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"