Rain Rain

I wrote this in a hurry cause I gotta study.

So it's been raining non stop for the past 24 hours. How much rain you ask? The canal outside my apartment has risen at least 5 feet since yesterday. The water covers half of the stairs leading down to where you would get on a tour boat. This weather reminds me of the 1824 St. Petersburg flood that Pushkin mentions in his poem "The Bronze Horseman."

...PS so happy I got that umbrella now. Definitely worth every ruble.

I'm making friends like no other. The guy that sold me the gym membership is an engineering student and also his grandmother teaches English and Russian literature. Really cool guy. He was the one that really encouraged me to go to the Ghostface Killah concert. Long story short. We became friends and we went to McDonalds and I talked to him in broken Russian and he talked to me in broken English. He's from Novogrod and he loves American French and German hip-hop. Mostly American though. We're supposed to be going to a soccer game (Moscow vs. St. Petersburg). He explained to me that St. Petersburg fans were not very okay with Black people. I don't know if I still want to go after hearing that. But he's a good guy. His name is Peter.

By the way. I still get looks in public. I guess it makes sense though... I guess white people that visit Lagos have similar experiences...

And I'm more familiar with how racism here works. I literally live in the center of St. Petersburg. What would be the equivalent of Manhattan. In my research (yes. I'm still doing it) I've noticed that most racist attacks occur on the outskirts and outside of the city. Like in little hick towns. I still keep my head on a swivel and my eyes wide open but I'm in a safer area than I thought.

Sad story. A newborn baby died when his mom left for a few days and he and his other older siblings ages 4 and 6 were left in the care of their grandmother and father (both alcoholics). The baby died he/she wasn't fed. The older kids survived by eating the left over alcohol chasers bread and juice... That's kind of sort of how this country is outside of moscow and st. petersburg.

HILARIOUS! HILARITY! I got into a Sauna today for the first time (maybe in my life) and there was this big burly Russian man in there. I had NO IDEA that saunas were so hot! So I'm just sitting there. Not able to breath very well cause the air is so humid and hot. And then the big burly Russian man pours a gourd of water onto the steam maker thing and the temperature in the room jumps up another 70 degrees! After that he turns to me and says "Ещё!?" to which I replied "Нет! Очень жарко!" And he hit his chest two times really hard and looked at me dead in the face and said "Хорошо! Хорошо!"

Translation-

Burley Russian man: Do you want more!?

Me: No! It's very hot!

Burley Russian man: That's good! That's good!

I sat it out in that place for about 10 minutes and lost out about 20 gallons of sweat.

Worked out like crazy today and I'm ridiculously sore.

I want to write more. I can write more. And I will. I have to do homework now and study study study STUDY! This grammar.

Stay Tuned

Healthy and On Schedule

The picture with the sunshine was taken roughly 30 minutes before the picture with the rain from the bus was taken.

I have cucumbers and tomatoes with EVERY dinner. And I'm starting to get on a better schedule in terms of studying, working out, and free time. I got an A on my first assignment!

I'm studying harder and really trying to devote more time to focusing on grammar. I'm happy the Lakers won. Kobe is the best basketball player in the world.

The Russian news report here today said that the Laker fans in LA partied like "gangsters" and showed clips of LA fans in the streets going crazy.

I was called 50 Cent Sunday on the Metro. I still get looks from lots of people. Especially kids. They're not hateful looks or looks of disapproval it's like "elephant in the room" kind of look.

But my diet here is ridiculously healthier than I've ever been in my life. Plus joining the gym? I'm going to come back looking like Dwight Howard... Not how he was looking last night but how they'll depict him on the cover of NBA LIVE 2010! Can't wait for that to come out! I'll be first in line to purchase it for my PS3.

I have my first exam on Wednesday. I'm so ready for it.

The weather here is schizophrenic. I woke up with all cloudy skies and light showers. Got to school and it was sunny and too hot for the jacket I was wearing. About halfway through the tour we were on it started getting cloudy and dark again. It started to rain and we (the group) voted on just driving around the rest of the tour and not walking.

I got to get some sleep. Gym at 8:00am!

American Cultural Imperialism (Thank God!)

The McDonalds here is the best thing to happen to me since I've been here. It is so delicious! Way better than any American McDonalds! And the Sprite was the perfect mixture of syrup and carbonated water. It wasn't flat or disgusting like the Sprites from McDonalds in France. It was lemon and lime harmonization perfected.

There were these two kids I saw on my way back listening to some surprisingly good sounding Russian hip-hop and I turned around and pointed at them and kind of gave them a thumbs up and their faces lit up like Christmas!

....

I started this blog a while back and saved it. We went on a tour of the city today. I had seen some of the spots already when I was exploring with some of the other Brown students earlier.

