New Year's trees

As my Christmas winds down to an uneventful end, the festivities are just about to begin. In all honesty, New Year's Eve is a really big deal here. I kept thinking about buying a miniature Christmas tree, but I never bothered, figuring they'd all be gone soon anyways. But they're all still there, all people are going all out. I asked some of my students if they were ready for New Year's, and one of the ladies in my class told me she absolutely had to get....and here she hesitated, "A Christmas tree? No, a New Year's tree." Well, to be honest, I guess it's all the same, just 6 days later.

As much as I tried to decipher this holiday which most of us Americans use as a big excuse for a party with friends, I'm still not sure quite what it's all about in Moscow. Some people spend the time with their family, and have a big dinner with plenty of presents, but it also seems to be true that many people are out with their friends at night too, and the amount of partying already promised seems endless. The Red Square should be crowded, the trees lit, and lot's of merriment. Any excuse for a party.

Life as an English teacher

Admittedly I don't talk about my job much, which is rather ironic since these days the majority of my time is spent working. Becoming an English teacher in another country is surprisingly easy, and as long as you're open-minded and courageous, you can teach just about anywhere....that is, if you're a native speaker. I'm not sure if native speakers make the best teachers, but that's the way it is.

Anyways, my life as an English teacher is surprisingly different from what I thought it would be like. For one, you have to be flexible, able to adjust to many different types of students, coming from different backgrounds and from all sorts of age groups and levels of language capabilities. What may work great for one group of students may be a disaster for another group. Or perhaps a group of 2 students can't really play the same games that a group of 10 students can. It really depends.

The second thing I've noticed is how mobile you have to be. I don't have a permanent school for the moment since I just arrived, and I've been sent out in virtually every direction of the city, teaching at all sorts of places. As a new teacher who is under hours on their contract, you can get called at any time to substitute teach a class, which means you never know your schedule really.

Although it might get old after a while, always moving about (which fortunately later on I will have my own classes when they start up in January), I actually enjoy all of the excitement. The best part is getting the chance to meet all sorts of people, and learn a lot about them, in class! I've taught businessmen, accountants, teenagers, bored housewives, the boss of a big company...Most of these people are really invested in learning the language, and it's inspiring to see their drive and motivation, as they ask me questions about grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary. Even the teenagers, who are studying for an exam, had an argument over past continuous in class that got very heated!

I find it really interesting to teach in companies, since you end up in a meeting room with a white board, and you never know what will happen. Sometimes the students are coworkers who get along really well, and can debate in English. Other times they somberly walk into the room at 9 in the morning, dreading the class that I haven't even taught yet. There are the ups and downs of teaching, but you have to admit, how often do you end up in a Russian executive office, drinking champagne and eating chocolates with two beginner students who make 10 times more money than you do? Indeed, it's an odd life.

Ice Skating

When I first signed up to teach in Russia, I secretly thought of how wonderful it would be to have a white Christmas. After all, for Christmas back in California, we often just wake up, open presents, eat breakfast, and then go for a nice hike on a sunny, cool day. Snow is just something you see on tv, or if you get enough energy to drive the 3 hours to Lake Tahoe to go skiing. But to have a snowy Christmas, that's special.

There are a few things I hadn't thought of when I made the assumption that I would be having a white Christmas in Russia. First of all, sometimes the temperature does rise just above freezing point, which will not make all the snow disappear, but it also means that if it rains, you have horrible slush and ice everywhere. Secondly, Russians don't celebrate Christmas on the 25th. If they celebrate Christmas at all (which many don't), it's on the 7th of January, after the huge festivities for New Year's. Oops.

Nevertheless, where there's a will, there's a way. Rounding up friends who were willing to wake up before noon on Christmas morning was somewhat of a challenge, but in the end, success was mine. Valentina and I headed out, later joined by Casey, to do what I had been dying to do even before I got to Moscow: ICE SKATING. And not just regular, indoor rink type ice skating, oh no. Real, outdoor, in the park ice skating.

