Here come the holidays!

Well folks, as the holidays approach I can't help but notice the Christmas trees, holiday decorations, and unnaturally short days that plague this northern land in the wintertime. These days I wake up at about 7:30 in total darkness, eat breakfast, head to the metro (still in total darkness), ride on trains underground for an hour, arrive at Vasilievsky Island at about 9:20, and the sun starts coming up. You can enjoy sunlight as much as you want until about 4:30 when it becomes very dark very quickly. And the days are getting shorter yet!

It really is quite remarkable to me that it's possible to maintain a city of 5 million in such circumstances, yet it's also somehow enchanting. I'm finally getting around to read Преступление и Наказание (Crime and Punishment) and Dostoevsky's St. Petersburg is in many ways alive to this day.

Here's a snapshot I took while strolling downtown at dusk. There was a thin layer of ice on the Fontanka which was remarkably reflective.
There's not a whole lot to report otherwise; life is plugging along. I'm coming home for the holidays on December 13th and very much looking forward to it -- I haven't ever missed a Christmas with the family, and I'm not interested in breaking that tradition anytime soon.

Jono

Щи да каша - пища наша

Nina Vasileevna and Vitalii Petrovich Ctetsenko are my host parents, and we live in a cozy 3 room apartment near Pionerskaya metro station.

Right about... here.

It's about a 50 minute commute to my building at St. Petersburg State on Vasilevskii island, so all in all, not bad.

Nina Vasileevna is retired with the exception of taking care of me, a task to which she puts forth a great amount of attention (and I am quite thankful!). If I could find a fault with her cooking, it might be that there's always a little too much of it located in my belly, but it pleases her when I eat a lot, so i try my best :).

Vitalii Petrovich is an engineer with a construction company. If I had a similar education, I might be able to more accurately explain exactly what kind of projects his organization works on, but as of yet my understanding is still a bit dim. He's Ukranian in terms of nationality and I learn plenty of interesting colloquialisms, phrases, expressions in Russian and sometimes in Ukrainian.

Here's a picture from our dinner last night, which lasted for four hours and two bottles of cognac.


If there are any specific questions about my homestay, please send 'em my way.

-Иван

Moscow Doesn't Believe in Tears

My goodness! It has nearly been a month since my last entry and aren't I embarrassed... Naturally, much has occurred since mid-September and I can give you a quick rundown of the basics:

We had a week-long vacation from October 5th to October 12th, during which I was in Moscow with my friends Brad and Natasha. We took a night train from Moskovskii Terminal here in St. Petersburg to Kurskii Terminal in Moscow, arriving at 4:40 AM. Through Brad's connections with the Resident Director of ACTR's Moscow study abroad program, we got a nice room in the hotel/dormitory associated with the International University on Leningrad Prospect. The trip was a real blast and we more or less got our fill of tourism and nightlife. If you ever have the chance to visit Moscow, naturally I highly recommend it.

- As it turns out, a lot of my preconceptions about Moscow were off-the-mark. I had imagined Moscow as being almost entirely Soviet and rather drab, but in reality there's a lot of architectural variety depending on where you are in the city ranging from 'classical European' to Soviet to modern skyscrapers.
- Moscow is definitely an expensive city, and it's hard to tell how expensive a restaurant or cafe is going to be judging from its external appearance or interior decor.
- Red Square isn't nearly as big as I had imagined it. It's big, but not THAT big.
- Lenin doesn't look so good these days.
- Moscow seems to be more racially diverse than Petersburg (diversity of nationalities from former Soviet republics, naturally)
- Moscow has lots of cool boroughs and neighborhoods to explore, whereas Petersburg's hot spots tend to be located in the historical center of the city.

Here are some pics from the trip for you folks to enjoy... hopefully I'll add a few more in the near future.
http://picasaweb.google.com/jonwebah/MoskvaOct5Oct12

Also, the host fam and I are having our Resident Director Tim and Homestay Coordinator Lena over for dinner tomorrow night. I'm hoping some serious pictures will result and I'll finally be able to write that post about my homestay.

С любовью,
Джон

A Russian Versaille

Last entry I promised a post about my homestay and family, and - I assure you - it is in the works (I just left some notes, etc at home and don't want to print incorrect info about my hostfam, plus I haven't snapped pictures of them yet).

Instead, I'll just fill you in a bit about this past weekend:

Friday
As the last day of the work week, Friday holds a special place in everyone's heart. It's a different day for us because we don't have our regular 1.5 hour classes; instead, we have 45 minute classes and then a 1.5 hour lecture about language and culture ("лингвокультурология"). After the lecture, every other week we have an excursion to a museum, cathedral, or other culturally significant location.

Меншиковский Дворец / Menschikov Palace
Our excursion this week was to Menschikov Palace, which is only a stone's throw away from our university on Vasilii Island. Menschikov was the first Governor of St. Petersburg and close friend and adviser to Peter the Great. Menschikov Palace was the first stone mansion built in St. Petersburg and... well... if you'd like a thorough history, I'll just direct you to the wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menshikov_Palace ... and the article about Alexandr Menschikov himself : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Menshikov . Menschikov is actually an incredibly interesting fellow - one of those fantastically corrupt monarchical advisers who survived primarily by charming the Emperor.

