18.8.10
I am home. I arrived in San Francisco last night, where my folks met me and took me back to Napa. It was much cooler in the bay area than it was in Moscow and Rostov. This morning, after going for a short run with Dad, I had to put on a sweatshirt because it was so chilly. Now the afternoon is here. The morning fog has dispersed, and the sky is as blue as can be. I like the view from this little room. Since they cut the sick pine trees down you can see a lot farther. Were it not for the foothills at the entrance to the Valley, you'd be able to see clear to the ocean from here. I haven't picked blackberries yet. That's next on the list. Then I have to put a loaf of bread in the oven, and bike to Vallerga's - I don't have to bike, I'd just like to; I want to make some watermellon gazpacho for dessert. I'll probably keel over when I see how expensive they sell watermellons over here.

Memories of the summer camp are already fading. My life there is as from a dream. Of course, some memories will never fade. The good memories stay forever. The other memories have already left me, so I'm left with the impression that things really weren't so bad there, were they?
That's about how I feel about the whole year in Rostov. It's as though I've completed a race. I wasn't competing against any other people, only myself. I was trying to do the best I could do, and now here I am. As in a real race, with the finish line behind you, being able to walk and relax, you can't help but be proud of the challenges overcome, some well, others not. It's during the race itself, when you're stuggling to overcome those challenges that you ask yourself what you were thinking, singing up for this gig.
The race ends, you're happy and proud, and then, without thinking, you go and sign up for another. I don't doubt that I'll teach again someday, the questions are what and where. If English, then I might like to find a job in a Spanish speaking country. If not English, then what - is math still in my future? I think so, but in what way?

I took the bus with the students in the third group from Krinitsa to Novorossisk, took the train back to Rostov, arrived at midnight ten days ago, and got a lift to a colleague's place where I was to stay the next three days.
I had to leave Rostov quickly because I was no longer registered there. In those three days time, I met with some students and friends, repacked my things, determined what not to take with me, and finally got on the overnight bus for Moscow.
I was in Moscow for a week. I didn't do much. I walked all over the place, but didn't go inside anywhere, except for bookstores, supermarkets, internet cafes, and a few restaurants. I visited the chess club on Sunday. They held a blitz tournament there, just like in Rostov. Bobby Fisher was playing - at least he looked like Bobby Fisher. I watched him play in one of the final matches. It appeared as though he was toying with his opponent, not that he was winning by much. He was just playing rather lackadaisically, defending only when necessary, otherwise waiting for something to happen and not attacking. I got distracted and turned away for a short time before I realized their match had ended. I don't even know if Bobby won or not.
In the last two days there, I didn't have much desire to do anything, so I spent some time reading in a park, and went to the movies. I saw a movie by Silverster Stallone, called, I think, "The Expendibles". At another theater I saw "Casablanca". On the plane ride home, I finished reading "The golden calf" by Ilf and Petrov. It's filled with jokes and satire, very much of which I didn't understand. I'll try reading the sequel "12 chairs" after a few more months of study.
I've also started my first novel in English since long ago. It's called "The Sea Wolf" by Jack London. A friend and colleague at Bloomington gave it to me for my birthday before I left. I like it so far.
After packing some things away here I find there's no shortage of interesting things to read. Part of me says I should get to it while I have some free time. The other part wants to go pick blackberries. What's a man to do?

Here are some pictures of the past year.

22.7.10
The second group left yesterday evening. As with the first group, I escorted them to the bus, shook their hands after they had taken their seats, and got off to see them drive away. It was tough walking back to my room alone. Many of my students had expressed their thanks for the work that I had done. Funny, what had I really done except scream for attention at the daily presentations. Anyway, students' appreciation is one of the best things about the job. I helped someone learn something. My work wasn't for nothing.
Usually, especially since arriving here, it seems that my efforts are indeed worthless. At least as far as learning is concerned, I don't think my students here learn much English. To be fair, how much can one actually learn in two weeks? On the other hand, if I could inspire them to try harder, I'm sure they could learn a lot more than they do.
Insipration is where it's at. A good teacher can inspire students. This is where I've failed to be good. Regardless of what I do, some students just don't care. And so I've begun to lower my standards for younger students. It's unfortunate, since I don't like teaching, or doing anything for that matter, at low standards. But when your success depends on a group of other people, some of whom couldn't care less about your goals for them, you can't hope to achieve too much. I console myself with the thought that a good teacher also never gives up. In this way, I have been good. I may have lowered my standards, which in a way is giving up something, but I haven't given up on them completely, however lazy they may seem to me, and I won't give up for another two weeks. Some of them actually want to learn English. I'll focus on those students in the last group, until my job finally comes to an end.
I started missing home only since leaving Rostov. I think it's the quality of food that calls me back. I ate well in Rostov. I made big salads, and a small variety of dishes. I call them meat-gulash, bean-gulash, and lastly, pea soup. Most dishes featured significant amounts of garlic and onion, but when I had guests, I toned it down a bit, and I received good reviews.
In Napa, my Dad barbeques all sorts of meat regularly: salmon fillets; chicken; pork chops. He also smokes a mean turkey. More important than meat is, of course, most other food. The basil is blooming and pesto sauce awaits me. Mom says the blackberries have been destroyed since the olianders were pruned, but she just doesn't know where to look. She's afraid of the poison oak up the creek, and meanwhile the biggest blackberries you've ever seen are probably already falling off their thorny branches.

This morning I hiked back to the place I went to two weeks ago on the day before the second group's arrival. It wasn't a long hike, not more than three miles round trip, but it wasn't without obstacles.
They had recently blocked the river from flowing into the sea by covering what had been a thin stream with gravel and rock. Yesterday there was a small storm, and this morning, as I set off, I noticed the sea had turned brown again, like it had several weeks ago during the first group's stay. That could only come from a river pouring tons of dirt into the sea. I walked to the river to find the gravel bridge completely washed away, replaced by a twenty foot gap between the banks of a renewed river of dirt, happily flowing into the Black Sea.
I watched an old man forge his way across, then, convinced that his route was safe, went to a cloth-changing stand, many of which are scattered about the beach, put on my swim trunks, went back to the river and crossed as the old man had done. The water was very dirty, so I couldn't see where I was stepping. For all I knew there may have been holes along the way, along with eels, leaches, and quicksand, but the current wasn't too strong, so I took my time and made it across without getting my backpack wet.
I went to the market, bought some dark chocolate, apples, and water, and had breakfast at the base of a small hill from where I could see the entire beach of Krinitza Bay. Despite the huge brown stain in the sea, the view was pretty good.
I climbed a metal staircase up the hill, crossed the small village at the top, entered a small forest, walked along a communal driveway, turned off onto a well-tred path to the edge of a cliff where there was a bench and a spectacular view. I had some more breakfast. I had also brought an assortment of nuts (almonds, chashews, walnuts and chestnuts) with me. Along with chocolate and some sort of fruit, there's no better hiker's food.
The brown stain hadn't made it so far East. It was only just visible to my right. Before me, about one hundred meters below, the Black Sea's waves splashed monotonously onto a thin gravel beach. I couldn't see the beach from where I was, since the cliff wasn't straight down, but I saw it later from another view. The water was very clear. There didn't seem to be many deep spots close to the beach. Several hundred meters offshore I could still make out the seafloor.
I took to reading a book called "The Turkish Gambit" It's a who-done-it by a Russian author named Akunin. At first his novel was difficult to understand, and although I still don't understand everything, it's gotten much easier.
I read slowly, but I don't care. I get distracted easily. There was a speed boat that repeatedly drove passengers out to sea. The passengers were tugged on a smaller boat. The driver went out beyond the brown stain, which was slowly making its way East, then managed to turn in such a way so to flip his tug, and the passengers were thrown into the sea.
There were seagulls. Viewed from the bottom they looked just like the ones that lived at Redwood Middle School in Napa (they commuted there in large flocks from San Pablo Bay, a northern fractile of San Francisco Bay, to eat up all the trash students left lying around). But viewed from the top, they looked more exotic. The pattern on the top of their wings was more intricate, with black and white spliced together, not the dull grey-tipped white wings of their Californian brothers.
There was a person snorkling in the shallow water below. Once he came up and yelled to shore. I think he was asking if he could grab something with his hands. Maybe a crab. I didn't hear the answer.
I read a chapter and took off. I didn't go to the hidden beach like last time, but headed back to camp. I rested for awhile on a bench where I had eaten my first breakfast that morning, crossed the river again, this time in a different place which turned out to be slightly deeper than the first. I had to hold my backpack above me so to keep it from getting wet, but I kept my balance and made it across. I returned to my room, showered, and took to writing.