Ice skating is one of those precious things that make Moscow special. What usually are summer amusement parks in June magically become transformed into skating parks, where all of the pathways are icy surfaces. Instead of just skating in circles, you can skate around the park, going wherever you like. As you take a skate in the park, music plays, and at night there are Christmas lights all around. It's mostly very pretty with plenty of trees and snow all around, although somewhat strange to see carousels, and park rides that are abandoned, not really in use until summertime.

It's somewhat of a challenge for a beginner like me, since there are no railings to cling to, nor is the ice groomed very often....but fortunately that's what friends are for. As Val and I skated around, we held hands, tripping over the massively uneven surfaces, struggling not to fall over. Casey struggled behind us, although she seemed to be having more success at looking a little more graceful. I was surprised that these two Russian girls weren't pros at this national sport. I asked them both, "When's the last time you went ice skating?" Val replied, "4 months ago, in Florida," and Casey thought about it, then said, "A year ago, I think. What about you Laura?" I laughed, because I knew I had them both beat. I went ice skating last month! Sadly you wouldn't know it from the way I was skating....

And of course, there are so many pro skaters, who just zip by you as you waddle along. But if you're going to be in Moscow in the winter time, I can't think of a better way to pass the time, so long as it doesn't rain!

Happy Holidays!

Rush hour

Ok, so I apologize in advance for yet another entry about the Metro, but I feel it is justified due to the large portion of my day devoted to being underground. On any given day I could be in the system for 2-3 hours, and when you consider that there are only 6 hours of daylight....well you get the point.

So rush hour. I'm sure that I've seen large crowds before, but this is different. For example, I've never seen a human jam of people waiting to get on the escalator, or to walk up the stairs. Nor have I been almost run over the amount of times that I've been in the wrong place at the wrong time....Fortunately the system is so efficient, traffic runs pretty smoothly.

I was thinking the other day about how life parallels in funny ways. I often think back to Reunion Island, and how different my time there was in comparison with Moscow. And yet, I was laughing when I saw something in the Metro. For each metro stop they usually have at least 4 escalators running during peak hours, so that everyone can get in and out. Sometimes, when there is a backup on one end, a policeman (called "militzia") will stop the flow of traffic for one escalator, which will then get stopped by and operator and run the opposite direction. Almost like opening another lane of traffic to get more people through, like they do on Reunion on the highway, so that more people going the proper direction will have more lanes to their disposition. It's pretty efficient, all things considered, although you really have to see it to believe it.

So as you can imagine, if there are backups trying to get onto escalators, the trains themselves during rush hour can be quite squished, or as my friend Valentina says, "we Russians call it morning sex." Let's try not to picture that image too much, especially depending on who you're squished next to. As my parents have always told me, in Japan they have "pushers," or hired people to shove people into trains so that they all fit. You would think that they would need the same system in Moscow, but the other day I discovered that Moscovites can be very clever, and can push themselves onto the train quite well. I even watched almost horrified but more impressed, as a man ran down the steps of the station and hurled himself into the train, jumping on top of the people, who crushed his fall just as the doors closed and the train took off. A professional crowd surfer in the making.

Fortunately this chaos is not all the time all day long. There is a lull in the afternoon, as I hop on to go to my favorite park to go jogging, further north on my line. And in the evening, right before the metro stops running at 1:30 in the morning, you have a peaceful lull, as us early party goers return home, while the rest of Moscow stays up late, waiting for a taxi ride home, or later, the 5:30 AM train. In those moments of silence, it's hard to imagine that the train could be any different.

Street sweeps

I remember the first time in snowed in Portland, Oregon. I was jogging on the track, late at night when it started to snow. At first I just smiled at the little flakes that were melting as soon as they fell. Oh well, I thought, at least they're pretty. But with each lap I made, the flakes got bigger and bigger, and after 4 laps, I couldn't believe it, the snow was sticking! Everyone was so excited, none of us slept that night, throwing snowballs, making snow angels. The next day there was chaos everywhere, crashed cars, people sliding on the slick ice, the city was a mess.....all over a few inches of snow!

