Yarn Along: War and Peace and the Pascha Sweaters

Late again to the Yarn Along party.  I've been meaning to write something for several days, but just couldn't quite manage it.  I've been trying to be disciplined about my computer use this week (I'll see how I go for the rest of Lent), and have been trying not to check e-mail or do anything computer related until naptime.  So far, I'm liking the routine of it, and I find that I feel less fractured (surprise, surprise!)  But that also means that I've got less time for writing and so forth, since I'm trying to get Birdie's Pascha sweater done and naptime is my primary knitting time.  So it goes.

During Lent this year, we are doing a Jesus Tree.  I got these discs from the same place as our Jesse Tree.  The idea is that you read a little bit from the Gospels every day until Pascha.  Each disc has a different passage on it.  Every day, we take a disc down and put it into the bag that came with the set.  The yellow disc at the bottom is for Pascha!  The feast of feasts!  It helps the kids to have a visual reminder of the season, and we've found the Jesse Tree so helpful these last few Nativity Fasts, I thought this would be a nice way to mark time during Lent.

In other news, Boo lost both his front teeth in the last couple of weeks!  He was pretty excited to lose both so close together.

And: a stitch fix (not that kind).  A sewing fix.  I decided that the main problem with the Tokyo Train Ride and Ivy League dresses was the lack of shaping in the middle.  The directional print of the Tokyo Train Ride seems to need some breaking up to look right, and I think the Ivy League dress just needs more definition or something.  So I pulled out the front elastics, and added a strip of elastic all the way across the middle, measured from the inner tuck lines, with about 2" negative ease.  

I think that's done it!  I'm much happier with both dresses now, and have been super comfortable all day.  I still wish I'd make them both about an inch longer, but I think the extra shaping fixes most of the problems for me, so I'm definitely going to get good wear out of them.  (And you can see, I found a heavier weight sweater to go with the Tokyo Train Ride dress!  Yay for ebay)

In other sewing news, my focus this week has been on sewing the girls' warm weather clothing.  I went through their bin yesterday and realized that they each have about 3 knit dresses from last year that will still fit and are 100% cotton.  I realized that several of the dresses Birdie wore last year that would fit Ponchik this year have a high polyester content, which I just don't want to put on my girls in the sticky heat + no AC we endure here in the summer.  The yellow dresses are the Pascha dresses, and I was able to work out the caps too!  I still have to make the pink fabric caps, but at least I kind of know what I'm doing now.  The gingham dresses are from the leftovers of my dress, and are my first go at Dottie Angel frocks for the girls.  They both love the kangaroo pocket!  I'll try to photograph the dresses on them when it warms up a bit.

On to knitting.  As you can see, I'm nearly done with the body of Birdie's Pascha sweater.  The sleeves go pretty quickly, so I'm hoping to finish it by mid-week next week.  I'm planning to block both sweaters together to save myself some trouble.  I feel like I should call this one the War and Peace sweater, since I watched the (mostly excellent) BBC version of the same whilst knitting it.  I have a few quibbles about some costuming choices, Russian language choices, and a few Russian Orthodox cultural choices, but overall, I felt the production did a good job of setting the scene, being truthful to the story while keeping it watchable, and the acting and casting were superb.  I especially enjoyed James Norton as Prince Bolkonsky.  I'm excited that Grantchester is to have another season airing here soon!

Thus I decided it was time to crack the mighty tome.  I got the Peaver/Volokhonsky translation, as I know my husband really likes them for his Dostoevsky translations, and I've heard good things about them generally.  I read Richard Peaver's introduction and found it helpful on a lot of levels.  I'm a little way into chapter one, and am finding it surprisingly readable.  It looks like War and Peace has some of the same structure of Anna Karenina, so that helps me to know what to expect.  I'm reminded of what an odd bird Tolstoy really was.  