Often when we have taken our students to the beach, we learn that they, for whatever reason, are not allowed to enter the water. A number of bullshit restrictions are enforced regularly, more so in the past two weeks, I think since the government performed an official safety review after several people drowned at a camp on the Azovski Sea.
On account of this review there were a number of precautions undertaken, among others the closure of the river by means of a gravel bridge. All it took was one or two small storms before that was completely washed away. Brilliant engineering! Now the government has left the area. I think the river will stay as it is until someone else drowns in the region.
On one occasion, they weren't allowed to swim because the water was too cold. Of course, I can swim whereever I like when I have time, but I don't enjoy taking advantage of this previledge in the presence of my students. It's tough to see the looks on their faces as you walk onto the beach, fully refreshed and ready to lie on the warm rocks to dry off. Nevertheless, I went swimming on that morning, only to find the water infested with grey jellyfish.
Some students had noticed them from the shore and taken some from the water to show their friends, but I didn't think there would be so many in the water. They were everywhere! Many of them were dead, but some of them were still twiching, looking for a last meal before washing up onto the beach.
There were enough people in the water that I concluded swimming was safe. I didn't stay in the water for long, though. I didn't like feeling them against my skin. I might as well have been swimming in runny snot. And who knows, was it that they couldn't sting you, or that they were just waiting for the right moment? Admitedly, with my googles it was a sight to see all those jellyfish swimming about. The biggest ones were about the size of my hand (I have big hands), the smaller ones could have fit in my palm.
On another occasion, the students couldn't swim because the waves were too big. Again, I didn't restrain myself on their regard, but left the grounds and swam on my own a bit down the beach. I did some body surfing. I don't know if I was doing it correctly, I just swam with the large waves and let myself be thrown towards the shore. I scraped my arm a bit, but had fun. It would have been more fun if I could've taken some students with me. It was a huge bummer for my students to see people not affiliated with the camp, people young and old, having a ball in the water while they had to watch from the beach. At one point there was a crowd of young people, about twelve years old on average, which drifted into our usual swimming area. They squealed with pleasure as the waves tossed them about like ants in a rainstorm.
Even if they are allowed to swim, officially they have to stay within a strict boundary which extends not five meters from the beach. On a few rare occasions, I've been allowed to take some older students to swim freely with me off the grounds, but we probably won't see much of that when the third group comes, because once they taste that freedom, they don't want to go without it. The company doesn't seem to trust me as a lifeguard, and perhaps rightly so. After all, I'm not qualified as such in any way. I only have a vague idea of how to perform CPR. On the other hand, are the Russian lifeguards qualified? Do they even have such qualifications in this country? I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't. If so, then aside from the experience standing on the beach, protecting children swimming in water shallow enough to stand in, these lifegaurds don't have anything over me. Furthermore, the mathematician in me can't help but consider the statistics. How many young people, not attending the camp, swim freely on our beach every day? Hundreds! And when is the last time someone drowned? Conclusion: it's pretty safe to swim. That's even true after the next bozo drowns (knock on wood - I still have two weeks left here).
I have enjoyed swimming far beyond the camp's boundary. There's another boundary about one hundrer meters out. At that point the water is around twenty feet deep. On days when the water is clear, you can see the bottom. There's a point where the rocky bottom gives way to fine sand. If the Black Sea were several meters more shallow, then it would have a beach like at Point Reyes, north of San Francisco, where the sand is so fine that it feels like you're walking on petrified dust. I dive down to the underwater beach and grab some sand every once in awhile. I try to imagine it dry, and it reminds me of home.

7.6.10
The semi final match featuring Germany and Spain takes place this evening. I have been rooting for Germany since the beginning of the world cup, and was happy to watch them handle England and Argentina so decisively, winning 4-2 (officially 4-1) and 4-0 respectively. Spain hasn't been nearly as impressive. They won their past two matches 1-0, with the same forward scoring both goals, in an albeit rather impressive fashion.
Four years ago Germany came off a 2-1 win against Argentina only to lose a closely fought match to Italy in the semi-finals. Italy deserved to win then, but this time the defending champions didn't make it out of group play, and Germany's victory is in much closer reach. I haven't read the tabloids, but I'd say they're the strong favorites for tonight, if not also for the final match against Holland, who beat Uraguay yesterday 3-2. I only saw the first half of that match, then I went to sleep.

I have a day off today. The first round of students left yesterday, and I stayed here to await the arrival of the next batch tomorrow. It was tough parting with some of my students. Strange, because, except for two or three out of eleven, I didn't think they were really good students. I guess I had developed relationships other than teacher-student. In a way I often become friends with some of my students, and only for some of them am I also a teacher.
I went for a walk this morning. I left the camp via the beach entrance, and headed East. I rolled up my jeans to cross a small river that flowes into the Black Sea, and walked further along the beach where participants of other camps were swimming and relaxing. Among others, there's a camp for athletes, a place where athletes of many disciplines can recover and cross train. I passed a trampoline where a young boy was jumping, flipping and twisting in every which way - a future gymnist I suppose. I reached the cliffs at the East end of the beach and stopped to shop at the small market where they were selling souvenirs and local fruit. I bought a kilogram of apples and three peaches, then started climbing the stairs which lead through a small forest up the cliffs.
The guard at the camp had said I should go to the end of the village at the top of the stairs, and walk through the forest to see some nice views of the sea. (I'm not sure that's exactly what he said, but having found the forest and seen some views, I figure that might be what he suggested.) I walked down a path in the forest. A middle aged woman was following me. Where were she and I going? I think she knew. I reached a thin beach which, like the camp's beach, didn't have as much fine sand as large gravel. I'm glad I wasn't barefoot. I walked along the beach, climbing over boulders here and there, passing people lying on towels and swimming in the shallow sea.
I found a big rock and sat down to look around. To my left were two women basking in the weak sunshine of a partly cloudy morning, one of them old, the other young. Maybe they were mother and daughter. The mother had long since given up her fight against weight gain. With a bathing suit suffocating under folds of lard, she was well on her way to the obesity typical of some older-aged Russian women. In contrast, the daughter was, as many young Russian women are, tall and slender.
A group of three people took a spot on the beach to my right. They were a man, a woman, and a boy of about nine or ten years. They might have been Armenian, but I'm a bad judge. The adults must have been either old parents, or young grandparents. The woman's face had got its first wrinkels, but she swam with grace and energy. The father was sitting on a large rock the lower part of which was being washed by small waves. He smiled as he watched the boy put on some flippers and waddle into the sea with a mask and snorkel in hand. The woman escorted him.
Far out at sea I could see three ships. To the west and disappearing over the horizon there was what might have been a cargo ship or an oil tanker. The other two, to the east and not moving anywhere, looked like military vessels. Closer to the beach, there were a few speed boats racing about.
I got up and went back the way I had come. I wondered through the forest a bit, coming to a camp ground and, further along, some cottages. Walking through the forest I couldn't help but remember the statistics on encephalitis-born ticks. There is supposedly an incurable strain prominent throughout southern Europe and Russia, ranging from the Perinnes in France through the Black Forest and the baltic regions all the way to Vladivostok. I thought about a few disabled people I had crossed since coming to Russia who were handicapped in a way that I had never seen before. Their movements are jerky. They walk as though they are struggling through a swamp, lifting one leg after the other out of a foot of thick mud. Someone told me that their disability comes from having drunk too much alcohol, but I would sooner believe that they were the unfortunate victoms of a really sick tick.
I consoled myself with a statistical calculation. First, I was walking on a well tread path, and wasn't about to take any short cuts. Second, I was wearing jeans, and there were many people walking the same way as I who were wearing shorts and swim suits - surely the ticks would sooner find them than me. Or is it the case that my American blood has such an irrisistable odor that they jump from the branches in the hopes of getting a small taste? (I honestly don't think that ticks jump from branches. As far as my blood is concerned, it often strikes me that in the company of Russians, mosquitoes seem to prefer me over them.) In the end, I figured the probability of getting a tick was on the same order as being struck by a mediorite. To be fair, I don't know that probability, but it hasn't happened yet, so I figure it's pretty small.
Reading this, do you wonder how I leave the house in the morning? Strange that I made it all the way over here somehow. что занесло меня сюда?
I returned back to the camp and started writing this entry. What am I going to do with the rest of my free day? I might take a swim in the Black Sea this evening, followed by a beer with salad and shashlick at a local cafe. Then I'll watch a football match. I hope Klose scores a goal or two. This is probably his last world cup, and he's scored so many goals for Germany already, he might break some sort of record.

