As you may have noticed, it's been a while since i've written! well, a lot has happened! so from the top!
After our Kazakh weekend, we had a normal week of class. Class is getting easier because I'm getting more adjusted to speaking and hearing only Russian. We also went on excursions during the week. One was to a black box theatre to see a play some students from the university put on. The play was really good and I enjoyed it, however, the black box was on the fourth floor of a building (keep in mind there isn't air conditioning in Russia) and it was around 95 outside and the small room was filled with over 30 people. That I did not enjoy. Our other excursion was to the local newspaper called Volga. We toured the press and the part where the journalists write. We also met with some of the journalists and asked questions. That evening it poured rain and the entire city flooded. Astrakhan' is 450 years old, but for some reason, in those 450 years, no one built a drainage system. So on my way home that evening, water was literally up to the doors of my host brother's car. He told me to watch the floor to make sure water wasn't spilling it. Cars were stranded in the streets because they had flooded and the drive that usually takes us 15 minutes took us an hour and a half. I also ran through puddles that were to my mid-shins! It was so much fun! The next day, Friday the 20, we were leaving for Volgograd, and that's when the fun ended.
Public transportation in Astrakhan' is all done on what's called marshrutkas, which are basically privately owned minivans that drive routes around the city and you just tell the driver to stop when you want him to. I haven't had any problems until this time. Somewhere between getting off the marshrutka and walking to my apartment, my wallet was stolen. For some reason, I didn't put it in my school bag that zips, but i put it in my grocery bag. The marshrutka was really crowded and i couldn't fiddle around with my bag to open it, so I figured my wallet would be fine in the grocery bag that was in my hand. But no. In the 2 minutes I wasn't overly cautious between the marshrutka and home, i lost my wallet. Needless to say I was very upset. I made a bunch of phone calls and then had to get on the train to go to Volgograd. And then when I got to the train station, I realized I forgot my passport. Does this sound like a fimilar Ross story, because it should! So my host brother drove back home to get it, while I got out and talked to the Russian militsia with a woman named Lyuba who works at the university. I had to report a stolen wallet (all in Russian) to the scary Russian police who we are advised to avoid at all costs unless we absolutely have to talk to them. They're the people you usually have to bribe, but they didn't bother me which was nice. My brother came back with my passport and then I got on the train with the rest of my group.
The train was an overnighter and was somewhat interesting. We got to Volgograd at like 8 in the morning and then got breakfast at this nasty place we ate at when we flew in to Volgograd. After breakfast we walked around the city with a tour guide straight out of the USSR (which i've really grown to love!--Soviet tour guides, not the actual USSR...). Volgograd is a beautiful city! I loved it! It was very clean and modern and had a drainage system! ;) (my host mom says Astrakhan' is a big village, not a city...it's true) I would love to go back to Volgograd.
Volgograd's first name was Tsaritsa, which means empress (like the Tsar's wife), but well after the October Revolution (1917) during the reign of Stalin, he had the city renamed to Stalingrad. After Stalin's death, the Soviet Union under Khruschev underwent a de-Stalinization period trying to erase the cult of personality surrounding him. So, in turn, Stalingrad was renamed Volgograd. During the Second World War, Stalingrad was the turning point for Russia. The Nazis had invaded and had made it all the was to the city and besieged it for over a year. At one point, the Nazis held all but a few blocks in the center of the city, but Russia eventually drove them out of Stalingrad and then out of Russia and were the first to reach Berlin. If you've seen the movie Enemy at the Gates, it takes place in Stalingrad and is about a famous sniper named Vasiliy Zaitsev. Interesting side note: when talking about WWII, Russians don't call it WWII, they call it the Great Patriotic War and the don't refer to the invaders as Germans, they call them Fascists, which I appreciate because it wasn't Germans who decided to do all that, it was the Nazis and Germans today face huge adversity in overcoming the stigma of Nazism.
Sorry for the history, but it's important to understanding Volgograd. So, there was communist paraphanelia and war-glory artwork everywhere. There is this famous monument we saw in Volgograd called the Monument of the Motherland. I'm not sure if that's what it's called in English but that's the Russian name translated. This monument was by far the most amazing monument i've ever seen. It really made you feel how awful the war was and all the thousands of people that died. More people died in Stalingrad than anywhere else in WWII including Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The monument is a complex of statues and ponds and there's a rotunda with the names of the Soviet soldiers who died in the battle carved into the walls. The rotunda is maybe three stories tall and emmense. There's an eternal flame lit in the middle with soldiers who guard it around the clock. The centerpiece of the complex is a statue of the motherland. It is the largest statue in the world, and I can't describe to you how magnificent it is. It's an incredibly dramatic statue of a woman running toward the Volga with her head and left hand turned back behind her calling her sons to battle, and her right hand is holding a sword pointed to the West. Google this so you can see it or click on the link on my blog to the blog of this girl named Shelley who is also in Astrakhan'. She has pictures of it. Unfortunately, my camera died... :( There was also a memorial church built after the collapse of the Soviet Union to commenerate the dead.
After the Motherland, we went to a museum dedicated to the War and poked around there for a while, and then we went to a planetarium. Why they thought going to a planetarium after a full day of walking around was a good idea is beyond me, but I slept through the whole thing. At lunch, the resteraunt served us all livers so i didn't eat and neither did anyone else. I'm a very adventurous eater but I refuse to touch liver. I physically cannot chew it and swallow it.
That night we got back on the train and rode back to Astrakhan'. We got back at about 6 am and i slept until noon. The week was normal with class. Friday a group of us went to an outdoor cafe after class for a beer and shashlik. Shashlik is like Russian shishkabobs, and they're amazing! They're my favorite food in Russia.
This past weekend we had another excursion, however, this one sucked. We left the university at 9 and then drove for two hours, told to get off the bus and walk up a dirt path in 90 degree heat. 30 minutes later we walked up a hill looked around and then walked back to the bus. Then we drove to an old dacha that was the summer house of someone famous. It had been converted into a museum and the upstairs was packed with as much Soviet things as possible: statues of Lenin, picutres of Stalin eating caviar, war propoganda, blah blah blah. I've had my fill of socialist art for a while! Then we drove a bit more and were told to get out again and walked for 30 minutes to look at the stepe and pick up scraps of pottery that were hundreds of years old. I took some with me because I figured I earned it for having to go on this dumb field trip. Then we went to a museum that was dedicated to the history of fishing...that was invigorrating. There were stuffed fish, boats, nets and pictures of people fished everywhere. This museum was in a village called Ikranoe which means caviar village, so what did we have for lunch? Not caviar, but room temperature fish that was not fresh and fish and noodle soup...Pretty bad. Haha! It's funny now though!
Sunday I went to church in the morning at this church in a predominatly Tatar neighborhood. My host mom wanted to go the the Tatar Bazaar, so she rode with me on the marshrutka and shopped while I was at church. I was ready to go on time just to the church near our apartment, but she insisted so I was an hour late! Haha! That's normal in Russia. The rest of the day I rested and did homework and then this week class again! Next weekend we don't have any excursions so my family wants to take me to the country to fish and cook shashlik and they also want to take me to this place on the Volga where we can watch the lotus flowers open up and night. It should be really cool! This Friday for 4th of July, our group is going to the beach on the river to hang out and I'm cooking my family an "American" meal. The problem is, I only know how to make foreign food! Haha! I'll figure it out! Until next time!

Ross