Pre-Kiev Post

On the eve of my departure for Kiev, I realized that it’s been a pathetic 23 days since my last post. I figured I ought to remedy that before heading into Ukraine.

There are three things that generally inhibit me from posting:

1. A wish to avoid talking about people here on the Internet
2. A desire to avoid being constantly whiny about certain things
3. Work

All three factors have colluded in the past few weeks.

The last three weeks have been busy and quite fun. I no longer spend all evenings holed up in my room like an Internet junkie! I have engaged in many semi-scandalous activities such as drinking coffee illicitly and dancing at the disco. The last two weeks were the start of classes, and I had 11 pairs per week to prep for, which is no joke. At any rate, this semester I have a much lighter courseload than last year, thank God. Here’s what I’m teaching:

Development of Conversational Speech

Linguistic Analysis of Artistic Texts

History of English-Speaking Peoples

You gotta love the convoluted course titles! The conversation class is the most fun because I get to teach my students extremely practical things and just talk with them. Today I showed them a bunch of videos of people with Valley girl accents. Then I pretended to be a waitress at a restaurant. Everyone wanted strawberry shortcake. I forgot Alyona’s Coke...sorry, Alyona! For those who are interested this website has pretty awesome, realistic colloquial English lesson materials.

The main frustrations have been getting back into the post-Soviet work culture. Enough said. I am leaving for a training in Kiev with my fellow Moldovan, Georgian, Armenian, and Azerbaijani ETA’s tomorrow, which I hope will recharge my tolerance for bureaucracy and give me a plethora of lesson planning ideas. I’m excited in the extreme because the Regional English Language Officer will be conducting the training and he is extraordinarily cool.

To change the subject abruptly, I have found myself getting weirdly obsessed with the Hold Steady and Bruce Springsteen. In particular, the song “Atlantic City.” I went on a fairly long tangent about popular perceptions of New Jersey in my literature class today. It was pretty uncalled for. I’m already getting as nuts as the professors I knew in the States.

I think this has to do with the fact that both the Hold Steady and the Boss are what Russian speakers would call спесифический. That is to say, they reflect the character of a certain place (Minneapolis and Jersey, respectively). I mean, you probably couldn’t even translate Hold Steady lyrics because they just wouldn’t make sense outside of an American context. (Although the chorus of “Party Pit”--“I’m going to walk around and drink some more”--is pretty much the most Russian thing I’ve ever heard.)

They are both essentially trying to tell the stories of people who live in a certain time and place without a whole lot of judgment, which is pretty unusual in popular music. Craig Finn, lead singer of the Hold Steady, writes about people like a college girl who gets mixed up with a townie murder and a teenage boy who gets kicked out of his own prom for being high. Bruce tells us about a man moving to Atlantic City to become a contract killer--and trying to convince his girlfriend to come with. It makes for some pretty good listening.

The Hold Steady also adds an interesting element of religion, alternating between blasphemy and piety. Craig Finn says, “I feel Jesus in the clumsiness of young and awkward lovers / I feel Judas in the long odd of the rackets on the corner.” Nevertheless, he seems pretty pleased that a past girlfriend was “a really good kisser and wasn’t all that strict of a Christian.”

I’m not sure if I’m obsessed because of nostalgia or the good music, but I can say that buying Boys and Girls in America at Hoodlums while I was on break was probably the best $5.99 I’ve spent in quite a while.

With that, I’m going to pack. Here I come, Kievan Rus!

Anna Karenina vs. The Museum of Innocence: Tolstoy/Pamuk Mash-up

While home on vacation, I was watching “Charlie Rose,” which is always a good idea. I was pleasantly surprised when I saw that the guest was Orhan Pamuk, the 2006 Nobel Laureate from Turkey, was talking about his new book, The Museum of Innocence. I started reading Pamuk’s books in 2007 when I was traveling in Turkey. I have to say that I don’t actually think his novels are all that good--after I finished both Snow and My Name is Red, I had the feeling that I had read a long, strange book about basically nothing. I’m a pretty big fan of his memoir Istanbul: Memories of the City, however, and through that book have come to appreciate his writing style, which is sentimental and self-aware of being sentimental at the same time. Istanbul is all about Pamuk finding himself through wandering through the old neighborhoods of Istanbul. After reading it, I often fancied myself to be Tempe’s Orhan Pamuk while riding my bike through Tempe’s more dilapidated neighborhoods!

