Last Look

My last week in Voronezh was a whirlwind. After my Siberian adventure, I had only four days left in my beloved provincial city. Here are a few photos of some of the memorable individuals I interacted with to some extent during my stay.

Dear readers, you may remember the carpenter from my first week who put together my closet and was very eager to introduce me to his four sons. The day before I left I ran into him and amidst complaints about USA and NATO he asked me when I was leaving. “Tomorrow!” I exclaimed. “Tomorrow?! We need a picture. You haven’t met my sons! I have four! You remember? Four! I will bring the youngest. No the second youngest. Tomorrow!”

The next morning he was ready for a photo op but without the son in tow. I think whichever son he advertised the idea to was even less thrilled than I was with the idea. (Perhaps he mentioned my lack of cooking skills?). He made me take two pictures. One where we did thumbs down for Putin and Obama and thumbs up for us and the rest of the world (Fulbright diplomacy at work!). And the other in front of his car which was a Ford. “Tell America even carpenter in Russia has this car!”.

These ladies sold me my Thanksgiving turkey and also meat on the very rare occasion that I attempted it. As I wandered through the market one last time I heard them cry out “devushka” (girl) and motion for me to come over. “How are you? How is America? How is your cooking? DO you want meat?”. I explained I was leaving in a few days for home, and we chatted for a few minutes before I asked to take their picture. “For America? We must fix our hair first”.

Normally I stop and buy nuts from a sweet guy near the entrance of the market who figured out very quickly I was a foreigner by my limited Russian when it comes to ordering quantities of almonds (I hate declining numbers in Russian more than almost anything). That day as I turned the corner of the market to buy almonds I was confronted by the fruit man who demanded to know my name and age since he recognized me. I normally quickly flee these situations but since it was my last week I decided to humor him. The conversation went a little like this:

Man: Girl! Girl! Girl! I know you hear me, girl. What’s your name? I’ve seen you here before.

Me: Maria

Man: How old are you?

Me: 22

Man: 22? What a joke! You’re 15! Stop pulling my leg.

Me: Ok…

Man: where are you from? What part of Russia?

Me: deep breath…I’m from America

I quickly walked away and thought I was free as he stared with googly eyes at the first American he had ever seen. Then I heard “Maria! Come back here”. His fruit partner in crime apparently refused to believe I was actually from America and over the age of 15. As these two burly men with just great breath got uncomfortably close to me, I knew I needed an exit strategy. Before I knew it, the almond boy had come up, grabbed me in his arms and heroically exclaimed, “She’s with me!”, and whisked me away to the nut stand.

Here is my almond hero shying away from the camera as he packages up my almonds.

My colleagues and boss decided to throw me a going away party, so we all gathered in a classroom to eat pirozhki and discuss how quickly my time in Voronezh had passed. I was grateful for a chance to see them all one last time and was showered with gifts and books and food and bells and magnets. Anything and everything they could think as a parting gift they gave.

Lastly, I have to mention my students. Each group found a special way to thank me and say goodbye. Here are "last day" pictures with a few groups. 

You may also remember me mentioning eating plov with Ira and her friend Luda on my first night in Voronezh. On my last day in Voronezh, Ira and Sasha (dressed in his American shirt, hat, and shoes) picked me up, and we decided to stop over to Luda’s again for some cookies and tea. It felt very “full circle” since the last time I had been there was on my first day in Voronezh when I was shy and terrified of teaching.

Marina and Maya, two other colleagues, met me at the station, and we stared at each other trying to comprehend that a year had passed.

After our goodbyes I was able to snap this picture of my three favorite Voronezh ladies as we waved to each other through train windows in a very poignant moment of farewell.

I have tried coming up with ways to describe what it felt like to return to the States after these nine months. In true Meri fashion, the only metaphor that works in my mind is to compare this year to a great book. After turning the last page of a truly compelling novel, one begins to see the world through the lens of the revelations and epiphanies one had reading the book. One sees the world differently and desperately wants those surrounding to also share in these discoveries, but no one else has read that book on that day. Therefore, it is truly impossible to explain the feelings and impressions it invoked without lengthy explanations that almost ruin the fascination of it all. My year in Russia felt a little like that. I came home half expecting everyone to have “read” with me the joys and sorrows, met the new friends, ridden the same train rides, but explaining every bit of it in detail doesn’t come even close to reading the book yourself. Thank you all for reading this blog- at least it gives you a shadowed glimpse of my wonderful year in Russia. And who knows, perhaps there will be another chapter of adventure abroad in a forthcoming “book”. In fact, I’ve already begun the first chapter. Stay tuned!