In Moscow in the winter it snows so often that it would take a lot more than a few inches to stop them. What's the secret behind their efficiency? The street sweeps. Every morning, snow or shine, there's a huge city wide crew of people, scraping away at the snow and ice, gritting the streets, adding all the chemicals. Regardless of where you live you can be sure that by the time you walk out onto the street, it will be relatively slick-free. Of course most Moscovites appear to be expert ice skaters, who when faced with a particularly slippery spot on the sidewalk just glide over it. Nor would they be phased if there were a huge pile of snow, it's just snow after all.

Of course the snow gang doesn't just clear the roads. They are in charge of keeping the Metro entrances cleared, so the steps don't get too icy, and more impressively, there's a group that shovels off snow from roofs! One evening, as my Moscovite friend Diana walked me around her old neighborhood where she grew up, we saw a team of men shoveling snow off of someone's roof. "I remember them," she smiled wistfully. "Every morning I would watch the huge waterfall of snow come off of the roof. They were always there." Admittedly shoveling snow is probably not the best paying job, but you must admit, we are all grateful that these jobs exist.

Beautiful Moscow

So I know I'm a little biased since I'm snow obsessed, but I really do believe, more than anything else, snow makes things look BEAUTIFUL. It's this magical property, that really has nothing to do with the science of it all. I was wondering how I felt about Moscow this weekend, when it happened. It started snowing. And not just a simple light trickle from the sky, but full out, huge flakes, falling down fast, without a sound.

Luckily I was in the Red Square to witness this glorious snow. The church bells were chiming 5 in the evening, time for mass. You could hear the choir singing, the priest chanting. I went in for a moment, just to appreciate the sounds from a bench just by the door. As I continued on, the music started changing. All of the sudden I was by the ice skating rink, set up just for the holidays next to GUM, the sparkly elegant mall across from the Kremlin. As it continued to snow, people were ice skating to Russian pop music, which is so cheesy it sometimes makes me laugh. And then there I was, in front of Lenin's tomb, the Kremlin, St Basil's Cathedral, watching it snow. GOrGEOUS. Moscow's a pretty cool place after all.

The Fish Bowl

When you show up at a new place, there's always at the beginning that period of time where you desperately grab for whatever is given to you. Be it resources, advice, information, kindness, and especially....friendship. Finding friends is always top priority in my opinion, because without people to spend time with, you might as well be sitting in front of your computer, in your room, at home, instead of using all of that energy and money to get halfway across the world again. Let's ignore the fact that that is precisely what I'm doing right now. I'm leaving in the next hour, though, so there.

Anyways, I discovered that the best thing about working for Moscow's biggest language school is that you are part of a group of interesting people already, who speak English and love to travel! All you have to do is find them....which I did. For various reasons, I've decided to camp out at one of the bigger schools, Kuznetski Most because there's a big library, helpful people, but also because there's what they call the "fishbowl," which is the teacher's room. It gets its name from the fact that most of its walls are panes of glass. This sounds scary, being so exposed, but actually its great. Not only are you visible to everyone, but everyone is visible to you, which leads to inevitable socializing, since teachers of course never miss an opportunity to gab. By the end of 4 hours yesterday, I was not only directing other teachers to resources, or how to use the printer (already been there, check!) but I had new facebook friends, invitations to parties, coffee breaks. Oh, and I got some lessons planned. It just makes life that much easier, when you know that you will have things to do, and friends to go do things with, and the sooner the better, before the work really kicks in!

Starting from 0

As the school sorts out my so far relatively non-existent work schedule (fortunately I’m getting paid all the same), I still have plenty of time to wander around this city, and figure out the metro a little more. Although I’d like to consider myself an expert in the business, I have to admit it’s still a little daunting when there is no indicator on the train, nor can you always read the sign in the station telling you where you are….the trick is to either count (which I as one of the most distracted people on the planet I fail at after having perhaps 100 thoughts in between stops), or you have to listen, and learn to read. It’s become sort of a game for me, guessing what the stop name sounds like, and then comparing it to the recorded voice over the intercom. It sure helps in learning the alphabet, which I’m becoming a pro.