6.6.10
The terrorist attacks of September 2001 have come up on more than one occasion in the discussion clubs I hold every Saturday. One of the prevailing theories among some Russians is that the Bush administration completely planned the destruction of the twin towers, going so far as to detonate secretly planted explosives after the planes crashed.
Their claims are based on, among other information perhaps, a TV documentary done on the attacks. Questions were raised such as: how could the buildings have fallen so cleanly; and why was there dust emmitted from the bottom floors just before the collapse, as though from an explosion?
Part of me feels that students who tell me this have a lot of balls to mention such a thing to an American. On the other hand, I'm not shy about talking about my antipathy towards the Bush administration, so maybe that gives them courage. Furthermore, the documentary may have very well come from America in the first place since anti-Bush sentiment eventually became just as strong there as in many other places in the world. So who am I to feel a little offended at such blasphemous accusations?
I answer their comments with cool skepticism. I say that while I wouldn't agrue with the claim that Bush had been planning to go to war in Iraq from the beginning of his term, and that I would believe they knew the attacks were coming and deliberately did little to stop them in anticipation of manipulating emotional Americans, I think that if the administration had itself committed the attacks, then they would've established stronger connections between the attackers and Sudam Hussein. They could've said that the high-jackers came from Iraq and not Saudi Arabia; Al-quida didn't even have to enter the picture at all, and American citizens would've been more readily dupped then they were as it is.
As far as those unanswered questions regarding the fall of the towers, I tell my students that the orderly collapse and renegade dust emmisions don't mystify me. After all, they never perform structural tests on skyscrapers by crashing jet-liners into them. How do we know how the buildings should have fallen? Despite my arguments, my students just shake their heads, as if to say, "you poor thing, if only you could come to truly understand the nature of your history."

America has cities and states named after places in Europe and Russia. There are states like New York, New Jersey, New Hampshire, and cities St. Petersburg and Moscow (both in Florida, I think), but we haven't named a body of water after any one previously known. That's why I've coined a name for the Gulf of Mexico, "The New Black Sea."
My students didn't appreciate the comparison so much, maybe they thought I was suggesting that the real Black Sea, which is quite nearby, is as dirty as the Gulf of Mexico has become as oil continues to spill from a BP rig.
Regardless, there was some interesting conversation about practical uses of nuclear weapons, as it has recently been suggested that nuking the sea floor might melt the surrounding rock and plug the leak. I tried to spur the converstion with some rather fantasical suggestions: out of one nuke we could make many very small nukes and use them to exterminate cockroaches; we could attach nukes to bar-bells and use them for weight-lifting; or we could use shells of nuclear bombs for flower beds - the flowers' polen would glow in the dark! Being as business oriented as any American natuarlly is, I've already come up with names for my businesses: nuke'em roaches; Pete's nuclear gymnasium; and nuclear powered flowers.
My younger students wanted to found a restaurant called "Nuke-Donald's." The slogan would be "I'm nukin' it!" Other students were much more practical and suggested using the uranium in bombs for nuclear energy. One of the more physics-savy students objected that weapons-grade uranium is not suitable for nulcear power. With that the discussion ended and we left to play ultimate frisbee on the street in front of the school. Thanks mom and dad for the frisbees from home!

I mention the terrorist attacks of 2001 and the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico because both catastrophes have been and will be intertwined in politics. I expect President Obama to take the initiative and raise support for alternative energy. Where Bush declared his war on terror, Obama may take this chance to wage war with dependence on fossil fuels, or global warming, or what have you. Where Bush managed to destroy lives and stability, Obama may succeed in helping society progress again.
And then perhaps the day will come when America, having achieved complete energy independence through a variety of sustainable clean energies, will point their finger at countries like Russia, which will continue to use their vast fossil-fuel reserves. In response, Russia will look back to the year two thousand and ten and discover that the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico was in fact secretly planned by the Obama administration.
I haven't yet heard any such theories about secret attacks on oil rigs. As far as I understand from the state news here, BP and the Obama administration are still occupied with stopping the leak. Has the cause of the leak been established yet? Some sort of explosion, right? Sounds suspicious to me ...

11.5.10

I added pictures of my European trip last week to the previous blog entry.

8.5.10
I returned from Europe a few hours ago. It's good to be back, and not so. I'll not have slept here one night before feeling like I never left - not a bad thing, since Rostov has its perks; but maybe it shows that my vacation could have been a little bit longer.
I left Rostov for Prague on the second of May. I flew through Vienna and arrived in Prague to meet my parents that evening. They escorted me from the airport to the shuttle, on the metro and through the cobblestone streets of central Prague to a really nice hotel across from the wax museum.
I was in Prague initially only that night and the following night. I went walking both mornings before breakfast, but didn't manage to explore as much as I would've liked to. During my first day in Prague we went on a guided walking tour of the old part of the city. I couldn't help noticing the guide's shortcomings in spoken English. Her grammar was pretty good, but her pronunciation of 'a' and 'r' was often off. That is, I didn't register them as either British or any other type of English pronunciation. Furthermore, she couldn't say 'th' to save her life, which is a common problem. Be that as it may, I wish I could say I speak a second language as well as she. I have my own problems to worry about, grammatical and otherwise!
On the tour we saw the capital castle, where the president was currently working, as indicated by the hissing flag. We spent over half an hour standing in line for some important cathedral, which was very impressive, if not also extremely reminiscent of Notre Dame in Paris.
We went to Berlin the following day. The train ride was typical of European trainrides, that is, awesome. My parents got me into first class with them; they had bought some sort of Europass that gets them five first class train rides anywhere throughout Europe. We got a quad seating area with a small table between us. We didn't have any cards, but the table was useful for service from the restaurant car. We got a platter of chess and another of veggies, and round of beer to boot.
The scenery was beautiful. We drove from Prague along a river past the German boarder to Dresden. I don't know the name of the river. It ran through small rocky hills. After Dresden there were fields basking in the spring season. Everything was green. Then there were fewer fields and more buildings, and then we were in Berlin.
The hotel was closer to the station than the route we took, but we got there without too big a detour. When we found the hotel, we also found G and G, some relatives of my father who live not far north of Hamburg. They had just arrived too. They had parked illegally at the hotel to have someone take their luggage. Funny, at first the way they had parked didn't strike me as unusual. You see cars parked on curbs and sidewalks all the time over here. I suppose it wouldn't have been long before someone gave them a ticket for disrupting the order on the German streets.
We entered while they left to find a parking place. We met up later for dinner.
The following morning my parents and I went to the train station to rent bikes. They had suggested going on a guided tour, you know, with a real guide, but I objected, insisting that I had seen enough in the half day I was there five and a half years ago to qualify me as a guide for at least a few hours. They gave in, and we set off for the zooligischer garden, a place where, little to my clients' knowledge, I had never been before.
I didn't hide that fact for long. We biked slowly through the garden in random directions. The conditions could not have been much better. The sky was clear, the sun bright, the birds were singing, the flowers blooming. Everywhere there was green. Finally we came to a street where a sign indicated the Reichstag in the opposite direction I had expected. We turned back and eventually came to the street of the 17th of June, named after some sort of people's revloution in the 1950's. Across the street there was the soviet monument, a place that had particularly caught my attention on my previous visit.
That day in early November 2004 I was in Berlin to take the GRE exam for my graduate school applications. I finished the exam in the morning and had until that evening to explore the city. I was on foot when I walked down that street, past the Column of Victory towards the Brandenburger Gates, when I came to a monument that had Russian written all over it. I took several pictures of it. Anyone who saw my laptop might remember seeing it on my desktop in the following years. There are seven columns, three on each side of a larger central column, on which a giant Russian infantry soldier poses, slowly marching forward. The central column has cyrillic text which I managed to read without too much difficulty. It says something like, "Praise to those who fell in battle with the fashist invaders for the security of the Soviet Union." The other columns say similar things, where each column is dedicated to specific members of the different divisions of the Red Army, the infintry, airforce, etc. Before the columns there is a square with steps leading up to it. On each side of the steps there are models of soviet artillery and tanks.
The day of my GRE exam was a dreary, rainy day. I have a picture of the square in front of the monument wet with rain and a huge dark cloud over the soldier's head. It seemed to fit the soldier's mood, as though he was thinking, "I'll march through a blizzard of a million fashists if I have to. I'm not stopping until I've reached Berlin!" A few days ago amidst sunny spring weather, one can only wonder if, under the shadow of the soldier's helmut, the grim face managed to smile at the favorable conditions.
We went under the columns and rode our bikes further to the capital building, the Reichstag. Workers were fertilizing the field before the entrance so that it was impossible to get a picture of the entire building, which is a shame because the Reichstag is quite impressive in my opinion.
From there we biked by a big demonstration for disabled peoples' rights, went through the Brandenburger Gates, biked on the streets to Checkpoint Charlie, had some hot chocolate at Einstein's cafe, biked back to the Gates, conicidentally passing a new monument dedicated to the Holocaust. I would like to have walked around, but I was outvoted, and we quickly biked back through the garden to the Column of Victory, which we had missed after wandering through the gardens the first time. We didn't have much time before we were supposed to meet the G gang, so it was lucky that the column was being renovated, and the gates for the underground passage to the island, around which deadly traffic waits for no one, were closed.
We raced back, biked through the Gates back to the former East, crossed a canal and found the meeting place without too much trouble and only a four-minute delay. We had a small meal together, then went into the historical museum.
The museum was stuffy. After the food I found myself wanting to take a short nap. I realized it was only from a lack of oxygen, and overcame my weariness by occasionally touching my toes for a few seconds. Bloodflow to the brain woke me up consistantly, and I was able to follow the exposition with interest. I was disappointed to hear that the others didn't feel like staying any longer. I don't think they had tried touching their toes! We hadn't even gotten to the twentieth century yet, but I didn't object. My legs were ready to get back on the bike, and the beautiful weather had not let up.
We biked slowly back through the garden to the train station. My parents gave up their bikes and went their own way. I used the remaining hour of the rental to bike around in search of a book store. Finally I found one called something like "Hugendubel" which had a lot to offer.
By the end of my stay in Berlin I ended up buying several books published by Reclam. I like this publisher for one reason because their books are very small. They don't take up much room or weight in your suitcase, they even fit easily in a coat or jacket pocket. The publisher also offers a lot of classical literature. I almost bought Part II of Faust, but restrained myself, since after all these years I still haven't completed Part I. I bought several books of poetry, some of them as presents for other people, some of them for myself.
I'm not much of a poet, and have not been much for reading poetry either, but I have come to at least respect the genre. I think poetry has to be read more slowly than a novel. It requires interpretation and reflection and all that bunk. I call it bunk only because I'm not good at it. I need to practice. Good thing I found that bookstore.
I also bought a collection of tales by Hermann Hesse. I read these tales first when I lived in Germany, then was lucky enough to find them in Bloomington, and didn't hesitate to buy the book, big and heavy as it may be in comparison to the Reclam editions, when I saw it at Hugendubels. I also bought, after some deliberation, a collection of stories by Edgar Allan Poe. I usually prefer reading original German rather than German translations, but I find Poe's writing so interesting in English, surely at least some of that charm gets translated into other languages as well.
In short, I came back to Rostov with more books than I expected. Now comes the hard part: findinng enough time to read what I bought. Furthermore, who knows how I'll get all of these home this summer? I'll probably leave a few books with some friends, either for good, or until I come back.
We spent the afternoon of our second day in Berlin in a castle where Sophia Charlotte once lived. My parents and I went through the museum with audio accomponiment, which made the stay much more interesting. To be fair, I don't remember much from all that information I heard, except that Charlotte had a new bedroom made after returning from somewhere and learning that Napoleon, while charging through the area, had slept in her bed! I was in a room where Napoleon once slept. Cool!
That evening I wanted to go to a movie, but I turned left when I should have gone right, and when after turning back and then wandering through the streets trying to find the combination I had taken earlier to get the theater, I finally found the theater, but had missed enough of what I wanted to see that it was no longer worth seeing. I could've gone to Iron Man 2, but I'd already seen it, and as German as it would have been, I didn't feel like watching it a second time. I returned to the hotel dejected and wet from the nightly rain.
The following morning everyone went their separate ways. I escorted my parents to their track from where they were leaving for a small city near Mainz, then returned to the hotel to collect my things for my train ride back to Prague, from where I was to fly back the following day. I said goodbye to my Uncle G and Aunt G and headed back to the train station.
I got to Prague, remembered which metro to take to the old town, then blanked on how to get to the hostel I had visited before leaving a few days earlier. Some would scold me for not being better prepared. My mom had taken a map for me, but I had no idea where I had put it. I would have taken a taxi, but when I asked a driver how to get to my Hostel, he said there were many by that name, and I didn't have the exact address. I reached familiar territory when I came upon a bridge across the river. Karl's bridge was the next bridge over, not a kilometer away. I reached Karl's bridge, from where it was easy to get to the central square, from where I could easily reach the hotel we had stayed at previously, from where I remembered how to get to a particular tower, not far from which I knew the hostel was located. Thus I eventually made it to my accomodation, and I wasn't too tired to return to the streets after packing my things away.
After getting lost on the way back a second time, I was pretty tired. Central Prague changes very much when the sun goes down. (My mom must be chuckling right about now.)
Thanks to all the walking that night, and some heavy street-vendor's cuisine, topped off with a course of Ben and Jerry's ice-cream, I slept relatively well, especially considering the noise on the street and in the hostel, where I was sharing a room with many other people. I had carefully studied a map before going to bed so that early the next morning, I found the metro station without too much trouble.
I got to the airport with over an hour of spare time to read a short story by Bernard Schlink, the German author who wrote "The Reader," which was made into a movie not long ago. He's a bit easier to read than some other authors. Maybe it's because he's lived in New York.