In the interview, Charlie Rose asked Pamuk what he thought was the greatest novel of all time, and Pamuk answered “Anna Karenina” without any hesitation. This interested me, since people usually pick War and Peace for the greatest novel of all time if they are into Tolstoy. To explain his love of Tolstoy, Pamuk retold an anecdote about Nabokov, who once explained Tolstoy’s writing style by simply opening a window in a dark classroom. His point: Tolstoy has a way of lighting up the entire room for you in every scene. He also talked about his new novel The Museum of Innocence, which I fortuitously received for Christmas. I just finished it a few days ago and was struck by the similarities to Anna Karenina. Both Anna Karenina and The Museum of Innocence are explorations of unhappy people in unhappy relationships and how they got that way.

So, I decided to try my hand at a little literary analysis. I haven’t read Anna Karenina in about three years, but I think I can pull it off. You can take the girl out of AP English, but you can’t take the AP English out of the girl!

Both The Museum of Innocence and Anna Karenina are essentially about women who rebel against restrictive social codes in 1860s Russia and 1970s Turkey, respectively. Anna, a married woman, has an affair with Vronsky, and Füsun, the heroine of The Museum of Innocence, has premarital sex with her distant relative Kemal (the narrator). These violations eventually earn them the scorn of society and a great deal of unhappiness. At the end, both choose death by machine: Anna throws herself under a train and Füsun drives a car into a tree. Their deaths symbolize the fact that their decision to violate sexual mores was essentially choosing to throw themselves into the gears of an unfeeling social machine. The endings of these novels are both tragic and arguably misogynist. Are the authors lamenting the restrictive social codes that destroy Anna and Füsun, or are they “punishing” these heroines for their transgressions? Are they saying that women who break sexual codes destroy their potential happiness? The gendered element of these stories is what makes them so compelling.

The settings are also quite interesting. Both Pamuk and Tolstoy see themselves as chroniclers of a particular socio-historical moment. Tolstoy captures the time of Tsar Alexander II, the “Tsar-Liberator,” which was an era of modernization in Russia. The serfs had been freed, but society still was remained traditional in many ways. You had to get permission from the tsar to get a divorce! Pamuk sets his story in 1970s Istanbul, during a time of terrorism and political upheaval in Turkey. Pamuk lovingly records the details of the historical moment down the brands of soda and the movie posters. In fact, the preservation and reification of these quotidian details is one of the main themes of The Museum of Innocence.

Both authors record the glittery and cruel workings of an élite, Westernized social class that is alienated from the main mass of society. Tolstoy’s aristocrats may at least speak Russian (unlike their forebears in War and Peace, who mainly speak French), but they can’t relate to the peasant class. When Levin tries to show his belief in equality by working with the ex-serfs on his estate, he knows he is making a fool of himself in front of them and his social peers. Try as he might, an aristocrat isn’t the same as a muzhik and they both know it. Likewise, the rich Istanbul élite described in Pamuk’s novel are educated abroad and have partially absorbed Western values. This only seems to make them more frustrated as they attempt to live Western sexual mores in a society that remains traditional. Pamuk constantly contrasts the Western, sometimes hedonistic values of Kemal and the conservative, religious values of his driver Çetin. At the same time, neither of these two aristocracies has succeeded in fully digesting the European culture they mimic. They are still peripherally Western cultures with more than a whiff of the East about them. Not quite authentically Russian or Turkish, not quite Western, they are caught in an uncomfortable limbo.

Both of these books succeed because they present complex characters in complex societies. You can definitely feel Tolstoy’s influence in Pamuk’s writing: a strong sense of character and tragedy, a desire to tell a compelling story rather than moralize. Pamuk is definitely striving to deserve his Nobel laurels, trying to capture the obsessions and ennui of his own people for history. Overall, I would highly recommend both of these books to anyone who hasn’t had the pleasure of reading them. Both novels are stimulating, readable, and quite rewarding!

