Friday 9/14

Yet another night walking across the bridge back to Vasilevsky just before the raising hour, mostly because, again, I failed to flag a car. Actually I flagged one in time, but due to my botched pronunciation he immediately took me for an American and named an outrageous price. It’s a nice walk, and tolerable in the fall weather, but I’m not sure how long that’ll last. At least when it starts to freeze the bridges will stay open and there’ll be less pressure finding transport home. Of course, at that point, who’s to say where I’ll be living.

I enjoy living with my host, but there’s a bit of independence I’m still craving. I’d like to live a little closer to the center, and absent worries about waking her up coming home late at night. Also it’d be nice to cook on my own, and thus live a little cheaper. I should be thankful for my position, but it’s hard to ignore the beckoning city center, or at any rate a more suitable lifestyle with other students, young folks. I’m starting to meet more people, students and the sorts, so hopefully a room somewhere shouldn’t be hard to find in a month or so. Contacts here are everything

But don’t get me wrong. I’m really fond of my babushka. In one of my classes today the professor explained that Russia’s real wealth is in it’s babushki. This is positively the truth.

In the same class we were discussing national mentalities about work, wages, ad age when I was singled out to explain why it is that around the world many see Americans as children all their lives. It wasn’t quite so blunt in the context of the conversation, but I was several fold taken aback. Even ignoring the loaded question I can’t get past the fallacious assumption that I can speak for a vague and externally perceived national mentality.

And so the problem of representing my country has been bugging me all day, all the more so as this week I’ve been in a number of long discussions about the United States with some of my recent foreign friends. I find myself in the precarious position of explaining my own convictions about our administration it’s foreign policy while urging my European friends to consider and reconsider the still great things about my country. Mostly everyone I meet is intelligent enough to distinguish between the decisions of a government and its people, and some are even perceptive enough to recognize that a population’s votes are not necessarily wholesale sanction of it’s representatives’ actions, particularly when those representatives have clearly terrified and deceived their electorate. But while it’s reassuring that anti-war Swedes, Belgians, and Germans do not, in fact, hate or impugn Americans, it’s distressing to be on the defensive all the time, forever coaxing qualifications to those initial reactions to my citizenship.  All the more so, when  those reactions are tinted by  this “childishness.”

But I’d say we have to in part blame ourselves for this sticky situation, and I’m not here talking so much about Iraq or US politics as about my teacher’s awkward question. That is, there really is a certain childish attitude about most of us abroad. I think a great deal of this has to with the global accessibility availed to native speakers of English. It’s also related to the economic and political power of our country. We’re used to ease and respect everywhere we go and I think we project those expectations on the countries we visit. When our expectations are disappointed, don’t we sometimes throw tantrums? This is by no means entirely unique to the United States, it’s just more, especially by comparison with Europe (and elsewhere, sorry to be so Eurocentric here, but pretty much everyone I know here is from around Europe, with the exception of a couple Japanese students) where learning at least several other languages is considered essential. You know, all that stuff about polyglossia in inverse relationship with the prestige of one’s “native” language.

Today I realized that, for one of the first times in my life I am not surrounded by my countrymen in some sphere or another. Because I enrolled in the University on my own, I’m in classes separated from the large group of American students who are studying through CIEE. Last summer I made every attempt to make Russian friends and hang out with Russians, but at the end of the day my classes were with other US students and I had a comfy American program to cushion me, in a small way, from the expatriot experience (not that I know what that is). The distance is quite refreshing, though. It’s perspective on both the truly optimistic and truly depressing elements of my country. As nice as those other students are, they do seem, as I must have seemed last year, like a bunch of children on holiday.

Not that this is any kind of new insight. I don’t remember exactly, but I think grand old de Tocqueville talks about this some where.

Related to all of this, I’m fascinated by my bi, tri and sometimes quadra-lingual friends. Or maybe I’m just jealous, I don’t know. At any rate, I’m quite sure that I’ll be learning more languages in my life. In the last couple days I’ve been around a handful of Belgians including two who are originally from Bulgaria, and one who speaks no Russian. The conversation slides around between Dutch, English, Bulgarian, and Russian. It’s touching, to me, when in my company they have a long conversation among themselves, regarding Belgian matters, but speaking in English as a clear gesture of inclusion to me.

In other news, I’m still pretty much out of the news loop. Which is a shame, because there’s a lot happening, or so I hear. But I can’t throw a stone without hearing about Putin, the recent dismemberment of the Cabinet, and expectations for the upcoming elections. Everybody is comparing it to Yeltsin’s appointment of Putin in 99 and, of course, they’re speculating on Putin’s future role in Russian politics. In the Russian system there is no limit to the total number of terms, just to consecutive terms and so people are saying that his return to the presidency inevitable, although anything can happen. It’s all very interesting, and I wish I was informed enough to speak more about it here, also this will be pretty much old news by the time I get around to posting.

Anyways, enough with the rambling talk, it’s time to sleep.

Tomorrow I’m making a concerted effort to stay out till the first Metro, if only to avoid another late night across the bridges.