Per aspera ad astra

I’ve decided to put off my work-angst manifest for a rainy day. Why? Well, because the weather lately has been absolutely beautiful and I can’t bring myself to be upset about anything. The sun is out for the first time in (just guessing) WEEKS and it’s hovering around 40-50 degrees. Now, as Russia is normally one of the more ugly countries out there (3 days of *abundant* sunshine is totally un-Vladimir) and there are literally five million articles about the correlation between weather and mood, this isn’t really surprising. Regardless, it’s totally blog-worthy.
And then I come into work to hear Aaron reading this hoot of a story. (Please take me away, Pun Police.) Seriously, read it. Oh, Russia.

Not only did that last post contain a *lot* of complaining (more to come!) it also contained no pictures. So lest you think my life is entirely doom and gloom, here’s a pick-me-up.

February 23 and March 8 are both major Russian holidays, the former being Day of the Defender of the Fatherland (День защитника Oтечества) and the latter being International Women’s Day (a misnomer, as it’s now celebrated only in Russia and other former Soviet states). The idea is to celebrate men and women, though admittedly, Women’s Day tends to be more of a consumerist hit in Russia than the unofficial Men’s Day.
However, to prove our equality by celebrating both sexist holidays, the American Home staff (teachers, directors and all) walked ourselves all the way next door to have dinner at Traktir. However, a perk of being a member of the Russian workforce is that our company dinners involve at least a dozen bottles of wine and vodka. More on that later.

Our meal started as most Russian meals do, with everyone showing up at least 15 minutes late  and the first course being a salad. However, we Americans were in for a bit of a treat: our salads were completely lacking mayonnaise. (For anyone not accustomed to Russian cuisine, a meal not drenched in butter and/or mayo is an unheard-of travesty.) A 2004 European study showed that ONLY in Russia was more mayo sold than ketchup.

See that? They even gave us olive oil on the side! Anyway, the meal progressed (meaning we had the salad and several toasts). The women read a poem for the men, some of the American girls made up a cool song (anyone who’s witnessed my song abilities can rest assured that I was not part of this) and in return the men sang for us and gave us flowers. I mostly just took pictures.

Part of the men’s part was taking part in contests. One involved seeing who could drink a can of beer through a straw the quickest. (Oh Russia, you’re so classy). I was pro-Eric at the beginning, but within a matter of seconds (literally), Matt had successfully polished off his beer, much to the amazement of the group and to the shock of Sara.

Several toasts later and we were ready for dancing.

Some of us were slightly less energetic.

During the evening, my objective was to get the people sitting next to me sufficiently buzzed. I didn’t have to try hard with Sara. To my right was Nelly (one of the Russian language tutors) and after refilling her wine glass several times, I think I can say I successfully completed my mission. Judge for yourself.

Короче, I think by the end of that evening, we all felt pretty well celebrated.

We didn’t have classes on the 8th, so on Tuesday, my class gave me flowers and on Wednesday one of the conversation club guys brought a pretty (albeit butter-filled) cake for the ladies. Who needs feminism when you’ve got roses and lots of chocolate-sugary goodness?

Also, March 8th is officially the one day in Russia where it is permissible to smile in public without being stared at or presumed drunk. I went to the grocery store to pick up some snacks and dreaded my normally terrible interaction with the cashier. (They are sticklers for exact change here, down to the kopeck) However, this time, not only did the woman take my 1000 ruble note without blinking, but she also gave me a discount because of the holiday. Rock on Russia!

I’m twenty one years old. I started working when I was fourteen, have held a job constantly ever since, and I’m going to be in the workplace for at least another couple decades or so. That being said, the working world is absolutely ridiculous.

First off, you have to work. There’s almost no way around it for most of us, save discovering some long distance relative has kicked the bucket and left you millions. Lucky bastards. Anyway, most of us go to college, university, or some other form of training to make ourselves more appealing to employers. The problem is that most of us do this. We wave our diplomas around on graduation day, only to quickly realize that BAs are a dime a dozen and we’re a few thousand in the hole already. It’s not exactly the most optimistic start to your future.

Some of us realize this and go on to graduate school or sign up for internships to set themselves apart. This is all fine and good as long as you have an end career in sight. However, after going to a liberal arts school, the only thing I learned about choosing a career is that nobody knows what they want. Friends who started as die-hard education/pre-med majors suddenly fell victim to foreign languages, psychology, geology and the dreaded beast Philosophy. (I, of course, had no such delusions and headed straight for my predestined doom as an English minor.) We hand in our final papers, march across the stage at graduation to get our token scrolls (you’ll get your real diploma months later in the mail) and march right off that stage with absolutely no clue about what we’re going to do after we take hundreds of photographs with friends and family. The only thing we know at that point is that in six months, the federal government is going to want a nice big check every month for the rest of our lives 10 years.

So when we get home, we spend hours upon hours browsing the essential websites- Monster, Career Builder, US Jobs, Facebook (let’s be realistic, we all get distracted), drafting and redrafting a resume that attempts to be drastically different from everyone else’s, trying to solicit recommendations and connections from former professors and employers. After doing that, we usually realize that our Bachelor of Arts degree entitles us to be one hell of a administrative assistant or telemarketer. This is when panic officially begins to set in and some of the more impulsive graduates start Googling things like “Peace Corps” or “teach ESL in Russia” and end up sitting at their computers one or two years from graduation doing the exact same thing again. But that’s neither here nor there.

