Wishy-washy

I often wonder if most people have as much trouble as I do sticking to one thing. My plans and hobbies constantly change. Generally when I have some accountability, I can see something through to the end, if it's not too long. But a list of the things that I have done to completion would be quite short. So far I have finished two work contracts, and to be honest, while I enjoyed both jobs, it felt like a heroic effort to make it to the end.

I have had even more second-guesses about my career choices since I came to Russia. I've been here three and a half months, and about once a week I decide that I'm never going to teach again after this year. I would go back home and work one of those 29-hour week jobs (that are probably in good supply now) while going to school to study computer science. This would lead to a stable job with a salary decent enough to support a family. My job would involve less contact with people and I would be doing work that focused on problem-solving instead of directing and performing. It sounds really nice, although I'm probably idealizing it.

But then I think about living in the US and not being able to meet interesting or different people and rarely if ever experiencing new cultures again. I think of the solitude of life in the US, of having to drive to work every day, of being bombarded with extravagance and yet feeling that it's normal and necessary. What if I never live in Japan, if I never live in the Middle East... would life still be fulfilling?

Tonight I felt very fulfilled after work. I thought about my schedule and realized that aside from my new high-pressure business class, I really like all of my classes. Anyway, I bought a digital piano for Christmas, which I consider to be the signing of a second contract (as long as it is offered to me). Furthermore, there's no way I can learn Russian to a satisfactory level in the next 6 months, and I think that is one goal that I will maintain for a long time, since I think it is the most beautiful language.

Speaking of languages... (Uh oh, he said the l-word, that means it's time for a LANGUAGE RANT)

I last updated my language goals over a year ago, but only to add one more language to the twelve that two years ago I decided to learn. I'm reconsidering my goals now, perhaps because I'm at a low point in my language studying. I love languages--there's no doubt about that. However, I've discovered over the past two years that my passion (or perhaps my discipline, or both) isn't strong enough to sustain my goals, especially when there are so many other things I want to delve into (for example, fantasy cartography). I have put a good bit of effort in learning several of these languages, so I have a better idea of what I really want now. Also, I think that one reason I study languages is to be more proud of myself, to impress more people, and the more languages the more impressed they'll be. Obviously this is a poor reason. So I've decided to re-evaluate my goals again in attempt to be more realistic.

Russian - I think if there's any language that I'm determined to learn to near fluency, both speaking and reading, it's Russian. It never ceases to enchant me, even though I've heard it so often in the past months. And yet I've made very little effort to improve it while I've been here. Something needs to change, but I'm still deciding what that is.

French - I'm happy with where I am in French, although I would like to expose myself to it a little more often. I think I should try to set a very moderate goal of reading three novels or so in a year and watching the news once a week, just to make sure I don't regress much. I'm considering going back to France for a visit, perhaps even this year, so if I do that I'll work harder at it.

Japanese - as I mentioned, I still intend to go to Japan someday, and I've got a long way to go in the language. Unlike with the other languages, I haven't encountered any Japanese literature that has enchanted me--I learn it purely for the language mechanics, so I'll be happy if I can read newspapers slowly and converse haltingly. Even so, I need to set a goal with Japanese which is more strenuous than with French--maybe 20 minutes a day or so.

Arabic - I don't know why, but I feel strongly drawn to Islamic culture. The Arabic language is central to this culture. So I intend to learn Arabic someday. For now I have no goals, but if I can establish a routine for my other languages maybe I'll consider it. I do know that it will take years for me to just get accustomed to it, so the sooner I start exposing myself to it, the better. A year ago I could read Arabic (with the vowel marks) almost as well as Russian, but I've barely studied it at all since then.

German - People say that German is an ugly language. For me hearing it conjures up images of the Nibelungenlied, Beowulf, and Tolkien. When I studied it every day, I considered it the most fun of all the languages. I don't have any immediate motivation to study, but I definitely want to improve my German significantly one day. Incidentally, I think if I could move anywhere else in Europe, it would be Germany.

Spanish - it's a useful and accessible language, and lovely to sing. I like speaking it almost as much as German. For the moment I have little reason to learn it, but I think if I decided to do so then I could pick it up fairly quickly. So I'm still on the fence about whether I should remove this from my list of languages.

Latin - it's fun, but I will never speak it fluently, and when I tried to read some literature I decided that it wasn't interesting enough to really put a lot of time into. This will probably be a hobby language--one that I pick up when I really want to study something else.

Italian - I wanted to learn this for the sake of some operas and some medieval/renaissance literature. One of my coworkers has spoken some Italian, and I've decided that I don't have much interest in learning it after all. The medieval/renaissance literature is hardly riveting, and though the opera is a bit of a loss I think I can find other, less time-consuming ways of understanding it.

