Unfortunately, this account is as full of misconceptions and prejudices as just about any other.
Quote:
The Soviets had this theory that if you didn't know how to get there, you probably weren't supposed to be there in the first place. Now, since Russia is capitalist, there are signs and advertisements everywhere, thank goodness, but street signs and numbers are still mostly absent, so forget addresses. It's like a Communist hangover or something. Sometimes there are street signs, little blue things about the size of printer paper, with the name of the street on it, way high up on a building, maybe twelve feet up. They're impossible to read from a distance. It's best just to wander and figure things out. Also, streets here change names sometimes even when they don't change directions. My route to school is like this. I make two turns, but am technically on about eight different streets.
The gal somehow believes that the entire world -- except the evil communists -- decorate their cities with two-feet high street names, visible from the other end of the block, thanks to the perfectly rectangular grid of streets and avenues. In Europe, and Russia is quite European in this respect, they try to decorate their cities with architecture and not the huge high-contrast street names. In fact, what they have in Russia is much better than in most other cities in Europe, where the street name may be mentioned only once at some crossing, in a font which is just about invisible. Not to mention the lack of standard locations and appearance for house numbers.
And this one:
Quote:
So much was covered up, destroyed, or simply fabricated by the Communists that there's no telling what really happened in some cases.
Now she only needs to realize that the anti-communists have been a lot more resourceful in covering, destroying or simply fabricating. Only I'm afraid that's hardly going to happen.
Quote:
The exchange places won't take anything other than the most pristine bills, which doesn't make sense - clean does not equal valid. It can't be wrinkled, marked on, or faded in any way, even though they have those little black-light machines or whatever-it-is that they use to verify currency. I think this is bizarre - no one makes yucky-looking counterfeit. If your bill is less than perfect (as mine was), you have to go to a bank, and they charge 10%! Total rip-off. But I had to do it there, because otherwise I would have had $100 and, somehow, still be broke.
This story is really boring. I've heard it re-iterated so many times. It is completely untrue. There may be some paranoid kiosks, but then there are others. I won't even mention the guys in the streets who take everything and offer better rates, and they don't care about your IDs.
Quote:
She attributes this to the Soviet system, under which busloads of schoolchildren and teachers were required to spend the day in the country to help bring in the potato harvest before they could start lessons, so there is a historical precedent for a slow start to studies.
BS. The truth is that summer is the vacation time, so there is nobody to prepare a schedule. You can't anyway because the teachers are all on vacation all the same. So when the semester starts, they have to start teaching and make a schedule at the same time, and that takes time. Nothing to do with Soviet anything except the statutory vacation.
Quote:
but the fact is that if you are a native speaker of a language, you are an expert in that language, even if you're stupid about everything else on the planet.
Oh my...
Quote:
Russians applaud in unison. It feels rather weird - sort of like being at a pep rally or something - but it's expected, and if you screw it up, someone will glare at you. Or if you have a host sister, she will move your hands for you, since you're obviously too uncultured to know proper theater behavior. Why do they do this? you ask. Because Russian culture is a collective culture. In collective cultures (such as most eastern cultures), harmony, group identity, and cooperation are more valuable than individual opinions, wants and desires. This isn't a bad thing, it's just different.
Sheer unadulterated idiocy. The reason why they glared at her was because she tried to applaud at the wrong moment -- when the play was still going or something, which was quite a nuisance for the other spectators. They applaud in unison because there are only a few moments when that can be done -- like when a play is over. Doing it before that is simply being impolite, and doing it after that is simply pointless. Individual wants and desires... Utter nonsense! I just love it when American teenagers start reflecting on cultural issues.
Quote:
Reading about the history of the revolution made me think about how poorly Americans understand Russia. Despite the many awful things that happened later, the Russian Revolution was one of the first times in Russian history that ordinary people were heroes, and that they felt their voices were being heard on a level that mattered. I think it's very easy to forget the power that moment had in the lives of the people and to focus instead on the repressions that occurred under communism, even though repression existed in Russia long before Lenin. I think we get an unbalanced picture.
She thinks! She is unsure!
Quote:
Everything on Moskovsky Prospekt is what I expected Russia would look like before I came - gray and dreary and incredibly uniform. My part of town, which is considerably older, has beautiful architecture that is run-down, as opposed to this part of town, which has newer, ugly architecture that is run-down. Apparently, the communists had a master plan to make that the center of town, which didn't take, but they managed to build a lot of ugly buildings before they realized that no one really wanted to live there.
Just about everything here is wrong. The communists did not have a master plan about making anything the center of town. People did and do really want to live in that part of town.
Quote:
Natalya commented to me once that Americans have a lot of self-confidence. I'm not really sure she meant by this, because she said it to me in English. If she'd said it in Russian, she might have used the word "samouverronost," which can translate as self-confidence, but which Rachik (teacher at OU) says is probably more accurately described as arrogance. So I don't know if she was simply translating the Russian concept for me, or meaning it in the English sense. Either way, self-confidence is not something valued as highly in this culture as it is in American culture. I consider self-confidence to be a positive trait, because I'm an American, but I think in other cultures it doesn't have a word because it's just normal - you're neither arrogant nor you're mousy.
Самоуверенность and self-confidence are the same. The problem with the Americans is that they are self-confident where they should not. This has to do with the role of doubt in critical thinking. Just look at the way she says absurdities without ever pausing for a second to think.
Quote:
I think there's something wrong with our culture.
Hear hear.
Quote:
All this reading and all the final tests going on right now got me to thinking about the American system of education, particulary at the high school level. It stinks. I think all I read in high school was Shakespeare and Huckleberry Finn (four times). Oh yeah, and Dickens, who I can't stand - he was paid by the word, and it shows. This leaves out nearly everything good written in English. And I'm really amazed that we never get around to world literature at all - including all the Russian greats, like Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, etc. etc. We didn't even read Don Quixote, which is something everyone reads.
I think this is probably because we only study about six subjects at a time, which can include things like sports and music (both necessary, but, really, can't those be after school?). Russian students, on the other hand, have around 17 subjects at a time - no joking. Anya, who is not even a stellar student, takes biology, chemistry and algebra, and everyone takes tons of history and literature, physics and other sciences, and language arts.
And then we're sooo self-confident.
Quote:
starting to think that, rather than being only sort-of European, Saint-Petersburg isn't European at all. Or I suppose it's possible that Western and Eastern Europe really are just incredibly different. Spaniards talk loudly on the streets, smile at people they've just met, are constantly laughing and joking, are very eager to be helpful.
Not Western vs Eastern, but Southern vs everything else. Is that so hard to understand?
