I will try in this posting to break my usual mode and write something rather brief and to the p-o-i-n-t. Who knows if I shall be successful in my aim, but I will try...
First of all...Last weekend I went on a picnic to the mountains that was fantastic! I was out buying groceries with the nine-year old in the morning and I ran into one of the American guys in town and he invited me with some friends out the to Lavushka--a sledding place near town. I said "Let me just drop my kid off at home" and ran the kid home, threw on my ski clothes and met up with the guys; we waited until 2pm for a shuttle that had been ordered at 9 am.The passengers had figured in 3hours delay, so we only had to wait 2 hrs instead of five... sometimes Tuvan time is really a blast.
Well we drove about a half hour out of town, through some villages, up to the mountains till we came to the Taiga ski base in the mountains, a popular (probably the most popular) get away place for the locals. The sky was crisp and blue, lighting the still-white mountains with a golden, friendly glow. Ravens tossed in turns in the still air. It was beautiful.
Then we turned off the main road and started driving our beat up gazelle van along a veeeery snowy single tire track (the van had double tires). Well, the driver gunned the engine to try and break us through to the parking lot, but to no avail, and we were quickly stuck. The driver told us to get out and push, and we did, but through a fatal miscalculation and misapplication of our brute strength we managed to push the bus further off the road into the snow amidst some big spruce trees. The trees, if they could laugh, were probably chuckling at us.
Then there was much heaving, some slight chilliness of limbs, and lots more heaving. We pushed and we shoved, chanted, put fallen tree limbs under the tires, coaxed, prayed, but nothing, nothing happened! All the while there were other cars and dudes on frolicksome horses cantering past. Finally we ate our pride and sent an emissary to ask other picnickers for their help. Our emissary came back with a shovel and two salty old Tuvan dudes on horseback, and with their guidance and encouragement (they didn't say much, but looked at us like we were silly kids and somehow the future of a lot of things depended on us being able to push that bus out of the snowy field) we finally were able to free the bus. The driver rode it like a bucking stallion up to the turn around, skidded it around in a full circle and unloaded our things. We proceeded to go sledding; on one of the steepest, iciest sledding hills i've ever seen; it was great! And down at the bottom of the hill we built a fire and make shashlik (shish ke bob). Talk about tasty. Also hanging out with some new friends--students at the university from another department--and drinking little forbidden seeming sips of sicky sweet wine and beer, drinking condensed milk from the can and doing all the other wonderful things Russians/Tuvans like to do in nature was also really pleasant.
The van never came back to take us back to the city; we ended walking down the road for eight km until we found the van coming up to get us after loading up with passengers from the village and returned to Kyzyl, tired and happy.
Well, I think that pahod (expedition) got some of the spring sillies into my blood, because the next day after classes I decided I wanted to go to Krasnoyarsk to a Fulbrighter convention and made some really fast travel plans. The plans involved rescheduling a couple classes, choirs, and TOEFL workshops, getting my documents in order and walking to the bus station, where the driver (of course) was the same one as always and a car was ready to leave 5 mins after I got there. Talk about convenient!
The mountain passes were really snowy. I haven't seen so much snow before in my life, although a guy recently visiting from Michigan tells me it's normal where he's from. There are a couple places on the road where the little toyota camry is literally surrounded on either side by twenty foot walls of snow; the feeling of claustrophobia and man's fragility in the natural world was pretty overwhelming and spectacular. I liked it a lot, though I was also a little bit scared.
Coming into Abakan again, I was reminded how much I like that city. It's just pleasant; calm people (possibly the most authentically Siberian Siberians I have met), steppeish rolling hills, they make lots of tasty food products, the mountain island of dachas in the middle of town, the woody downtown with its friendly path (reminds me of middle path at kenyon a bit!). Basically; Abakan is one of my favorite cities on Earth!
Then I caught my train and shared a platzkart bunker with some nice chatty ladies. One was a Khakass babushka, who was really nice and also her Russian Sister in Law. We had good conversation; they filled my pockets with sweet candies like I was a little five year old kid and gave me lots of friendly advice. Most of the advice sounded like most of the other advice I get here: "Find a husband." Russia is persistent in its belief that my life will not be complete until I get married. But I did sweet talk the one lady into saying some sentences for me in the Khakhass language, which sounds a lot like Tuvan! I recognized some words that were the same; which makes perfect sense considering the two people have been neighbors for thousands of years.
