Yesterday several of the teachers and I went to the city of Murom. We were invited by the students and professor of English at Murom's university; it is a tradition that every year students from Murom come to the American Home, and teachers go to visit Murom and stay with families there for a night. We left bright and early on a bus--it takes about two hours to get to Murom from Vladimir. Murom is an ancient town with a rich history, and, although I had been there before, it was cool to see the city again. We teachers judged presentations that the students made in English, and then we went on an excursion of the city. Then the group broke up, and I went with our hosts to see more of the city. We first went and saw a brand-new bridge that spans the Oka River. A nice bridge is a big deal in Russia, and Putin attended the opening ceremony of this bridge. Then we met up with a group of medieval war reenactors. The were dressed up like Russian warriors from the 11th Century, which means chain mail, armor, and battle axes. I tried on chain mail and a helmet. I thought about trying to do some ax fighting, but decided to save that for another time. After some more sightseeing, which included riding a Ferris wheel and a swinging ship, we headed back to my hosts' house. I stayed with a great family in a beautiful little wooden house, and we of course had a nice dinner and interesting conversation, which was aided by a little cognac. I'm off to Moscow in a few hours to board a plane for Irkutsk--it's the start of my Lake Baikal adventure. Here are some pictures of our Murom trip:

One of the hardest aspects of English for Russian learners seems to be the usage of countable and uncountable nouns. We teachers commonly see sentences such as, "One peoples walk into bank," and, "Please give me a few tea," and, "Is there some books on your desk?". And, compared to Russian, English has some fairly complicated rules regarding countable and uncountable nouns (like when we use plurals, whether we use "much" or "many," when to use articles, or why a sentence like "There is much crime in my neighborhood" sounds unnatural).

Real problems happen when there are words that are countable in one language that are uncountable in the other--or vice versa. I tell my students that 95% of the time their knowledge of Russian will guide them through learning English; this is a simpler way of saying that generally the linguistic system that they have been acquiring since they were little babies--in this case, the understanding of what words are countable and what words are uncountable--is similar in a lot of ways to the linguistic system that is ingrained in an American's brain. Russian and English, although they are distant relations, are members of the same language family, after all. There are a few words, though, that give students a lot of trouble.

One of them is "people." I frequently remind my students that "people" is a countable word (one person, two people), but my students still mess it up. The problem is that my students are thinking of the Russian word люди, which translates as people. But for them, люди is uncountable--it is like an undifferentiated mass. They also often get confused by the Russian word народ, which also means "people" but in the sense of "the people have spoken" or "the Mayan people." So I get sentences like, "There are many peoples in my apartment," which may very well may be true--there could be people of several different ethnicities -but it is probably not what the writer meant.    

I'm sure some doctorate student in Russian has written a thesis about this (if not, it's my topic--hands off), but it's interesting to consider the implications of considering "people" to be an uncountable noun. In a way, it is very revealing of the attitudes of Russians toward people. Russians very frequently use the word народ (народ злился; народ гуляет--the people are angry; the people are relaxing/roaming/partying), which gives a sense of a shapeless mass with its own volition. There is a similar connotation with the word люди (люди должны ходить по тратуарам--people should walk on the sidewalks), and, although Russian has a way to make "people" into a countable word (во Владимире живут 350 000 человек --350,000 people live in Vladimir), that form is only used to count the number of people in a certain place. Russian culture is much more focused on the collective and less directed toward the differentiation of the individual than American culture. This is reflected in the language--or maybe it is enabled by the language.

Anyway that's enough deep thought for one night. It's time to go to bed. 

Here's a shot I snapped when I was waiting for the bus this morning. You can see that the leaves haven't come out on the trees yet, but at least all the snow is gone. Also, you can see the strange combination of village houses and big apartment buildings that exists in my neighborhood. The neighborhood (called Dobroe, which means good or friendly in Russian) was built from about the 1960s to the 1980s, and it kind of absorbed two small villages. From what I understand, Dobroe was built mainly for workers of the Vladimir Chemical Plant, which is located nearby. There are a few streets where it looks like you really are in a village with little wooden houses and narrow, unimproved streets, but these little areas are totally surrounded by monolithic, multi-story apartment buildings. People joke that Vladimir is just one big village (you really do see the same people all the time on buses and on the street), but what's funny to me is that there are some places right in the city that actually look like a village. Check it out:

Russia is not known for its respect for the environment, and lately I have really noticed the nasty air pollution here in Vladimir. Vladimir isn't a big industrial center, but there are several factories and the giant city heat plant. There are also tons of cars and trucks, and many of them have very little in the way of emissions controls. Sometimes a big truck will go by and cloud the entire street in thick, black smoke. Also, spring has arrived, and the weather has drastically improved here, but we haven't gotten any rain, which means that all the dirt and grit that collected all winter is dry and dusty. Every time a car drives by, all this dust goes airborne. At night you can see just how dirty the air is because car headlights cut beams through this foggy, dusty haze.

