What? Could it be that I'm updating my blog again? Could it possibly be that I have nothing else to do other than sit in my room with a plate of cheese (stolen from Mama Masha) and plot out recounts of my life on the struggle bus? Yes, perhaps it could. However, as of now, the woodland critters are abuzz with special news: today, I am transcending the media. Yesterday, I spent my evening in front of a video camera in order to give you the special privilege of seeing my chubby face in action. So, without further ado, I give you my technological creation.
I couldn't get a picture of the video so I just chose a picture of me with a wombat. Sorry.
Also, I don't know why it's called "Capture2012" or whatever. I couldn't figure out how to change it. Sorry about the jank look. I would spruce this page up but I've had enough internet for today.
Hey, hey, you, you (I don't like your girlfriend;)
Well, it’s a Saturday night and I’m listening to Mary
Poppins in my Perpetual Party Dress. In about thirty minutes, I’m going to
leave the comfort of Mama Masha’s cabbage-filled kitchen (I came home from my
Russian Adventures today to find approximately ten cabbages on the windowsill
and table. I sense a cabbage-filled week ahead) to hit up an abandoned bomb
shelter club with some French gentlemen. However, I figured that before I begin
this night of sweater-capes and phlegm, I would bloggy-blog it up to the best
of my abilities. But what am I bloggy-blogging it up about, you ask?
Russian museums.
Now, if you are part of the 75-90 age group to which this blog is probably targeted, you may want to grab a pace-maker, because you are going to get more excitement out of this than the annual two-for-one sale on Frango mints (that was a shout-out to you, Grandma.) Anyway, in case you all were unaware, St. Petersburg, and all of Russia for that matter, has more museums than Hillary Clinton has pantsuits. (Which, if you don't follow the official Hillary Clinton style blog, is a lot.)
If you don't believe that this woman should rule the galaxy after seeing this, then there's something wrong with your brain.
For real, though, if you want to find out every tiny detail about something that no one else in America cares about, come to St. Petersburg. And I'm not just talking about famous ones like the State Hermitage (Государственный Эрмитаж) or the Russian Museum (which are both incredibly beautiful.) No, I'm talking about the ones set up by that guy who lives in his mother's basement and who, by day, researches the reproduction methods of termites, and, by night, writes fanfictions about old Catdog episodes. Want to get your drink on in an educational way? Check out the Vodka Museum. Can't get enough of being well-hydrated? Pay a visit to the Water Museum. Have a cat fetish? For just 99 Rubles (3 American dollars,) you can analyze a cat-a-fied rendition of the Mona Lisa and participate in weekly round table discussions with the creme de la creme of "crazy cat ladies" concerning what true happiness really means to felines. (I'm not kidding about this. Technically, the museum itself is in Moscow, but I don't think you can truly say you've lived until you know that this exists. Please check out its website, you will not be disappointed.)
In case you can't read it, its official logo is "You can know more about cats in art...You can know more about cats...You can know more about..."
Think that's just a bad translation? Well, it's not; I promise you that it says the exact same thing in Russian. Anyway, today I’m going
to be talking about a few gems my friends and I have found during the course of
our romps about the Motherland’s greatest city. We’ll start with the Hermitage.
I know I usually include a comical caption, but there's really nothing funny to say about the Hermitage. Sorry.
The Hermitage is/was
the Winter Palace and acted as the Tsars’ home until the Bolshevik Revolution
in 1917. For Americans under the age of 25, it was the
building where Anastasia went to find Dmitri but ended up hallucinating
dead relatives and attracting unwanted attention from talking
bats. Anyway, once you wiggle your way through the throng of Asian tourists
filming the building, the place is actually beautiful. According to one of our
tour guides, “Russian joke says you have to spend one year in Hermitage to see
all paintings.” Some other knee-slappers included “Russian joke says St.
Petersburg has 300 days of rain a year,” and “Russian joke says St. Petersburg
has more museums than people.” Feel free to break those out when your next
dinner party goes south. And, just so you know, they will get mad if you don’t
laugh.
Anyway, it actually
probably would take me a year to talk about all the paintings in the Hermitage,
so I’ll just show you my favorite. The disarrayed shoes on the ground
supposedly symbolize an affair between the two lovers, and the dog is supposed
to represent fidelity, but, being the mature art critic I am, I just think it’s
the bee’s knees that this old lady is getting her jollies by camping out in the
corner.
My future right before my very eyes. Sorry about the boobies, y'all.
