Oh my. I didn’t start out to spend money today. I cleaned the apartment this morning in preparation for the landlady’s meter-reading inspection tomorrow. Then I had to get some supplies for projects this week , so Sonia and I went into town. We went to the craft supply shop at the big plaza. Sonia was impressed. I got the few things I needed and then we took the escalator down. And what did we spy one the next level? A Sportmaster store.
Sonia had been looking for some crampons for her shoes. Being from Spain, she is not at all used to dealing with icy surfaces and is afraid she’s going to fall flat on her face and break something. We found some in this Sportmaster. As long as we were there, I figured I would look for a warmer winter coat. I’ve been told it’s not unusual to hit -22 degrees F. here in winter. I found a nice, long jacket that really keeps me warm. Sonia also found some snow pants. Then I ended up getting a couple of coffee cups at the grocery store in the mall because two of mine had broken. Plus, we ate fast food at Burger King. We’ve decided it’s not good when we go out together! All we do is spend money.
On the way home, we stopped in the little grocery store in our complex. A lady approached us and asked if we gave English lessons. Her family wants to move to Australia and they need to work on their English. I wouldn’t mind picking up another private student or two.
Then the international staff started texting back and forth. We had wanted to do a get-together and decided to do it this Thursday for Thanksgiving. I decided to do Sauerbraten. Now all I have to do is run out and find all the ingredients tomorrow and start marinating. I hope I can turn up all the spices. It will be a really eclectic meal; something Spanish, something British, something Russian, something Indian and something German. And not a turkey in sight.
Tuesday I’m going to the Tatar theater. They perform Tatar classics there. They speak in Tatar, then they translate it into Russian and after that they translate it into English. So the same joke gets three different laughs. I suspect it’s similar to what we know in Germany as Bauerntheater (farmers’theater or country theater).
OK. Enough for now. I’ve got to get up early tomorrow.
Sunday, November 19, 2017
Saturday, November 18, 2017
Spain and black spaghetti, part 2
I had a great start to the weekend. Yesterday when I got home from work, I figured I had finally better make plans for the winter break or I wouldn’t get anything. My break is from 27 Dec to 10 Jan. I was toying with bike trips in Spain or Greece, or just a trip to room. I googled Spain tours and Greece tours and they are all in spring. But Spain offered some bus tours of Andalusia, which is the particular area I am interested in. I didn’t know which one to choose, so I whatsapped my Spanish friend Sonia quickly to see if she was free and ran over to her apartment, which is in the building about 500 feet from mine. We found a great 9-day tour which gives me time for an extra day in Segovia and Madrid. We found a reasonable flight AND a good deal on a hotel near the airport. And Sonia lives right around the corner, so she is going to pick me up when I get into Madrid. The flights will be long because of time waiting for connecting flights, but I will finally get to see this historic and culturally important part of Spain that has always interested me. Glad I got that taken care of.
Today was also very, very pleasant. After cleaning up a little and Skyping to Germany, I met Anna downtown. We walked to the Hermitage Museum and looked at an exhibit of Imperial pottery, made in St. Petersburg. It was a lovely exhibit with a combination of old and modern. Then we walked all the way across town to the bookstore with the collection of English-language books. Two surprises: it was smaller than I had expected and it had a wonderful collection of English-language materials for young kids. Both Anna and I fond books we thought we might enjoy. The store owner happened to come in while we were there , heard us speaking English, thanked us for patronizing her store and offered us a cup of tea. We sat right down at the table in the store and drank tea and ate chocolate. We even started browsing through our books. I’ll guarantee we’ll be going back there.
We left the store and walked through the passage connecting the mall to the hotel and took the elevator up to the 25th-floor restaurant. It was already totally dark in Kazan and the view of the city all lit up was breath-taking. It was a very noble establishment but everyone was casually dressed. It seems pretty obvious that a lot of well-off foreigners use this hotel when they come to Kazan. The wait staff all spoke English.
We shared a bruschetta appetizer, each of the four pieces of bread having a different topping. We shared two pots of tea. I had the black spaghetti with shrimp and Béchamel sauce and Anna had a salad with roast beef slices.it was finally a meal that wasn’t too bland. In fact, it was excellent. My whole bill with tax and tip was $15. The view alone was worth that.
I caught a bus home and am in for the night. My stomach is still full!
Tomorrow is clean-up and shopping day. The landlady come Monday to read the meters. The place had better look good. And I get to skype to Germany tomorrow night. That will be fun.
