Happy Halloween! Russia doesn't really celebrate Halloween, but we had a Halloween party last weekend for our students. Everyone had a great time, and I have to give the students props--they made some great costumes without any of the benefits of the commerical Halloween bonanza that we have at our disposal in the US. Here's a link to the American Home Facebook album of pictures from our party:

Halloween 2013

Russia is a stuffy place. We may disagree on our ideal room temperature, but if there is one thing that Americans don't like, it is a hot, stuffy room or car. The minute the air gets stale and heavy, we open the windows or crank on the AC. But this is not so in Russia. Everything is stifling and airless. This surprised me at first; Russia is famous for being a cold country, after all. It would seem that Russians would be hardened to the cold and not mind a pleasant chill or a fresh breeze.

Russians, however, are terrified of drafts and chilliness, and they prefer a much higher room temperature that most Americans can tolerate. The "healthy" room temperature here is considered to be 23 or 24 Celsius--that's 72 to 75 Fahrenheit. My parents always kept the thermostat at 66F and turned it down to 62 at night; that really makes for brisk winter mornings! Russians, however, start complaining of cold long before I've even noticed a chill, and they take extra precautions to ensure that they don't get cold. Today, it was about 50F, and people were walking around in winter coats with scarves and hats. I don't understand how they weren't dying--I was warm riding the bus in my spring jacket.

There is an explanation for this Russian fear of cold. Russians believe that cold air is a direct cause of illness. My host mom would always scold me for leaving the apartment with "my throat open" (not wearing a scarf) because that will cause a sore throat or a cold (never got one). Or people will immediately protest if someone opens a window on a stifling bus because it will make everyone sick (I feel like the cesspool of germ-filled stale air is probably more dangerous if you want to get technical). Russians strongly adhere to the belief that if your feet get cold, you will get a cold; someone explained to me that there is a direct connection between the nerves in your feet and the nerves in you lungs, and that is the cause for this propensity to illness. I'd be interested to know what the American Medical Association thinks about that.

The most dangerous of all, however, are drafts. My Russian teacher once explained to me how dangerous her apartment is because the desk in her room is positioned on a direct line between two windows. If they are both open, she immediately gets a cold. The cause? The air is moving in two directions and is entering the apartment from both windows, and that is somehow dangerous. Of course, the laws of air pressure would dictate that it's impossible for air to be entering the apartment from both windows at the same time without somewhere else for it to go, but, logic notwithstanding, my teacher insisted that she can always tell instantly when someone opens another window. This draft problem also happens in cars. It's OK to have one window open, but having two windows open at the same time is extremely dangerous. My teacher said that she and her family can't travel long distances in their car in the summer because it gets too hot, which is a problem because she would like to visit relatives in far-away cities. Making the drive bearable by opening the windows, however, is off the table: Her elderly mother can't take the chance of getting sick.

Now that I live on my own, I can freely open the windows and relish a fresh breeze without worrying about impending doom. But I still get a lot of complaints if I open a window or turn on the air conditioner while I'm teaching (it gets mighty stuffy and smelly in a small room with 13 people). Oh Russia.     

Wow that was a big week. It was midterm week at the American Home, which meant lots of questions and giving speaking and written exams. It was also the week of the annual Halloween Party, which our students love but which requires a lot of planning and work. On top of that, another teacher and I agreed to present at a research conference held by Vladimir State University, and, in order to do that, we had to write a research paper and prepare a presentation. Needless to say, I didn't have a lot of free time!

I was all worth it, though. The Halloween party was a success: 60 or so highly energetic Russian students (mostly teenage girls) showed up, and we turned the American Home into a haunted house. They carved pumpkins, learned to dance the thriller, and ate lots of junk food. It was like a little bit of America right here in Vladimir.

The research presentation also went well. Our paper was titled "Inequality in American education: the impact of location," and we focused on property tax's role in producing unequal outcomes in Ohio schools. It was a tough slug to get the paper written, but we definitely enlightened the academics at Vladimir State about a side of America that isn't covered in movies and pop songs (the usual sources of information about American culture). Our presentation highlighted two school districts in the Cleveland area that illustrate the correlation between property-tax revenues and school performance--Cleveland and Beachwood--and one that breaks the trend--Cleveland Heights-University Heights. We presented in English to a group of about 15 people, and, at least from their reactions, it seemed like they understood at least most of what we were saying. We even got a few questions. My favorite was, "Do private individuals support struggling public schools?"--I answered by bringing up the role of the Cleveland Foundation and other philanthropic organizations.

Also, most of my students did well on their midterms. Now I've got to grade a big stack of tests featuring such ESL gems as "I like to do it a lot" as a response to the question "How often do you do your homework?" and a lot of incomprehensible things like "I slip in my bad around until 23:00pm at week." (She means I go to bed at around 11:00pm on weeknights).  One day I'll have to make a blog dedicated to the stuff my students say....

Here are a few pictures from a trip some of the other teachers and I took to Moscow last weekend. We were lucky enough to get a sunny day (what a rarity!), and so it was nice to the capital city in all its glory.