Chinese - I tried studying Chinese. Not much, but enough to find it frustrating and boring. I like to hear some people speaking it, and I think it would be extremely profitable to understand and speak myself, but I don't think these will happen.

Greek and Hebrew - obviously I wanted to learn these to be able to read the Bible. Unless I decide to go to seminary, these are not very relevant to me. They might be good study-for-fun languages, but I no longer intend to achieve literacy.

Persian and Sanskrit - okay, to be honest, I picked these out more because they sounded interesting and important. I've not put any effort whatsoever into learning them. Once again, I might study them for fun, but unless I end up going to Iran I'm not going to put much effort into Persian, and it was pure ambiance that inspired me to learn Sanskrit (although some of the writing styles are so cool!)

So this still leaves me with five or six foreign languages to study, which is a lot, but my French doesn't require much more effort and I have a solid start on the others (except Arabic).

My 2013 daily routine in Russia

My schedule in Russia has been considerably more volatile than in Vietnam, but I still managed to establish something of a routine. I work Monday through Friday and sometimes on Saturday. Typically I get up between 9:30 and 10, less than an hour after the sun has risen. I plan my day and make any preparations necessary for work, do laundry, and maybe some cleaning. My typical menus only require about fifteen minutes to cook, so I usually begin lunch at 11:45 and I've finished eating by 12:20.

On Monday and Friday I have to go to Butovo, so I leave my flat at 12:35, walk to the train station, and catch the 1:08 train. I arrive in Butovo about 1:22 and run from the train station to the bus station, barely in time to buy tickets before the 1:28 bus drives up (it's almost always early). The bus ride to the school takes 20 minutes, which gives me an hour and forty-five minutes to plan for my classes. I don't typically need that much time, so I spend at least fifteen minutes chatting with the administrator there. Typically I learn some Russian and she learns some English. I then teach from 3:30 until 6:15. Both my classes in Butovo have three students, and they're all nice and easy to teach. On Monday I have to hurry back to Podolsk to teach an adult beginner class starting at 8.  On Friday I stay in Butovo a little longer and teach a teenage student one-to-one for 45 minutes.

The other weekdays I stay in Podolsk. On Tuesday and Thursday I start teaching at four, so I typically leave my flat at 1:30 and arrive at the school at 1:50, then plan for two hours. I teach a nice small class of intermediate teenagers, and then a crazy class of younger students. On Tuesdays I also teach an adult pre-intermediate class, so I get home just after 10 PM. On Thursdays I get home early--around 8 PM unless I do shopping first, which is what normally happens. As for Wednesdays, I don't think I've had more than two with the same schedule.

After work I might go shopping if the shops are still open. My free time has been a strange thing here in Russia. I do a little bit of Russian studying, but not a significant amount. On the bus and train I do a lot of flashcards, and I talk to the administrator at Butovo, but I'd say that outside of those things I spend less than two hours on Russian every week. Grocery shopping happens at least three times a week, so some time does go into that, but only one of those trips takes more than twenty minutes. I waste some time on the internet and on video games, but I can't recall obsessing over any game. I know that I've spent many hours programming a game for my students, but I still don't feel that it accounts for all the time I'm missing.

On the third Saturday of the month all the teachers have to go to Moscow for professional development seminars. This has ended up being a full day trip every time so far. Two Saturdays I've had other working responsibilities, and on one Sunday as well. I've visited Moscow on a few of these weekends for sight-seeing or excursions. Most weekends I go on a big shopping trip.

Life feels a lot busier than it ever has before, but I can't completely account for this feeling. Apparently a lot of things will change with the new year, so maybe this will be one of them. My goals for the new year are to work harder on Russian, meaning getting a teacher if necessary, and to spend a fair amount of time on the piano every day (this was my Christmas present to myself, with the help of some folks back home). I also hope that I'll write more and do better with correspondence, but I think this has been my goal every year, so I'm not expecting a whole lot.

Russian food and the dacha way of life

At long last I've arrived at the new year holidays. I've enjoyed them quite a bit, mostly spending them by practicing piano and reading. The first few days were more interesting though, because I went to a Russian dacha, a country house.

The dacha was located about a thirty-forty minute drive from Podolsk, within an entire suburb of dachas. I would say that dachas most similar to lake houses in America--out in the country down very narrow roads, and not typically the most elegant buildings. The house itself wasn't extremely comfortable, which makes sense considering most dachas are built by their owners. In fact the second story of the dacha had a lot of unstained wood and signs of ongoing construction. The stairs were very narrow and steep. The insulation seemed to be missing or not very effective--most of the time we had the heaters going full blast, but it was still cool near the floor and near the walls. It was an interesting experience to feel warm standing up and then become cool by sitting on the floor--kind of like swimming in a lake.