I'll post some pictures of my trip for those of you without any imagination. I'll post some pictures of Rostov in my last entry, which at the rate I'm going might already be the next one!

Regarding those pictures, my internet is too weak. We'll have to wait a few days at least...

29.3.10
My political orientation has changed a little. I used to be all for big government. I liked the idea of free education and free health care and the high taxes required, and I still do. But I have to admit, I'm not being fair to many of my countrymen. Tough as it is, I must try to understand that there are Americans who don't appreciate, for example, higher education. For them it's rather pointless to pay taxes to support other people's interests.
It occurred to me that a big government can't function well in such a multicultural society. The governments I dream about seem to function fine in smaller countries, like Denmark or Sweden. Maybe it's because those countries' interests are more unified than the interests of Americans. Indeed, it's reasonable that people who live close to one another have similar interests: the smaller the area, the more similar the culture and the problems it faces.
It might make sense for us Americans to turn not to our nation but to our respective state for government. A person like me could then move to the state with super high taxes, but good health care and educational provisions, whereas a farmer who couldn't care less about Galois theory and foreign languages could look for a place where the agricultural industry is well supported.
That's all easier said than done. Many people have settled down and don't want to move anywhere. What do we do with California, which is both an educational and agricultural powerhouse? (No wonder it's bankrupt.)
Regardless, it seems more efficient to exact taxes more on the state than on the national level. California is a state which should have very high taxes. If you don't like taxes, then don't live in California!
Whereas if the nation as a whole has high taxes, where are stingy Americans going to go? Thus, maybe governmental programs like national health care are not a good idea after all. I took note of one Republican's objection to the bill, which claimed that expensive health care was good in that it encouraged Americans to stay healthy: Health care won't be expensive for you as long as you take care of yourself. And that's the way it should be!
What was I thinking when I said that I wanted to live in a place with free health care. I hate hospitals! It'd be great if I can live a long life without ever having to visit them more than once a decade. And even if I pay hundreds of dollars to talk to a doctor and have my blood tested every few years (to give credit where it's due, my parents paid that bill last summer), it still might not amount to as much as the taxes I would continually pay for other people's liposuctions.

I had plenty of time off last week. I went to the theater three times, which is good, because I might not have time in the near future. They've got me working six evenings a week, today till seven thirty, Tuesday through Friday till nine fifteen, and Saturday until six thirty. Of course, I'm have many mornings off, so I can't complain too loudly, even if I don't see why they can't give me just one evening.
I'm pleased to say that I understood most of what was said at the theater. Somehow, I've managed to make some progress on that front. Hopefully speaking and writing will follow.
I played four games of tempo chess yesterday, and won twice! That's a pretty good percentage for me. The first match was against none other than Gilbert Godfrey. He quickly took advantage of a careless opening on my part, haughtily announced check mate, and began muttering something I couldn't understand, judging by the tone something like 'what the hell were you thinking?' An old man who frequents the club without ever playing or even watching the games glanced at me with a sympathic eye from where he was sitting nearby. I shrugged my shoulders after Gilbert charged away and the old man muttered something I couldn't understand. It could have been anything from 'don't pay any attention to him' to 'what the hell were you thinking?’.
I played another old man in the second round. We laced our pawns about each other with an advantageous position for me in the center. Waging battle on both fronts, I sloppily managed to gain the upper hand, but wasted my time finishing him off. I should have simplified when I had the chance.
I played the third match against an equally skilled opponent. I made a stupid mistake and gave up.
I think I played down to the level of my fourth opponent. I got lucky with a combination which won his queen. He gave up, and I got out of there. I would have continued playing, but I had tickets to the theater.

