Mi Casa!

This is the living room. You can see my bed to the left and my host-woman's bed to the right. And that's the television where I watched a bunch of American movies only dubbed in Russia with no English subtitles. I still don't really know what happens in Sherlock Holmes after watching it six times.


This is the kitchen, where pasta was never in short supply. I loved my host-woman, she knew how much I loved pasta and would always buy it for me. And I think on the table in this picture, she made this thing with summer squash and garlic with a little bit of mayo and some tomato salad thing, it was delish.


The kitchen leads to the balcony where I spent most of my time.I would stand here often watching people walk by and smoking cigarettes, trying to sort out my feelings toward this place, sometimes loving Russia, sometimes hating it.


And finally this is the view from my balcony.


Actually there were two balconies, but the other was reserved for drying clothes. I think I prefer clothes to be dried on a rack instead of a dryer--- it'd keep me from ruining my sweaters.

Зазеркалье

I know it's been about six months since I last touched this site, but I wanted to wrap up my experience a little before I forgot forever.

So the camp was the strangest thing ever. I was with the kids from 8am until midnight, then the counselors would have about 2- 3hour meetings afterward, translating to no sleep, ever. What made these meetings even better was that I didn't understand a single thing because I don't actually know Russian (I'm working on that still). So my friend, Sam, and I passed the time throwing ants onto each other and then eventually started skipping the meetings to swim in the river. We met so many characters at the river. We met a girl who took English in high school and insisted that we friend her on facebook, immediately. We met another person who was just chilling with a hedgehog. We ran into a party of people who gave us booze and we ended up making fun of each others' culture and accent. It's safe to assume that there is always a good time at the rechka (little river).

But the camp itself was intense. Filled with back to back games, activities, and skits. We played about three camp-wide games a day, which often meant that the counselors were running around in 100+ degree weather, while chasing or being chased by screaming Russian kids. My favorite and most terrifying game was the one in which us counselors were dressed in bones and antlers and were told to be deer. Then they released a horde of scary children on us. My deer instincts told me to run and I did, fast. I have scars from running through the brush at such speed and agility. I was terrified, more terrified then the night the all the Russians left the Americans in the woods after dark for about an hour. Cool, bros. But back to the story, these kids were scary. And I'm sad to say, they managed to gobble up my bones and antlers, leaving me panting on the stone ground, alone, begging for our local water, that was soon to be nicknamed grasnaya voda (dirty water due to it's color and odor).

I know I say these kids are scary, but they are truly far from it. They are passionate, intelligent, innovative, and simply amazing. Like for one game, the American counselors had to create tasks for the children to do and stick them into balloons. But to get the tasks out of the balloon, each team had to create a functioning bow and arrow. AND THEY DID. It blew my mind.



This is Misha taking a shot at a balloon. He was the best shooter in all the teams.



Here's another boy, named Misha as well, completing a blind portrait task.

This was the day before tragedy struck.

**I know I left a lot out and alluded to things that I really didn't explain here or elsewhere, but that would be a lot of text that I feel might bore you, plus I failed to take a lot of photos during the actual camp day **

Apocalypse

I believe it was Day 4 of camp, maybe 5, you lose track of time when you are in the magical world of Alice in Wonderland (the theme of the camp if you don't remember). I was finally getting used to the chaos of camp, this day already feeling calmer than the previous ones. It had just begun and I was leading an English lesson. We all noticed the smoke rising from the woods off in the distance, so I thought all things fire and smoke related would make for an appropriate topic for my students.

Then a babushka (old woman) with a megaphone interrupted my lesson, yelling to everyone to collect their belongings and head to the river, so we did. I wasn't taking this threat of a fire too seriously a) because I was in Russia and b) because these things don't actually happen. But then I should have realized when dealing with a, b never really matters.

I walked back to my room, took out my camera and collected some essential items, leaving a ton behind. This is the view from my housing.



We stopped to make sure, we had everyone.



Then we made our way to the river. Two of the boys from my group, they were secretly my favorite.

Then we each took turns crossing the river.



Once we were all together again on the bank, we were instructed to start walking on a path in a direction opposite from camp. This is when everyone realized that we weren't going back. I helped carry bags of kids overburdened with luggage.




Camp was over. The true impact of this didn't settle until we finally took a rest. The kids began to cry about how much fun they were having and that they were going to miss us. In this time of sadness, we broke code, finally revealing our real names, so that we could be friends on vkontake (aka Russian facebook).


We found a clearing and sat, waiting for cars to pick everyone up and drive them out of the woods to safety. So I sadly said my goodbyes, letting the kids go first, while I watched the sky grow darker.