When we first arrived there I sat down to peel onions. Between me and one other person, we peeled nearly 10 kilos (22 pounds) of onions that day (but I'll admit that he did most of it, having arrived earlier). I didn't do much more after finishing that except wait for preparations to be completed. After we had been there for two hours or so an interesting dilemma cropped up. We had three enormous containers of salad made (to be explained later), but these salads needed mayonnaise, of which we were in short supply. A poll went round concerning who was able to drive--in the final analysis there were only three people, all of whom had had several beers and were continuing to drink in an effort to find a solution. For about an hour and half while we were hoping for dinner all I heard about was how we had no mayonnaise and no one could go to the store to get it, as walking was about four cold and windy miles each way  and by this time it was dark as well.

We finally sat down to eat at ten minutes to midnight and the new year. The mayonnaise problem was temporarily solved by only adding mayonnaise to the salad that was on the table. The TV was on and was displaying the clock tower at the Kremlin, as is traditional. At midnight, after the clock tower had tolled twelve times, the host opened a couple bottles of champagne and filled our glasses and we toasted to the new year. Then we listened to Putin's speech while eating dinner. After dinner we didn't do much--mostly we watched the horrific musical performances on TV from the new year's celebration until about five. I slept in a fold out armchair which was barely more than fabric covered wood, but I managed to sleep well enough.

I found my time at the dacha to be very strenuous for a few reasons. First, the host had joked that the dacha "way of life" (быт in Russian) is to wake up, eat, drink, and sleep. Indeed, people didn't seem to be very interested in doing much else, which was frustrating to me. I did get a lot of Russian practice in though, and I visited a memorial to Russian soldiers from several different wars. Second, I hadn't had any information about the trip except that I should bring something to drink. I assumed that we would stay the night, but hoped that we would leave in the afternoon of the next day. It was 9 PM of the third day before we left, and I was grossly under-prepared for such a significant time investment. Also, I felt very unclean, because of the third problem: no running water in the dacha. There was a well, and people filled up buckets and brought them into the house, and that's what we used for hand washing and the little dish-washing that we did. Most of the time though, the serving dishes just stayed on the table and were refilled when necessary.

Well, that covers the majority of my time at the dacha. Now something I've been meaning to talk about for a long time: Russian food. I've asked a few of my adult classes for some recommendations about Russian food, but they've all been unsure of what Russian food is exactly. From what I've seen so far, the most distinctive dishes are salads and soups.

Salads aren't typically the kind with lettuce (from what I understand that's specifically a caesar salad or a greek salad). These salads are chicken or ham or potato salad, but they have a lot more than just a couple of ingredients. One of my favorite salads, Olivye, typically has potatoes, ham, peas, pickles, and possibly other vegetables. Chicken salads vary, but I've yet to have one that wasn't delicious. And there are some wonderful mushroom salads. To be honest, there are very few salads I've had that aren't tasty. Most of my experience with salads comes from buying them in the supermarket, so probably when they're homemade they're all tasty.

A typical olivye salad

If there is a Russian national dish, it's probably borsch, beetroot soup. This is a slightly sour soup with or without meat but always with a beautiful purplish-red color.

Borsch is a nice, hearty and pleasant dish. I don't crave it, but I'm always glad when I've eaten it. Solyanka is a soup that's tastier when I've had it, but apparently there are so many different variations that it's hard to say what exactly is in it. Those are the only soups that I've had, but there are many more apparently, including milk soup.

No joke. Milk with noodles.

Outside of these two important types of dishes, Russians also seem to eat a lot of bread and sausage. Buckwheat is at least as popular as rice. Caviar is fairly common as well, and I've decided that I'm not a big fan of it. Another famous Russian dish (though apparently more Caucasian than Russian) is shashlik, barbecued fatty meat. I had had it three times before going to the dacha, but only at the dacha did I enjoy it. Wow, it was good.

Our shashlik looked exactly like this.

In terms of fruits and vegetables, Russia is disappointingly similar to America (in comparison with Vietnam). Apples, pears, oranges, bananas, and grapes are all staple fruits. However, cherries are more plentiful, and there are two kinds with completely different words. Apparently during cherry season they become extremely cheap. They also have blackcurrants, which is a wonderful thing because I love blackcurrants. My boss gave me a large jar of her homemade blackcurrant preserves which I would love to tear into, but I haven't figured out how to open the jar yet. Also, orange peppers are quite a bit more common and cheaper here, much as green peppers are in the states. That's nice for me because I enjoy them quite a bit more.

I'll probably have more to say about Russian food in the future, but that's all for now!