Getting to Krasnoyarsk was a bit surreal; cities are much different from rural places and Krasnoyarsk is a real city. Lots and lots of high rise apartment buildings; courtyards, stores, factories, empty buildings, etc. I was thrilled to meet Helen the Krasnoyarsk ETA at the airport and see her university. I do have to say that the Aerospace Academy where she teaches is much prettier than Tuvan State University, though they also didn't have toilet paper. Some things in Russia never change... But the rocket Helen described is MUCH larger than I imagined. They seriously just put a rocket, as in "the object which flies into space," standing upright in the middle of the open spot in front of the university.
Talking with other ETAs is always great. We are having so many parallel experiences, it's really good to get together once in a while and talk about things; as well as to refresh my memory about what it means to be a twenty two year old person in America, and what the heck sort of weird existence I was living a year ago when I still went to school. Lots has changed since then, but not that much at the same time....
We did fun stuff like drink beer, make tacos and brownies, drink lots of really tasty coffee, go to the train station several more times, and participate in the conference which was our real purpose for being there after all. We had an exhibit at a fair of many countries where we talked about American culture and American English language. A lot of interesting people came to our booth, including a whole slew of Tuvans who study in Krasnoyarsk and where there representing Respublika Tuva and Tuvan culture. I also discovered some words are mutually distinguishable between Tuvan and Kyrgyz languages; which I guess makes sense and all, both being Turkic languages. But the whole mutual distinguish-ability of closely related languages gets me every time; it's a magical feeling to realize you can understand someone from a totally unknown (to oneself) country just because of another skill you have somehow acquired (I first felt this feeling in Ukraine when I realized Russian was even more useful than I thought...). Anyways; as the months slip by, I just feel better and better about being a foreign languages major in college!
Finally it was time to head for home. The train ride home was long. I actually missed my first train because I read the ticket poorly (i.e. not at all), but luckily there was another and I made it. I didn't talk to my fellow passengers--just slept--but then the next day the dezhurnaya came and sat with me for a couple hours and we chatted as lots of dry steppe rolled by. I think I spotted a lot of deer stones from the train window--the mysterious mini stonehenge esque decorations that the indigenous people of siberia left behind. Anyways; there were a lot of strange circles of vertically pointed rocks.... suspicious!
Then I got to Abakan and met up with a good friend and her friend and we all decided to take the taxi together. We took a taxi-bus thing with these two beefy-meathead Tuvan dudes. I am calling them meatheads because they were telling us lies at the train station; that we were waiting for a train from Irkutsk which really didn't exist; really the meatheads just wanted to fill up the van (why didn't they just say that?). We took off on the road and then stopped briefly in Minusinsk to pick up a mother and tiny little baby. The baby promptly feel asleep with its head on my knee. I don't know why babies in Russia always fall asleep on top of me, but it happens a lot more than I would ever expect. I usually feel honored by this, though it means that I can't wiggle my feet much. I guess in Russia people are most democratic about their bodies and space; the American definition of "personal space" is not invoked.
The shit hit the fan, as they say, when we realized after driving 270 out of 437 kilometers that the meatheads had forgotten to gas up the van. Of course it was also a diesel van. We spent a while chasing down dump trucks in the Siberian back country before finally landing in a village where the meatheads were able to siphon some Benzine. Hurrah! There's no such thing as a boring taxi ride to Tuva.
Getting back again to life and the swing of things here has been good. The final election results were finally made and we have a new department chair; but so far it seems ok. It really doesn't effect my job too much, who ever is making the final decisions. It seems like every one is eager to work with me and happy to talk/ask questions/just to have me around. I guess power comes and goes and so do the people who lead organizations. So I guess I'm cautiously optimistic... mostly I feel like the election was a big waste of emotional energy, but people gotta do what people gotta do I guess.
Finally, there's a professor here teaching classes in Shakespeare this week from a bible college in the US, so there is plenty of crazy stuff going on in Kyzyl. I have been drafted a bit into helping show this guy around, which is fun. Plus there's neverendingly a lot to discover and understand here, and talking to someone about it helps me figure things out. So I guess that things in Kyzyl are going great! It's finally a little warmer, a little more like spring. The Tuvans are depressed about this though; apparently it means the tick season is coming. I really don't know what to expect for Tick season. Namdolmaa has been telling me crazy stories about a sky black from ticks; but she has been known to exaggerate about health related issues, so I guess its just another case of wait and see. All the best my friends!
Love,
Riley
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