Мой любимый памятник

Sure, the monuments to Gogol, Peter I, etc. might be more "important" or "pertinent."  But I have fallen in love with this little booth, erected in honor of Russians' obsession with the weather.  The window displays the progression of barometric pressure over the past week, while the present is charted on the other side.  

I have fallen off the wagon, so to speak, over the last weeks, and am preparing an enormous entry covering that time, which included a 10-day cruise along the Volga, among other notable excursions.   Prepare yourselves, dear readers, for tomes ahead.  

ALL ABOUT ME.

For those of you who aren't members of my immediate family (or for those members of my immediate family who might need a refresher), I am a third-year student in Reed College's Russian Department.  I'm spending this semester studying in St. Petersburg, at the ACTR/RLASP (Advanced Russian Language and Area Studies) program, which is run by American Councils in conjunction with Bryn Mawr College and St. Petersburg's Russian State Pedagogical University (The Gertsen Institute).  You can learn more about ACTR's excellent study abroad opportunities, as well as apply for the spring term or next year, at www.actr.org or at www.acrussiaabroad.org.  

I was very lucky to be awarded a Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship, which made possible my term abroad.  The Gilman International Scholarship Program is an amazing resource, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State and Bureau of Education, to make study abroad possible for undergraduate students of all economic backgrounds.  The Gilman Scholarships are awarded to select undergraduate students who are eligible for the Federal Pell Grant (if you're not sure if you receive or are eligible for this grant, you can find out at www.ed.gov/programs/fpg/index.html).  Thanks to programs such as the Gilman Scholarship and the Fulbright-Hayes Program, students for whom study abroad might otherwise be out of reach are enabled to travel and study internationally.  The Gilman Scholarship Program is of special interest to students of Russian, as beyond the scholarships of up to $5000 per semester available to all study abroad participants, the Program offers a Critical Need Languages Scholarship of up to $3,000 to students of Russian, Chinese, Arabic, and other languages of domestic interest.  To apply for the Gilman International Scholarship or to learn more about it, go to www.iie.org.

Besides enabling students to study abroad, the Gilman Program encourages a more profound experience abroad by requiring all scholarship recipients to complete a follow-on service project, a proposal of which is part of the application.  The service project is meant to spur wider interest and knowledge of study-abroad opportunities, and may be geared toward one's college community or a wider audience.  Hence, piperinpeter.blogspot.com.  By writing this blog, I hope to make known the benefits of study abroad, particular to students of Russian language and culture.  Moreover, I hope my experiences will encourage students who think that study abroad is beyond their reach to apply for the many programs and scholarships available to us.  While studying Russian may at times seem an arcane task, we Russian majors will actually be a vital part of America's economic and political future.  In this "globalized" world, bilingual Americans with cross-cultural understanding are a key component of our nation's continuing prosperity.  Our generation carries the burden and the privilege of coming of age in a time when knowledge of diverse cultures and languages is vital, not only to personal and national economic success, but to each individual's comprehension of his daily life.  

Aside from all that, blini with red caviar are delicious beyond one's wildest imaginings, and available on every block in Petersburg.  

     Three weeks have passed since I arrived in Peter, but it seems much shorter.  My days are filled with classes, group excursions, and long walks around this strange and wonderful city; time for reflection and recording is little.  I live with Tatiana Petrovna (“Tania” to me) and her adult daughter, Ira, in a cozy apartment five kilometers from the city center, where I attend classes four days a week.  Most days, I dash to the metro station on Prospekt Veteranov at quarter to nine, jam myself into a full-to-capacity car, and travel north squeezed on all sides by grumpy Russians.  At Tekhnologicheskii Institut I shove my way out of the car (if I move too slowly, someone’s hand will materialize between my shoulderblades, pushing me forcefully toward the exit), race across the platform to catch the second train, and the process is repeated until I mount the impossibly long escalator that ejects the sleepy crowd onto Nevskii Prospekt.  From there it’s a five minute walk past the monumental Kazanskii Sabor to our classroom building, into which I slink sheepishly, usually five minutes late to Conversation Practice.  This daily commute, while far from the most pleasant feature of Russian life, is a valuable key to understanding a few of the mysteries of Petersburg, such as:  Why are shopgirls and waitresses so cranky?  It’s because every hapless customer must remind them of the jerk into whose sweaty armpit their faces were pressed that very morning on the train. 

My classes are exhausting and very good.  From 9:30 to 3:30 I study grammar, phonetics, area studies, conversation, and “slovoobrazavanie” (“word-education”).  The professors are paragons of patience, teasing meaning from our garbled sentences, kindly correcting our innumerable mistakes, and nearly fainting with shock and joy when one of us manages to utter a phrase correctly.  I’ve learned to value above all else this gorgeous, melodious phrase: “Absolutno pravil’no, Pai-per!”  Three out of five classes consist of only myself and three other girls.  At first I thought this would be dull, but it’s been wonderful to have allies at the university, who will commiserate when, for instance, our phonetics teacher informs me that after two years of Russian study I still cannot pronounce correctly the word for 3, or 4, or 1. 

 

Now, after three weeks, I look back fondly on those days when I thought that I spoke Russian.  The disillusionment of being surrounded by native speakers for the first time, and confronting the paucity of one’s hard-earned language skills, does eventually pass.  Now, more often than not, I find my inability to communicate basic information in this damnably difficult language humorous rather than soul-crushing.  Moreover, every day it does get easier; every day I understand more and say “Shto???  Eshio raz???” very slightly less.  There are also those victories which buoy me for days: on Thursday, I managed to give directions to a Russian tourist, which I think were at least partly right.  Since then I have had to work hard to suppress a broad prideful grin at the memory. 

Every day, too, I am reminded that these struggles are entirely worthwhile, when I walk beneath the Khram Spas' na krovi (Church of Spilt Blood) on my way somewhere, when I swing by the Hermitage after classes, or come home from the cold to hot borscht, tea, and Tania’s rhapsodizing about the mushrooms at her dacha.  Evenings (wrapped in sweaters as the city has yet to turn on our radiators) I hunch over my lessons beneath the dim yellow bulb, while Ira yells indecipherably at the newscasters on TV and Tania calls out crossword clues from the kitchen, or I work my way through Babel or Brodskii, asking Tania to explain the many words neglected by my dictionary.  Each new word I learn suddenly begins to show up everywhere, in advertisements, on TV, in conversations.  Language study is far from abstract here, but an unavoidable component of daily life.  Moreover, the language itself is living.  Flipping through flash cards on the train, I'll look up to see that passive participle printed on the wall.  Every time I explain to Tania and Ira what time I'll be home and where I'm going, verbs of motion are alive in a way I couldn't have imagined when I was learning them by rote in the library in Oregon.  

For now I'll leave you.  Soon: More pictures, more postings, some Russian-language things that I hope will be of interest to students of the language.  Увидимся!  

"Пайпер Давидовна"