Then it was finally my turn to leave. I hopped in the car and began to cry, not believing that this was the last time I would see everyone. The good-byes felt short and rushed, but I tried to distract myself, by watching the people and houses I passed. Right when I felt eyes dry, to my surprise everyone was being re-located to the same spot, so I cried again, happy to be re-united with everyone again. But still a general sense of sadness still loomed.

Some kids just sat by themselves waiting for parents or for the bus to arrive, to carry them safely back home, while others sat in the arms of others, hugging everyone they could find.




***I'm placing these photos sort of out of order, but you can tell- the darker the photo is, the longer we were standing there**

This boy was throwing rocks.


These two are another favorite from my group. They are extremely smart, had a great sense of humor, and spoke English pretty well, well, way better than my Russian. And like the boy, most of the kids had wet t-shirts that they wrapped around their face to protect from the smoke. Also, you can see the wall of smoke slowly take over the sky.


A Russian counselor, Anton (aka Piram), making calls to the children's family.


Sam and I's general attitude towards everything, even this forest fire.


The bus that saved us!


Right before I stepped on the bus, I snapped this photo of the sun.


What an unbelievable ending to the four or five longest, weirdest, funnest, most unbelievable days of my life. And right when I got used to everything, it ended.
That's Russia for you.

Camp Burned Down

Here's an article of what happened.

Hellloooo Followers

I'm leaving in approximately an hour to go to a English teaching camp for three weeks. I will have to pretend to be a character from Alice in Wonderland for the said three weeks. My name is no longer Danielle, but White Rabbit and yes, I do have to dress like a rabbit every day. I will have no breaks and I am expected to lead my own English classes, my own class on puppetry, and another one on Astrology. So, we'll see what my sanity is like in a month.

When I get back, I will finish up my blog on my experience. Expect pictures of my living situation (like apartment and camp), fashion in Russia (club wear= business wear, you can see people at 10 am looking like they are going to Turtle or some other delicious bar), camp, and Moscow.

Much Love.
d.marie.hise

Wednesday 07.21.10

At the river the other day we met this really awesome guy named Alexsay and he invited us to this Anarchy compound located on the other side of town. So we met up with him at Lenin Square and took the thirty minute commute by a sauna/bus.

This house is really awesome. It's a place where people can get together with like-minded people, share ideas, and possibly carry out some action. Also, they offer their home to hitchhikers passing through Voronezh. We met an Estonian guy who was staying their for a while as he hitchhikes through Russia.

Only one person there could really speak English, but, still, we all just chilled, talking about a variety of things, especially the attitudes of the Russian and American government and people on animal cruelty, food production, alternative social groups, homosexuality, etc.


They also prepared tea for us! It was extremely cute, there were cookies and tea set up on a make shift table.


After tea we moved inside where it's a little cooler.


This is Liza, she was the one who basically did all the translating. She's extremely cool and vegetarian. I don't know how she does it because it's really hard to be vegetarian in Russia.


Interesting discoveries!
-Most people believe that they have never seen or met a homosexual.
-People love their circuses here.
-Anarchists are often labeled or seen as terrorists.
-It is difficult to help people out. People often don't trust others to deliver the charity items to the appropriate place and people need to jump through so many hoops for permits (if they give it to you) to even give things away.

Tuesday 07.20.10

Today was great.

Sadly, it was our last Russian class, so we went over to Natalia's house to hang out with her granddaughter, Nika, and make some blinchiki, which are basically crepes.

While Natalia and Sam were cooking, I was running around with Nika. She is super adorable and so much fun. At one point she was just running back and forth from one wall to the other. We naturally became best friends.


Then lunch was ready. We had a copious amount of filling options. There were sauteed mushrooms and cabbage, nutella, bananas, raspberries, tvorok, yogurt, and other things I can't rememver. All served with tea, of course.


This combo was def my favorite. Nutella forever.


While Nika was taking her nap, we all calmed our full bellys by watching Sherlock Holmes dubbed in Russian. I've seen that movie four times and only in Russian. I still don't fully understand what's going on.

Then Nika woke up and we had to say good-bye. I wanted to take her with me.


Later that night, after our camp meeting, Sam's family and mine got together at a cafe to smoke hookah. My lungs cannot handle smoke anymore, but it was a fun and delicious treat nonetheless.


I love hot chocolate and have been craving it for a while, so when I saw it on the menu I ordered it.


Russian hot chocolate is weeeiiirrrddd. It's basically fudge, a shot of warm, straight, thick, sweet fudge. But it came with water and water is so valuable since the drinking water here is tainted by polution and other unknown parasites. Also, the chocolate tasted delicious with the cherry flavored hookah.

