Here Comes Winter

A heavy, wet snow

This week felt considerably less busy that the last couple. This was due, in part, to not having any classes on Monday and also due to the fact that I basically covered only one theme for all my classes the entire week. We covered a long list of words and phrases related to life and studies in American colleges. Certain processes and systems work very differently in American universities compared to Russian universities. For example, I shared my experiences with a liberal arts education that necessitated an exploration of different subjects other than my major. For my students (and for many Russians in other universities), they must adhere to a more strictly controlled schedule that doesn't allow for much freedom in class selection. Also, financial aid works quite a bit differently. For American colleges, tuition can be very high and require that you get a lot of scholarships and loans. For Russians, financial aid usually comes in the form of living stipends for students from poorer families and it's often not much.

This week, we've seen a considerable change in the weather. For the last couple weeks, temperatures have hovered around the low-thirties with off-and-on rain. Now we're finally getting snow and got our first taste of cold temperatures. On Tuesday (or maybe Wednesday?), the windchill dipped down to close to 0 degrees Fahrenheit with real temperatures closer to about 10 degrees. However, since then it's warmed up considerably back to the low-thirties and it's basically a big slushy mess everywhere. Sidewalks are giant puddles and the streets are covered in mud. It's pretty annoying, but there is one plus. If your shoes get filthy from crossing the street, they'll probably get clean again as soon as you get to the other side and hit another puddle. In short, I need to buy some better boots. Also, with snow on the ground, everything is considerably more beautiful, so I suppose that's another plus.

A view of some old homes from my room after a night of snow

I spent some of my free time this week hanging out with a few people. On Wednesday, I went to the movies with Pavel (my primary contact here). We went to Cloud Atlas. I remember seeings ads for it in the US before I left, but since arriving, I had completely forgotten about it. I'm glad we went because it was a very interesting movie. That said, it was a little confusing and didn't have a standard plot line. The fact that I watched it in Russian didn't help. Regardless, it was a very creative film and I had a lot of fun.

On Thursday, I didn't have as much work to prepare for my 8:00am class on Friday so I spent some time with Niklas, Dima, and Sasha. I donated the rest of my pasta sauce to their dinner which means I'll probably have to make a quick stop to the store tomorrow so I can have some pasta of my own soon. We basically just talked about random stuff and enjoyed each other's company.

Looking across the square in front of the philharmonic

On Friday night, Katya took me to another one of her favorite places in the city, called "Retro." It's a pub/cafe with a sort of Russian 1980s-1990s theme. Of course, my eyes gravitated to the most American things on the menu. As soon as I saw that they offered buffalo wings, I knew I had to order them. But, for the first time in my life, a waiter actually suggested that I shouldn't order a particular item from their menu. Katya explained that I wanted to see how they compare with buffalo wings as we prepare them in the US. The waiter said that they actually use some kind of curry sauce for the buffalo-flavored wings (there were other flavors as well). At that point, I was confused, but I decided that I needed to try them nevertheless. When we got our food, the waiter actually told us that the restaurant had recently changed the recipe and that they might resemble American-style buffalo wings more. I'll say that they were tasty, but I won't say that they were buffalo wings. They were close, but a bit off. Because it was Friday, we also got to enjoy some live music from a local group that played some covers but also, according to the waiter, some of their own songs. What's the most interesting thing about live music at this place though? The restaurant adds $10 to each table's bill for the live music! It's a good thing that the band was good... But all in all, it was a cool place with a neat atmosphere and good food and I had a lot of fun talking with Katya.

On Saturday, Katya invited me to go with her and some of her friends/classmates to a "concert." As it turned out before we left, nobody was quite sure what it was going to be exactly. They were certain where it was going to be and pretty certain that there was going to be a performance from students, but we didn't find out until we got there that the performance was a part of a program for high school students who were visiting the university. So basically, we hung out at a prospective student event for about a half hour while waiting for the show to start. I had seen a lot of the performances before because some of them were repeat performances from the Freshman Debut that I went to a few weeks ago. Nevertheless, some of those were very cool and I saw a couple new things that were really entertaining, such as a comedy skit and a Russian folk dance. Now I'm sitting here trying to figure out what to do for dinner and how to spend my Saturday evening. I suppose I also have to keep in mind that I have to get up early for a full-day excursion to Tobolsk tomorrow.