I find myself in a Russian state of mind these days.  I'm craving Pavlovo-Posad scarves, Russian folk music, Rassolink (pickle soup), and proper Russian pierog with cabbage or apples (the kind made with bread, not the Polish version that passes for the same around here).  I still think in Russian sometimes (which is weird, because I'm far from fluent, but I find that my thoughts are sometimes very fluid in Russian, whereas my mouth can't seem to make the words come out).  I keep meaning to pick up my language books again.  I am considering it as a side-Lenten project, once I get through a few more sewing projects.

Linking with Ginny for Yarn Along!

Five Favorites: Communist Bloc Edition

Been a while since I did one of these lists, but I was listening to some music in the car, which reminded me of a movie I love, and well,...things sort of rolled from there.  So without further ado, I present five favorites of the Slavic/Communist Bloc variety.

~1~

The CD I was listening to in the car was La Vent Du Nord's Dans Les Airs.  They are actually a French-Canadian folk group, but it suddenly occurred to me that several tracks remind me of the soundtrack to one of my favorite Russian films (see #2).  I've really enjoyed this album in the past few months.  I took a break for Lent, but I sometimes need a break from Lenten music in the middle of the season.

~2~

One of my favorite Russian movies is Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears.  It is from the early 1980s, and it follows a group of friends for about 20 years, starting in the mid-1960s.  I find so many things about the storylines compelling, and I realize that it is a fairly sunny view of life in the Soviet Union, but I've also seen some of that life lived out, so there is some truth there as well.  I think some of what I like about the film is that everything seems so familiar somehow.

~3~

I can't really mention Russian films and not talk about Ostrov (The Island).  I was fortunate to be in Russia on a month-long language study when it was in theaters there, and was able to see it twice in Russian.  I missed some of the details, owing to my own less than stellar language skills, but I really loved the film.  I was grateful to watch it again with English subtitles about a year later when it came to the States.  

~4~

I have to mention another favorite film that I've written about on the blog before, long ago: Zelary.  It is in Czech (with a little German thrown in here and there) and it is just so wonderful on so many levels.  It technically takes place before the Communists took over, but I still think it belong in this list, and since its my list, I can do what I want to.  (nana-nana-boo-boo).  I think the best part for me is the picture of old-world village life--the simplicity and complexity of human relationships in a small intimate setting.  I like that it doesn't romanticize the people who live in small villages, but yet the richness of human connection is very present.  Plus it is a cracking good story.

~5~

And finally, Slavenka Draculic's How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed.  She is writing from Yugoslavia/Croatia in the 1980s, and she captures so much of what I find fascinating about Soviet life.  It is light and readable, with many personal touches and lots of dark humor, which I enjoy.

~Bonus~

I have a handful of German films from the Communist period (or about it) that I really love:

Goodbye, Lenin!, Barbara, The Lives of Others, and The Promise.

***

There are obviously many other books and films about Russia, the Soviet Union, and the former Communist bloc countries that I would recommend, but this is my short list.

Linking with Jenna for Five Favorites!  

Beauty from Ashes

I hope this ramble-y little post makes some sense.  I've come down with another lung infection and had a killer migraine yesterday, so I'm not sure how well I was able to articulate myself, but 7 posts in 7 days waits for no man, so here you go!

Dostoevsky wrote that beauty will save the world (The Idiot).

When we went to Austria in the summer of 2012, I rediscovered some parts of myself I thought were lost when we visited Salzburg.  I wrote a little about that journey here, but mostly I discovered that I need beauty and goodness in my life in order to have some sense of peace.  A lot has happened since then, and I confess that I've forgotten some of those very important lessons.  There is much in city living that ugly, dirty, and depressing, and it can be very easy to slip into forgetting to see the forest for the trees.  There is also much to like about living in the city--this winter would have been much more difficult for us if we had been living in the suburbs or somewhere more rural.  So even though my basic vision of the beauty in creation involves isolated rural landscapes, I'm trying to adjust to the urban reality of my daily life.  And that landscape has its own sort of beauty; one must look harder to see it.