I have definitely noticed that the bad air has had an effect on me. I've been running and biking outside more often now that the weather is nice, and after runs I always cough a lot. I can't imagine all that nasty dust is good to be breathing. Hopefully we'll get some rain soon! 

I had a moment of decisiveness yesterday and finally bought a bicycle. I've been meaning to buy a bike for about two months because I really miss bicycling and also because, in my car-deprived state, I feel a serious need to control some vehicle. The weather here suddenly got beautiful late last week, and it was torturous watching all the bicyclists riding around the city all weekend.

So yesterday I went to a sporting goods store with the pretext of just seeing what they had to offer. They had a decent selection of bikes, and they even had a few in my size, which is kind of unusual. I looked around for a little bit and then decided that one of the bikes had my name on it. After talking to the salesman (I figured out from context the Russian words for kickstand and bike pump--подножка and велонасос) and laying down about two thirds of my monthly salary, I left the store with my brand new Stern Energy 2.0 bike. I thought about riding home, but the tires were not fully inflated (the велонасос that came with the bike  is a piece of junk that leaks more air than puts into the tire), so I left it in the garage of the AH. But I anticipate a lot of riding this summer. Here are some pictures of my new toy:

Here's a picture I quickly snapped on the bus ride home this evening. The bus was surprisingly empty tonight, so I took the opportunity to take some pictures.Here's the #25 bus to Dobroe in all it's dingy glory.

Most people in Russia live in apartments, and that, of course, means that most people live in apartment buildings. These buildings can be small or large, nice or disastrous, new or old. The majority of these buildings were built during the Soviet Union, and therefore most of them are standardized. Most buildings are rather unattractive grey boxes, although there is some variation.

Living in an apartment building is different from living in your own house. You have neighbors under you, all around you, and above you. And you can hear all of your neighbors. Some buildings are more solid and soundproof than others, but the sounds of neighbors are always present. Maybe its the sound of the little kid who lives upstairs pushing a chair around the kitchen. Or maybe it's the downstairs neighbors using a drill at 9am to hang something from their ceiling. The bathroom is the place where the neighbors are most audible--I think it has to do with the way the pipes run and how sound travels in the ventilation shaft. You can hear all kinds of things, though, when you're sitting on the toilet. I've heard arguments, singing, laughing, fights, and--my personal favorite--someone say "Hallelujah--I can finally use the f---ing toliet." People generally try to be kind to their neighbors and not be too loud, although loud neighbors are a constant topic for complaints. For example, this morning I was awoken by the sounds of the upstairs neighbors running the vacuum cleaner at 8:30am....

It's hard to believe that in 2 weeks I'll be on my way to Lake Baikal. Going to Baikal has been a dream of mine for a while, and I specifically saved money for a trip there. I leave for Irkutsk (the nearest major city) on April 29. It's a 5-hour flight (Russia is huge). Here's a picture of Lake Baikal--the world's largest and deepest lake.

This isn't related to Vladimir per se, but here is a link to a really cool NPR article about the economics of density. Check it out: The Big Squeeze: Can Cities Save The Earth?

Last weekend, we had a party for our adult students at a hall in the center of Vladimir. It was a great time, and we did a presentation, had live music, and did plenty of dancing. A local TV crew showed up to do a report on the party (the American Home gets a fair amount of local news coverage), and, without any warning, they asked me to do an interview in Russian. So put my best face on and answered their questions. The TV crew then hung around for a while and filmed the festivities.

One part of the party was designated time for "mingling," which is a concept that doesn't seem to have made it to Russia quite yet. As any young professional (or old professional, for that matter) knows, mingling is that awkward 40 minutes or so before a presentation when you feel obligated to talk up some potentially well-connected strangers in order to expand your network. Or, alternatively, it is a time to grab about five small plates and just talk to the people you came with. Regardless, we Americans all understand that mingling is a completely unstructured time that really revolves around basic social skills. As this seems to be is a foreign concept to Russians, we made a little scavenger hunt ("find somebody with the same birthday month as you") and made a little competition out of it.

Our mingling "game" worked about as well as one might expect--people mostly talked to the people they came with--but it caught the attention of the TV crew. They said that mingling is a famous American game, and, to add insult to injury, they worked my interview into this whole mingling mix up. They said I've been playing "mingling" for several years (how one wins at mingling I'm not sure) and that, although I'm single, I hope that I can find my "second half" by playing this game. I don't exactly know where they got that idea, and while I'm certainly not opposed to finding a second half through what amounts to just talking to people, the whole of Vladimir now thinks that we Americans have some sort of mingling club or something.