Well, how did I do? Any comments from the Russian literature fans/Orientalists/English teachers out there?

PS--Coincidentally, as I post this I am listening to "One for the Cutters" by the Hold Steady, which has the similar theme of a woman who violates social mores and class boundaries!

Analogy: The Hold Steady : Minneapolis :: Tolstoy : Russia?

The Internationals

I think there comes a point when every American studying/working/living abroad asks themselves this question:

“Did I come this far just to hang out with Americans?”

Most people who go to foreign countries imagine themselves bonding with the locals and experiencing their lives (or at least doing shots with them). I know that when I first left for Armenia, that’s what I thought I’d be doing. And of course, that did actually come true in some regard, mostly through my homestay. (Although I didn’t really think that I’d be doing shots with my fifty-seven-year-old host mom and her brother...but that was a good evening.) We were also incredibly lucky to be introduced to Gevork, a great friend and our unofficial guide to everything Armenian.

Still, I spent the majority of my time with fellow Americans Steven and Patrick, bumming around the Yerevan and speaking English all day long. This ended up being extremely fun and I wouldn’t have traded it for anything...but it wasn’t what I expected to be doing when I left.

In Russia, we American students were extremely lucky to meet some very awesome, very культурные (cultured) people our age, and so I actually spent a pretty decent amount of time hanging out with Russian people in Russia! What a phenomenon! It was great, and I left with a really positive impression of Russians my age, who in my experience were very open and outgoing (and patient with our Russian).

Here in Moldova, I thank constantly thank God for the Peace Corps, because without them we Fulbrighters would be so bored. Just having a few extra Americans in town really makes a difference. It’s nice to be able to relax with some fellow countrymen. There’s times when you just need to talk with an American, dammit. (Like when your university changes the dates of three of your finals without telling you...) Plus, they have the hook-up with all sorts of nice freebies: space heaters, American medicine, coats, textbooks, etc. Plus, they actually get decent language and teacher training, so they’re a great help when you are confused/out of ideas/need to find a language tutor. The only danger is that Peace Corps tells them about every possible safety and health hazard, so talking to them has the tendency to make you extremely paranoid.

There’s also the interesting phenomenon of the international community that springs up whenever a few foreigners meet in a strange land. You’re all kind of bored, trying to meet people, and having difficulties with the culture and the language. So, of course, you hang out. In Armenia, I was friends with people from Israel, Russia, Poland, and Iran. (Armenia: the only place in the world where Iranians, Israelis, Americans are allies.)

I notice pretty much the same phenomenon here. One of my students asked me the other day, “Did you think when you came to Moldova you would be spending so much time with Turkish people?” The answer: no, but I probably should have guessed. It’s been pretty fun meeting the other internationals in Moldova. We Americans teamed up with the European volunteers (from Spain, Lithuania, France, and Germany) to party and go to the disco last night, and I have to say it was pretty awesome.

At any rate, my own international experiences have made me skeptical of those typical travel narratives where people go to a foreign country, integrate with the locals, and spend the rest of their time their living natively ever after. In my experience, it usually doesn’t work out like that. But, that’s not always a bad thing. Hanging out with other foreigners helps you to process the massive task of fitting in to another culture, and can even teach you about a new one (see: my Turkish language lessons). At the very least, it definitely keeps you sane, even if it doesn’t fit in with the romantic conception of living abroad.

The Little Things

After my epic journey from Phoenix to Jacksonville to Washington, D.C. to Zurich to Bucharest to Chisinau to Comrat, I decided to post about the little things I missed about America while I was in Moldova.

Shower curtains

Non-German beer varieties

Turning on the heat when it gets the least bit cold

Purple mountains

Seeing my own feet (I wear wool socks 24/7 in Comrat)

Not wearing long underwear or anything wool

Being able to walk into a store and look at clothes without a clerk asking you what’s taking so long

Large bookstores

Hoodlum’s (I really broke the bank on new CDs while I was home)

Spin magazine (I just consumed their issue on Pearl Jam...amazing)

Knowing where you can purchase something

Using idioms without worrying if people will understand them

Swearing

My grandma’s potica (delicious raisin and nut pastry)

Riding in cars

Blowdrying my hair (I couldn’t find a hairdryer for the longest time in Comrat)

Paying for things with a debit card

Wearing funky t-shirts

Coffee-maker coffee

Chicken wings

Watching American sports on TV (We’re hoping that March Madness will get some coverage on cable.)

