn English' class for Russians. While it was not what I was expecting at all, it was actually pretty fun to help explain why we say the things that we do. And after the lesson, we exchanged some info with a few people, and I even got to jam on the guitar. Eventually, Katya was saying that she will have some of her artwork on display there...so really I knew what she was talking about...kind of.

2.  Jordan, one of the other Americans, and I went to a bar not far from campus to celebrate Katya's brother's birthday. And while this time there wasn't any lacking information in my translation, our night was not without its fair share of surprises. First, that Russian apparently like to take their own tip from the change that they give you back at the bar. Secondly, (and probably only a shock to me since she's already been to Russian several times) because Jordan is African American, everyone and their mother tried to dance with, like, or on her at some point of the evening. And lastly, that Russians love to гулять. It doesn't matter what time of day or night (in our case 4 am), Russian will stroll with no particular destination in mind and no other desire than to walk. 

{As an aside, let me just say that on principle I actually really like thier love of гулятьing. But that evening, Jordan and I had everything against us. Both of us were kind of feeling under the weather. Jordan was wearing heels. And we had a whole 2 hours to гулять in the somewhat chilly Vladivostok air before we were going to be able to get back into the dorms.}

3. I got decently sick, and all of my Russian teachers have given me their own versions of health advice. It does get overwhelming sometimes now to have teachers randomly stop me in the hallway  or interrupt class to ask me how I'm feeling and if I have enough medicine with me, but I will always love how much the Russians care about you if you're under the weather. It's kind of like have 10 moms...only we don't really speak each others languages very well... 

4. We went to the center and celebrated that Day of the Tiger! It was so exciting to see all the people, of all ages mind you, dressed up in crazy tiger costumes or ridiculous orange outfits. We even got to see a cute group of Russians girls sing and dance to a few songs. Afterwards, we decided to stick around for the rock concert in the evening. And, let me tell you, after eating a very interesting version of a cheeseburger, we experienced on heck of a show. We saw three bands, with each one only being allowed a set of two songs. It almost had a battle of the bands feel to it, and there was a nice mix of Russian and American songs. But what really took the cake was the the totally unexpected cover of the Ghost-busters song. Never have I ever thought I would see a crowd go that wild for that song. Great fun.

5. I had to explain (in Russian) to one of my fellow peers who is from Korea, that, contrary to the John Denver song Country Road, West Virginia is NOT almost heaven, and that he should maybe rethink the places he wants to visit when he comes to America. {These are the little things that keep me going}

More Stories and Pictures to come....

My First Week in Vladivostok

The Traveling Part

I am happy to report that the flights from Phoenix to JFK, JFK to Moscow, and Moscow to Vladivostok were rather uneventful, and the only thing that really threw me for a loop was the fact that we had to recheck our bags and go through security again at each stop.   Thankfully, though our layovers were long enough so that we had enough time, and my bag did not get lost.

On the way to Moscow I sat next to a nice guy from America who was going to Moscow just for a short vacation. He didn’t know a single word of Russian (I tried to teach him a few useful ones), but he seemed perfectly content with that. Than on the flight to Vlad, I sat next to a woman who had lived in Vlad all of her life and was returning from visiting her daughter in Moscow. She was very nice, and patiently let me butcher her native language so that she could answer all of my questions in her own somewhat broken English. We ate our Russian plane meals together and talked about everything form cool places in Vladivostok that she thought I would like to how the school system works.

The Getting to the University Part

At the airport we eventually met two very nice girls who are also students at Vladivostok State University of Economics and Services (VSUES), and we all piled into a very European looking van and headed off to the university. One of the first things that struck me was that, unlike the rest of Europe, people still drive on the right side of the road here. But more interesting is that there is a mixture of both European cars- with the driver seat on the right- and American/Japanese cars- with the driver seat on the left. The roads also usually lack lane lines, and cars just haphazardly weave in and out of traffic. Our driver, though, was very skilled and got us safely to VSUES, and we hauled our stuff up several flights of stairs into our rooms. 