Anyway, check out the interview. It's in Russian, of course.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttn28dTgvX0

Here's a few pictures I took yesterday morning in the center of Vladimir. The snow is melting fast, but we still have a long way to go. I have to say, though, the city looks pretty under its blanket of snow.

My friend and I were stretching after a run tonight when we were approached by a woman who said "Young men, sportsmen, do you have some money for a drink?" When we said, "No, we don't drink," she replied by asking if we had any beer (I don't know where she thought we would have been hiding bottles of beer). This older lady, who looked pretty normal, then asked us to help her out with even just 10 rubles (30 cents) to buy something to drink. Neither of us had any money, but this whole episode got me thinking about alcoholism.

Russia is, unfortunately, very famous for its extreme consumption of alcohol. And this fame is definitely founded in reality. Alcohol is ever present, and no gathering would be complete without some spirit. A good dinner party po-russki has several liters of vodka, maybe some cognac, and a bottle or two of wine. It really is possible to find vodka that is cheaper than water, and beer isn't much more expensive. Shoot, many Russians don't really think of beer as alcohol--it's the weak stuff you drink in the morning to get over your hangover and start your day.

All this alcohol, however, contributes to a nasty problem with alcoholism. America, of course, is by no means immune from alcoholism, and far too many Americans struggle with and die from alcohol. But alcoholism is present in an in-your-face kind of way here in Russia that doesn't compare to anything I have ever experienced back home. I noticed this in Moscow, but I really see alcoholism here in Vladimir; it's a provincial town with low wages and little to for people to do other than drink. Empty liquor bottles are strewn everywhere on weekend (or even weekday) mornings, and the stench of alcohol-laden sweat (peregar in Russian) fills buses on weekend mornings. It's a rare person here, I think, whose family or relatives haven't been affected in some way by alcoholism.

Being here in Russia has changed my opinion of alcohol. I've never been a big drinker, but I became acquainted with the stuff in college, and at the time, I thought it was pretty cool (it's the whole forbidden-fruit thing--just trying to get a case of beer as a freshman was an enticing adventure in and of itself). But I've grown older and wiser, and also I became dedicated to sports and bodybuilding, and I've been drinking less and less. I came to a realization earlier this year that getting drunk and having fun actually don't go together. What's the sense in wasting tons of money in order to act stupid, lose control of your body, do dumb things, and wake up feeling like you got hit by a bus? Now I very rarely drink more than a beer or two, and I'm lucky to have found some friends here who also can have fun without downing endless shots or guzzling countless bottles of beer. I hang out with my friends almost every night, and I can do that because I don't drink, I don't waste my money, and I don't wake up with a hangover. Not so shabby. I should mention that I also don't like the beer here in Russia--it's nearly impossible to find anything but fizzy, watery lagers.

Of course, it's not easy for a man to refuse a drink in Russia, and a lot of men are at least somewhat suspicious of non-drinkers. Shoot, last weekend my friend almost got into a fight partially because of the fact that he doesn't drink. I usually use the excuse that I'm an athlete, and after 2.5 years of bodybuilding, I finally look big enough that people generally accept my excuse. But sometimes that doesn't work, and then I have to decide whether I want to draw a line in the sand or just go with the flow. But I'm a lot happier this way, and it's amazing how much money I've saved in the past few months. But really, who would have thought being Russia would make someone drink less?       

Globalism has enabled a blending of world cuisines, but each culture has its own unique take on every dish. The Chinese food we Americans devour en mass is not really the food people eat in China, and I have a feeling that most Italians would be deeply offended at the offering of dollar slices of pizza that get wolfed down by Ohio State's finest every weekend night on High Street (nothing like waking up at noon on Sunday with that why-did-I-think-a-whole-pepperoni-and-hot-sausage-with-garlic-sauce-pizza-was-a-good-idea feeling..oh college). Of course, Russia does its own adaptations of world cuisine. My friends and I made a pretty international dinner for ourselves last night: I made curry, and the other guys made pizza and pasta with meat sauce. It all turned out really well, and that was in spite of the fact that I used sour cream instead of plain yogurt in the curry.

The one thing that still perturbs me, though, is that Russia seems to not have heard of tomato sauce yet. When you make a pizza, for example, you don't grab a can of pizza sauce. No, instead you get yourself a bag of ketchup and squirt some on. It's the same deal with pasta. Yum. I've lived in Russia for a while now, but the idea of dousing my pasta in slimy ketchup is still unappetizing. But there aren't many other options. Whereas American grocery stores have the whole canned-tomato-stuff isle, Russian grocery stores have a big isle full of marginally different types of ketchup. So even making your own pasta sauce would be somewhat challenging, although I want to try it one day. Until then, I'll just keep on drowning my pasta in ketchup.