I love trucks. I have loved trucks, buses, and cars ever since I was, well, I don't even remember how old, but let's just say that I think the highlight of kindergarten for me was getting a tour of the school bus garage. Like any self-respecting guy, I love cars and motorcycles and other stuff that drives, and I have my own dream car (two actually--an Audi R8 or a 1972 GTO), but my real love is for trucks and buses. Dump trucks, tankers, garbage trucks, reefers, car carriers, semis, fire trucks, doubles and triples, cement mixers, cab overs, sleepers, over-the-road buses--I love them all. 

Russia is a good place for a truck lover. Russian trucks are no-frills workhorses that are built for plying rough roads with big loads in all kinds of nasty weather. The Kamaz rules the world of the Russian truck. The name Kamaz is derived from the name of a factory (Kamskiy Avtomobilniy Zavod), and these trucks are made in the city of Naberezhniye Chelny. These trucks are big, heavy, and break any Western emissions regulation. They aren't all dressed up and chromed to the hilt like modern American trucks, but they are built to do work, not to win a beauty contest. Besides, there is something cool about these brutes. Kamaz trucks are modified to do all kinds of jobs, and even the Russian army uses modified Kamaz trucks in their operations. Here are some pictures of the tough Russian Kamaz in action.

 

You find lots of funny bad English translations in Russia. My personal favorite bad translations are in restaurant menus, but the botched English is everywhere. This was on an arcade game in a junky supermarket in my neighborhood. I think the Chinese are really responsible for this mess of English--I'm sure the machine was made in China.

Tonight another teacher and I took part in a Pecha Kucha night here in Vladimir. For those who are unfamilliar, Pecha Kucha is a presentation format where you have 20 sides which are timed for 20 seconds each. I learned about this type of presentation in college, and we were taught that the slides should be only pictures, which creates a very cool, very visual presentation. People here in Vladimir didn't follow the no-text rule, but the presentations were interesting nonetheless. Also, the presentations are short; each one takes only six minutes (too bad my professors couldn't have followed this format...). There were a total of eight presentations tonight, and they ranged in topic from an etymological history of Russian good-luck proverbs to a very-detailed overview of the ancient Chinese game go to a summary of Slavic women's gymnastics, which, from what I gathered, is basically a hyper gender-normative version of yoga (the lady who gave the presentation said that this brand of gymnastics is only for women and will help women reconnect with their essential feminine nature).

We did our presentation on American food--more specifically, about American sandwiches. We told the assembled audience about 19 popular American sandwiches, everything from PB&J to po' boys. We listed the main ingredients and talked a little about the popularity or the history of each sandwich. And, of course, all this was done in Russian. We went last, and of course it was a bit nerve-racking waiting around and thinking about how to use my Russian to phrase 20-second blurbs about American sandwiches. But it all turned out well, and I think people found our presentation, if not interesting, then at least appetizing   Here are some pictures:

OK so this looks like abdominal fat and heart disease on a plate, but actually it was my dinner. Those are fried potatoes covered with melted cheese, fried liver-and-onion patties, a bowl of cabbage and sliced carrots (basically coleslaw without the mayo), and a glass of kefir, which is a kind of yogurt-like milk product (it's actually healthy). This amazingly mono-color dinner was delicious in a gluttonous, fatty sort of way, but I can already feel the cholesterol accumulating in my heart. Yum.

I've had a couple of big days and a real shortage of sleep, so I'm taking a night off, staying home, and watching Skyfall (I still haven't see it!) tonight. I had a very busy week at work, and I have been honing my Russian billiards game, which is a hobby that necessarily happens when I should really be sleeping. Russian billiards is a very tough game: You can hit any ball with any ball (not like in American pool), but the table is bigger, and the pockets are exactly the size of the balls, so you have to be extremely accurate with your shots.

But I'll talk about billiards some other time. I have something far more exciting now. This morning, one of the other teachers and I went with my Russian friend to a school in my neighborhood and gave a presentation about growing up in America. My friend graduated from this school a few years ago, and one of his teachers invited us there. We met at 9am, and we went to Vladimir's School #36. The school building itself was nothing special--a little beat up and dingy--but it is considered the best school in terms of educational quality in the city. We met my friend's former teacher and had some coffee, and then we went into the classroom. This was just a regular class--history, I think--and I don't think anyone in the class spoke much English at all. So we did the presentation all in Russian.

I prepared some pictures that illustrated a regular day for an American teenager--school, sports, clubs, friends, and jobs. My friend also put together some pictures of our home states and universities; the Russian students now know a lot more about Ohio and Mississippi than they ever would have imagined. We showed a little video of cool time-lapse photography of natural places and cities in America, and then we took questions. The students asked some really interesting--and sometimes tough--questions, including "How do guys meet girls in America?" "What literature is popular in America?" "What do you think of America's penchant for sticking its nose into other countries' business?" and "What possessed you to come to Russia?" This whole thing went on for almost two hours, and, although my friend translated a few phrases where he could, we did the whole thing in Russian. I was kind of nervous about speaking in front of a class of Russian teenagers in Russian, but actually it went fine. Of course they chuckled a little when I mispronounced the occasional word, but I had them laughing more at my jokes than at me, and that's always the goal.