As if in celebration of my birthday, the Olympic torch passed through Vladimir yesterday. And, it typical Russian fashion, it was a big production. There was a gaudy ceremony, replete with songs, dancing, tributes to Vladimir's past Olympic champions, and glorious speeches by political leaders: The governor of Vladimir Oblast said that this day would shine out as one of the brightest and best in our lives, a day that we would tell our grandchildren about. Perhaps things were verging on hyperbole. Then, after a troupe of Russian folk dancers did their thing and children from sport-focused schools demonstrated Vladimir's future athletic prowess, the Olympic flame was run onto the stage by some future Olympians, and the torch was lit. The torch was then paraded around the city, which shut down all the major roads and completely stopped public transportation, stranding people at work from 3 until 9pm. I got some pictures of this most-memorable occurrence on my Ipod:

The Sochi Olympics--brought to you by Coke. Oh globalism 

The governor and mayor

The lighted torch

Vladimir's future athletes showing their stuff 

A great article about the state of rural Russia. The same conditions definitely exist here just outside of Vladimir.

http://www.nytimes.com/newsgraphics/2013/10/13/russia/?ref=global-home

Russia's size is one of its greatest assets and greatest hindrances. The country has a tremendous amount of natural resources, but everything is amazingly spread out, and low density is expensive. Russians always say their country suffers from a lack of modern infrastructure--roads, air transportation, supply networks--and infrastructure improvement is a constant topic in political discussions. Huge amounts of expensive infrastructure have to be built to serve small, isolated communities, particularly in Siberia.

Roads and especially bridges are Russia's most lacking infrastructure area. Ivanovo, Vladimir, and Murom--cities with a combined population of over 800,000--are connected by a single, bumpy, two-lane road. That road passes through the center of Vladimir and crosses the little river Klyama on a two-lane bridge, which is always packed with traffic. That's because it's the only river crossing in the city and one of the only for many miles. When I was in Siberia, I noticed that ferries, hovercrafts, or ice crossings are the preferred way to get across rivers--there simply aren't many bridges.

This led me to realize how amazingly rich America is with bridges. The idea of having to drive far out of your way to get to a river crossing is unheard of, at least in the parts of America I've visited. Bridges are plentiful and generally not plagued by capacity problems. In a way, America has a bit of the opposite problem--too many bridges. We face big bills to maintain the bridges we have, whereas Russia suffers from a shortage of bridges and the expense of building new ones in far-flung regions. And it's not just in Siberia: A few years ago, Medvedev came to Murom to cut the ribbon on a large new bridge that replaced a rickety floating bridge--the kind that the army uses for temporary crossings--that had been the only crossing for many years. And that's in a city of over 100,000 people. Here's the new bridge, which I visited this past spring:

Russian fall outside my apartment window:

Here's a classic from the Russia/former USSR taxi playlist. It was released in 1979 by the Soviet group Yalla, and it's called "Uchkuduk"--the name of a city in Uzbekistan. This song reminds me of bouncing along a bumpy road in a dirty old bus, on my way to see Lake Baikal and watching Siberia's pine forest go by.

Also, you've gotta love the retro looks these guys have going on:

  

Russian food can be a bit difficult to explain to people. Honestly, if you're a foodie, Russia is a terrible country for you. The food that most people eat day in and day out is, in a word, terrible. I mean, ketchup is considered an acceptable thing to put on pasta--and it's not just acceptable, it's what most people use for pasta sauce. Gross. In general, Russian food is hearty, flavorless fare that is good for filling your stomach but doesn't exactly leave you wanting more. 

That said, there are some really good parts of Russian cuisine, and there are some really strange (for Americans) parts. When it's done well, traditional Russian food can be quite good. It's not a flavor-packed experience like Indian food, but it's very comforting, satisfying food that is perfect for, say, a long-awaited dinner after a frigid winter day spent slogging through snowdrifts. Here's a great summation of some of the more unique--and extremely common--foods that make up Russian cuisine: 17 bizarre foods every Russian grew up with  

The first of the month is a mixed blessing. On one hand, it brings a paycheck, but, on the other, it means bills are due. At my apartment here in Vladimir, the bills start showing up in our little mailbox in the stairwell after the fifteenth of the month, and they need to be paid before about the tenth of the next month. Russia is mostly a cash economy, and I have never seen bank checks used, so most people pay their bills in cash at post offices or at utility offices (I think online paying is becoming more common). Fortunately, our landlady takes care of the actual paying of the bills, freeing us from having to stand in lines of grumpy old women at the post office.

We get bills for water (hot and cold--there are different meters for those), gas (no meter), electricity (I think our meter is broken), heating (we have no control over that one), and building and grounds maintenance (given the condition of our building, I'm not exactly sure what we are paying for). The biggest bill is for heating, which is calculated by the area of the apartment. Our 54-square-meter apartment costs 1,694 rubles a month to heat (about $50). Building maintenance is the next-biggest item, at around $40, and then it's hot water and electricity at about $10 each. The gas, which we only use for the stove, is figured not by usage but by the number of people registered to the apartment--in our case, that's four (I guess those four people are our landlady and her family). The price for gas? Fifty two rubles per person (ya that's $1.62). I'd say I can afford that. 

My dad always spreads out all the bills and paperwork on the kitchen table, pours himself a cup of coffee (or a few), and gets down to paying bills every month. This is my homage to him (alas, that is tea with lemon--I was doing this around midnight last night):