Sunday 07.18.10

I'll keep this post short since I didn't take any pictures this day. We went to another river today. People from Voronezh sure love their rivers.

Anyways, this one was really awesome. There was a rope swing, rocks to jump off of, ice cream for sale, and if you were brave enough and swam accross the river (it was quite deep and wide) you can walk through amazing "beach" dachas- they were beautiful. One babushka invited us in for lunch, jokingly of course. And a nice family let us jump off of there dock, probably because they knew we were Americans- people are super intriguied by us.

After that I took a nap. Lena took a photo of me and Daniel napping. Cute!


After I awoke, Sam and I went swimming around. I love people who are willing to have sandball fights with me. She's great.

I ate sooooo many mushrooms that day.

Saturday 07.17.10

Today I was going to stay home and mope around in my underwear, but then I was invited to go to the river with everyone, and the idea of cool water was too good to pass up. So I went. We drove for an hour, a bunch of us crammed in each car, which was fine until we turned into the woods. Okay, so there aren't really roads to this river, you just kind of drive through the woods. Luckily, this area consists of planted trees, so the distance between trees is uniform, it's actually quite strange. So, we finally arrived and made camp.


Sam made mexican food, which was amazing. It was the first time I had beans in like weeks and it was great. I can't wait to get a Chipotle burrito.


Then we went into the water. It was pretty unusual because it was so shallow and the forest was located so much higher, but it was perfect for playing games and apparently canoeing through.

Here, Vlad is running away with the "football" in an intense game of tackle football. Look at his perfect form!


And naturally when we see water, we think chicken. So we played a couple rounds of chicken. Daniel and I teamed up and called ourselves team danielli (which is basically the plural form of Daniel in Russian). We won one glorious round.



Team Abby and Daniel vs. Sam and Michal


Team Abby and Daniel vs. Sergay and Colya

Then, as I was napping, everyone played a serious game of Red Rover, Red Rover.


Michal and Daniel holding hands. I swear every Russian, or in this case Polish boy, is in love with Daniel. It's cute.


And here's Abra attempting to break through... quite unsuccessfully.

Tuesday 07.13.10

Instead of having our traditional Russian class with Natalia Stepanovna, we went to her apartment to make some piroshki. Since Sam and I are vegetarian, we stuffed them with potato and mushrooms. I lack folding skills, so I made about two and left the rest to Sam and Natalia.


Here you can see Sam in action- some piroshki are already stuffed, but raw and some are frying away in the covered pan.


Here is the finished product! And since we are in Russia, our wonderful host offered us fresh hot tea on this scorching day. I'm starting to really love tea.


And this is what it looks like on the inside. So it's basically a filled doughnut, usually stuffed with meat. You can find a stand that sells these almost anywhere in Russia.

I ate about eight of these that day. I nearly died.

Sunday 07.11.10

So while, the rest of the world was enjoying a free slurpee from 7 11 (curse you), we went on a day trip to a town about an hour away called Eletz. The town felt extremely deserted, which was a nice change from Voronezh. We ended up going to three beautiful churches. This one was the largest and quite remarkable on the outside and inside.



I wish I could have gotten better photos on the inside, but I didn't pay for a blessing that will allow me not to burn in hell for taking said desired photos, so I had to try to secretly snap photos. I was unsuccessful. But this place was tall and beautifully decorated and painted from head to toe.


I did get a blurry photo of my friend, Sam, dressed in church gear (which means her head's covered, shoulders are covered, knees are covered). Oh and she loves to play the penis game in churches, which is always a bad idea.


Then we walked to another church place. Apparently, most church services are like three hours long and extremely boring.


Our polish friend, Michal, found a street called the Red Square. Funny.


And this is Daniel, probably lecturing about History. He basically knows everything.


Then we walked to another church. This one I made a donation, so I got to take photos.



My friend Abby is in the background.


Then we went to this art museum, it was endearing, since the pieces weren't all that special or great, but it did have a photo exhibit of a photojournalist's work between the 60s and 70s. It was really cute.

Three adorable girls playing on a stage in the main square.


Then we climbed up this fire tower and took a look over the city. Apparently, before technology, firefighters would stand up there, keeping an eye out for smoke. If they spotted some, they would send out firefighters to the site to fight the fire. Oh, and here is another photo of the main church taken from the tower.


On this trip, like usual, we are accompanied by a bunch of random people who want to practice their English and what not. This trip, we met a really eccentric man who brought a lot of instruments. Well, as we were waiting around, we naturally started jamming in the park. This is my friend Abby, playing one of the tamer instruments.