After the presentation, we went back to the teacher's office and had more coffee and chocolates (normal fare at any Russian office meeting), and we talked more with the teacher and a few of her students. She said that she will put together some pictures of the presentation and send it to my friend within a week or two, so hopefully I'll be able to post some pictures soonish.

I had a great morning in the sportzal a few days ago. I was doing a back workout, which is one of my favorite workouts. Lately the gym has been quite empty in the mornings, and it is usually just me and a few other people. We're all regulars, so we all shake hands whenever we walk in (it's a Russian custom), and sometimes we get a conversation going between sets (a great time to brush up on my Russian cursing).

On this morning, however, one guy who I see all the time apparently decided that I was worth talking to. Every gym has its pecking order, and this guy is definitely at the top of the AM pecking order at Akademia Tela in Dobroe. This guy is huge, and everybody else definitely makes way for him. It turns out that he served in Spetsnaz--Russia's special forces. He gave me some pointers on my form and workout program (advice is always appreciated). He also told me all about the process for getting into Spetsnaz, which is pretty intense. According to him, you have to withstand a few rounds of what amounts to mixed fighting with some of the best fighters in the special forces. After telling me all this, he noted that I could apply to join if I wanted to. I'm nearly positive that he knows that I'm American, but I didn't bother to tell him that I would have to give up my citizenship to join Spetsnaz. That's not gonna happen. Although, after watching this video, I have to admit that those Spetsnaz guys can do some cool stuff. Check it out:

Spetsnaz Video

(The video is of a police special response unit doing a demonstration in Kazan, Russia). 

Here's a picture of a nasty accident I saw tonight. A car appearantly tried to go around a bus, hit the back of the bus, and spun around into the other lane. There were lots of police officers around, and the car was completely destroyed. Hopefully everyone walked out of this one alive.

Most Russians live in apartment buildings of between five and nine floors (big cities have taller buildings; the tallest apartment building I've ever been in was a 26-floor building in Moscow). In order to reach their apartments, of course, most people ride elevators. Most apartment buildings also have several different entrances that don't connect to each other, which means that most buildings have quite a few elevators.

These elevators are nothing fancy, and usually they are tiny little cubicles that are frequently dirty and sometimes scrawled with graffiti. Elevators here are usually pretty primative too. For example, my host mom and I got into the elevator in our building with another lady, and I asked the lady what floor she was going to and pushed the button for her floor and my floor. This confused the elevator, and my host joked that Russian elevators have no memory. Another funny thing about the place I lived in Moscow was that the building had eight floors, but the elevator had buttons for 12 floors. I always wondered what would happen if I pushed 12....

Elevators also break down fairly often, and that is big problem if you're an old lady who lives on the 11th floor. There is only one elevator that will get you to your apartment, and if it's broken, you have to trudge up all the stairs carrying your bags of bread, potatoes, and cabbage. The elevator in my entrance breaks down every so often, and it wasn't working for a few days last week. I saw lots of unhappy people slogging up and down the stairs those days. Here's a picture of the broken elevator in my building and the inside of the elevator in the building where I lived in Moscow.

I've gone ice skating a few times this winter, and going ice skating in Russia is an interesting experience. First, I don't have skates, so I have to rent them. That requires giving some old lady your passport (the look on everybody's faces when I pull out my American passport is priceless). The poor ladies always struggle to figure out how to write my last name, but so far I haven't had any problems (no one has sold my passport yet).

Once I get my skates, it's time to hit the ice. As a whole, people here can skate pretty well, but a skating rink in Russia operates on the same set of rules as Russian driving--chaotic anarchy. People skate against the flow of traffic, stop without any warning, and weave in and out of other people. Add a whole bunch of tiny little kids who come up to my knees and some old ladies who totter around and get in everybody's way and you have a nearly limitless potential for crashes. I can skate decently well, but I'm not all that good at stopping on a dime, and that's a very useful skill here. Last week I was skating and a little toddler girl fell right in front of me. I was looking back at my friends and didn't see this happen, and I only noticed the girl just as I was about to skate right into her. So I spread my legs really wide and skated right over her, which made everyone around laugh.

Here are a few pictures of ice skating last weekend. We went to a big outdoor rink that all the Russians said was like an artifact out of the Soviet Union. The tickets you get when your pay for your entrance onto the ice were printed by the order of some defunct Soviet agency in 1977. The skates were kind of lousy, but the ice was decent, and there was the greatest of Russian/American pop music playing over tinny loudspeakers.

Here's another hit from the Russia playlist. This song is called Nogi (legs), and it is by the group Diskoteka Avariya. It plays on the radio a lot, and I especially love when it plays while I'm doing a leg workout at the gym. This video is kind of racy, but they show it on Russian TV, so it can't be that bad.

Milk in bags? Welcome to Russia. Here milk is often sold in one-liter bags, which surprised me at first. To use this milk, you cut off one of the corners of the bag and pour. They even make a little pitcher thing that holds the milk bag--quite convenient. Lot of other foods (ketchup and mayonnaise, for example) also come in bags here, and actually it saves resources to use a bag instead of a big carton. Here's a picture of a bag of milk in a pitcher on my counter.