I think one of the first things that people notice upon entering an Orthodox church are the externals of it--the physical space is designed to engage all the senses, and the iconography, the incense, the music, the candles, the chanting, etc. are all part of that.  It is to remind us of heaven, and the heavenly cloud of witnesses that surround us always, to relive the creation and salvation story through the liturgy, to point our minds and hearts to worship God and to pray for the salvation of our selves and the world.

When we first moved to this part of the country, we were underwhelmed by many of the local churches, particularly the iconography, which was heavily influenced by the Romanticism that overtook Russian iconography in the late 19th century.  It seemed so at odds, both liturgically and aesthetically, with the traditional Byzantine style iconography to which we were accustomed.  I myself studied iconography with the Prosopon School, and learned the Rublev method, which is fairly contiguous with Byzantine styles.  Aesthetics mean a lot to me, and speak to me in visceral ways, so to find so much of the iconography of the churches to be of a distinct Western style, full of sentimentalism, was disappointing. Lately, however, I find myself revising that opinion, as I think those 19th century images have much to teach me about beauty, and about a window on the soul.

Merciful Savior Church, Nizhni Novgorod, Russia

A few weeks ago, I had the very rare opportunity to attend a Saturday Vespers by myself.  I went to the Russian parish that is an easy walk from our house, and entered the candle-lit darkness of the nave.  It was womb-like, even though the church was cold.  The fragrance of incense lingered on the air, and the brass candle stands, the gold on various icons, the threads of the analogian covers all sparkled in the low light.  I breathed a deep sigh, and felt something go out of me, a pressure that lives on my shoulders most days.  I was transported back to my first experiences of the Orthodox Church in Russia, and to the sure conviction I had upon entering that God dwelled there.

The church in which I spent the most amount of time in those days was in Nizhni Novgorod, a city about seven hours east of Moscow.  The church was not large, but very old, and filled with iconography, both painted frescos and murals, as well as loose mounted icons.  Being Protestant, and having no sense of the history of iconography, those 19th century sentimental images seemed quite familiar to me.  They were similar to the ones I'd seen in Bible story books growing up, and were reassuring.

Merciful Savior Church, Interior, Nizhni Novgorod, Russia

We could have a discussion about the theology of these Romantic-type icons, but I don't think that is worth going into here.  The point is, how do these images help me to focus my mind on God, to journey to salvation, to imitate Christ?  I'm not sure I could articulate exactly how they do, but they do.  I feel movement in my soul when I'm surrounded by beauty, and it pushes me to prayer, to examine my worldliness, to understand the myriad of ways in which I fall short of the glory of God.  I understand more viscerally how deep the thorn in my wounded soul, and how impossible it is for me to draw it out myself.

I will pursue beauty.  I will look for the beauty beneath the mask of ugliness and sin, I will try to look past the spiritual sickness of the world and see the creation of God.  I will remind myself (again) of my purpose in this life.  I know I will stumble, I know I will fall, and sometimes, it may take me a while to get back up again, but as I journey to the Cross this Lent, I will remind myself of my need for salvation.

A blessed Fast to us all, and forgive me, a sinner.

Odds and Ends, Vol. 6

Time for another Odds and Ends!  

Rod Dreher examines the ways in which the Western mind is different from the rest of the world, and how our rationality and scientific approach to life may blind us to the metaphysical realities that surround us.  From the article: "In practice, what he’s raising here is a fundamental questions about the nature of secularism and the experience of reality. Is the “buffered self” of secularism (in the sense that Charles Taylor means) a method of interpreting the same data we all perceive? Or is secularism something that makes it literally impossible to perceive a certain level of reality? Put another way, does the secular mindset help us to see reality more clearly, or does it blind us to things our pre-modern ancestors could see?"