I almost forgot that I'm here to be a student. But now I'm going to get really serious about doing well in my class and mastering as much Russian as I can this summer. I'm picking up words and phrases here and there but the grammar is still escaping me. I have two Russian language teachers. One is young and she talks so impossibly fast! (The classes are all in Russian) And my other teacher is older and she talks nice and slow and I do really well with her. She probably thinks I'm the best student in the language class cause I can converse with her and answer questions in class easily. The younger teacher spits off Russian words like a gatling gun spits off rounds. She probably thinks I'm the worst student in the class.

The poverty here is so grimy. Contrary to how busted up and disgustingly awful my apartment smells there's still a lot more worse places the further away you get from the center of St. Petersburg. The majority of Russia's wealth is concentrated into Moscow and St. Petersburg. The further away you get the more depressing and awful things get... Another reason I think the United States is kind of on top of things in terms of administration and quality of life. If Huntsville, Texas was in Russia I'd probably be a farmer and alcoholic.

The metro is MADNESS during rush hour in the afternoon! I'm from the country and I've never had to take metros and buses. So getting around reading the signs and stops in Russian on one of the worlds largest metro systems is a huge leap for me.

And the Taxi's here! Are absolutely ridiculous! You just stop a RANDOM UNMARKED car in the street and negotiate a price and you go off to your destination. There are some cabs with yellow things on top indicating they are a legitimate cab but cabs don't have meters in them! Pricing with cab drivers is best negotiated by people that know the city and know how much things should cost.

Anyway! I'm about to get very serious about my homework and things of that nature. Dinner time...

Stay Tuned

Sunshine All Day and Night

The sun here practically never sets. Honestly! It's daylight outside for about 23 hours. It's not bad though. I still get plenty of sleep and I think the city looks really pretty at night when the sun is just starting to set. The entire sky is peach colored with blue beautiful shades of blue between 10pm and 3am. It gets dark at 4 and the sun comes back up at 5.

I joined a gym here in Russia. And it is incredible! The facilities are really nice and I've got a Russian coach (тренер). The basketball court there is so sick too! It's European style so the lines are a little different. I paid a lot to join this gym for just a month so my goal is to to go there every morning before class and workout.

I've been doing homework a lot today. Nothing too crazy or exciting. Last night I kicked it with the Harvard students again. These Russian girls came up to me and started bombarding me with questions about their English grammar and different nouns. And then they wanted to know all about me and what I was doing here. The same thing would happen constantly throughout the night with other Russians...

The alcohol policy here is absolutely absurd. It can be bought 24 hours a day 7 days a week and it's available on every corner. When I first got here my host mom told me that alcohol was a major problem in this country. And I agree. It can be consumed openly on the streets like a bottle of water and public drunkenness is not a rarity.

random. It was about 3:30am last night and there was a girl and a horse. she wanted me to pay her 200 rubles to ride it. I explained to her (in Russian) that in Texas my family has several horses and that I did not want to pay to ride her horse in the middle of the city at 3:30 in the morning.

I am not sure what the other Brown students have been up too. They like to speak in English entirely too much. Most of the Harvard students have had at least 2 or 3 years of Russian. So that's my reason for hanging out with them. It's not a very good idea to be with a lot of people that are speaking English loudly in public.

I'm thinking about submitting this blog as my final project for my culture class. Which I KILL everyday. Partly because I took Russian/Eastern European History for an entire year this year but it's also really interesting and I love doing the readings. After readings Pushkin's "Autumn" I have now selected Fall as my favorite season.

Oh yeah we went to the Russian Art Museum yesterday! I saw some very beautiful Medieval Russian Icons! I Prayed in front of one. Our tour guide was really smart and very informative. But he talked SO SLOW and his accent made his English so difficult to listen to. Wish he would have just lectured in Russian.

And I saw some of the other places that students were living yesterday... Let's just say I got played... But I like to think I'm getting the authentic Soviet Russian experience living here. My house is not as westernized as the others. And the combined smell of the cat and dog and cigaret smoke in here is more than one can bear. It takes me like an hour to eat dinner every night cause I'm trying to breath through my mouth and eat at the same time.

The best smelling place and most amazing place is the metro! It's like a mile underground but it's so nice! Everything is marble and I feel like I'm a king in a palace when I'm on my way to school! The metro stations here are by far one of the most impressive wonders of the world. They don't smell bad and they're not grimy like the ones in New York. I haven't seen any rats and the rails are not littered with trash and there are no bums or homeless people living and/or urinating there.

There other picture is from one of the metro stations and it's one of the less fancy ones! It's not great picture but the mosaic is huge and it's really magnificent.

That's all for now. Back to the homework grind.

Stay Tuned.