"Boy Blowing Horn." You rock that horn, boy.
Okay, this was pretty cool. Every hour the peacock would spread its tail, a squirrel would eat its nut, and the owl would do something equally fantasmical. It doesn't work now, so if you want to see it in action, you could buy your own peacock-owl-squirrel set and train them. Or, you know, close your eyes and imagine. Whatever works.
Anyway,
I grow tired of my spiel on art. Let’s get to the pickled oddities.
The
real museum is actually called Kuntskammer, and I think it’s an anthropological
museum. I’m too lazy to double-check, so if you want to know, knock yourself
out and have a party with Google. The real reason why anyone (aside from
anthropologists, I guess,) visits the museum is because of the room filled with
artifacts that can only be described as pickled oddities. You ever just wake up
and think, “Man, last night was so crazy, the only thing I want to do right now
is look at a two hundred-year-old deformed fetus in a jar of formaldehyde. And
some crabs. Shucks, it’s too bad those don’t exist.”
Well,
you know what, kid? You’re wrong. And you know what else? IT’S FACT TIME!
The
Kuntskammer (aka the Anthropological Museum, maybe,) was the first museum to be
founded in Russia. Everyone’s good friend Peter the Great, being the
trailblazer that he was, one day decided to partake on a voyage to collect
two-headed animals, deformed fetuses, and whatever else he could
find along the way. When he came back, he put them all on display and invited
his citizens to come and look. Although it sounds kind of creepy (which it was,)
he actually did it so that the people could learn that the deformations
everyone was gawking at were not due to devilry, but this magical little thing
calledscience.
This actually took me about half an hour on Paint.
He even enticed them with free glasses of vodka, because
really, what is an afternoon of education without alcohol? At least, that’s my
motto. Today, the place is decked out with Peter’s fetuses (which also sounds
like the name of a soap opera,) skeletons of two-headed calves, teeth (Pete considered himself to be a pretty good dentist and practiced on his subjects,
apparently,) and some sea shell collages. Oh, and crabs, for the marine
biologists out there. There’s also an iron stick that Peter the Great hammered
out himself. I don’t think it does anything besides be a stick, but I’ll give
him props for being such a versatile person—he really should have a liberal
arts department named after him. I’m going to put up some pictures, so if you
are of the faint of heart (that’s you, 75-90 year-olds,) you can skip ahead to the picture of the pony in shoes.
Peter was a weird dude.
A two-headed cow.
Peter's death mask. From the looks of it, he died just pre-jowl phase.
Anyway, here's that picture of a pony in shoes I promised you.
AWW, JUST LOOK AT THOSE LITTLE SHOES! Anyway, that's all for now. I'm actually going to attempt to do a "vlog" (I believe that's the hip internet lingo for it) next time, so get ready to see my chubby face in action.
First and foremost, I would like to apologize for and warn you about my declining abilities in the English language. I have found that, as my Russian skills continue to remain stagnant, my knowledge of the English language is decreasing, leaving me to stumble around St. Petersburg communicating in grunts and interpretive dance.
Anyway, I have received numerous requests (all from my mother) to explain an average school day. Please buckle your seat belts, because by the end of the wild ride that is a day in the life of (Russian) Alyssa Lindley, your boat may be so rocked that you'll never recover again. I will write it in schedule-form so as to vary my blogging style.
8:00: I am woken up to the sound of my host mother pounding at the door and yelling, "АЛИСА, ИДИ КУШАТЬ!" or (ALYSSA, COME EAT!) Normally, my expression looks something like this:
After scarfing down an absolutely scrumptious breakfast of either kasha, blini, or blinochki, my host mother comments on how much I am able to eat (and this is actually a true statement,) and I trudge on over to my room to get dressed. After I одеваюсь (odevayus, or dress,) I look something like this:
9:00: I board the Приморская (Primorskaya) metro station and partake on the uncomfortably sweaty journey to school. The Russian metros are actually some of the deepest in the world (around 105 meters below ground,) with each elevator ride lasting about three minutes; when you board it you can't see the bottom, and it slightly resembles a tunnel to hell. In all my travels, I have determined that the real purgatory is actually a never-ending ride on the St. Petersburg metro escalator. Nice try, Dante.
10:00 (but more like 10:05): I arrive for classes. I won't really go into detail, since most of the time I just doodle and/or eat cream puffs, but I will show you this picture of my literature teacher Vladimir:
Don't worry about not being able to understand it; it makes just as much sense to me. See the confused and slightly embarrassed looks on the kids' faces? Yup, that's every Monday and Thursday for a glorious one hour and thirty minutes of Vladimir Shatsev.