Defining Digital "Mindfulness"--this is an excellent short piece on the purpose of being mindful.  From the article: "Stepping away from technology will not make us more or less mindful—just as a day of detoxing or fasting will not automatically change our perception of food. In all things, we want to cultivate Aristotle’s virtuous mean, searching for that place between excess and defect where excellence dwells. Mindfulness does not necessitate pure abstention from iPhones, Twitter, and the like—it is not about neglecting certain platforms. Rather, it defines how we use those platforms. The reason for a “fast,” “detox,” or what-have-you is to help us see the big picture, to give us greater purpose, understanding, and discretion."  There are so many articles about taking a technology break in order to reconnect, slow down, etc., but none of them examine what the metapurpose of it is, nor how to really approach technology in our everyday lives.  The author doesn't suggest a quick fix, but rather a global approach to the problem of distracted living.

via

A cool photo essay of vinyl record sleeves blended with real people.

Lessons from Urban Resurgence.  I thought this was an interesting observation about the ways of modern cities.

The Trouble with Bright Girls--reasons why smart girls may struggle in new situations, or fail to succeed later in life.  So much of this article resonated with my own educational experience.

Ways to Handle Temper Tantrums (in adults and children!)  Useful whether you are a parent or not, as many of us never outgrow the need to flail on the ground when things don't go our way.

Via

These brick sculptures are amazing.  I didn't know you could do that with brick!

A fascinating book review on the history of liberalism.  Mr. Siegel's book pokes holes in all the dogma of the arc of liberal thinking, and points to an interesting turning point in the development of the movement, placing its primary birth in the 1920s.  I have to agree, as society changed so drastically in the wake of the Great War, so many social mores went out the door, and the 1920s was a time of great social experimentation and avante garde of the type that makes the revolutions of the 1960s seem tame indeed.  I also think it is interesting (on a lighter note) that fashions of the 1920s were replicated in the 1960s.  Coicidence?  Probably not, since fashion tends to reflect other things going on in society.

The Secret Emotional Life of Stay at Home Parents.  Written by a stay-at-home dad, it is poignant and completely on target.

A letter from a working mother to a stay-at-home mom, and vice versa.  Food for thought, certainly.

Dweeja writes about how our expectations (especially when small children are involved) can easily make us angry, upset, and unhappy with our lives.  Adjusting them to reality can make life easier.  Brief, but well worth the read.

The War on Humans. Wesley J Smith writes about how the environmentalism movement has turned into a war on humanity.  The movement has changed from one that seeks to preserve habitat for the human race to one that seeks to save it from the human race.

When a society that was based on religious convictions moves away from that foundation, there are bound to be cultural consequences.  Rod Dreher discusses some of them.

Via

19th century lithographer makes alphabet from landscapes--very cool imagery!

I'll be the first to say that I strongly disliked Catcher in the Rye, and don't really understand the public fascination with J.D. Salinger, but this article on the character of Holden, and how he exemplifies the post modern existential quest, was interesting.  The most interesting part about the article is implied, which is that perhaps the modern existential quest, and the obsession with identity is beside the point.

I know there are many out there who are sick of this winter, but I, for one, will take it over our nasty, humid, ridiculously hot un-airconditioned summers.  Any.day.  Jason Peters nicely articulates why.

Fyodor Telkov, Yekaterinburg

Beyond Sochi: Photographs of Rural Russians, by Russians.  A fascinating photo essay, sent to me by a friend.  I've said it before, and I'll say it again.  The western media doesn't understand Russia.

And more on how the Western media doesn't get it when it comes to Russia.  This resonated so strongly with me, especially after living there and seeing how, so often, even the in-country Western journalists missed what was really happening.

The vanishing art of letter-writing and why it matters.

Getting of the Social Media Soapbox.  Meagan Francis discusses why it is sometimes best to walk away from an online argument.

Via

A Scotland built on stories.  Cultural narrative!  Scotland!  Battle of Bannockburn! Robert the Bruce!  (about whom I wrote a rather Long Paper at one point)  Of course this one makes the list.

Just for fun: A Nature Soundbox.  This little application (that can run on a PC) is like a radio full of nature sounds that you can customize.  Try it and see!  It is so soothing to have going in the background, and there are lots of options for different combinations of sound.

Especially appropriate for this pre-Lenten period: Tony Woodlief talks about the Prodigal Son.