28.2.10
Like I said before, I'm torn as to what to do with myself. If I let myself reminice, then I start to miss mathematics. The other part of me says I could continue teaching just as well, if not for the job itself, which has its ups and downs, then for the sake of living in different places in the world - I don't think I'll ever miss living in America. Meanwhile, at night I dream of being a professional athlete, usually a soccer player. I wasn't so well acquainted with any other sport.
Fortunately, the Olympic games haven't had too much a negative effect on my sleep. I didn't stay up too late or get up at all early to watch the events that I would've liked to see. A few weeks ago I watched some heats of short-track speed skating. What a sport! Speed skating, regardless of the distance, is pretty cool, but especially in the short-track events where they stuff five or six skaters on the track. Whenever someone loses their balance and falls, they sometimes take out a few other skaters with them, and the flailing legs and arms are reminiscent of a bowling alley as they crash into the wall on the side of the track.
I saw an American named Apollo Ohno race on the short track. He was pretty impressive. In the first heat, he hung back until there were two or three laps left. Then in the span of one lap, he just flew by everybody. It was as though the other skaters were moving in slow motion. He would've lapped a few people if he had continued his sprint all the way through the final lap.
In the finals of the same event, the competition was a little tighter for Ohno. He started out in behind, then slipped into fourth place with a few laps to go. The three skaters in front of him were all from South Korea. They would've swept the event if it were not for the third Korean, who was either greedy for a silver medal or was thinking "Oh no!" because of the American tight on his heels. This Korean fell on the very final turn of the event and took out his comrade in front of him to boot. The first place Korean got away, Ohno took second, and another American took third place. The Korean who was going to get second must have been pretty angry.
I'm also a cross country skiing and biatholon fan, as well as hockey. I never was too fond of hockey, but then I saw the first period of the semi-finals, where the US team creamed Finland. The final match is in a few hours. I tried to convince my students to cheer for America, especially because Canada knocked Russia out of the tournament. Many of them were supportive, but some refused to think about hockey.

I saw a ballet performance of Hamlet this evening. I stopped by the theater randomly to see if there were any tickets left, and I got a pretty good seat on the first row of the balcony for about eleven dollars. Then I stopped by the chess club to watch the weekly tournament until the start of the performance. I hadn't been to the chess club for a few weeks. I wasn't too motivated to occupy myself with the game until I actually started watching. John Candy, Gilbert Godfrey, Stoneface, Christopher Lyoid and Robin Williams were all there. Dustin Hofman was absent. Stoneface lost to both Godfrey and Lyoid. I don't know how that happened. Gilbert Godfrey beats just about everybody, but even I have beaten Christopher Lyoid, if only once out of the upwards of ten parties we've played.
The ballet wasn't as impressive as Romeo and Juliet. The musical accompaniment was by Shostakovich, which I enjoyed good at times, but occasionally I didn't like the dissonance. Shostakovich doesn't beat whoever composed the Jugernaut's Lied!

15.3.10
My father often asks me if I believe in free will. I say I believe it completely, since the only perceivable alternative would be fatalism, which I refuse to accept. I prove my claim with the fork experiment: if I hold a fork out in front of me and start to count to three, then on the count of three I can decide to either hold or drop the fork. It's my decision, hence free will exists. Of course, dropping a fork is a bit extreme, and it's tough to say if we can equate dropping a fork with spending years of your life thinking about something in the annals of Algebraic Topology or dropping everything and moving to another country.
Perhaps more importantly, you wonder if dropping a fork is your decision if we add outside influences into the equation. My brothers influenced me greatly when I was younger. What if before I drop the fork, my brothers declare that I must hold the fork at all costs. Then when I drop it, is it my decision? Maybe I was just spiting my brothers.
Perhaps that's another reason why I left my homeland. I wanted to spite my culture. I wanted to escape anyone and anything that was telling me what to do. Here I can do whatever I like without any cultural reprimand. I am free here. I am more myself than I have ever been.
Whoever that is, I'm still not sure. Having rejected any cultural formula which tells us to get a good job, then get married, then start a family, then retire etc., I am living in limbo. I have to make my own formula, and that's not so easy.

Regarding anal flatulence, it occurred to me that it's criticized not for any natural reason, but cultural. Again, it's a question of nature versus nurture. I remember when I was a toddler, I would take a deep breath whenever I heard or otherwise sensed another family member had farted. For some reason I enjoyed the smell. Maybe I was proud to learn that these adult people couldn't hold it all in either, or maybe I hadn't yet been brainwashed into cringing at that methanic stench.
The latter seems to make some sense, especially considering the fact that one's own flatulence doesn't smell as bad when one is alone as it does amongst other people. When people in a crowd fart, it smells so bad because of the presence of many people. In a crowd. our cultural upbringing kicks in and tells us to gag at the smell, whereas when we're alone, there's nothing to worry about and the odor is quite natural.
My father often tells me of a time he saw me dancing as a toddler. Maybe it was to "Bad Boys," or maybe to something else. He says I was as graceful as a toddler could be. Back then, I danced as freely as I farted, but now I dance only after several drinks, and break wind primarily as I walk along Pushkinskaya. They say a child loses their innocence after exposure to the real world. I say it's culture that robs us of our innocence. To what extent is what we call the real world is a man-made façade?
Maybe I would do well in a nudist colony.
Of course, to bring the argument home, I should've started with a few positive things to say about human's culture. I can't think of anything positive. If you're reading this, maybe you can remind me of all the good things culture gives us.

8.2.10
There was another factor to my leaving the PhD program behind. Namely, I was becoming someone. Not necessarily someone that I didn't want to be, a mathematician, but regardless of who, my self was being determined.
Becoming someone is a frightening process. I'm twenty seven years old and still letting go of my childhood. As an American in an upper-middle class family, I had the opportunity to become anybody I wanted. As time goes on, I've been having to let go of whatever potential I've ever had and actually become someone. Even though in my opinion as an English teacher I'm not becoming anybody, which perhaps is one of the things that has appealed to me about the job, I'm nevertheless losing my potential.
I've seen two movies in the theater since I got back, neither of which is worth much mention, except the Book of Eli sends a message I don't quite agree with. At the end of the movie, Eli achieves his goal, and then dies peacefully. I suppose the idea is that we all have a certain purpose in life, after the fulfillment of which we can die happy. But maybe I missunderstood this idea, or the Russian, because then I think the young girl declares with the confidence of someone who's found their purpose in life that she's going to return home. What's she going to do then? Die peacefully?
There was an advertisement on TV about a film of a group of young people, Americans I think, who made a list of one hundred things they wanted to do before they died, then quit their jobs and set off to do the things on the list. Maybe the idea is that you shouldn't just let life go by working in an office for several decades. But making a list of things you want to do before you die is the another extreme, because again, what do they do when they've finished the list?

14.2.10
That's not right about not becoming anybody as an English teacher. To some extent, I have found myself in this profession. That's not to say I'm happy with my job, but that I have become someone. I could potentially continue this line of work for the rest of my life and in doing so, I don't think I would change very much as a teacher. I could lead a normal life, making shy of fifteen hundred dollars a month teaching English in Russia. Why don't I do that if I love living here so much?
Studying math became a sad story after awhile. I was like the main character from the novel Flowers for Alginon. I seemed to get more and more retarded as time went on. The more I studied math, the less attractive it became, the less I was able to understand it. It was as though I had become fluent in mathematics through the first year of graduate study, and then I began to lose the ability to understand it. It was as though I had mathematical alzheimers.
I like to hope that I didn't lose the ability as much as the motivation to study further. I like to think I was a classic case of a burnt out graduate student. Indeed, I know there were other students in the program who studied just as despairingly as me. I remember one of the Chinese students declaring that there was nothing else for him to do, his only chance was to continue studying. At that time, I could have said the same thing, but my experience in Germany was calling me, bidding me to leave the country again.
The year I spent in Germany was a pandora's box for me. It has made my life very interesting and very complicated. Or maybe I'm the only one who complicates things. Regardless, had it not been for Germany, I think I would've said the same thing as the Chinese student. I would have had faith in the idea that there was nothing else for me.
There I was, retarded in my math classes, and excelling in a few Russian classes that my advisor let me take. Spending half the effort it took to learn about K-theory, I seared through Russian declination tables like a hot knife through butter. Studying Russian, the wind was at my back, and studying math became more and more like running into a brick wall. My fate had been decided, I only needed to find the American Home to realize it.
Russian hasn't lost its appeal. However, I think it will after awhile. If I continue learning at the current rate, I would estimate that with another year here, my listening and speaking proficiency in Russian would reach between seventy and eighty percent of my corresponding proficiencies in English. (Put in such a way, maybe that's not saying much. Let's not even mention writing proficieny...) That's a big if, whether I will continue at the same rate. On one hand, the more Russian you understand, the easier it becomes to learn more. On the other hand, the more you understand, the less motivation you have to learn.
You have less motivation because something is lost when you learn a language. At first it's like beautiful music. And then you start to understand it, and it turns from music into a tool. I ask my students sometimes if they think English is beautiful. Some of them say yes, but they can't explain why. I don't see any beauty in English. For me, it's only a tool.
Only now does it occur to me how the nature of languages differs from that of mathematics. First, unlike language, Russian and German at least, it's not the case that mathematics becomes easier as you go, if anything it's the other way around. Second, like languages, mathematics is also filled with tools, or is a tool itself. Nevertheless parts of it are remarkably beautiful. Furthermore, beauty comes only when you understand mathematics. If you don't understand it, it's complete jibberish, not beautiful music, as may be with languages.