All right, so back to the Monster search. You’ve found an perfect almost perfect ideal appealing acceptable job listing. But then, after all that hard work, you have to bend over backwards to get it. If you’re lucky (very, very lucky) you’ll get an email response saying “We’ve received your application. You will be notified if we wish to get in touch for an interview. Have a nice day.” If you light a candle, say some prayers, write an absolutely amazing cover letter and call them several times, you *might* get an interview. The whole process is a slightly degrading prostitution of your skills and talents for a few dozen Bosses that you’ll end up despising and bitching about anyway.

What’s even more frustrating is that, more often that not, college grads are being slammed for lack of experience. Most of us are now familiar with the whole “you can’t get experience without a job, can’t get a job without experience” catch-22 and justifiably have grown to resent job listings that “absolutely require 5-7 years of experience showing progressively increased responsibility in the chosen field”. You start to take liberties and can almost make yourself believe that the year you spent giving angry soccer moms bags of hamburgers for her squealing brats at the local fast food establishment can feasibly count as experience in “human resources”. None of us have the right experience, mostly because four years ago we were more preoccupied with who was sleeping in whose dorm room than considering the ramifications of not choosing our future career path. That’s not to say that we’re complete idiots now, just that we were complete idiots then. A lack of experience does not make someone a completely inefficient worker. In fact, in some cases, it makes them *better*. Unemployable, but better!

Don’t get me started on experience, seriously. Well, not yet, anyway. That’ll be the topic in Part II of my “Damn the Man” series. See you soon!

Finally, it’s time for my promised February update! The major events that I’ve already mentioned (scroll down) went off well.
The most important part of this month was Maslenitsa. Basically, it’s the Russian equivalent of Mardi Gras, except it lasts a week and involves eating lots and lots of blini (Russian pancakes, more like crepes). I did my share and ate blini at least once on 5 of the 7 days of our Maslenitsa week. It was rough, but I made it. Here are some of the piles and piles of blini that we ate for Joanna’s birthday.

The topic in my conversation class the previous day was ‘Holidays’, so I told my students to bring fillings for blini and I’d make some tasty blini. Despite the fact that only 5 of them ended up coming, they were smart enough to bring not only blini filling, tea bags, and other snacks, but also tons of extra blini! We had some guest appearances as a result; Sara, like myself, is a fan of using сгушёнка (sweetened condensed milk) as a blini filler.

Speaking of indulgent celebrations, we also had our Mardi Gras Party at the AH. Games, dancing, Twister, food, food, etc. I took plenty of pictures, but I think you can imagine it well enough. Here’s one of my students Zhenya (R) dancing with another student, Sveta.

That night, Masha, Katya and I decided to cook blini at Masha’s apartment before we went to Suzdal for the end-of-Maslenitsa celebration on Sunday. I was running late after the party and they started without me. Needless to say, it resulted in a magnificent failure and I arrived just in time for the unexpected party. Masha’s relatives appeared out of nowhere, along with a similarly mysterious amount of food and I spent an hour or so answering rapid-fire questions in Russian from Masha’s slightly tipsy father.

Never let it be said that Russians are inhospitable. We only wanted to cook blini, and ended up eating and splitting a bottle of red wine between the three of us lovely ladies.

The next morning, Masha’s mother got up at 7 am and cooked fresh blini for the entire group (more than 10 of us!). Once again, Russian hospitality is second to none. We headed off to Suzdal via bus. After the 40 minute bus ride, we discovered that the Suzdal bus station is located exactly at the edge of the town. We walked about 15 minutes to get to the actual celebration downtown.

Upon arrival, we bought several bottles of Медовуха (Suzdal’s famous honey-flavored, semi-alcoholic drink that tastes like heaven) and broke out the first set of blini. There were tons of Medovukha and shashlik (shish kebab) vendors, and plenty of entertainment. Katya and I played a game where you sit on a wooden pole and try to knock your opponent off with a giant pillowcase stuffed with hay. (And despite the fact that she weighs less than 100 pounds, we still tied. It’s hard!)

We danced, watched half-naked men try to scale a 50 foot vertical wooden pole, and organized an impromptu game of Russian-American Red Rover and got some strangers to join in. We ended up wandering around the town and its nearby monastery, ending up like this in the snow more than a few times, thanks to Sara’s host Ira:

Hungry again, we found a table (which, as you’ll notice, is a conveniently sized tree stump) and broke out the rest of the blini. Several toasts of Medovukha and rounds of dancing later, and we were almost not freezing!


Finally, as we were waiting in the bus station to return to Vladimir, I decided to make perhaps the best impulse purchase of my life:

The Russian means “I love you”. Because nothing says “I love you” like a creepy witch-like hand grabbing at you. Best dollar I’ve ever spent.

Most of February was freezing, so we spent a lot of time inside, playing billiards, visiting friends, and occasionally teaching. But mostly just hanging out. And since it’s polite to bring food to someone’s house if you’re visiting, I decided that brownies are a simple, homemade and cheap way to be polite. Despite the fact that Russians all love chocolate, this fantastic dish hasn’t made it to Vladimir yet, so I’ve been a pioneer. Needless to say, they’ve been a huge hit with every Russian I’ve introduced them to. Katya and I baked some at Yura’s last week pre-movie. In true Russian fashion, we couldn’t just have ONE snack for an entire two hour movie, so we made two bags of popcorn, broke out the sukhariki (like croutons, but tastier!), tea, and Coke. (Keep in mind that this feast was intended for three people.)


Good month, overall, despite the fact that all I feel like I did was eat, eat, eat. (Not entirely untrue!) Tune in next time when I talk about my overabundance of future plans, Women’s Day, spring break, and being stuck here until July!