Odds and Ends, Vol. 3

Time for another edition of Odds and Ends!  I seem to find myself with another growing list of great articles to share, so time to post them!

A Modern Conversion (how one "becomes" Orthodox)

Why Curation is a Good Idea (this list is one of them!)

Six Elements that Make a Post go Viral, or, the quest for cultural narrative.

McDonald's Is the New Commons, and why it is important to retain public gathering spaces, especially as our societies age.

Top 75 Pictures for 2013.  Stunning, truly stunning.

Alan Jacobs reflects on ways of thinking, especially for writers. From the article: "The key point here is: get out of your comfort zone, your echo chamber. But don't do so by seeking out the crowd-pleasers and rabble-rousers from outside your typical group (unless you’re trying to understand sociological phenomena). If you’re a conservative who wants to understand liberalism, don’t bother with Michael Moore; if you’re a liberal who wants to understand conservatism, don't bother with Sarah Palin; if you’re an unbeliever who’s curious about Christianity, ignore Joel Osteen; if you’re an orthodox Christian trying to get a fix on atheism, steer clear of Bill Maher."

Thinking about seasonality, and how the modern world is flat.  Personally, I'd welcome a public return to the cycles of feast and fast, tied to a publicly known agricultural cycle.  Our brief sojourn in Austria, which still observes many of these customs, was delightful in that way.

And in a related brief reflection, Mat. Anna writes about Holy Days.

In Russia, "How are you?" isn't merely a formality; it is a serious question that asks one to divulge the true state of one's life.  I've never re-accustomed to the American usage, although I've trained myself to observe it.

A friend writes about her resolutions for the New Year.  Everything she wrote, I second.  She articulated exactly what has been on my mind lately.

And Matt Walsh, on parenting and public education.  (Warning: he is a little polemical) I've definitely been thinking about this article.

A decade of winter!

And finally: The Mythology of the French Woman.  Rod Dreher's kitchen sink post on the same topic is also worth reading.  It would appear that our fascination with French ways is in some part a reaction to the public loss of common sense.

Nizhni Stories

I wrote these a while back as part of a writer's workshop.  They detail a few episodes of my time living in as a student in Nizhni Novgorod, Russia in the fall of 1998.  I posted them to my Facebook page last week, but thought they might be a good read here as well.  Apologies if you are seeing these twice.

Ludmilla (Mama), Masha, Masha's husband Sasha, and Katya

            “GEE-ELL!  Zaftrak!”  My Russian mama’s high voice rudely pierced my sleep-addled brain.

            “Okay!”  I called back.  I rolled onto my side, staring at the mille fleur pattern of the Persian rug on the wall across from the bed.  Groaning a little, I got up, smoothing the blanket encased in the top sheet, trying the make the diamond shaped hole in the middle lie smooth.  I pulled the rug-like bedspread up over the large square pillow and headed down the dark narrow hallway, past the pink leather padded inner front door to the kitchen on the left. 

            Mama was dressed in her at-home robe, the salmon colored ruffles hanging limply where the halves crossed her body.  Her short faded blond hair was sticking up at odd angles and again I felt guilty for displacing Mama to the fold-out couch for half a semester.  I never had anything to say about it, however.  Mama had installed me in Katya’s room, Katya in her room and taken the couch for herself before I even arrived to stay.  The couch was a typical Russian foldout—the precursor to the futon.  It was padded and covered with a brown fleecy slipcover and unfolded flat for sleeping. 

            Mama bustled around the kitchen finishing breakfast.  Mama cooks very different than my mother, but I like nearly everything Mama makes.  My own mother measures most things with teaspoon and cup measures.  Mama throws a little of this, a pinch of that, a saucer of flour and voila— a dense dough results.  Mama pats the dough into little balls, flattens them with the palm of her hand and fries in them in the skillet.  Five minutes later, the golden glistening disks sat on my plate, smothered in homemade blackberry jam and smetana, the thin kind of sour cream that Russians eat with nearly everything.  