Saturday
Natasha (one of the program participants) invited several of us to Petergof. Natasha was born in St. Petersburg, moved to the states when she was eight, and naturally speaks Russian quite well. It was initially a trip planned by her friend Nastya, and we were glad to be able to tag along.

Petergof
Originally planned and designed by Peter the Great, with the intent of creating a massive complex of palaces and gardens in the spirit of the French Palace at Versailles. Having never been to Versailles, I can't contrast the two, but I will say that Petergof is pretty darn opulent. If you get the chance to go, don't miss it. This past weekend was the last weekend that the fountains were operating before they shut them down for the winter (that's right, folks, it's mid-September and we're shutting down for winter).

I'm going to be posting all of my pictures to Picasa Web Albums for all to see. The first installment consists of the photos I took while at Petergof. The weather wasn't the best and thus I wasn't completely inspired to take snapshots of everything there was to see, but that will leave something for those who someday visit Petergof.

Without further ado: http://picasaweb.google.com/jonwebah/FlagshipPetergof

Long Days and soon-to-be Long Nights

Well it's Thursday, and I'm still recovering from a long Monday, frankly. Three hours of class in the morning leads to a forty-five minute session with a tutor -- not too bad, all things considered. We usually get out of class around 2 or so, which leaves a good chunk of day for whatever one's heart desires (usually a coffee or a beer). On Mondays, however, I have my спецкурс ('spetscours'), which is an elective course I'm auditing with Russians. The спецкурс is a bit of a marathon - it lasts four hours from 4 to 8 pm. Factor in an hour for transport and it means I leave in the morning at 8:30am and return home at 9pm.

The Спецкурс
'Modern Systems of Human Rights Defense' is a course outlining the history and current governmental and jurisprudential means of defending human rights. In our reader, which comes in at around 1,000 pages, there are translations of an early English bill of rights, the Virginia bill of rights, the US bill of rights, et cetera. So far, the course has been useful in terms of learning Russian lexicon as it relates to human rights, but also to other subjects such as law, economics, politics. Our professor is of Georgian descent and has spent time studying in Boston, which means he speaks English beautifully, but on the rare occasion in which he uses it with us, we generally choose to answer in Russian.

Here's a pretty picture that I took a little while back -- the view is from the southern bank of the Neva, looking onto Peter and Paul fortress.And another photo to whet your appetite for my next post which will be about my homestay and family... this is the view from the window of my apartment on Hercules avenue:

Day to Day

Naturally I've been asked various questions about day to day life here in Russia -- how are my classes, what's my host family like, et cetera... Well, let's get down to it:

Classes
We have five courses all together and our schedule splits them up over the course of the week. On any given day we have two courses for an hour and a half each. Then comes lunch and one-on-one time with tutors, and then the day is over. As you can tell, it's not a super-long day, but having one-on-one time with a tutor can be exhausting after 3 straight hours of class.

Grammar and Lexicon
This is the meat and potatoes of any language, but at our level it's a lot of discussing nuanced verbs and rarely employed high level phrases and vocabulary.

Speaking and Conversation
As you might expect, we do the most free speaking in this course while tackling various themes offhand. Challenging, depending the topic.

Phonetics
Have you ever heard a Russian speaking English and thought to yourself that their intonation sounds a bit morose and monotone? Well an American speaking Russian sounds like a moron, what with our rollercoaster intonation. Thus, we work on phonetics.

Language and Culture
So much of being able to understand a speaker of a foreign language depends on prior knowledge of history and culture. This course examines the connection between language, literature, film, music, et cetera. Do you know what 'riding as a rabbit' ("ехать зайцем") means?

Writing
More specifically, letter writing. Although I would not have thought we'd need an entire course for letter writing, I'm finding that this course is helpful in terms of writing style. After all, the phrases that a corporation would use in a correspondence to a client (continuous passive voice, et cetera) are useful in all forms of official writing.

We're also auditing a course of our choice among Russian students. Currently I'm in 'Modern Systems of Human Rights Defense' and it looks to be an interesting course.

On a typical day, a fully English phrase does not pass though my lips. It's great to be in Russia again and to have such committed students of Russian in the program with me. We speak Russian at all times and although there have already been a few days when I've felt like a TOTAL dolt, I'm beginning to notice small improvements in my speech. Baby steps...

JW

I have found the Ark

Well, until today I was in trouble in terms of finding a reasonable place to use the internet. In practically every internet cafe in St. Petersburg, it seems, the prices have risen slightly. Combined with the fact that the dollar has decreased in value relative to the ruble (from approx 29 rubles to the dollar to 25 rubles to the dollar), it costs consistently more to access the internet. The going rate for an hour at an internet cafe is now 100 rubles (4 bucks). That is, frankly, too much.