Or trying to. Sometimes for lunch my friend Iulia and I will go to MyMy’s (pronounced Moo Moo’s with a kitsch little cow on the sign to go with it), which is great, because it’s cafeteria style, you grab what you want, or point at it, and they dish it up for you. The biggest challenge is always at the end, when they ask you what beverage you want (or rather I think that’s what they’re asking, because what more could I possibly need?). I look at the menu, which is half in Russian, the bit they understand, and half in English, the part I understand. To get between the two, I try to find the English print for what I want, and then attempt to pronounce the Russian part, assuming I get all my letters right.

To date, I have had about 5% success rate…that one time at another sandwich place where I asked for something that I didn’t know what it was, but the picture looked pretty. I’m hoping that’s what I got, anyways. There was another time that I asked for “borsch” which is simple enough, since it is the same word in English after all. The rest of the time, the waitress looks at me with an exasperated expression and then holds up the menu, waiting to look at whatever thing I point at. Ah yes, she nods, the %*!@#$%E. Da, da, that one. Fortunately I have yet to eat anything I didn’t like, and I haven’t mistakenly ordered shrimp. Although it’s frustrating to have to start at zero, I’m refusing to give up hope, and I play the alphabet game as I walk down the street, trying to make sense of every sign and every print. I feel like a little kid, learning to read for the first time, waiting for that exciting moment when those silly symbols take on more meaning than ever before. I can’t wait.

Fashion in Moscow

Everyday I walk out of my door, I’m wearing my one coat, and my one pair of boots. I smile at the simplicity of it all, I almost don’t even think of what I’m putting on underneath so long as I’m wearing something. But inevitably I’m always passed up on the sidewalk as I dawdle by someone, and about half of the time that person is followed by a persistent clickety clack of, dare I say it? High HEELS. If your eyes just got big at the thought of someone wearing high heels in ice and snow and grit, then you know just how I feel every time I see a “muscovite” of the feminine persuasion. It’s almost as if they defy physics, although it is amusing to see them carefully toe their way down slippery steps, which could trip up the average person in boots. Oh, and these are always topped off by a luxurious fur coat (needless to say that most animal right activists against fur would probably faint if they ever went to Moscow in winter).

I think what amazes me the most is how they have this almost mystical immunity to feeling cold. A lot of these top notch women don’t feel the need to wear a hat or scarf, which I’m assuming is because it detracts from the overall outfit. As goofy as I look in my hat, I couldn’t imagine a day without it here, especially when it’s already dropped below 28 degrees Celsius. Fortunately I’m not completely alone, there seems to be a younger generation that has although still stylish, at least a more practical outlook on what to wear. To explain how many different fashions, hair styles, or hats I’ve seen on the street would take weeks, and I’m too fashion stupid to really say. I’m not abandoning my hat at any rate, for the sake of my ears.

Comfort level?

"What's your comfort level here?" my new friend Iulia from Romania asked me, with a mischievous grin, as if she already knew the answer. Not quite. So I drew it out for her on a cline (pardon me for those of you who don't understand English teacher speak, think of it as a line on a graph). I used my arms, at the top of the cline is where I feel most comfortable, say a dinner with my family. At the bottom, is where I've felt say, the most vulnerable or out of place, like Madagascar. So let's put Moscow below Italy and Budapest, but above anywhere in Africa.

I've come to the conclusion that as much as someone can travel, it's not what I would call "easy" to adjust to every new place you go to. Of course the food is different, the music can be odd, and the people may not randomly smile on the metro. You're likely to get lost, get off at the wrong stop on the metro, or fumble with the money. But all of these things are manageable, in fact they are part of the adventure that make life fun, exhilarating, new.