           Mama went to the pantry closet in the hall that also doubled as a coat closet and pulled down a new jar of compote, the tiny Russian apples preserved and floating on the top.  Mmm, my favorite.  Mama poured me a glass and then sat down in the opposite chair to eat her own breakfast.  Mama didn’t speak any English, but tried to speak slowly for her American daughter and they had a halting conversation about the planned activities for the day.  I was nearly finished when Katya shuffled in, wearing a T-shirt and underpants, her gangly legs bare and her feet shoved into a pair of ratty slippers.  I stood up to make room for Katya at the small table and brought my dishes to the sink.  Picking up the baking soda from the sink, I poured a little in my hand, made a paste and added mustard powder from the box perched precariously on the sink ledge.  I set about washing my dishes with the paste in my hands.  Soap of champions, I thought.  As I washed, I remembered the conversation with Mama the night before.  

         Mama had come home from her job at the bank, and was rummaging in the freezing balcony for some item of food that was stored there because the refrigerator was too small. Emerging from between a stack of pots and pans with a home-canned jar in hand, Mama asked me if I would like to have kooreetsa for supper.  Kooreesta, kooreesta, I thought frantically.  I know I should know the word, but blank on the meaning.  I look desperately at Mama.  Mama asks again and tries hand motions.  "Minutchko," I say, and run into my room for dictionary.  K…ka…kee…kooreetsa: chicken!  Holding my finger on the entry I show Mama and say yes, kooretsa would be fine.  Mama giggles like a schoolgirl and tries out the English word on her tongue.  “CHEE-ken.”  She grinned, her blue eyes twinkling.  I smile now, rinsing off the gritty residue from the plate and my hands and heads for the shower. 

** 

Marjory came over for supper and Mama made pizza.  Or, at least Mama’s version of pizza, which was more like a pirogi with toppings.  She thinks the only thing Americans eat is pizza.  I kept thinking I should introduce her to a good old-fashioned casserole.  She was giggling in that high-pitched chortle of hers as she pulled the long pan out of the oven.  “PEE-tsa!”  she kept exclaiming with glee, followed by peals of laughter.  Mama was pretty proud of herself. 

**

            After a long and hard search, I finally bought a coat.  It was camel colored wool and ankle-length with a big floppy hood.  The matching camel lining was quilted and made the coat sit heavy on my shoulders.  It had eight matching buttons up the front in a neat rectangle, a ninth button holding the collar together.  I had an ivory beret and a hand-loomed crocheted scarf that I’d bought from a babushka selling them along the road.  Mama had been asking for days if I had found a coat yet—my old pea coat had been deemed insufficient two weeks ago.  In the interim, Mama pulled an old fur beast out of the closet and made me wear it when I went out.  I hated it.  I stepped up my search for a coat in short order after that.  I gleefully wore my new coat home, the beast stuffed into my satchel. I nonchalantly hung the lovely new garment in the coat closet.  I was studying in my room when Mama came home from work. 

            “Ooohh!” she exclaimed from the hallway, her voice piercing the stillness.  I jumped a little.  It had been silent in the flat for hours.  I poked my head into the hallway.  She was standing in front of the hallway vanity examining my coat, her own coat still on her back and her feet still shod in outdoor boots.  She giggled and asked me where I got it.  I remembered the name of the store but told her the street it was located on instead.  She ran a hand over the quilted lining in approval.  “Will this be warm enough—maybe this is a fall coat.”  She mused more to herself that to me.  “Oh no,” I put in.  “This is very warm.”  I shoved up my sweater sleeve a couple of inches to reveal two layers of long underwear.  “I wear many clothes.” I got out.  She smiled at me again and hung the coat in the closet.  Turning she said,

            “How much did you pay for it?”  Uh-oh.  Numbers weren’t my strong suit in either language.  I tried and failed to say it in Russian.  Mama tried to tell me how much she had paid for her last coat and I blinked dumbly at her.  Mama went into Katya’s room for a minute and emerged with a calculator.  I grinned with relief.  Something I could use!  I punched in the price of the coat and converted it to dollars.  She did the same to tell me the price she’d paid.  About the same.  I felt good about that.  She smiled at me again, the language barrier making things awkward again.  She congratulated me again and I mumbled thanks and went back to my room to study.