Browsing through the yellow pages the other night, I found a cafe called 'Star Cafe'. The ad in the yellow pages said that there was free internet and free wifi there. Booya. Hopefully I'll be in better connection with everyone via the internet from now on. I figure I have budgeted a coffee/beer a day for myself, so I can afford to come here and use the internet for free.

Until next time,
JWeb

Feet on the Ground

FRIDAY, AUGUST 31

Well, folks, it's been a while since the last entry in this renowned blog, and rightfully so. Had I posted constant updates from day to day about what we were doing and how I was acclimating to all of it, I assure you that you would have been bored, outside of the fact that you would have questioned my sanity (in retrospect, I, too, question my sanity).

After flying off on Friday at 6:00pm eastern standard time, we flew into Munich (my 3^rd time in Germany without stepping out of an airport) and then from Munich flew to St. Petersburg. Our program's resident director would have normally been with us, but due to the fact that the long-standing RD for the Flagship program departed this summer, Tim Dempsey (our new RD) was held up due to the complicated and time consuming Russian visa process. Nevertheless, we successfully made our flights and met up at the airport with Lena Zinkevich, our homestay coordinator. She really picked up a lot of the duties that Tim unfortunately had to miss out on because of the visa debacle. We were eventually picked up by a small bus and dropped off to our respective homestays. I was the last to be dropped off, which basically means that I live the farthest from the city center.

This week was mainly orientation and what I would call a 'sampling' of the classes we're taking. Grammar and Lexicon, Phonetics, Reading, Conversation, and Writing. I won't get into those right now... in fact I'll leave the whole classes thing to another time, when I've had some more time in the trenches.

In terms of acclimation, I'm finally able to realize how nice it is to be back in St. Petersburg. During the first few days I was so horribly jet lagged I didn't know which way was up – I was sleeping during the day, awake at night, and basically miserable. It's amazing how lack of sleep can disrupt one's world.

That's all for now -- when I'm writing, I'm generally writing about what comes to my head at that particular moment. If there's something you'd like to hear about or if you have a suggestion for a blog topic, shoot me an email (jonwebah@gmail.com).

The Dream Team

The orientation has officially concluded in DC and the group has become more or less acquainted with one another. It's exciting to meet such passionate and skilled students of the Russian language and there's a certain camaraderie in having attained the Russian skills required to get into the program. The group is geographically and academically diverse. We were provided with this rundown of the program participants:

(In alphabetical order)
1. Natasha Berenshteyn - University of California (2007). BA Political Science, European Studies.
2. Alicia Evolga - Florida State University (2005). BA International Affairs [Russian].
3. Bradley Gorski - Georgetown University (2007). BA Russian.
4. Chloe Kitzinger - Yale University (2006). BA Philosophy.
5. Andrew Lohsen - Colby College (2006). BA Russian Language and Culture.
6. Susannah Powell - Davidson College (2004). BA Political Science, French.
7. Jordan Shedlock - Hamilton College (2006). BA Russian Studies, History.
8. Evan Villemez - Bradley University (2006). BA International Studies [Russia].
9. Jonathan Weber - University of Virginia (2007). BA Economics, Russian.
10. Audrey Wood - University of Pittsburgh (2005). BA Political Science.

Their pictures follow here, with the exception of Natasha (of whom I haven't managed to get a snapshot yet) and Alicia who, sadly, due to an urgent family matter will not be joining us for the program.











Brad








Chloe













Andrew

Susannah















Jordan














Audrey



















And our fearless Resident Director (RD), Tim Dempsey who just completed the Flagship program this past year.



I think that's enough for now. Tomorrow we leave for Russia.

A New Hope

I was recently having a drink at Kramer Books on DuPont Circle in DC and reflecting on the changes an undergraduate goes through during their final year. For me, the beginning of my senior year, rather than the end, was bittersweet. I had just finished a semester abroad in St. Petersburg and was uncertain of my desire to throw myself back into the college routine. Through my internship at American Councils I was able to continue my use of Russian, but the thought that I may never practically have a need to use the language was consistently nagging.

So... I decided to apply to the Russian Flagship Program, about which I had heard while I was in St. Petersburg. I won't bore you with the details, but it took some time. 3 Tests - 2 online, 1 phone interview; the works. I applied for the National Security Language Program fellowship, but did not receive it. When I was informed that I had been accepted to the study program nonetheless, my worries turned to the program's cost. In the end, I was lucky enough that the folks at ACTR who were administering the tests decided to fund me via several avenues including Fulbright-Hayes, and the State Department.

I return to St. Petersburg in a little over a week. The main purpose of this blog is to keep people updated as to my whereabouts and life abroad, but I hope it will also serve also as a means to keep in touch with friends and family, so please send me feedback and add comments!

-Jon

PS-
I'll try to keep it un-egocentric as possible, but egocentrism is a bit unavoidable given the nature of personal blogs.