2:30: I EAT. For the price of 110 Rubles, I am able to purchase mediocre soup, a mediocre pastry, mediocre chicken, and CIROK! For all of you Americans, Cirok is basically chocolate-covered cheesecake. I don't know why it hasn't made its way over to the good ole U.S. of A. yet, but I have a theory that if I bring some back and put them on a stick, they will instantly become a sensation. Also, in case you were curious, when I typed in "Russian Cirok" to find a picture for you, the only search option was "Miley Cyrus Asian." That doesn't have to do with any of my blog, but I just thought you should know.
Cirok
What I look like whilst eating Cirok.
3:30: Go on Russian adventures!
9:00: Get home, watch bad Russian TV, do homework, go to bed.
Well, that is a typical day. If you are still reading, I will now continue to talk about one of the oldest and possibly strangest Russian traditions:
THE BANYA
I hope that impressed you. Anyway, a banya is basically the Russian version of a communal bath. However, as it is Russia, there is so much more to it than sitting around and stewing in your own filth. No, you have to beat the filth off. Let me tell you the "down-low," as the cool kids would say it.
So, last Tuesday, my program director Katya, eight girls, and I bundled up and metro-ed on over to a seemingly normal building hidden in an alley. We got in, crowded into an elevator, and found our designated room. And then, we got naked.
A picture of the banya. Sorry about the poor quality, but it was a little steamy.
Once we had de-clothed, we filed into the room. Now, for those of you who don't know me, I have a little problem with perspiration. For those of you who do know me, you are probably clawing at your eyes at the thought of me stewing in a 235-degree room. Needless to say, it was bad. Several small animals drowned.
So, after sitting in the hot room for as long as your body can handle it (or until your eyes start to feel a strange burning sensation,) you totter on out and jump (or in my case, wade) into a VERY cold pool. After you've cooled down, you totter on back into the room. The process then repeats. Meanwhile, you're trying to ignore the fact that you are crowded into a room in the nude with eight girls you've known for about three weeks and trying not to permanently blind them with your albino skin.
But is that it? No, of course that's not it, for this is Russia. After so long, you become bored of the "cold pool to hot room" thing. So what do you do then? Bring out the birch branches. You lie down on your stomach while someone else (in this case Katya,) brings in a bouquet (do branches come in bouquets?) of birch branches. The other person then whacks the branches up and down your body. You turn onto your back, and the whacking is repeated. Here is a photo of the process:
Unfortunately, the bearded man was extra
As weird as it sounds, the banya was actually a really awesome experience. It's been around Russia for ages, and it still remains an extremely integral part of the country's culture. So can you guess what time it is now? FACT TIME! During the Soviet Union, the government made an effort to ban banyas due to their "sexual connotations." However, as the Russian people considered it such an important part of their traditions, they fought to keep them open (which, if you know anything about historical Russian protests and the Russian "что делать?" or "What can you do?" mentality, is actually pretty astounding.)
Also, I was quite delighted to find out that the banya has a "spirit" that dates back to very early Russian paganism. I introduce to you банник, or Bannik:
What a happy guy. Well, that's all for now, folks! On a side note, I really want to say thank you to all of my friends and family who have kept in contact with me and been asking about my time here. It means a lot to me, and I miss you all very much!
Пока пока!
PS- I know a lot of you have seen this before, but if you haven't and you're having a bad day, at least you're not this guy:
Well, it's a Sunday night and I have about eight pounds of homework to catch up on as I was sick this past weekend/Monday. Nevertheless, I shall press on and attempt to impress my adoring fans with glorious tales of life in the land of the bears. Speaking of which, I petted a bear. Like an actual bear. He was drinking from a bottle and sitting on a bench. The trainer wanted me to sit on his lap, but as it was A LIVE BEAR, I politely declined/used my limited Russian vocabulary to say "No thanks, I only want to pet it." (Which came out as something like "No, only..." and then frantic petting motions with my hands.) Pictures were 200 rubles, and as I am cheap except when it comes to buying insane amounts of garlic bread, I cannot provide you with proof. But below is a picture of the bear.
Just kidding, I just think that this is one awesome animal duo. This is the actual bear.