I think what has made Moscow a little lower on the cline is due to the language. Not only have I never learned Russian (aside from my friend Jamie's crash course before I left), but the alphabet is completely new, and for someone who loves reading roadsigns, menus, etc, this is another speed bump. Talking to my mother about this before leaving, she told me how much she hates not being able to speak the language of the land when overseas. I shrugged it off, figuring I would just learn. And admittedly my Russian has improved exponentially. Each day I seem to double my vocabulary - from one word to two, four, 8.....! So if you want to know my comfort level, it's rising everyday, everytime I have a new verbal interaction with someone: the first time I asked for 2 oranges from my favorite fruit stand lady, or the first time I ordered something from a menu. At least I blend in enough it seems. As usual I'm always the person people ask on the street for directions, or on the metro for which stop to take. Who would have thought, an American that can blend in?

In Desperate Search of Green

Today I decided it was time to go adventuring on my own. My mission: to find at least one green place in this somewhat overwhelming city, a place to relax, be at peace, and maybe even go jogging, if I could handle it without falling and breaking something. As I looked through the guidebook, I discovered a botanical garden, right next to the VVT, or the “All-Russa Exhibit Centre” according to the book. Aha, a quick stroll between metro stops, it seemed.

Unlike many places in the world, such as San Francisco where it seems pitiful that they should have so many stops on a metro line, when you can walk between them in less than a few minutes, Moscow’s stops are more serious. Admittedly I got a little lost towards the end, but we’re still talking a 2 hour walk.

Anyways, back to the VVT. It’s probably one of those places that is lovely to visit in the summer, but in the winter it’s a little bleak, and rather drab. The VVT as far as I can tell consists of many memorials, buildings, museums, including a pretty cool looking space museum with an awesome spacey –looking tower. There are fountains, sculptures, all soviet style, elaborate and overbearing. Don’t forget the ferris wheel and amusement park, which take up the first part of the VVT. And of course, intercoms, blaring what I hope are commercials and Russian pop music.

The park seemed to stretch on forever, until I crossed the river into the Botanical Gardens, 82 acres that seriously contrast the VVT. There if you covered your ears against the sounds of traffic, you could almost believe that you were in a snow covered forest besides a river, with hardly anyone to distract you. The park must absolutely be beautiful in the summer, at least from the photos that were shown on the map. It was beautiful now, with the little bit of snow left over from the weekend. My new jogging place.

As I attempted to find the Metro stop, I asked a random woman walking down the street. “Metro?” She looked at me, and motioned for me to follow her. As we walked she asked first in Russian, and then resorted to broken English: “Country?” “American,” I replied. Her eyes widened a little in interest. We stepped onto the same train, and she pointed to herself, “Babushka, grandmother.” In the end I gathered that she had 3 children, (she showed me a photo of one of her daughters) and she was 64. For a lady who didn’t speak English, she sure knew her English words enough for me to understand. Not too shabby. Although Russians seem serious as they walk down the street, they do stop when you ask them a question, and most try to help, even if they don’t speak English.

The Red Square

Before I made it Moscow, I knew the one thing I had to see before anything else: the infamous Red Square. My friends swore by it, my grandparents praised it, I knew it would be amazing. As my roommate guided me out of the metro to the café where we’d meet her friends for lunch, she casually turned around and pointed. “Oh, and there’s the Red Square.”

Turns out that although the name is appropriate (it is a square after all), what I expected ended up being confused by the number of sights of interest. There’s Saint Basil’s Cathedral, Lenin’s Tomb, Gum Mall, not to mention the Kremlin, which stretches out in all directions, it’s difficult to know quite where it begins or ends. Oddly enough this time of year there’s an ice skating rink in the middle, that seems somewhat artificial and bizarre in the middle of such impressive buildings. Next to it there’s a very artificial Christmas tree, that seems very dwarfed in such a huge space. Like everywhere else I have been in the past few days, loud Russian music is played all day long from some intercom hidden somewhere.

I think it’s going to take me years to discover this place! As Kirsten walked me around we managed to arrive just in time to see the changing of the guards for the Kremlin. Although they have thick coats and those awesome fur coats, I really can’t imagine a more difficult job than standing still, outside, in Moscow for any period of time. It didn’t take us long to run indoors again, to the GUM, which is one of the more elaborate shopping centers I’ve seen. Even though it’s a shopping mall, and I hate shopping, at least it’s warm.