Access to my DVD collection

Chisinau!

Yesterday was quite the adventure. I gave my last December final as quickly as possible, calculated grades at the speed of light, and then hightailed out of the university in order to catch a minibus to Chisinau. It had been snowing for four straight days, so I decided time was of the essence. There was no way I was going to let myself get snowed in and miss my flight.

The bus station was abuzz with people trying to figure out when buses were going to leave, as all the routes were on limited schedules. Me and my big red suitcase got rejected from one minibus, only to be accepted on board about five minutes later as they realized they needed more passengers. I like to think my dour, helpless expression helped to get me on the bus. Our two-hour ride over the snowy roads to Chisinau was surprisingly uneventful. The drivers here know how to manage without snow tires, apparently. On the way, I spent about 45 minutes talking with a friendly Bulgarian lady from Taraclia. She told me many entertaining stories, like how there were so many people at her son's wedding that they had to put chairs and tables on the stage of the House of Culture they were holding it in. Moldova is such a friendly country!

I lugged my suitcase (weighed down by approximately 6 liters of wine from my host family) on to another minibus from the South Bus Station into the center of Chisinau, where Amy, my lovely hostess for this weekend, found me and took me to her apartment. Her nice "Euro-remont" (European-remodelled) apartment is a good waystation between Comrat and America. We made a delicious meat spaghetti sauce with ingredients from the western-style grocery store downstairs from her apartment. Robin, a Peace Corps Volunteer who lives in the same building, joined us for dinner. We shared homestay horror stories; it was highly entertaining.

Today I went on a shopping extravaganza (read: I spent $50). It was nice and sunny, which made the snow glisten quite prettily. I bought a hairdryer (apparently the word diffuser is the same in Russian—score!), some Russian cartoons on DVD, more DDT music, and The Reader in Russian. I'm quite looking forward to reading The Reader on the plane. It was written in German originally, so I figure reading it in Russian is no more weird than reading it in English.

I also confirmed with the staff at an Air Moldova office that my flight to Frankfurt is indeed scheduled to leave tomorrow. This is good. About 12 hours until I have to leave for the airport. Yay!

White Christmas

I woke up this morning around six, wondering why it was so cold. When I actually got up at nine, I saw that Comrat had turned into a snowy winter wonderland! I, of course, cranked up the Christmas music (Stephen Colbert's "Another Christmas Song," of course) and enjoyed a relaxing morning.

Everyone at work was excited about the snow, which was fun! I, however, tend to have problems with falling down... My Arizona upbringing did not prepare me for this.

It's finals month here (yes, they have a finals month), which means lots of work for us teachers and lots of stress for the students. I have to give two finals tomorrow for my Culture and Civilization class, which I'm not exactly looking forward to. Unfortunately, test time means cheating time! I have a lot of issues with the pervasive post-Soviet culture of copying, which kind of makes writing tests pointless. Even when I do two different versions, people magically have all the same answers! You can map seating arrangements by looking at who has the same mistakes. The tiny classrooms definitely exacerbate this...as well as the fact that everyone seems to wink at it! Ah, well.

I'm looking forward to heading home on December 20th. It'll give me a good chance to recharge my educational batteries, stock up on books, eat Mexican food, and drink good beer. Most of all, I can't wait to see my Arizona people!

Another sign that I might be going crazy...

We watched a fairly lame educational dramatization of Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" in my literary text analysis class today. I felt that the class was rather bored, which gave me an impetus to get theatrical. So, we were reviewing the plot of the story, and at the climactic moment, I exclaimed, fists raised to the sky,

"It was the beating of his hideous heart!"

I had not realized until this year how entertaining it is to be eccentric in front of a captive audience.

On tap for tomorrow: an analysis of a Tim O'Brien short story and a song by Ani DiFranco. It's nice to be the professor. I can make them read whatever I want!