25.01.10
I probably spent almost as much time travelling over the holidays as I did home with my family. I traveled from Rostov to Moscow knowing that Aeroflot had cancelled my flight to Washington, not knowing if there was a substitute route available. That's a little nerve-racking. I had contacted Aeroflot a few days before leaving Rostov. They told me to contact my travel agency. I bought an international phone card, which luckily functioned probably, and contacted the travel agency in America. I was calling Maryland, but for some reason a person with a strong Indian accent picked up. I struggled to clarify my problem for him. He said he'd get back to me via email. He never did.
I emailed the agency just before leaving. I heard from them again after arriving home. They told me that Aeroflot was obligated by some airline law to get me to Washington. This they had done as best they could: they gave me a first class seat from Moscow to Amsterdam, and an exit row seat on the long flight from Amtsterdam to Washington. And I had been thinking as I approached the Aeroflot desk at two in the morning amongst a crowd of angry Russians, all of whom had had flights cancelled, that Aeroflot would give me their sincerest apologies and wish me better luck next time. It would have been another 'welcome to Russia' moment. But no, Aeroflot did their job in first-class fashion. To be fair, I think any airline would've cancelled a flight with so few passengers on board - at least I presume that's why the flight was cancelled; how many people want to fly to Washington on New Year's Eve; any sane American is already home by the twenty fifth!
They couldn't help it that the flight from Amsterdam to Washington was delayed. It was a KLM flight. We had gone through gratuitous security, probably because someone had tried to blow up a plane in Detroit on Chrismtas a few days before, and had taken our seats on the plane when the captain announced that there was a small technical matter that would require an additional halfhour before takeoff. A halfhour later he said it would be another ninety minutes. An hour after that he announced that we would switch planes. I arrived in Washington on the evening of New Year's Eve several hours after my connecting flight left for Oakland. Fortunately, there was a very helpful man at the Jetblue desk who arranged for a discount hotel room at a local Sheraton, and let me make a phone call home to announce the delay.
I was pretty happy in the hotel room in Washington. It was nice to have a bed. I was exhausted. In preparation for the time change, I deprived myself of normal sleep the night before my trip, and had gotten by on cat naps through one night at the airport and on my flights. I slept well on New Years Eve and flew home the next morning without a problem.
I wasn't home for long before it felt like I had never left. That's good because without such a feeling I don't think I could ever bring myself to leave that place.
Flying back to Moscow was fun. I flew San Francisco to Denver and Denver to Houston on United, and then Houston to Moscow on Singapore Airlines, which I highly recommend. I was on a plane where each passenger has a computer in front of them on which they can watch a variety of movies, or play logic games. I watched Ratatoullie, The Golden Compass, and a German movie about a guy who loses his memory in an accident, and slowly remembers that he took part in a cyber crime. I also played a game called Caveman, where you, the caveman, have to push rocks in the right places in order to escape a cave before it's filled with lava. Because of this variety of entertainment, and intermittent naps, I hardly felt the eleven hours it took to get to Moscow.

I was in Vladimir for a few days. I saw some old colleagues, students and friends. I met a few of the new teachers at the AH too. One of them is G, who I found similar to myself in a way. When discussing why someone would do such a thing as come to Russia to teach English, we simultaneously declared that there was nothing in America to keep us there. It was a bit frightening for me, since G is much older than me and I didn't think there were middle-aged men who reasoned like I do. He's actually on the other side of a long career, was married and has children who have grown up. Perhaps it means that I could potentially feel some sort of longing for living abroad throughout my entire life. It doesn't go away. It hasn't yet, and I was kind of hoping it would. It would make things simpler for me.
I was thinking about math recently. I was trying to evoke any and every feeling I've ever felt about math. There was the enthusiasm I felt up through my first year in Bloomington, and then there were the long days of despair I experienced toward the end of my studies. Those times are almost two years past. It's long enough ago that it's not easy to remember how I got along with math. Maybe I could say that any psychological wounds have healed, or maybe the day I go back to a math program is the day I want to start learning another language instead of math. In any case, on that recent day I came to the conclusion that it would not be a bad idea to study math seriously again. But that was just one day's conclusion. On another day the conclusion may have been different.

My grandfather passed away over the Christmas holiday. He was one hundred years old, and ready to move on with his life. I didn't always appreciate what he brought when he came to visit, be it obligatory prayer before dinner or a reminder of starving children in China when I didn't eat my asparagus. I'll remember him because he really helped me learn how to play chess. Were it not for him, I may never have come to appreciate the game as I do today. Maybe it was no coincidence that I played so well the other day at the chess club. Grandpa was with me in spirit.
So many people had come that the tournament was structured not so that everyone plays everyone else, but so that winners play winners and losers play losers. I played well enough to be eventually slotted against Gilbert Godfrey, who checkmated me in a few moves, followed by Stoneface, who, after a big exchange, somehow ended up a bishop up. For the exception of those two and a few others, I held my own that day. I'll have to remember Grandpa more often when I visit the chessclub on Sundays.

15.12.09
A week ago my internet wasn't working. I tried to connect with my USB modem, but the system reported the very same error that had come up the first time I tried using the modem. I stopped by the shop where I'd bought it, and asked them to tell me how to fix the problem. They asked me if I had money on the account. I said yes. Then they said I needed to dial such and such number, wait fifteen minutes, then dial some other number. They had done this on the first day. It reneued something that for some reason wasn't working. After getting the phone numbers, I went home and tried them out. It didn't help.
Turns out, there wasn't any money on the account. I was over a hundred rubles in debt to my internet provider. Fortunately, I figured that out on my own, so I didn't have to go back to the shop with my computer to have them tell me how mistaken I was.
I paid my internet provider, MTC, five hundred rubles, and ever since they say that I have three hundred and fifty on the account (five hundred minus the debt). My credit is suspiciously not going down, even though I'm using the internet rather freely. I expect any day now that I'll get the same error message and discover that I'm a few hundred rubles in debt to MTC.

I was happy I had internet last week, since it allowed me to follow some Champions League matches online. I didn't watch anything live online, but I could follow commentary on several matches and see who scored when. At the same time, I was watching the champions of the premier league in Russia, Rubin, lose two to nothing to Inter Milan. Rubin takes third place in the group thanks to Barcelona, who on the same evening beat the fourth team by enough points to put them behind Rubin. I was very disappointed to observe Manchester United come back against Wolfsburg. Wolfsburg had tied up the match at one to one, but within the final minutes Michael Owen scored two goals, excluding Wolfsburg from further champions league play. The other team from that group to continue is ZSK. I blame myself for this unfortunate turn of events. I went to see A Christmas Carol on the night that Wolfsburg played their away match against ZSK in Moscow. They lost two to one, I think because I wasn't there to watch. Now I'll never get to see Wolfsburg play.

Things were as usual at the chess club two days ago, except I played well. I only had two victories out of ten, but that's twice as good as two out of twenty! In fact, there were at least two other games that I could have won, one of which I lost on time, the other I lost due to once again overseeing my opponent's only possible attack, which unfortunately happend to be full-blown mate. There's something about covering my tracks in chess that I can't seem to grasp. They say that if ever you gain material, you should then stabilize your position so as to not lose the new-found advantage. Sometimes I get carried away. I play full steam ahead, forgetting what I've so often seen, that patience is what wins the match.
With an odd number of players, there was a by round for each player. On mine, it so happened that Gilbert Godfrey and Stoneface were playing against each other. As I came to their table towards the end of the match, it seemed like Stoneface was winning, but pressed for time, he screwed up somehow and Gilbert got the upper hand. With seconds left, Stoneface raced his lonely king to the center of the board as Gilbert queened his last pawn and turned to attack. Hands raced from board to clock and back in a chess tango at presto tempo. Had Gilbert run out of time - he had only seconds left - Stoneface could've declared a draw, but he ended up resigning instead.
I didn't get a chance to play either of those players. I guess at the tempo tournaments, with fifteen minutes per side as opposed to five for blitz, the winners play the winners and the losers play the losers. It just occured to me, but probably that's why I played so well. My last opponent was a young man who gave himself somewhere between ten and fifteen minutes at the start. I pointed out that he hadn't set his clock properly, but he shrugged his shoulders, saying he had alloted plenty of time for another loss. He had had a bad day I guess.