Today was also very, very pleasant. After cleaning up a little and Skyping to Germany, I met Anna downtown. We walked to the Hermitage Museum and looked at an exhibit of Imperial pottery, made in St. Petersburg. It was a lovely exhibit with a combination of old and modern. Then we walked all the way across town to the bookstore with the collection of English-language books. Two surprises: it was smaller than I had expected and it had a wonderful collection of English-language materials for young kids. Both Anna and I fond books we thought we might enjoy. The store owner happened to come in while we were there , heard us speaking English, thanked us for patronizing her store and offered us a cup of tea. We sat right down at the table in the store and drank tea and ate chocolate. We even started browsing through our books. I’ll guarantee we’ll be going back there.
We left the store and walked through the passage connecting the mall to the hotel and took the elevator up to the 25th-floor restaurant. It was already totally dark in Kazan and the view of the city all lit up was breath-taking. It was a very noble establishment but everyone was casually dressed. It seems pretty obvious that a lot of well-off foreigners use this hotel when they come to Kazan. The wait staff all spoke English.
We shared a bruschetta appetizer, each of the four pieces of bread having a different topping. We shared two pots of tea. I had the black spaghetti with shrimp and Béchamel sauce and Anna had a salad with roast beef slices.it was finally a meal that wasn’t too bland. In fact, it was excellent. My whole bill with tax and tip was $15. The view alone was worth that.
I caught a bus home and am in for the night. My stomach is still full!
Tomorrow is clean-up and shopping day. The landlady come Monday to read the meters. The place had better look good. And I get to skype to Germany tomorrow night. That will be fun.
Spain and black spaghetti
Thursday, November 16, 2017
Let’s get physical!
I forgot to mention that my movie ticket only cost $2.58. Eat your heart out, Regal Cinema!
Fun fact: when you go to a restaurant here with other people, it doesn’t matter how many people are in the party, the waiter serves the first dish that comes out of the kitchen. They never wait until the food for the entire party is ready, so someone always ends up watching another person eating for 10 minutes until his food arrives. Weird system. In general, the food’s not spicy enought for me.
Fun fact: The kids love croutons in their soup at lunchtime. It’s just the old, stale bread that hasn’t been finished up from the previous week that’s cut up in small chunks. But the kids will ask for it by the handful.
It’s snowing like crazy at the moment. I think I’m about to experience a Russian winter. I just did my homework and checked the latitude of Rochester and Kazan. Kazan is 12 degrees of latitude further north than Rochester. Holy crap. I just went out and bought a warmer hat. Now I’ve got my eye on a long winter coat. I will be walking to school soon. I don’t want to ride if the roads aren’t cleared and my impression so far is that that will never be the case in Kazan. Although I shouldn’t rush to judgement. I’ve seen street sweepers out there. They don’t seem to be very effective, however. Every car in Kazan is covered in mud. It’s also illegal to wash your car in your apartment parking lot. Only if you own a place out in the country, can you wash it yourself.
I learned something else interesting. The Russian Duma (legislative body) just declared that it’s no longer mandatory to teach the Tatar language in schools in Tatarstan. If a kid wants to voluntarily take Tatar lessons, he can sign up for a class after hours. This has some people worried. They see it as an attack on the culture and are afraid the language and their heritage will be lost. It sounds like it might be the first step to insert more Russian influence into Tatarstan. This only applies to public schools. Private schools can teach it if they want.
So, now on to the physical. Every school teacher in Russia has to get a physical once a year. It includes a chest x-ray for TB and for the women, a pelvic exam. Yup, you heard me right. What the hell do they expect teachers to be doing in school?! And they expect you to bring a passport picture. In any case, our school contracts with the cheapest clinic it can find and the clinic only does the exams on Wednesdays. So, according to our nurses at school, they had sent all of the paperwork for us foreigners on ahead to the clinic so that we could be processed in a reasonable amount of time and not have to translate everything there.
We show up at the clinic, with Valeriya, Matthew’s Russian wife as a translator. This clinic looked like something an American woman would go to to get an illegal abortion. We got there shortly after 8 and there were already about 20 people milling around. Then we find out that the guy at the clinic who supposedly processed our paperwork in advance had quit his job. So, Valeriya’s standing there filling out all the paperwork in Russian for us and about 30 more people come into the clinic. You don’t take a number, you don’t wait in line, you push and shove. Finally we get to go to the back and stand by the first doctor’s door where they draw blood. What the hell for? As we are waiting, about 8 people just simply push ahead and jump the line. Some of them were even from the other branch of our school! Damn.
After about an hour of this crap, we just said screw it, got our documents back and went back to school. Matthew was smart enough to take a video of the entire scene to show the boss how impossible is was. So now we will have to find another solution. We actually already have but I’m not going to put it in print. I’ll let you know when I get the official documents.