A friend of mine and I discovered a beautiful chapel in the square as well, to make up for the fact that St Basil’s was closed for renovation. We had good timing too, as they had just started an evening mass. Never having been in a Russian Orthodox church before, I realize now that my grandmother was right: they don’t sit! What’s more, attendees must bow and perform hail Mary’s every few seconds. And yet, as the priest chanted, and the four part choir sang, as I inhaled the incense I was awed by the beauty of the church walls, and music that was reaching my ears. It’s not every day you hear musicians in perfect tune, with perfect harmony, nor do you get to see such beautiful murals on the walls. As we walked back into the bitter cold, I felt a little warmer, inspired by this new home of mine.

My first traffic jam!

It was Saturday afternoon, and I had just made it through customs, grabbed my bag, and out the door. Through the throng of taxi drivers, there it was, a sign: “Laura Preston.” “Sasha” (as I later discovered, that was his name) waved it back and forth, nonchalantly until he saw my eyes meet his. As if by magic, he suddenly became animated, grabbed my bag, and off we went. Through the “das” and “nyets,” I was able to get my first tour of Moscow.

And my first traffic jam. I know they say the city is large, but I never thought it would be a web of confusing roads, packed with cars of all sizes and styles, zigzagging and driving on parts of the road I didn’t even know were driveable. As we listened to Russian pop music Sasha groaned as we waited in stopped traffic for half an hour. An hour later and we were still driving towards the city center, as Sasha pointed and most likely swore about the hundreds of stopped cars on the other side of the freeway; his route home. As he smoked what was probably his 8th cigarette, I pointed to some sky scrapers and asked, “Moscova?” Nyet, further ahead.

As long as it took to get to my flat, somewhere on the opposite side of town, I decided I would never feel the urge to drive through this town, as we turned and continued onto to large road after large road. Who knows where we were????

Later on I discovered that there is a solution to this congestion problem, which is ultimately doomed to happen with 10 million people in one place: the metro. They aren’t lying when they say it is one of the most lavish and beautiful undergrounds in Europe. Believe me, the best part of the metro is waiting for the train as you stare at the tiled ceilings, or marbled halls adorned by crystal chandeliers. Too bad the longest wait time is 3 minutes. The metro seems to go wherever I need to go, and faster than anything else. The trick is to read the signs and know the stops. Time to practice my Cyrillic reading!

Round two - Moscow

So for those of you who haven't talked to me in a while, it's time for a new adventure overseas. After a lovely summer in Europe, it was time to run back home in California for a while, to spend some time with my family, recharge the batteries, and of course the inevitable, look for a job. Which I found - the perfect change, something to contrast my last year on a tropical island, surfing - somewhere with a different climate, attitude, language. A completely new experience.

I decided to go to Moscow, Russia for the following reasons:
A – It’s a new country that I have never been to, and if I add it to my “Where I’ve been” map, it will look like I’ve seen the whole world.
B- Russian is a new language with a new alphabet, which I think will be fun to learn, and might even be useful someday.
And C – SNOW. After a year of summer, as much fun as it is, I am more than ready for a little chilly weather and finally, I can live in a place where it snows a LOT. Well, I hope so at least.

But the truth is more subtle than all of these things combined. More than anything, after all of the gossip, myths, and legends of what has been, what is, and what will be, I want to find the truth. People tend to have very strong opinions about Russia. I can’t count the number of times someone has asked me, “Why on earth do you want to go there? Of all places!!!” And yet, my curiosity gets the best of me. I am out to discover what was, what is, and what may be considered Russia…to finally put the records straight in my mind.


That's how I stumbled on Russia. Or rather, it stumbled on me. Why not? A new language, a new location, and definitely a different climate? After waiting for a visa, and a lovely Thanksgiving with the family and Agnes, it was time. Time for a new adventure, teaching English in Moscow, Russia. What's the worst that could happen?