I went for a walk today. I needed to buy some groceries. I also wanted to look for some souveniers to bring back to America. I found a few things which might make interesting presents, among them a ceramic dish with a cathedral on it. I didn't recognize the cathedral by name, but it sure looked familiar somehow. Had I seen such a cathedral in Rostov? I left the shop without buying anything and took an unknown street towards the central market, where I usually get my food.
It was cold enough that my hands were beginning to go numb, but I had enough layers on that the important body parts were comfortable, as long as I didn't stand still for too long.
As soon as I passed Voroshilovski Prospect, the street became a bit more familiar. I had reached the eastern border of the central market, where merchants were selling anything from mens' underwear to contemporary foreign literature. I stopped by one of the book stands and glanced at a few of the Russian classics they had, but I didn't buy anything. I continued down the street and finally reached a large cathedral with light-blue colored roofing supporting the characteristic golden domes which you see on many cathedrals in Russia. I crossed the street, went through a New Year's tree patch and viewed the cathedral from the front. I was standing closer than I should've been, but it was enough to recognize the building I had seen in the ceramic. I think it'll make a nice present because I can say that I have lived not a five-minutes walk away from that place.
I bought four heads of garlic, one and a half kilograms of onions, many apples, five persimmons, and a loaf of bread. I've started eating persimmons again. I use to eat them as a child, but since then I've never eaten them regularly. There's some sort of resin on them that leaves your mouth feeling like cotton. That takes some getting use to, but otherwise they're delicious.

7.12.09
I talked with mom yesterday. I told her I'd had a bad day at the chess club, and she replied that she thought every day at the chess club was a bad day for me. But it's clear to me now that I'm not looking for victory during the Sunday tournaments, otherwise I would've stopped going long ago. I'm happy if I lose on time with an advantage in material or position. That shows at least that I can play. Yesterday I didn't get so far in half of the twenty matches.
My first of two victories was against someone who wasn't having a very good day either. If fact, I played against him like most of the other players play against me. He made mistakes repeatedly, and I pounced every time. I went to Georgi Vasilitch to announce my victory, but, for it was my first victory after eight loses, expressed myself a little too loudly, not seeing my disgrunteled opponent behind me. He then told George that he'd had enough for the day, and took off, crestfallen. I felt bad for him. I know what he was feeling very well. He and I were like crippled horses at the races. I ran with three legs, while he tried to get on with only two. The other horses ran circles around us as we nostalgically remembered better days when it seemed like we knew what we were doing.
My last victory came surprisingly with my last match of the evening. I was well on my way to losing when my opponent made a serious blunder which cost him practically everything he had. He still might have beaten me on time, had he not given up in despair. Maybe he was just tired. It was the twentieth party of the day.
If only other players made such mistakes when they played me. Alas, I am most often the one who leaves pieces unguarded and oversees the simplest of traps. Sometimes I feel like I'm playing blindfolded, I make such stupid mistakes.
I was in a pretty bad mood yesterday, not so much from chess as from roudy teenagers causing me grief during discussion lessons the previous day. Chess was one thing that could've cheered me up, if only I'd managed to play a little more skillfully.
The linguist is one of the weaker players at the club. He and I warmed up before the tournament started. He wanted to show me his new super system which supposedly works every time. After hearing him say the name several times, I understood that he attributed the position to Capablanca. We played two or three matches. He beat me every time with his new technique. NevertheIess, I wasn't impressed. He usually beats me anyway. I asked him to let me know how he plays during the tournament. He didn't have an especially good day either. After each match he came up to me and jokingly blamed Capablanca for his hair-brained method, but stuck with it until the end.
He escorted me most of the way home. He likes speaking German. It's enough for him if it at least seems like you're listening. I often don't care to hear what he has to say. I think he knows this, but sees that I tolerate his rambling and rambles further.

Last week I went to a school in Aksai, a suburb of Rostov, and lead a discussion lesson for teenagers. Another Language Link teacher drove me there and left me with one of the full time teachers at the school. She and I had almost an hour to kill before the first of two lessons. We talked about why an American would do such a silly thing like come to Russia. When I agreed to have some tea, she left the room and came back fully loaded with crackers, chocolate and some English black tea. I'm surprised she didn't have cake on hand. Maybe she mistook me for a Brit. I would've been happy with just a glass of water, flavor it however you like.
I gave my war and peace lesson to the first group. That went fine. The second lesson was visited only by tennage girls who had never seen a real live American before. I felt like a celebrity as I answered random questions for fifty minutes. Then, since I didn't have the music, I read them "Imagine" out loud and asked them if such a world were possible or even desirable. They didn't have any good answers. I told them it was homework.

30.11.09

I usually have Mondays off, but today I gave a lesson for about an hour. I lead a discussion for a group of English teachers. The discussion was what I’ve come to title “War and Peace,” where we discuss the army in American and Russia, the American military budget, and then move into John Lennon’s Eutopia as described in his song Imagine.
Last Saturday I had discussion sections with my interesting classes, but they hadn’t given much thought to how we could achieve John Lennon’s world. I think it was still more or less undecided if a world where there are no countries, religion, and possessions would be a nice place to live. Maybe it would be peaceful, sure, but it might also be boring as hell. Maybe we fight wars to keep ourselves entertained. Living in America, sometimes I get that impression.

They dragged me in last Wednesday morning to help a random student prepare for a job interview. The student was planning to take a job in Moscow with an American company. I wasn’t in the best mood at nine o’clock that morning, having done nothing more than eat and sleep since leaving the school after my last lesson the previous night.
Nevertheless I warmed up to the student after a few minutes. You can’t help but feel like a celebrity when you speak English with a student who hasn’t spoken to a native speaker for a long time. After asking her some random general interview questions that I’d printed out the previous evening, I mentioned some mistakes that she had made and had better avoid, then wished her luck. She’s going to need it. If the position requires a candidate who knows English well, then she’s toast. Or maybe she knows some people. That always helps in this country.
I managed to cancel my last lesson on Wednesday, which gave me time to visit the German club at the library. When I arrived, they were playing memory with pictures of famous German people, many of whom I‘d never heard of before. After that, we did pair dictations about three of the famous Germans. I worked with the linguist from the chess club on a person named Lubido, a former soccer player evidently. The linguist had an article with holes in it, and I had the same article with different holes. He had the information that I needed and vice versa. We were supposed to dictate to one another to complete the article. The linguist didn’t care to take dictation, so I listened to him and wrote as he read his broken article in broken German.
After the German club, I exited the library with the linguist and some other old Russian men. We talked about random things. One of them, Sergei, was very delighted to speak with me. He had a certain respect for foreigners. I think he took me for German at first. It’s not hard to fool a non-German sometimes. I declared myself American after he asked me where I was from, and he maintained his enthusiasm, allbeit maybe just for show.
The Russians and I parted ways, and part of me wanted to go home and catch the Champions League match featuring ZSK and the reining German champions, Wolfsburg. Unfortunately, I’d made plans for the movie theater earlier after stumbling out of my second lesson that morning, too exhausted to remember the football match.
I didn’t regret going to the movie theater. I saw the Russian edition of A Christmas Carol. The story has become one of my favorites over the past few years. It has the Christmas spirit, and some spooky ghosts. What could be better? I remember watching it ever year around Christmas time on TV when I was younger, and seeing the play at a small theater in San Francisco with my family, and finally reading the original last Christmas as I was proctering final exams.
The movie was a cartoon in 3D. The glasses didn’t hurt my eyes too much, as they had in the past. It was very entertaining, honestly one of the best movies I’ve seen in a long time. How is it that some of the best movies I’ve seen over the past few years are cartoons? Among them are The Incredibles and Ratatouille. Those movies are good because they fulfill their purpose. You watch them with the desire to be entertained in a certain way, and they deliver. How many scary movies are actually scary? Only the good ones, and that’s not many.
It turns out that Wolfsburg lost to ZSK in Moscow two to one. They’re not out of it though. I later learned that they had already played in Germany, where Wolfsburg won three to one. As it stands, ZSK, Wolfsburg, Inter Milan, or a fourth team could win the group. I guess the last game decides it all. I don’t know who Wolfsburg is playing, but I hope they take it.

23.11.09
I went looking for some audio books today. I knew there was a large store in town, larger than the one of the same chain in Vladimir, and I figured they’d have a good selection.
The challenge was getting there on public transport. I didn’t know which bus to take, nor did I know what street it was on. So I had to ask. I asked a marshrutka driver. I asked the woman at the newpaper kiosk. Nobody knew where the store M Studio was.
I took the only bus I knew well to the soccer stadium. Coming back from Shachti I’d always driven first by the stadium, and then shortly thereafter by M studio. I got off at the soccer stadium, asked a woman at another kiosk if she knew were the store was, but she’d never heard of it either.
I started walking along a big prospect in the direction I thought it was. Not long and I came to a sign for the store. It wasn’t called M studio, but M video. Hopefully that was the only thing stopping people from understanding me.
The air, however cool, was filled with smog from all the cars driving by. I passed a person wearing a mask and I wondered if it was to prevent the swine flu or black lung. The sun was going down. After walking a little over a mile, I reached the store. They didn’t have any audiobooks.

