It's so great to be back! I've been in the US for about ten days, and a lot of things have been surprising me. Here's a quick list:

-Friendly people. Americans have a reputation for being a friendly lot, and we are known for asking complete strangers how they're doing (this confuses Russians). Some Americans who've traveled to Russia return and find our smiley, neighborly way to be disingenuous and annoying, but I've been loving that fact that the cashier in the grocery store smiles and asks if you found everything, that strangers in parks stop and chat about coyote sightings, that airport security workers greet you with a "how are you."  I don't find it fake; it's just people being nice to each other. I've seen the alternative, and I much prefer the American way.

-Teeth. I haven't seen a single gold tooth since I've been back. I also haven't been bowled over by anyone's breath of death. Thank you American dental care.

-Flavorful food. Russian food is hearty and can be very good. It, however, is not bursting with vivid flavors. I've been savoring the rich variety of cuisine that we Americans have at our disposal. I had a burrito the other day from Ohio City Burrito--one of my favorite lunch places in Cleveland--and my taste buds were rejoicing at combinations of piquant flavors they hadn't experienced in almost two years. I've got to go to an Indian restaurant soon--it's been far too long.

--Roads and driving. I was a bit worried that I would forgot how to drive, but my fears were unfounded. Driving came right back, and I've done plenty of city and highway driving (I put 450 miles on the car in the last week). Even after one of the harshest winters in recent memory, Ohio's roads are in excellent shape compared to what Russia calls roads, and our drivers are so much better behaved. I've been tempted to pull Russian driving moves and squeeze around cars at intersections or overtake slow-movers on curves, but I've held back. And that's probably for the best.

The one thing I do miss right now is tvorog (farmer's cheese). It is high in protein and was my normal bedtime snack. You can find it in every Russian grocery store, but it's nowhere to be found here. I guess I could make my own, but that's a hassle. I'm trying to convince myself to like cottage cheese instead. We'll see how this goes.   

The busy teacher is busily at work. When these last exams are graded, my work as a teacher here in Vladimir is pretty much complete. Time has flown!

I found this ancient mineral-water vending machine in the basement of the business institute we use to hold some of our overflow classes. I have a feeling this hasn't served anyone since the Soviet Union.

Yesterday, one of my students invited another teacher and me to his dacha outside of town. We were lucky enough to get a warm, sunny day (around 70F yesterday), and so we hung out outside and grilled. My student has a gorgeous, large property, and he has built several log-cabin-style buildings. He's got a big garden, chickens, and beehives--it's a regular country estate. In the evening, we went to the banya, where we got the full--or, as my student called it, the textbook--banya experience, complete with whipping with branches and lots of aromatic herbs. Russians take the banya very seriously, and it is believed that steaming regularly in a banya is a cure for allsorts of ailments. I can't attest to the banya's long-term health benefits, but I sure felt great afterward. Here are a few pictures:

The chicken coop

They're building a new banya using some very old-school techniques. This is flax and moss used as chinking between the logs. 

The new banya will be really nice. 

Lunchtime 

That's a bottle of homemade vodka--it tasted a lot better than the stuff they sell in stores.

 A very Russian scene 

Having some tea from a wood-fired samovar 

Getting my banya on

Summer is approaching (or at least it should be), and summer in Russia is a special time. It's light from 4am to midnight, and people take full advantage of the brief respite from the cold and snow. Everyone wants to be outside as much as possible, and people go to their dachas or just hang out in parks in the cities. Summer here is really unique, and I'm sad that I'll miss it.

Here's a song that really reminds me of summer in Russia. It's called Жить в Кайф (roughly "Live in Bliss") by the Belorussian artist Max Korzh. Max is a year older than me, and he makes a lot of pop hip-hop songs that relate to life for average young Russians. This song tells Max's own story of choosing to drop out of university to chase his dream of making music, and I really like the song's themes of freedom and dreams. Dreams are very important to Russians--I've been asked many times by students and just people I meet, "What is your dream?" which is not an easy question to answer on the spot. I remember the professor in a Russian culture class at Ohio State saying that Americans have plans; Russians have dreams. When I listen to this song, I feel the unbridled thrill of throwing caution to the wind and chasing a dream. See what you think.

I've been in Vladimir for almost two years, and last night was the first time someone gave me flak for not being Russian. We had a party for our adult students at an event hall near the American Home, and then most of the teachers and about ten students went to a nice restaurant with a karaoke bar in the center of town. We ordered some food and drinks and sang a few songs (no mastery from me this time) and were just hanging out. We had been there for a while when the lady at the table in front of us turned around and gave us the one-finger salute. We looked at her incredulously, and I said, "Same to you." She did this a few more times. Her complaint was that we were talking while her husband was singing, but everyone in the place was talking--it's a bar, after all. 