 

Me and my lovely coat, outside the flat, November 1998

             The phone rang a lot that evening. Mama’s voice trilled in the hallway.  Her sister called, her daughter called, some friends called.  Everyone got to hear the whole story of my coat, including the price.  I gave up studying and listened in, smiling at her mother’s pride.

Two Pears

*I have another post in the hopper, but am struggling to finish it, so I'm going to leave you a little story of my early days in Moscow.  I have a few of these stories floating around on my hard drive that I may pull out and share along the way.

I arrived at Sheremetyevo II in Moscow late in the evening, exhausted and jet lagged after more than 24 hours in transit due to a six hour layover in Warsaw.  I had more luggage than I could hope to manage by myself, but somehow I managed to clear customs without a hassle or a cart.  I had been given to understand that someone from the University would be picking me up at the airport.  In my naïveté, I assumed that someone would speak some English.  Wrong.  I got a Georgian with a handful of English words who didn’t know how to put them in a sentence.  It was muggy and smoky in the city—peat fires from the countryside kept smoke rolling over the city for weeks after.  There was the familiar smell of Moscow, and the sights and sounds denied me for four years. 

When we arrived at my apartment in the south central part of the city (a part completely unknown to me) he helped me with my luggage and bade me farewell.  I stood looking around my little apartment that I had arranged to let from some friends who had worked my job in the previous academic year.  They had promised that the fridge and cabinets would be stocked for me when I came (I had paid someone to do this) and that everything would be reasonably clean.                  

Well, the apartment was clean, but there were two lonely pears and two slices of something that looked like ham in the fridge and that was it.  Someone had thoughtfully placed flowers on the table, but you can’t eat those.  It was too late for me to be hungry, so I just rummaged through my luggage to find my nightgown and crawled into bed after a quick phone call to the States to let my mother know I had arrived safely. 

I woke up the next morning lost.  I didn’t know where I was in the city, I had no rubles and was terrified to leave my apartment for fear that I wouldn’t be able to find it again. I wasn’t precisely sure of the address and Russians are notorious for giving bad directions or making up directions if they don’t know.  So I waited.  I had a vague notion that someone was supposed to phone me—I remembered Valery saying something about it when he dropped me off the previous night.  I started unpacking my things, feeling sick in my stomach.  After what seemed a lifetime, someone from the college where I was to work phoned late in the day and offered a brief tour of the area.  Larry came by and took me out for an hour, showing me where I could change money, but little else. 

I went back to my apartment and was left alone for four days—no phone calls, no visits, nothing.  A stranger in a strange land.  I kept forgetting to eat, and couldn’t face the bare fridge with those two pathetic little pears and the weird looking ham slices.  I was homesick, jet lagged, and afraid to leave my apartment.  I woke up sobbing each of those four days and wondered what I had been thinking, joining an organization that didn’t do a thing to ease an expat into the city or the culture.  My previous experience in Russia hadn’t prepared me for this in the least.  The loneliness was the worst—days and weeks stretched out before me with nothing in them, and I was very afraid.  Larry had placed the fear of God in me about being out at night by myself and I didn’t know what I would do when it started getting dark at 4:00 in the afternoon.  I didn’t know anyone in the city and I didn’t know my part of the city at all.  I knew my way around downtown and the immediate surround, but I couldn’t even figure out how to get a bus to the Metro, much less get downtown on it.  I felt as though I were drowning and didn’t know how to come up for air.  The Russian part of my brain had gone on strike and my fear was eating me up.  I remember the day I ate the last of the pears.  I thought, now I have to leave and make my way and hope for the best.  It was with great trepidation that I locked my apartment after those four days, and went out in search of food.