Boy, I thought getting Medicaid for my dad was a pain in the ass, but this bureaucracy tops them all.
On a calmer topic, Mothers’ Day here is in November. We will have to prepare a present for the moms and they come in on one afternoon and put on a program for the kids. Can’t wait to see what this will be like.
We’re headed for the mexican restaurant again tomorrow. Saturday I want to finally get to the big bookstore and Sunday is going to be cleaning and Skyping day. The landlady comes Monday to read the meters so I’ve got to be ready for her.
Fun fact: when you go to a restaurant here with other people, it doesn’t matter how many people are in the party, the waiter serves the first dish that comes out of the kitchen. They never wait until the food for the entire party is ready, so someone always ends up watching another person eating for 10 minutes until his food arrives. Weird system. In general, the food’s not spicy enought for me.
Fun fact: The kids love croutons in their soup at lunchtime. It’s just the old, stale bread that hasn’t been finished up from the previous week that’s cut up in small chunks. But the kids will ask for it by the handful.
It’s snowing like crazy at the moment. I think I’m about to experience a Russian winter. I just did my homework and checked the latitude of Rochester and Kazan. Kazan is 12 degrees of latitude further north than Rochester. Holy crap. I just went out and bought a warmer hat. Now I’ve got my eye on a long winter coat. I will be walking to school soon. I don’t want to ride if the roads aren’t cleared and my impression so far is that that will never be the case in Kazan. Although I shouldn’t rush to judgement. I’ve seen street sweepers out there. They don’t seem to be very effective, however. Every car in Kazan is covered in mud. It’s also illegal to wash your car in your apartment parking lot. Only if you own a place out in the country, can you wash it yourself.
I learned something else interesting. The Russian Duma (legislative body) just declared that it’s no longer mandatory to teach the Tatar language in schools in Tatarstan. If a kid wants to voluntarily take Tatar lessons, he can sign up for a class after hours. This has some people worried. They see it as an attack on the culture and are afraid the language and their heritage will be lost. It sounds like it might be the first step to insert more Russian influence into Tatarstan. This only applies to public schools. Private schools can teach it if they want.
So, now on to the physical. Every school teacher in Russia has to get a physical once a year. It includes a chest x-ray for TB and for the women, a pelvic exam. Yup, you heard me right. What the hell do they expect teachers to be doing in school?! And they expect you to bring a passport picture. In any case, our school contracts with the cheapest clinic it can find and the clinic only does the exams on Wednesdays. So, according to our nurses at school, they had sent all of the paperwork for us foreigners on ahead to the clinic so that we could be processed in a reasonable amount of time and not have to translate everything there.
We show up at the clinic, with Valeriya, Matthew’s Russian wife as a translator. This clinic looked like something an American woman would go to to get an illegal abortion. We got there shortly after 8 and there were already about 20 people milling around. Then we find out that the guy at the clinic who supposedly processed our paperwork in advance had quit his job. So, Valeriya’s standing there filling out all the paperwork in Russian for us and about 30 more people come into the clinic. You don’t take a number, you don’t wait in line, you push and shove. Finally we get to go to the back and stand by the first doctor’s door where they draw blood. What the hell for? As we are waiting, about 8 people just simply push ahead and jump the line. Some of them were even from the other branch of our school! Damn.
After about an hour of this crap, we just said screw it, got our documents back and went back to school. Matthew was smart enough to take a video of the entire scene to show the boss how impossible is was. So now we will have to find another solution. We actually already have but I’m not going to put it in print. I’ll let you know when I get the official documents.
Boy, I thought getting Medicaid for my dad was a pain in the ass, but this bureaucracy tops them all.
On a calmer topic, Mothers’ Day here is in November. We will have to prepare a present for the moms and they come in on one afternoon and put on a program for the kids. Can’t wait to see what this will be like.
We’re headed for the mexican restaurant again tomorrow. Saturday I want to finally get to the big bookstore and Sunday is going to be cleaning and Skyping day. The landlady comes Monday to read the meters so I’ve got to be ready for her.
Sunday, November 12, 2017
Mozart and Mathilda
I forgot to mention yesterday that the Basket-hall has squat toilets in the ladies’ room. It’s a porcelain hole with places to put your feet on either side. I’ve seen the, in other countries, but it was the first time I’ve seen them in Russia.
So, Skyping didn’t work last night, but we made a WhatsApp call. At least I got to talk to everyone. The next time I’ll remember to push the camera button however, so we can all see each other too. We didn’t make contact until about 4 and then we talked for half an hour. That means I slept in until 10.