Things escalated pretty fast. Her husband finished his song, threw down the microphone, and stormed over to our table. He said that he shouldn't have to listen to people speaking a foreign language in his country and demanded that we leave. His wife chimed in and claimed that we were being discourteous and exclaimed that our parents didn't raise us right. Well, that was about as much as I was going to listen to. I stayed sitting down, but I challenged them to say what we had done wrong exactly ("Объясните мне--что мы здесь делаем неправильно") and told them if they wanted a quiet concert they should have gone to a theater ("хотели концерт сходили бы в театр"). 

By this time the whole bar was watching us. It looked like things might turn ugly in a hurry: The guy was obviously gearing up for a fight, and he was saying incendiary things like "Россия для русских" (Russia is for Russians). We were sitting at a different table from the main bulk of our group, and so it looked like there were only three of us. Pretty soon, however, the guys--Russian and American--from the other table came up and made their presence known. The two rabble-rousers now saw how outnumbered they were, and the bouncer made it clear that it was time for them to leave. The situation ended without a fight, and we stayed at the bar for a little while longer. 

But that made me so mad. I'm normally a calm person, but there are some things I won't tolerate, and listening to some primped-up 30-something lady say "get the hell out of here Yankees" while her water-heater-build husband spews nationalist garbage is one of those things. The support my Russian friends gave me made me feel better--they said they were embarrassed by those people and that they were with me one hundred percent--but I was still all tense and angry for the rest of the night. 

The situation bothered me so much because it was the first time in my life that I've been accosted not for something I did but simply for who I am. Once I got home, I did some reflecting and realized that last night was an important lesson--it showed another side of the immigrant experience. Immigrants aren't always welcomed with open arms and smiles like we usually are here in Vladimir, and the experience of being a foreigner would be incomplete without seeing the other side of the coin. Also, I reflected on the fact that the Uzbek cabby who drove us home or the Angolan university student who attends the American Home probably face this sort of situation with regularity. As a tall, white male from the United States, I'm not the recipient of much discrimination, and so it's instructive to feel how lousy and aggravating it is. Most people who face discrimination also don't have a whole bar to back them up and usually have to shut up and take it, which must feel incredibly dehumanizing. 

This situation further reinforced my feeling that it's time to go back home. We haven't had any problems related to the situation in Ukraine, but there's been a general upswing in Russian patriotism verging on nationalism, and that has produced an equal and opposite reaction in me. I've been much more on edge and defensive lately, ready to call anyone out on the smallest slight against America. I shouldn't let that sort of stuff affect me, but it does, and for my own sanity and well-being I need to remove myself from the situation. Last night was instructive, and I'm glad that it happened with only a little more than two weeks left in my time here in Russia.    

I try to stay up-to-date on news in the world of urban planning, and I came across an interesting article this morning. It's in The Atlantic Cities blog--one of my favorite sources for planning news--and the article looks at a recent analysis of walkability and access to food in American cities. The analysis considered how many Americans live within a five-minute walk of a store selling quality food. It isn't surprising that very few Americans can take a quick stroll to a store, and those Americans mostly live in major urban centers like New York and San Francisco. The worst major cities included such towns as Indianapolis and Charlotte, where only five percent of residents live within a walkable distance from a grocery store. I fear my native Cleveland wouldn't score much better. Here's the article: In the U.S., a Quick Walk to the Store Is a Rare Thing Indeed

Vladimir, on the other hand, would actually score very well. There's a store right next to my apartment building, and there are many stores and two bus stops within a five-minute walk. That's compact urbanism at work. That said, many Americans would be disappointed at what they'd find at those stores. I remember the first time I went into a Russian grocery store--I realized that there isn't much of anything appealing on all those shelves. At the nearest grocery store--a place called Pyatyorichka--you'll find an isle devoted to little candies, an isle with bleach-white pasta and other cheap grains, a huge alcohol section, and a freezer full of pelmeni and other frozen foods. There's a small case of meat (often dangerously close to the expiration date), a larger case full of sausages (probably a safer, if less healthy, bet), and a section with vegetables. Those vegetables are really hit-or-miss: The only safe options are potatoes, onions, and carrots; the peppers, cucumbers, and tomatoes are often all mushy and shriveled. My roommate have invented a new slogan for that grocery store: "Pyatyorichka--where we couldn't care less."

Griping aside, it is really nice to have a place close by when I need some milk or eggs or something else basic. At my house in America, the nearest store is a five-minute drive away, and, while I love driving, it's nicer and healthier to be able to take a little walk and get what I need instead of burning fossil fuel and risking getting hit by a truck out on the roads.