Siberia

I started off the year with grand plans of taking the transiberian railway from start (Vladivostok) to finish (St. Petersburg), but one look at my budget swiftly altered that plan.  However, I was most fortunate to be able to travel to see Lake Baikal, the world’s deepest freshwater lake and Russia’s pride and joy.

I met Gabby in the Eastern Siberian city of Irkutsk (I flew, she trained…for 55 hours). Although we only had a few hours in “the Paris of Siberia”, we quickly found the knock-off Subway chain before proceeding to a philharmonic concert…in true Meri/Gabby fashion.

The next day we crammed into a marshrutka and started the long journey to the Lake. The journey felt akin to riding a mechanical bull for hours on end except for when we slowed to a crashing halt whenever cows or horses decided to cross the road. Five hours later we were on a ferry to Olkhon Island, the only inhabited island on Baikal. A few hours later we were dropped off in a town called хужир at a hostel owned by a Soviet Gold medal ping pong player. We immediately turned on the heater in our room and went outside to check out the view.

We met a lot of other travelers at the hostel, including a retired teacher from Rochester! We were served breakfast and dinner as part of our stay since besides a rundown grocery store and a few small cafes food is difficult to find on the island.

But don’t worry: there was internet!

We stupidly hadn’t foreseen there would be no ATM on the island (silly American girls), so here we are adding up our money to see what we could afford to do and eat for our three day stay.

Gabby and I went walking, running, biking on a terribly bumpy road, boating on the lake where we met a couple from Rochester, and swimming. The swimming only lasted a few brief minutes since the water was approximately 3 degrees C since Baikal only begins melting at the end of May/ beginning of June.

Boating on the Lake

Biking next to horses

Before doing anything else the day we arrived, we immediately booked a reservation for a marshrutka for early our last morning back to Irkutsk in order to make our train home. Of course the man feigned ignorance when he showed up at the hostel to pick up another man. After a lot of arguing on the secretary’s part and apathetic shrugging on the driver’s, he begrudgingly told us that another van was leaving in an hour. Our next driver was just as reckless and terrifying, but Gabby managed to fall asleep on our way back calling the bumpiness “somehow calming” (as we stopped to let the poor man in the front seat with motion sickness out). We stopped for lunch at a tiny café in a tiny village on a tiny dirt road, and all of a sudden I heard familiar voices. My Estonian friends who live on the floor beneath me were on their way to Olkhon and had just eaten at the café! Even in Siberia it’s a small world.

After our driver drove around Irkutsk for an hour-seemingly aimlessly but apparently with some purpose, he dropped us at the train station and we boarded our train to Yekaterinburg. Since Gabby already had a long trip from Chelyabinsk, she was considerably less excited for our 50+ hour trip to Yekaterinburg. In between chatting with our neighbors and eating kielbasa, I loved staring out the window and watching the scenery change as we made our way West. 

Our fellow passenger Stan insisted on showing me pictures of his home. Of his girlfriend. Of his ex-girlfriend. Of his dacha. Of his apartment. Of him swimming. The worst part was I couldn’t even come up with an excuse to leave. He knew as well as I did that we had hours of train riding left! I was grateful when the kids in my bunk grabbed me to show me the sunset.

Russia passed a law June 1^st outlawing smoking in public places (which included trains) and since it was still early June, we got to enjoy the many battles in between passengers wishing to smoke and the exhausted conductor about the law that now prohibits the wafts of smoke coming from the rooms inbetween the cars that I am so used to after nine months of train rides.

At about hour forty, we had a thirty minute stop in Novosibirsk. Gabby and I left our backpacks on the train, grabbed our passports and one small towel and hurried into the station to find the shower. After literally the fastest shower of my life, we sprinted back to the train dripping wet (a huge no no in Russia since, as my old host mother would say, “the devil will get in your wet hair if you are outside”). The elderly woman in our car was so concerned we wouldn’t make it and let out a huge sigh of relief when we bounded onto the platform with twenty minutes to spare. The woman’s granddaughter, Dasha, spent the first few hours on the train staring at me but would look away as soon as I glanced up. After about seven hours, she came up and put an apple in front of me on the table. I started chatting with her and soon we were playing cards and drawing pictures. 

Waiting for the train with Dasha after our shower

Upon finally arriving in Yekaterinburg, Gabby and I parted ways back to our cities. Even though we didn’t make it all the way to Vladivostok, I am glad we had the chance to experience a small snapshot of Siberian cities, villages, trains, and people.