Rock the Mic

What's better than going to see one of your favorite artists live in performance? Having your own live performance the night after! That's right! I rocked* the stage last night at A2 Club. I was taken to this club by the same guy that I met at the concert yesterday Sif.

Two things: not all Africans are scheming, untrustworthy, tricksters I should have never showed my mom the "I Go Chop Your Dollar" video. Secondly there are too few Black people here for us to be trying to scheme and rip each other off. I'm more worried about being attacked, hustled, or robbed by a white Russian. I know Africans. Trust me! I can tell the difference between a sketchy African that wants to rip me off and someone that is a comrade (товарищ). I know when I need to be cautious and when to be a comrade. That being said. Let me tell you about the rest of yesterday.

So I went to this huge park with my Russian speech partner from school and this kid from Harvard Felix. There was a zoo and boats! There were these enormous ugly birds in the zoo that looked like a mix between an eagle and vulture. We paid for a boat and got in and rowed around the lake it was BEAUTIFUL! The park is huge and it's in the most fancy part of St. Petersburg. There are huge amazingly nice apartment buildings and yachts, boats, and jet skis. It's incredible!

After we left there I came back to the station where I live and met up wit Sif. The most HILARIOUS thing ever happened. I was walking home and this old drunk Russian guy comes up to me and all my friends (at this point I'm with like 5 or 6 other people) and says in Russian, "I want to help you! I don't want these people to kidnap and harm you! How much do I need to pay these horrible girls so they do not take you away? How much is your ransom?" We tried to explain to this man for about 10 minutes that we were all friends and that everything was okay but he was very concerned about my safety. Thankfully, Sif took control of the situation and told the guy (in Russian cause he speaks it better than me) that everything was cool and that we had to go. I shook the guys hand and called him my comrade and we left. Best part about all of this is... I handed this girl my camera and she recorded the entire thing.

At this point it's about 10 pm. We head to the store to get some drinks. Which by the way. Alcohol here costs no more than a dollar and cigarets are fifty cents. They can both be bought on almost any corner and consumed in public. I now know why the average life expectancy for a Russian male is about fifty years. I bought my favorite peach tea that's only here in Europe and we headed to the park.

At the park another drunk Russian about my age comes up to me and my friends and he was really interested getting acquainted with me. He was very rowdy and tried to start a fight with a guy that was with his girlfriend standing on the bridge for just glancing over at him. Anyway, he was cool and to seal our newfound friendship with Sergei Mariinskiy we all took a shot of gin (he was carrying around a bottle of Seagrams). It's very rude in Russia to turn down the drink of friendship. I gave a toast to, "A beautiful city. Great new friends. and A wonderful country" (or something like that). Someone also said to World Peace. Which I think was the most important of all things.

So this dude Sif. Is the most well connected person I've ever met. He calls his friend up (another student from Zimbabwe) and we take a cab to the club. Once we get there we go right through security with no hassle. His other friend from Cameroon (who speaks French, English, and Russian) hooked us up with VIP and drinks and hooka. It was hands down one of the most baller moments of my life! There were some Chinese gangsters in VIP on the other side of the club that looked really scary. They had their women and they were just laid back like than ran the world. I most certainly was not going to cross them or go anywhere near their girls.

Then the moment came. I was talking to a Russian girl about how I don't think I look like Snoop Dogg and these whack Russian rappers started sounding horrible on stage. I told her that I was going to go up and do better. I found Sif and asked him if I could get on stage. He gets the DJ and tells him I'm going to go. My heart is pounding but yet I feel cool in relaxed. Next thing I know I'm up on the stage with a mic in my hand in front of the entire club rocking the building from left to right! I did have to borrow a few lines from Jay-Z, Outkast, and of course Joe Budden but I kept mostly original, entertaining, and of course SO GANGSTA! And Sif is the best hype man ever! He came up beside me and started dancing and doing hand gestures. I felt like Eminem in 8 Mile. When he finally gets his flow together and starts doing well in battles and at shows. It was incredible.

The end of the night was very tame. I left and Sif and the dude from Cameroon come outside and help me get a Taxi and make sure that I don't get ripped off. They got me a cab for 150 Rubles. About 4 or 5 dollars. I would have paid up to 500 or 700 though had they not been there to secure a price for me (dollar to ruble conversions are ridiculously hard). My cab drive was from Uzbekistan and we had a really good conversation in Russian. I'm picking up so many new words everyday and grammar.

I made it back to my room safely and passed out. Woke up. Had breakfast. And made it to school EARLY.

I know I can't have that type of fun every night. I don't even want to. It would ruin the feeling. But last night was truly indescribable and the description you just read does not do it justice.

I'm staying safe. Studying hard. And keeping my wits about me.

Stay Tuned

C.R.E.A.M.

