The train: I was very fortunate in train companions on my way to Izhevsk. The woman with the bed above me and I chatted for a long time. She’s from Udmurtia, heading home for the holidays, and used to teach English where Hannah’s teaching right now. People who speak English that well will very rarely let me practice my Russian, but she was very nice about it, helping me out when I couldn’t say something in Russian but not switching the whole conversation over to English. In the morning I became acquainted with some of the school children in our wagon. They’d been on a group trip to Moscow, for many their first time to the city, and had lots of questions for me. They offered me chocolates that I tried to refuse because I saw that it was their holiday candy, but the teacher explained that it would mean more to them to give me candy than it would to just eat it themselves. She kept asking them if they knew what they were going to say about the trip when they got off the train and she wouldn’t let any of them say the same thing. I didn’t understand until we got off the train and there was a whole camera crew filming them for the evening news.

The rest of the day: lots of parties. After I showered (finally!) we went to the university for a party with Hannah’s coworkers. It was mostly a New Year’s party (I’ve mentioned it before and probably will again: New Year’s is the biggest holiday of the year) with lots of skits and games and predictions for the coming months, but it was also a very belated birthday party for one of the teachers, a driver’s license party for another teacher, and a Christmas Eve party for Hannah, Meredith (scholar in Izhevsk for the semester; I’ve mentioned her before), and I, the crazy Americans who celebrate our religious holidays on the same calendar system we celebrate our non-religious ones (the Russian Orthodox are still on the old system). We left stuffed full of salads and cakes and cookies we couldn’t turn down without offending someone and headed immediately to The American Center, another part of the university, for another party. At this one Hannah and I were the guests of honor. It felt almost like we were panelists. A selection of very bright students were there to ask us questions about how we celebrated Christmas, and especially Christmas Eve, at home. The director of the center had brought more goodies that of course we had to eat, so we left feeling even more over-full. In the evening there was yet another party, this one in the dorm where Hannah lives. For the Venezuelans and Germans, Christmas Eve is the day for celebration and Christmas is the day for relaxing with your family, so there was a feast that Hannah and I could hardly bear to look at. We didn’t stay that long before retiring to her room for some digesting.

A little sign of the crisis: One student who was at the American Center does translation work at a factory in Izhevsk and had to leave our party early to get to her factory’s holiday party. This year, instead of holding it in a restaurant, they were holding it in the company library.

Photos