After I got up and got going, I took my 5-liter water bottle out to the water Automat and filled it up. Then I walked down to my old bank, took out more money and deposited it in my new bank. It’s right near the subway station and my bread bakery. So I stopped and got bread and took the subway into town. I’ve got to take a picture of the bakery for you next week. It’s a little, nondescript gray building with no entrance. If you want bread, you wait in front of a little window tha5 the guy opens when he sees you and you tell him what you want. Sometimes the line is 10 people long. And when you’re standing at the window, you can see all the bakers patting the dough and putting it in the oven. You end up with piping hot flat bread. It’s phenomenal.
I had wanted to go to to the big bookstore that the guy told us about yesterday, but since I started out so late and had tickets for the 2 p.m. showing of Mathilda, I decided to push the bookstore off until next week and get tickets to The Magic Flute instead. So when I got off the subway I walked up The Hill to the opera house. I go to the counter and ask for tickets for Dec. 20 and the only thing they have left is standing room only. I tell her I’ll take two tickets and she tells me the price. I didn’t hear her correctly through her inch-thick plexiglass and and screechy microphone so I asked her to repeat. You would have thought I had asked her to sacrifice her first-born child. Finally, the lady behind me in line told me the price (less than a dollar a ticket. Take note, RPO, they sell out weeks in advance.)
It’s interesting that 99.9% of cashiers go out of their way to help you. The small number who don’t are usually older women. Maybe they are just pissed at the raw deal they’ve gotten in life and now have someone they can take it out on. Who the hell knows. But I got my tickets.
Then I walked down to the place where I saw the neat Tatar hats and, of course, they were all too big and I didn’t like any of them anyway. So I walked back to the mall with the movie theater and ate two slices of pieces at the food court. It’s important to know that it was two slices, because when you order two, you get a free cup of tea with it.
I went into the movie theater and took my seat. They have as many trailers and commercials as in the States. It was good that the movie didn’t have an awful lot of complicated dialogue and that I remembered some of my Russian history. I got the gist of it and enjoyed it. It didn’t feel like 2 hours and 10 minutes.
After the movie I caught the subway back towards home and stopped at the grocery story. I got what I needed and walked home. Then I had a nice long FaceTime chat with Mary Ellen. I was so glad she could watch me make my penguin project for school and critique it for me.
And now, since I’m still tired from the late chat with America, it’s about time to turn in. The only other thing of note today was that I noticed a Stockmann department store in town. It’s a very prominent department store chain in Finland.
Tomorrow I’m making binoculars out of toilet paper rolls with the kids and were going on a lion hunt. In the evening, I have tutoring. So enough for now.
So, Skyping didn’t work last night, but we made a WhatsApp call. At least I got to talk to everyone. The next time I’ll remember to push the camera button however, so we can all see each other too. We didn’t make contact until about 4 and then we talked for half an hour. That means I slept in until 10.
After I got up and got going, I took my 5-liter water bottle out to the water Automat and filled it up. Then I walked down to my old bank, took out more money and deposited it in my new bank. It’s right near the subway station and my bread bakery. So I stopped and got bread and took the subway into town. I’ve got to take a picture of the bakery for you next week. It’s a little, nondescript gray building with no entrance. If you want bread, you wait in front of a little window tha5 the guy opens when he sees you and you tell him what you want. Sometimes the line is 10 people long. And when you’re standing at the window, you can see all the bakers patting the dough and putting it in the oven. You end up with piping hot flat bread. It’s phenomenal.
I had wanted to go to to the big bookstore that the guy told us about yesterday, but since I started out so late and had tickets for the 2 p.m. showing of Mathilda, I decided to push the bookstore off until next week and get tickets to The Magic Flute instead. So when I got off the subway I walked up The Hill to the opera house. I go to the counter and ask for tickets for Dec. 20 and the only thing they have left is standing room only. I tell her I’ll take two tickets and she tells me the price. I didn’t hear her correctly through her inch-thick plexiglass and and screechy microphone so I asked her to repeat. You would have thought I had asked her to sacrifice her first-born child. Finally, the lady behind me in line told me the price (less than a dollar a ticket. Take note, RPO, they sell out weeks in advance.)
It’s interesting that 99.9% of cashiers go out of their way to help you. The small number who don’t are usually older women. Maybe they are just pissed at the raw deal they’ve gotten in life and now have someone they can take it out on. Who the hell knows. But I got my tickets.