Cash Rules Everything Around Me (C.R.E.A.M.)... A popular song/phrase coined by the Wu-Tang Clan on their 1993 Debut Album "Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)" also one of my favorite albums of all time. So naturally when I found out that Ghostface Killah was going to be preforming in St. Petersburg I immediately sprung into action into planning on how I could see him. But let's start at the start of my day.

Took the metro to school. And school was long and tedious. Grammar exercises, worksheets, conversation... The dreariness of it all! After that me and two other American students bought gym memberships to this really nice Fitness center right next to the school. For 4500 rubles. It turns out that we got completely ripped off. At the mall not far from my house the lady working at a kiosk desk for the same gym said that there was a discount and that it was only supposed to cost 3100 rubles. Scam number one. Then I paid too much for an umbrella (зонт)... I really needed one though.

Fastforward.

I got off at the station not far from the club where the show was. And I took a Taxi. He charged me 200 rubles for what was maybe only supposed to be a 50 no more than a 100 ruble ride.

Cash ruled everything around me until I got to the show in which the Ghostface amazingness took over and astounded me. Initially I thought that me and Ghostface were the only two black people in the building... I'll get back to that later. Anyway the show was so incredible! He rocked the stage like he was in his prime! Most of the people in the room didn't understand A WORD of what he was saying but he killed it*! Some of the beats I've never even heard before.

Anyway! After the show most people cleared out and I noticed that there were 4 black people there. One was probably from western Europe. Two were native Russians I'm guessing cause they only spoke Russian with a lot of their white Russian friends. And the last dude is my new homie Sif!

We met up with some dudes that were on stage with Ghostface and they were so surprised to see me there that they were like "yo you're rolling with us" and so me and Sif went back with them. We were with Ghostface Killah in his dressing room. He looked dog tired! But he was interested in what we were doing in Russia and asked us how we felt about St. Petersburg. And then we bombarded him with questions! He's really deep. He was talking about some really interesting, philosophical type ideas and ways people understand life. He's not your average rapper. His DJ/entourage wanted us to roll with them and translate and show them the spots around Petersburg but I had to get back here cause of homework and my host mom (хозяйка-landlady) would be worried if I came back too late.

On the way back I got to know Sif. He's from Zimbabwe and he's been here 5 years. He just obtained his bachelors in engineering and he is working on his masters. He's a master computer programmer and speaks Russian, English, and his native Zimbabwean language fluently. He told me about all 30 Black people in St. Petersburg. kidding... I think there's like 45. Anyway, he told me about his experiences here and how he was almost beaten to death after he got jumped by skinheads. He told me about his father who studied artillery here in the 70's and went back to Zimbabwe and fought in a war...

Cool thing is. He knows the city. The people. The ins and out of this place better than most Russians. He went out of his way (even paid) to show me how to get back to my station. Cause I wasn't going to take another Taxi. I offered to give him enough rubles to pay him back for the cost of him coming down to the metro with me and enough for him to get maybe 2 or 3 drinks. He didn't accept it and said we'd go out later and I could buy him a drink then.

Funny how life plays out. And interesting how God Works (Muslim, Jewish, Christian, ect.)-courtesy of Ghostface. I was continually getting ripped off today and was feeling lost and depressed about being in this city and wondering what my purpose here was but tonight thanks to Ghostface Killah and the everyday kindness of complete strangers I'm feeling a lot better about Russia and Russian.

Stay Tuned

Swing of Things

I rode the metro to school by myself. I know people say that the best way to learn is to make mistakes and to be corrected but I don't like sounding like a four year old trying to speak Russian in class.

I fell asleep yesterday at 8:00 pm and woke up at 7 this morning. It was really weird. This room is freezing cold and everytime I come back home the dog tries to take off his muzzle and I'm worried one day he's going to get it off.

On the bright side! The bath water was really really hot! I was thinking that it would be 3rd world cold but it was good and warm.

And this place has the most God-awful musty smell. Partly cause of all the animals (Dog, Cat, turtle...) and partly just cause it's an old busted building. My apartment isn't that bad but outside of here coming up the stairs or the elevator it smells like urine and cigarets.

I bought 3 green apples from this gypsy. They were only 45 rubles (about a $1.50) she was very nice. I think I will buy fresh produce from her often cause she's on my way to school.

There are a lot of farmers that stand around the city trying to sell their produce. It's like every 50 paces there's a small set up where I can buy apples, chives, celery, potatoes, carrots... Stuff like that.

I got my Russian cell phone today. The School gives them to us with 100 rubles credit on there and we can add more rubles as needed.

I think I saw a black person but I'm not sure... They were moving quickly and wearing a hood.

Anyway, I have to run and get breakfast. 3 eggs. toast. and water/juice. every morning. Later!