I had finished listening to a story by Bulgakov called something like “Fateful Eggs”. I listened and read at the same time. It worked out all right. If I listened without the text, I didn’t understand a thing. If I read without listening, then it took me ten minutes to cover a page. Somehow by doing both at the same time, I got through the story quickly and managed to understand something, allbeit rather little.
I see the story in my head as though it were a dream; it has so many holes in it. There was a professor. His name was Persikov. He discovered some sort of beam. It was special, I don’t know why. Then chickens started dying, which was bad because people wanted eggs. But Persikov got his hands on some eggs. I think they were struck by Persikov’s special beam (intentionally - he was doing an experiment), but it turns out they weren’t chicken eggs, but reptile eggs, or maybe the beam transformed them. In the end many people were eaten by giant anacondas and Persikov and his assistants were murdered by an angry mob.

After checking a few more stores on the way back to Budionovski prospect, I stopped by a rather small video store which I walk by every day on my way home from work. It happened to have a few interesting audiobooks. I got some works of Gogol, to which I already have the text, and something by a guy named Turgenev - a Russian author whom I had heard of, but whose works I had never read nor heard. I can always get the text off the internet if the stories sound interesting.
While I was trasferring the audiofiles from the CDs to my computer, I saw some advertisements for online stores on the CD containers. I visited them (from the comfort of my own flat). It turns out, I could have downloaded everything from the internet that I had bought at the store, and it would’ve been cheaper too. I remember I was looking for such websites years ago when I was in Bloomington and started to focus more attention on learning Russian. The best thing I could find then was a disfunctional website from which you could order a CD in Russian if you managed to complete the order before explorer closed itself for some random reason.

For all those Americans out there, you might not have heard the latest news from the soccer world. For the second year in a row, Rubin, the team from Kazan, has clenched first place in the Russian premier league, whose season will come to an end next weekend. Rubin will continue to play in the champions league. I forget who they play next, but the game is tomorrow night. The other Russian team playing in the champions league, ZSK from Moscow, is going to play the league champions from Germany on Wednesday, Wolfsburg. I’m looking forward to that match, since I’ve heard a lot about the Wolfsburg team, but have never seen them play.
Internationally, I’ve heard that they’re forming the groups for the World Cup next summer. The Russian national team suffered a crushing loss against Slovenia last week, losing one to zero, thus giving the Slovenians the slot in the World Cup. You could feel the disappointment in the streets the next morning. The normally hard faces were especially gloomy. It was enough to stifle the good mood of any happy-go-lucky American.
Elsewhere, France won a trip to the World Cup over Ireland. The winning goal was assisted following a blatant hand-ball by one of France’s star forwards, Henri. The referee and linesmen seemed to be the only ones not to see anything. After the match, Ireland protested. Henri didn’t deny the foul, but blamed the referee for not seeing it. Even President Sarcossi apologized that France had won in such a way, but didn’t offer a rematch. Henri’s play has been compared to the famous goal scored by Maradonna in a world cup final when allegedly the “hand of God” was at work.

The first two discussion sections were in Schachti last weekend, as they are every other Saturday. We hadn’t yet talked about US government spending or John Lennon’s Eutopia, so there was nothing much new regarding how to achieve the perfect world or how people differ from animals. But we talked about it in a class of teenagers back in Rostov. I was surprised that there weren’t many students who claimed that people were more than animals. One student suggested that people were the intelligent animals, which I thought was almost a fair assessment. We can say that cheetas are the fast ones, whales are the big ones, and we are the smart ones (whatever that means). I’ll have a chance to talk about it with my interesting class next Saturday.
Regarding nature versus nurture, I asked my students the extent to which nature determines a person. In situation one, where mom and dad both weigh five hundred pounds, and where the child is also grossly overweight, the students insisted that nurture was at play, not nature. In situation two, where both mom and dad are math geniuses, and the child also excels at math, for some reason a few students hesitated to give nurture so much credit. However, one student discounted nature even in situation two, insisting that both his parents excelled at math, while he struggled at math and prefered literature.

I went to the chess club this week, but I don’t have time to go into detail. Suffice it to say that despite a strong showing against the Turk and the Parisian, two victories and one draw are hardly enough sustinance for such a competitive character. I’ll continue to go, although it’s clear that by playing merely every week, I’m not getting much better. It’s tough to enter that room knowing that you’re in for such a beating. Something has to be done.

16.11.09

I didn’t go to the chess club this week. Instead I went to see a ballet performance of Romeo and Juliet. It was the second ballet I had visited in Russia, the first being Swan Lake at a famous theater in St. Petersburg about a year ago. The Rostov ballet didn’t match the one in Petersburg. Juliet wasn’t quite as fluid a dancer as the head swan, but I’m not picky when it comes to ballet.
Unlike Swan Lake, I was very familiar with the story of Romeo and Juliet, and it was fun to see it again in a new genre. The best scenes were when the stage was full with the two fueding families (the Capulets and the Montegues, if I remember correctly). In the beginning, there was a fight with many people dancing around, waving and thrusting swords at one another. Then, after intermission, just after Romeo took revenge on one of the main characters from the other family, there was a scene with members of both families mourning their loss and cursing their enemies at the other side of the stage. It was remarkable how they managed to express everything through dance.
To top it all off, one of the main musical themes was a classical peace that I like very much. I’ve written about it before, though not so recently that it’s been included in a blog entry. It starts with tubas sounding two full beats alternating at the lowest two notes, and then violins come in at I think eight beats to a measure with a rather macabre melody. I forget what it’s called, but I think the title has something to do with witches. I’ll call it the Jugernaut’s lied, beacuse the first movement is especially fit for an omnipotent entrance. It was used for the party at one of the family’s places, where Romeo and Juliet first met. For the first movement the family enters their dance hall and starts the ritual dance. Then the second movement comes in, much calmer and more soothing than the first, and that’s when Juliet enters and begins to dance. By the end of the party, the main theme sounds again as the stowaway Romeo is discovered.

I worked a lot last week. Saturday brought some interesting discussions. The previous evening I had somehow decided on the topic of war and peace. I found a chart of the US federal spending in 2008 on wikipedia and shared it with the class. I expressed my disapproval that, according to the chart, the governement spends ten times as much on war as it does on education. I posed the usual question after telling a little bit about America: how does it work in Russia? Nobody knew. They said that the government kept that information secret.
Here’s a naive thought that I shared with my students: when it comes to making progress, a society does best by investing resources in education and research. This is how society comes up with things like computers, mobile phones, the cure to polio, etc. By investing in the military (and military research), society takes a step backwards: the only use for a bomb is for destroying something. What’s the point of that? No student had anything to say. Maybe they were too afraid of bursting my peaceful bubble. A few students did point out that societies without militaries don’t last very long. I don’t disagree. Look at the Native Americans.
Taking the discussion even further in a eutopian direction, we listened to John Lennon’s Imagine, after which I asked the students if such a world (without religion, countries, the need to kill…) is possible, and if so, what needs to be done to achieve such a world. The younger students said that John Lennon was singing about Eutopia, and anybody knows that such a world is impossible. Many of the adult students felt the same way, although there were some who weren’t so readily dismissive. One student suggested that people have to change their souls. I asked for clarification. Russians use the word soul very often. I think the student might have expressed herself clearer by saying that people must change their nature. I found this very interesting. We ended class with the question of how people must change their nature in order to live in John Lennon‘s imaginary world.
I think it was a good note to end the class on. It’s not often that we have something interesting from which to start the next class, but that people should change their nature leads well into a discussion on nature versus nurture, as well as the extent to which a human is not an animal, a topic on which I should probably tread lightly so as not to offend people by suggesting that the difference between a person and a dog is the same as the difference between a dog and a cat - that it is no more than physiological.

What is the difference between a human and an animal? (“Here we go again,” my family members are groaning, but let me share my heathen thoughts with others in the audience.)
Religious people might say that humans have souls whereas animals do not. I think that the existence of a soul is as axiomatic as the existence of a God. Furthermore, I find it axiomatic to say that animals don’t have souls. In short, the religious explanation strikes me as what many religious explanations do: an axiom; it just is so.
Less religious people have suggested that people are intelligent and animals are not. This doesn‘t say much, for why is intelligence more important than the hundreds of qualities that humans lack? After all, the cheeta is the fastest, and the whale is the biggest; why are they considered animals and we not? Most recently someone suggested that animals either don’t feel pain, or somehow feel it in a different way. I contorted with the following thought experiment. Take a dog, a bear, an eagle, several other animals, and one human, impale them all with a spear through the belly and observe that all creatures react in pretty much the same way. How is pain perceived differently for the non-human creatures in the experiment?
Maybe there are other reasons why people are not animals. Please let me know, they might be useful in the discussion. Indeed, if the discussion developes, I should be familiar with all sides, so that I spur them on by disagreeing with everything!

I bought a USB modem yesterday, and am sending this entry from home for the first time. The word processor doesn’t have any spell checking in English. Would you have been able to tell the difference?