You'd have to be living under a rock not to know that some really big things are happening in Ukraine right now. The US media is giving the situation good coverage, but Ukraine is pretty much the only topic of discussion on the news here in Russia. People are obsessed with the events in Ukraine, and it's understandable why: Russia and Ukraine have a long history together, and most people in Russia have friends and family in Ukraine. This is a mini-revolution happening right at Russia's doorstep. 

The difference between Russian and Western news coverage of Ukraine is striking. Western sources report that demonstrators seized Maidan after Yanukovich snubbed the EU in favor of closer ties with Russia and that those demonstrators were killed by Yanukovich's police, proving that Yanukovich and his policies didn't represent the interests of the Ukrainian people. To Western eyes, Yanukovich's ouster was a victory for the Ukrainian people and a chance for Ukraine's nascent democracy to flower. Russia's aggression and seizure of the Crimea is portrayed as a violation of international law and proof of Russia's malicious desire to maintain its Soviet sphere of influence. 

Russian media shows a very different picture. Those demonstrators on Maidan were hired by the EU and US and in no way represented what Ukrainians want. The demonstrators were mostly criminals and hooligans who ruthlessly murdered defenseless policemen who were prevented by cowardly Yanukovich (who was afraid of what the West would say if he allowed the police to use force against the demonstrators) from taking steps to defend themselves and restore order in the center of Kiev. The protests themselves were criminal and should have been broken up immediately, allowing the government and the people of Ukraine to work. Any grievances should have been solved through political channels, not demonstration. 

The Russian media has far harsher words for what has happened in the past two weeks. According to Russia, the Ukrainian parliament had no right to fire the democratically elected president--that's not democracy. The people of real Ukraine (the eastern, Russian-speaking part of the country) don't want this change that has forcefully imposed on them by the West. Bring up the fact that western Ukraine strongly supports these new developments and you'll hear that western Ukraine, and the city of Lviv especially, has always been against Russia and is mostly made of rebels and traitors (parts of western Ukraine collaborated with the Nazis during WWII). As for the developments in the Crimea, Russians believe that territory is really part of Russia and was mistakenly given away during the Soviet Union, so Russia has a right--a duty really--to protect the ethnic Russians who live there. 

The long and the short of it is that Russians are hearing a totally different version of events than people in the West hear. As with everything, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. Also, having been to Ukraine, I can appreciate how complex that country is. Lviv is a totally different city than Odessa: Lviv is solidly European, whereas Odessa is Russian. The next few weeks will be very interesting, to say the least. 

Here's a picture of me in Lviv during my trip to Ukraine last year. 

Recently we had a little electrical problem in our Soviet apartment. The kitchen light, which had been flickering for months, finally quit working altogether. I tried changing the bulb, but that didn't help the situation. I could see that one of the contacts in the socket was loose, but my roommate and I couldn't remember whether the light switch was in the on position when it was up or down (all the switches in the apartment are different), and I wasn't willing to stick a screwdriver into the socket until I knew for sure whether I would survive the experience. We decided it was time to call the landlady. In the meantime, I took a sconce off the wall in the hallway and used a piece of wire to fix it to the gas pipe in the kitchen, giving us some very classy bare-bulb illumination.

Our landlady, who is a friend of one of the security guards at my work, and her husband came and tried to fix the light fixture, but they also couldn't get it to work. They left us a nice little table lamp and called an electrician. Our landlady called me and said she had prepaid the electrician and that he would arrive sometime between nine and eleven on Wednesday morning.

At 8:30 on Wednesday morning the doorbell rang--the electrician had showed up early. I tried to let him in, but the button to open the main stairwell door often doesn't work, and so the electrician couldn't get in. Within a few minutes, our landlady called, saying the electrician was waiting outside. I managed to get the door open on the third attempt, and, after chiding me for not letting him in, the electrician, an older guy in camouflage gear, shuffled in. I showed him our non-working light fixture. I was still half asleep, and so when he asked me if we had changed the bulb, I responded that I didn't know, to which he gave me a look of disapproval. Oops. After deducing that we had, in fact, tried to change the bulb, he asked whether the switch worked, and then, without waiting for me to rely, decided to test it himself. Good decision--I hadn't had any coffee yet, and so I wasn't really up to the task of dealing with an electrician in Russian.

In about five minutes he fixed the light (the contact was loose) and left after demonstrating that I owed him no money (he probably thought I spoke no Russian). The cost for this whole affair? 50 rubles, which converts to the whopping total of $1.38. Not bad.

Last night we watched the USA-Canada hockey game after work. The result was unfortunate, but we decided not to let that spoil our night and went to a karaoke bar. Karaoke is hugely popular in Russia, and the crowd at the place we went to consists mostly of a bunch of 30-somethings who get rather drunk, so it doesn't really matter how well you sing; someone will always sing worse than you. I sang a Russian song called Пора домой (time to go home) and collaborated with another teacher to do a ridiculous rendition of "Call me Maybe." Here's the Russian song I sang:

Teaching in Russia has several distinct advantages, and one of them is that students love to give their teacher gifts. I got a really crazy gift earlier this week from one of my students. In a previous class, we did an exercise that asked students whether they preferred snakes or spiders. Typical second-semester ESL stuff. One of my students asked whether I like snakes, to which I relied that I think snakes are cool. He told me that he would bring something in for me next class.

The next class he gives me one of the strangest/coolest gifts I've ever gotten. He presented me with a bottle of vodka that has a snake inside. It's from China, and so the description of exactly what's in the bottle is almost incomprehensible (terrible translation), but I gather that there's a snake a bunch of herbs and berries steeping in vodka. Yummy. I'll definitely have to try it out.

