The Social Side

Well, there is certainly a lot to tell, but as I said I will be writing in shorter installments to try to keep posts more frequent and less dry.  As you already know, my first three weeks were fairly congested with work-related activities.  However, recently I have been getting out a lot more and now have a few solid friends here in Kazan (some of them are even Russian!).  Another Fulbright fellow who is doing research here and has lived in Kazan before has been a great help to me since he speaks Russian very well and has been helping me with my language progression.  He also has good Russian friends that he has introduced to me and this past week has been great fun.  Just last night one of his friends, Ramil, came over to celebrate getting his passport.  In Russia, citizens have two "passports" - their domestic ID cards and their international passports.  You must apply for an international passport, as if to be allowed to travel abroad, and Ramil was granted his international passport yesterday.  So I brought some food and he brought some vodka and we went to Tom's apartment to celebrate this momentous occasion!  I have also started a language exchange with another person I met last week.  Oddly enough she wants to learn spanish (as well as practice her english) and she will help me with Russian.  So we will be meeting up when we have free time to work on languages.  Thus far I have been really surprised at how useful my Spanish is in Russia!  Aside from my first friends here being from Columbia and running into someone who wants to learn spanish, it is an extremely rare language in these parts.  Like in the States you can usually assume in a public situation there is someone around who can understand a little bit (or more) of spanish, it is that way here with english and german, but virtually no one understands spanish.  Thus, I have found it ultimately useful to express myself in certain situations where I am jostled on the street or someone shoves past me forcefully on the bus and I can say things i am sure they will not understand but will make me feel better.  They usually look at me weirdly, but I am a foreigner so they do this anyway!  That being said, I really have had little need for this sort of use of Spanish, I have just found it quite entertaining.  Generally, the people here have been wonderful and helpful.  Tonight I will be leaving for Moscow, where i will spend one week.  One half of this week is devoted to Fulbright in-country orientation and meetings, the other half will be purely tourist exploration, so look for pictures of that in the coming weeks.  I have some updates pertaining to my teaching schedule, but this will be continued another time.  Take care!! -G