Then I walked down to the place where I saw the neat Tatar hats and, of course, they were all too big and I didn’t like any of them anyway. So I walked back to the mall with the movie theater and ate two slices of pieces at the food court. It’s important to know that it was two slices, because when you order two, you get a free cup of tea with it.
I went into the movie theater and took my seat. They have as many trailers and commercials as in the States. It was good that the movie didn’t have an awful lot of complicated dialogue and that I remembered some of my Russian history. I got the gist of it and enjoyed it. It didn’t feel like 2 hours and 10 minutes.
After the movie I caught the subway back towards home and stopped at the grocery story. I got what I needed and walked home. Then I had a nice long FaceTime chat with Mary Ellen. I was so glad she could watch me make my penguin project for school and critique it for me.
And now, since I’m still tired from the late chat with America, it’s about time to turn in. The only other thing of note today was that I noticed a Stockmann department store in town. It’s a very prominent department store chain in Finland.
Tomorrow I’m making binoculars out of toilet paper rolls with the kids and were going on a lion hunt. In the evening, I have tutoring. So enough for now.
Saturday, November 11, 2017
Go, Unics Kazan, part 2.
So, Emma, Sonia and I went to the Unics Kazan bastball game tonight. The name is pronounced “uniques” and not “eunuchs”. What a great game. On the Kazan team there was a guy from Gabon, a Spaniard, a Nigerian-Canadian and several Americans. The league’s motto is “One league - one language: basketball”. During their warm-ups, the Kazan players even do yoga poses! After a sloppy first half, we got our stuff together and pulled out an exciting win. There was a nice atmosphere in the arena. Sonia and I headed home after the game and Emma headed out to her dance class.
We took a bus home, which reminded us why the subway and the tram are preferable. Lordy, traffic is so bad in Kazan and people drive like bats out of hell. You’d better find a route where you only have to turn right. I can’t begin to explain what a left turn looks like here, but it isn’t pretty, especially if it involves crossing tram tracks.
In the morning Sonia and I had been shopping. I needed some stuff for next weeks’s projects and Sonia needed a scrapper for her ceramic stove. We found both -.PLUS, Sonia find a screen for her phone and a really great stereotypical Russian hat with the ear flaps to keep her warm during the winter. It’s really gorgeous.
We stopped in a bookstore in the plaza we were at and asked the guy if they had any books in English. They did, but they were only the classics. On the way out the guy told us about another shopping center that has a bookstore with lots of literature in English. That’s going to be on of my goals tomorrow. Plus, I bought a ticket to go see the movie Mathilda tomorrow. It’s only in Russian with no subtitles, but I really want to see it. It’s about an affair one of the czars had with a ballet dancer. Will fill you in more tomorrow.
It snowed this morning while we were underway, but it warmed up over the course of the day. So by the time we took off for the basketball game, it had gotten slightly milder. It still does not mean that it was warm, however.
I’m getting excited that I will be able to Skype with my work buddies in the States. It’s party night for them and I’ll be able to talk with them all. But I have to be up at 0 dark 3 a.m. to do it. SO YOU ALL HAD BETTER BE APPRECIATING MY EFFORTS. 😁👍 And don’t expect me to be too alert.
We took a bus home, which reminded us why the subway and the tram are preferable. Lordy, traffic is so bad in Kazan and people drive like bats out of hell. You’d better find a route where you only have to turn right. I can’t begin to explain what a left turn looks like here, but it isn’t pretty, especially if it involves crossing tram tracks.
In the morning Sonia and I had been shopping. I needed some stuff for next weeks’s projects and Sonia needed a scrapper for her ceramic stove. We found both -.PLUS, Sonia find a screen for her phone and a really great stereotypical Russian hat with the ear flaps to keep her warm during the winter. It’s really gorgeous.
We stopped in a bookstore in the plaza we were at and asked the guy if they had any books in English. They did, but they were only the classics. On the way out the guy told us about another shopping center that has a bookstore with lots of literature in English. That’s going to be on of my goals tomorrow. Plus, I bought a ticket to go see the movie Mathilda tomorrow. It’s only in Russian with no subtitles, but I really want to see it. It’s about an affair one of the czars had with a ballet dancer. Will fill you in more tomorrow.
It snowed this morning while we were underway, but it warmed up over the course of the day. So by the time we took off for the basketball game, it had gotten slightly milder. It still does not mean that it was warm, however.
I’m getting excited that I will be able to Skype with my work buddies in the States. It’s party night for them and I’ll be able to talk with them all. But I have to be up at 0 dark 3 a.m. to do it. SO YOU ALL HAD BETTER BE APPRECIATING MY EFFORTS. 😁👍 And don’t expect me to be too alert.
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