The Moving In Part

Because the university here is broken up into so many different departments, not everyone starts school one the same day. So, when we arrived on Sunday no one had yet to move into my suite. I will eventually post some photos of the room, but it’s pretty small, our beds are permanently bunked, and there is a small fridge in every room. Most of the suites have its own toilet and shower room (my does at least), and I think at most six people ever share them at once. Everything went rather smoothly with quickly organizing the room, but Ithaca and I did run into our first hurdle when we had to make our beds. The international affairs people and our equivalent of an RA had asked us if we needed help making our beds, but we assured them it would be fine- because, I mean, we know how to make a bed. But of course, once we finally decided to make them, we realize we had a weird sheet with a hole in it (which turned out of be a duvet cover), a normal top sheet, a blanket, and a comforter. Confused, I of course decided to make things much too complicated and instead of covering our comforter, stuffed our mattress rolls into the duvet cover, which was no easy task. 

The Tour of the School Part

So keeping in mind that it was Sunday when we arrived, one of the students gathered us up and took us on a little tour. But because school hadn’t started for anyone yet and so many things are just closed on Sunday in Russia, our tour consisted of a lot of “usually you can go through this door to get to…” and “oh we will see that some other time since it is closed today.” We did experience a bit of the maze that is VSUES, however. It almost seems impossible, but to get anywhere on campus you literally NEVER have to walk outside. The school even has its own small collection of vendors and shops where you can buy anything from a tan to a winter coat, which you can get to by walking through a strange white door below the cafeteria. We joke that it’s easier for one of the students living with a family in the center of town to navigate their way to school, than for anyone to find their way to class. 

The First Class Part

So on Monday we were led to this room somewhere in the university at about 9:15 in the morning. For the longest time I really had no idea what we were doing there and nobody came into the room to tell us what was happening. Then someone informed us that we were going to take our placement test and that someone would be in shortly to administer it to us. But of course shortly turned into at least 20 minutes of anxious waiting. Eventually, we took the exam and were sectioned into groups and given schedules for the week. 

The Figuring Out Where Ithaca and I Belong Part

Let's just say, after classes on Tuesday and Wednesday, Ithaca and I both felt as if a very fast Russian train had just rammed into us. Things were going very fast, everyone else in our group had better Russian than us, and we couldn't even understand half of the words they were using to define other words that we didn't know. We thankfully met with one of the international department people and she quickly switched our whole schedule around so that we could be in a bit of an easier group. Now, with Thursday and Friday classes under our belts, I think our spirits are much higher and we're actually learning, instead of quickly drowning. 

The Random Adventures Part

 So other interesting things that have happened since being here have involved random excursions to the city and beyond. Our first taste of Vladivostok was led by the international department- Elena and Lena. We drove and walked around different parts of the city and even drove all the way across what is now the longest suspension bridge in the world to Russky Island and saw where they had built the huge APEC conference hall.

Thursday, Ithaca and I met up with one of the other American students, Danielle, and her roommate Aliona, and we went to the Chinese market. It took about an hour to get there on bus, but it was very worth it. There are a lot of cheap things that can be haggled down if your Russian is good enough, and there's an inside mall, as well as an outside area covered by a tarp. After walking around there for a while, we went to a nearby pizza place, which wasn't too bad, and then made our way make to the dorms.

The next night we climbed up to a higher point behind the university- Eagle's Nest' and looked at the skyline of the city, which was very beautiful. We had one random Russian guy with us who simply wanted to lead us around because he was excited by the fact that we were American, and our other Russian friend Dima who speaks pretty good English.

Yesterday, we spent the morning in the city, ate some really good bliny and we rode a Farris Wheel on the main pier in the city, and then took a long long LONG bus ride to a popular beach outside of Vladivostok. We certainly experience a normal Russian bus ride- crowed and hot and bumpy and LONG. The beach was very much worth it however, and Ithaca, Miles, Micah (two other Americans) and I all swam some and then we built a little fort while soaking up the sun. Yes, the sun. We timed it well, though, as the weather is soon going to get colder and colder. 

And Lastly, the Roommate Part

I do officially have a roommate whose name is Katya. So far we have not really been in the room at the same time so we haven't talked much, but she seems very nice. She has already offered to let me borrow her hair dryer, and even though she speaks super fast, I really think I catch most of what she's saying. I think as time goes on it'll be really great to have her around. And as far as the suite mates go...still haven't really met them, but I think I'll just go over there when most of them are in the room and make a fool of myself soon. 

Pictures