Vladimir News

June 28, 2007

The weather is still very warm in Russia. Every day, shorts and a t-shirt are all that are necessary. I keep wondering when it will cool off, but each day starts with sunny, blue skies and mild temps, followed by warmer temps, a clouding over and then a chance of rain, sometimes heavy. It sounds like America in the summer!

I ran this morning in a different place along the streets. There are wide walkways away from the main streets that are used for walking. A great place to run. I ran earlier so there weren't as many cars and trucks. The worst polluters are the men who are smoking their strong cigarettes, but the smoke is easily avoidable. I was scoping out the bus stop situation for today we are riding the bus on our own without our Russians to help us.

Breakfast was water and a banana! I met Carol and Diedre, two other Fulbrighters, and rode the bus into town. It was definitely a sardine can experience! The little lady who collected the 7 rubles had to squeeze through a mass of bodies in order to make her rounds. By the time we reached our stop, we had been through a lot of body squeezing and knew who had showered and used deoderant and who had not!

Russian lessons start the day. Many words I had learned before are coming back to me! A tour of the children's museum was very interesting. A cucumber festival was shown on a film from a nearby town. It looked like Octoberfest with the emphasis on cucumbers! After the usual lunch of salad, soup, meat of the day, dessert, and tea we were off to tour the two oldest Churches in Vladimir, St. Dimitri's and The Church of the Assumption. 12th century churches are much older than anything in America. Golden domes are distinctive in the city landscape!

We later discussed how history is being taught in today's schools in Russia. Facts versus perspective and how Russians think about their history as opposed to how we think about teaching Russian history was the order of the discussion.

Again, we took the bus home on the Sardine Express. Olesya is a great cook. Great dinner of vegetables, salad, meat. We then walked and met her sister, Oxana with her 1 year old baby, Veronica. Great conversations took place about school, salaries, taxes, and maternity leave. We went shopping, mostly for me. Water, yogurt, more bananas, and more were purchased and she produced a shopping club card, much like we have for each food store in America. 3% off the total with the card! Plastic bags were available and seemed to be for free, something that hasn't been available like that in Russia before.

We returned home and I shared "Maryland Stuff" with Alex and Olesya. Alex is an independent truck driver who just bought a new, used truck. This makes two dump trucks to run as he is hired by contractors and gets paid well during the summer. During the winter, construction comes to a stop and so does Alex's work. So he is working as much as possilbe during the warm months.

The sun doesn't set until after 10:00. So when bed time was mentioned, I hadn't realized that it was already midnight! Until tomorrow!~