To Peter and Back Again

That is, in fact, a monkey in a sweater.

We arrived in St. Petersburg (henceforth, Peter, as it is referred to in Russian) on Thursday after a rather enjoyable train ride where all the Russians stared at the loud Americans for seven hours straight. We, of course, felt very flattered that others thought us so fascinating as to pay so much attention to us. We were supposed to stay at a hostel that night, which, if we had been in Western Europe, would have meant we spent the night with a bunch of backpackers, young tourists, and generally interesting people. Unfortunately, Peter didn't get the memo or something, because we walked in and it was fully of forty-five-year-old ex-cons in wife-beaters. We had joked before arriving that we would end up in some hole-in-the-wall place, one where there's a creepy guy in the corner who just stares at you and doesn't ever say a word. We coined the phrase "Kyrgyzstanian in the corner" based on its alliterative quality rather than as any statement about Kyrgyzstanians, who are some of the nicest people ever. Anyway, we didn't exactly have the "Kyrg in the corner" in mind when we got there, but it soon became much more relevant. Most of our new ex-con friends were pretty inebriated and didn't give us much of a problem, but there was one excessively friendly one who insisted on telling us that the Kyrgyzstanian in the other room had stabbed someone the week before, and the Kyrgyzstanian in the other room insisted on yelling at us. So, we decided that there wasn't reason to find out whether the rumor about the "knife fight" (as the friendly one put it) was true and ventured out to find somewhere else to stay.

Catching Up

Street art!

It has been a while since I've written, so this will likely include a lot. I think the last time I wrote, it was the day before I went in for my first day at my internship, so I guess I'll start from there. I'm working for the Gorki Institute of World Literature in their Folklore Department, and that's been a real joy so far. The Institute itself is a research branch of the Russian Academy of Science, so they really don't do much in the realm of bachelor's degress or anything like that, but they have classes for PhD students, and as I understand it, they have a good number of interns who are doing research to get their Masters degrees as well. Anyway, the people there are really nice and really experienced in their fields. The lady that we work with most closely is Yelena, and she is possibly the kindest human being I've met in Russia so far. She is super accommodating, and it seems like most the time, her objective is to help us to accomplish whatever we are working towards personally, whether that's in research, sightseeing, or anything else. She has been super helpful in getting stuff lined up for my research, and  we've been learning a ton each day about some of her interests, like Russian folk music and ritualistic traditions among various Russian groups. The first day, we got to watch and listen to some old Siberian songs, and that was a real treat. I sang some Georgian folk music last semester with some good friends, and it reminded me of that. Anyway, since then, we've been learning all about the Russian calendar, holidays, funerary traditions, and foods-- just to name a few things-- and it has really opened my mind to understanding a lot of things that were, before, a "dark forest," as the Russians put it. I am really loving the subject material, and I'm excited to get into some translation work over these next few days. We're going to be translating Russian articles into English for publication in Folklorica, a journal of Slavic literature and folklore. In any case, I am stoked.