This Olympic season has had me thinking about goals and achievement, and I got to thinking about my goals with the Russian language. People have often asked me why I study Russian, and, honestly, I have only rarely articulated my goals--mainly because I wasn't exactly sure of them. I've always enjoyed studying Russian, and that was enough. I'm not one to set a numerical or time goal on something like the study of a language. As long as it's fun, I'll keep at it. That's been my story with Russian. I can confidently call myself fluent in Russian; of course there are words I don't know, and I make mistakes from time to time, but I'm at a level where I can freely converse with anyone about any topic.

I've been having a bit of angst lately about my study of Russian. I get three hours of Russian language classes each week. Those hours, however, are the worst hours of my week. I get virtually nothing of benefit from my classes, and there are a number of reasons for that, the biggest of which being a mismatch in goals between my teacher and I. My teacher is a very nice lady who is passionate about Russian literature and lives in a world where Pushkin-style language is still used. She is totally out of touch with modern slang and cringes at the very notion of a swear word. I, on the other hand, love the slangy recesses of the Russian language and don't have much interest in 150-year-old literature. That mismatch makes for some pretty painfully boring lessons.

I've been beating myself up for my lack of interest in doing my Russian homework (my teacher has just given up expecting me to read any poetry), and I've been feeling a bit melancholy about leaving behind Russia and the possibility to improve my Russian.

But then today I had a realization. I've reached my goal. Today I went ice skating with my teenage class. We spoke exclusively Russian, peppered with slang and swearing. We talked about everything for music to sports to school to girls. That was what I wanted. I was always most interested in being about to communicate with regular Russians my age--my peers. I have always had the most fun listening to Russian rap, rock, and pop songs and trying to understand them; that's how I learned Russian. I've never been much interested in Russian literature (I can understand English perfectly--why would I torture myself reading some dry text in a foreign language and be unable to appreciate the true intricacies of the word choice, double meaning, and poetry? Besides, Russian punctuation bothers me on a deep level). I'm not planning to work in Russia--it's not my home country, and while being a foreigner is an intensely rewarding and challenging experience, it's not a lifestyle for me. Home is calling, and I'm excited to get back and start a new chapter in my life. I've always just wanted to speak with young Russians, to take a glimpse into the life of my peers who were born on the other side of the world. That's all.

And now, as I stand in my Soviet apartment and chat on Vkontake (the Russian Facebook) with my students, I realize that I've completed the journey I began 11 years ago when Mrs. Subbotin wrote Здравствуйте on the board of a classroom at Kenston Middle School. I've reached my goal. Sure, there is always room for improvement, and I'll continue to strive to learn more words and phrases that will help me do what I love--talk to Russians--but I'm not going to stress about not being interested in Derzhavin's poetry or Dovlatov's short stories (not to mention my complete disinterest in reading War and Peace). Now, there is a time and a place for literature, and I see myself getting interested in that later, but that time isn't now. Pushkin's been dead for a long time, and his stuff will be there for much longer, but my chance to meet and talk with young Russians is approaching its end. I've got a great non-fiction book--in English, thank you very much--about the Vietnam war, and, when I have spare time, that's what I'm going to read. Maybe I'll even get back to reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (that book has been sitting half read for quite some time now). And I'm going to revel in the fact that I've reached--and even exceeded--my goals with Russian.   

It's almost time for the 2014 Olympics, and Russia is beaming with pride. These games are a big source of enthusiasm and national pride for Russians, and the games are being drummed up with near-Soviet vigor. Politicians evoke the Olympics in speeches; street banners promote the games; and the games are invoked at all sporting events. Last weekend, I went with a few of my students to a cross-country skiing competition at a Vladimir park. Everything had an Olympic theme.

I watched most of the opening ceremony (I was teaching for the first hour of the ceremony), and it was certainly impressive. With all the controversy and negativity surrounding the games, here's to hoping that everything goes well and that the right people--the athletes--make the news.

Here are a few pictures of the skiing event from last weekend. It was called Лыжнья Россия (Skiing Russia), and the event in Vladimir was one of hundreds around the country. It was pretty cold that day, so we didn't stay long, but it was fun to watch some really good skiers do their thing.

On my very last day in Rome, I decided to go to Trastevere. My guide in the Forum recommended it as Rome's most authentic neighborhood--the place where Romans go to stroll. Unfortunately it was raining that day, which made for somewhat unpleasant strolling, but I enjoyed Trastevere's winding streets nonetheless. I got lunch at a pizzeria that could very well have been in Cleveland--it was decorated with rock posters and had a bare-florescent-bulb charm that would fit in well in the Forest City. The broccoli-cheese pizza I got was spectacular.

I then crossed the Tiber and entered the area near Rome's former Jewish ghetto, which today is full of expensive shops and cafes. I found an open-air market, and I bought some insanely potent truffle-infused olive oil. Then I made my way back to the Pantheon and got an espresso at a street cafe and just took in the scene. The rain-glazed square was bustling with tourists, and I was reflecting on a great trip. It was a good way to end.

My flights back to Moscow were uneventful, and the plane from Vienna to Moscow was only maybe a third full. There was a little complication with my visa--I wasn't let on the plane initially and had to wait while a security officer entered my information into his computer to verify that I was legally allowed to return to Russia--and all the while I was thinking how much I didn't want to go back. Cold, grey, unfriendly, bland Russia just didn't seem very appealing after the feast that was Rome.

But I'm very happy that I got on that plane. I have some great classes; a teacher from last year is back for this semester, which has made for a lot more fun in and out of the office; and I'm enjoying my last few months here in Vladimir. It's amazing how the time has flown. And, pitiful salary notwithstanding, my job here has enriched me so much; my trip to Rome is just the icing on the cake.