Although this was a while ago, I suppose I should write something about this wonderful little city called Novgorod. Last weekend, my shkolniki and I traveled by bus to Novgorod, which recently celebrated its 1150th birthday. Celebrations featured pony rides, children running around in blow-up balls, and large statues of Lenin. Often, the children in the blow-up balls would roll full speed into the large statue of Lenin, who would look down on them with a very Lenin-like expression. The city itself was actually beautiful. There were about 80 billion churches to look at, which, of course, I can never get enough of. My favorite was a church with a path around it on which women (and I suppose men, if their nature so calls for it) could walk. Supposedly, if a woman wishes really, really hard and walks all the way around, she will be bestowed with a rich, beautiful husband. The tour guide didn't give us the chance to see it, but later that night I went and did a few hundred laps. I told the spirits that I don't need beautiful, just rich. I'm eagerly awaiting my mail-order Russian husband.
A picture of one of the many churches.
A view from a Novgorod house.
Perhaps the most exciting part of the trip was the voyage back to St. Petersburg. The ride itself was supposed to take about three hours, but due to a traffic jam, we were stuck on a bus with one small bathroom and 30 of our peers for roughly ten hours. We played a game of Mafia (in which three Mafia members defeated 28 other players,) listened to a Russian man named Nikita sing his version of "Last Friday Night" (in which we explained to him what "hickey" meant,) and hit around a blown-up garbage bag (in which we realized that we had made it past the point of bonding and just wanted to get the heck off of the bus.) I spent the next day at home in bed with a slight fever and a hatred for Russia's lack of modern medicine. Mama Masha, bless her soul, decided to take matters into her own hands by giving me a little contraption whose name I did not catch. All I know is that it was large, smelled of smoke, had two little pipes to stick in my nostrils, and emitted a light that I "could not look directly at since it would hurt my brain." So naturally she proceeded to stick it into my brain. Well, I suppose I will leave you with that image. As for your Russian bit o' knowledge for the week, the longest word of the Russian language is достопримечательность (dostoprimechatelnost) which means "tourism." These bears will express my farewell. http://www.buzzfeed.com/lyapalater/10-bears-waving-at-you
I am sure that some time ago, many of you woke up, hustled to check my blog (as you do every day, no doubt) and were struck with a heart attack when you saw that the invisible Google gods had removed it. Well, you can officially check yourself out of the hospital, because BEARS, BEETS, AND BABUSHKAS IS BACK, Y'ALL! And it has been almost two whole weeks since the start of my work to seduce Putin and become the queen of Russia. Much has happened, so I suppose I will fill you in on the highlights. Get ready to have your socks rocked clean off of your feet.
On the first day here, I fell asleep at the still-daylight-hour of 7:30 PM. I just thought that was important because that has not happened to me since I was about six years old. The next forty-eight hours were filled with get-to-know-you activities, orientations, and figuring out the Russian electrical system (I spent about half an hour tugging and banging on a little light cube on the wall before I figured out that you have to use your key card turn turn the lights on) so I will spare you the details.
Anyway, on Friday I was fortunate enough to enter the home of Maria Nikolaevna, my host mother and new best friend. She is about 60, has short white hair, and is very similar to Consuela of Family Guy. Our conversations normally go something like this:
Except it's concerning whether or not I bring the umbrella. Every morning at breakfast, she looks out the window and says, "Сегодня, идёт дождь," (Sevodnja, idyot dozhd) or "Сегодня, не идёт дождь," (Sevodnja, nye idyot dozhd) which means "Today, it will rain," or, "Today, it will not rain." This determines whether or not I bring the umbrella. Usually, our attempts at conversation resemble a tennis match in which she serves the ball, I swing, and I miss completely and must frantically run and retrieve the ball while she judges me.
I also wish to address the Russian custom of eating everything on their plate. Let me give you a bit o' history and tell you why this is. During World War II, the German army attempted to take the city of Saint Petersburg (at that time, Leningrad) in order to gain access to its tank/weapons factories. Like the comrades that they were, the Russians banded together and stopped the the Germans from infiltrating the city. While they were successful (Leningrad became the first Western city which Hitler was unable to infiltrate,) millions of people died of starvation due to the blockade; since food and supplies couldn't get through, borscht could not be made, and much of the city perished. Now, it is a custom to eat everything one is given. While I respect this tradition, it is very difficult to eat a plate of vegetables, a salad (or rather, tomato slices,) bread, and two hot dogs. However, it makes it very delightful to eat pancakes, which I have been stuffing myself with for about a week straight.
