Mamayev Kurgan

Mamayev Kurgan/Mamayav Hill is the highest point(which isn't very high) overlooking the city of Volgograd, formerly known as Stalingrad. The battle of Stalingrad served as a major turning point for the allies during WWII. Many died on Mamayev Hill. A memorial complex sits on the site today. .

Cooking in the Dorm Kitchens

Remember how I mentioned that I couldn’t cook too well? Well, while staying in the dorms at Volgu I had to learn. The stolovaya (cafeteria) closed sometime in the early afternoon. So dinner was on me. I knew how to cook pasta, but I got really sick of it so I branched out. I had a few experiments such as macaroni and cheese without milk which turned into macaroni and a cheesy blob of glue, burnt chicken, rotten eggs etc. I don’t think I did too badly. The building is still standing. By the end of my stay and after numerous trial and error experiments I was able to cook chicken soup and able to extract broth from the chicken bone to do this. Thank you Volgu students and Google.

shi with Vera

Vera was an English tutor. The degree she was working toward was one in teaching. Anyway, she sometimes took me along to her lessons with her students. So I had the opportunity to meet them and their families. I told Vera I was curious about Shi, which is cabbage soup. So Vera talked to her student Yana’s mother, Sveta. We wound up making it one afternoon. Vera did all the translating, since the mother did not know English. She knew right away that I couldn’t cook either. So I learned in Russia, pretty quick. We cut up vegetables, the meat etc. An hour later it was ready. Vera also wrote down the recipe for me, I still have it somewhere.

I will update this entry with the recipe once i find it.

The Ones Who Stay Friends

This blog may come off as a bit controversial, and some may disagree, but the reality is when you go abroad you will end up facing language barriers. No matter how much of a language you have studied in the classroom it will happen. Unless you grew up speaking it or have been learning for years and years, it will happen. It happened to me a lot with my roommates, with professors, and the locals. You still have the potential to become friends with these people, but from my experience I have found that the lasting friendships are the ones with whom you can actually communicate with to me, this meant stringing more than just a sentence or two together. It is stressful when you can only communicate a sentence or two at a time with a dictionary.


For me, my closest friends wound up being the ones who spoke English. In reality that’s how it goes, if you cannot communicate by language, it is much harder to form a solid bond with someone, because you can’t really learn their likes, dislikes interests, etc. While it is possible to form friendships with those that you experience a severe language barrier with, it is not the easiest thing, it takes a great deal more patience, so the majority of my closest friends spoke a decent amount of English.

On the flipside, those that I faced the language barriers with also taught me the most in the way of new words. Those that knew English wanted to speak English with me,which was sometimes frustrating when I was trying to learn Russian. So, those that I faced the language barriers with were some of the better teachers because I had to learn Russian to communicate with them.

I did have one good friend, Elena, who was born in Siberia. She was teaching herself English, and she was pretty good at it. I helped her with English, and in turn she helped me with my Russian. I think I learned the most from her. And as a result of learning languages together we became friends that way, and we still talk. I will try to send her something in Russian and she corrects it, while she sends me something in English to correct.

My friend, Elena

Vera's Roomates

I met Vera’s roommates who also spoke English. Both of their names were Maria. Now keep in mind, that Russians have about 10 names in their vocabulary, so you will meet about 50 people with the same first name. So I called one roommate Masha, which is a nickname for Maria sort of like Patty or Trisha for Patricia. Maria, the other one, was from Azerbaijan and knew how to speak three or four other languages. I had tea with them all. Over the course of the semester, the girls took me all over the place. I got to see a dance festival with people from all over the caucus regions performing native dances; Maria performed one of her own. It was fascinating; there was even a dancer from as far away as India. I think she was an exchange student as well. We went shopping, went to the movies and just hung out and had tea. These three were definitely my closest friends during my stay, especially Vera.

Vera

It was around the first week in October when I met Vera. I’d come back from morning classes and was taking a nap when a knock on the door woke me up… I wasn’t too happy. I answered the door in my paint covered, two sizes too large green t-shirt, blue pants and barefoot, not to mention my hair was a mess. I must’ve been a sight. Anyway, there she was. She introduced herself, handed me an index card with her phone number and room number on it. I think she understood that I was a little confused. She told me that a professor in the international department had mentioned that I was all alone here, meaning I was the only female among three other guys in my group, and the professor thought I could use a friend. She told me if there was anything I needed to call her or stop by. A few days later I did that. She seemed like a nice person and my gut instinct was correct, she became one of my closest friends.

classes

At Volgu, all classes were in one building. This was quite a change from Mansfield, which has several classroom buildings. There were 4-5 floors in the building, which had classrooms, the stolovaya (cafeteria), library, computer labs, little food shops, and an ATM machine.
There were no elevators and the bathrooms had no soap or toilet paper. I learned quickly to bring tissues and hand sanitizer with me to class every day, or just “hold it” until I got back to the dormitory.
Anyway, Cody Ryan and I had all the same classes. We had 1-2 per day and they were about 90-minutes long. We had some classes with students from Kent State University in Ohio and a couple of girls from Belgium. The majority of our classes were in English, with the exception of phonetics, in which I was completely lost in from day one. This was my least favorite course.
We also took two Language courses, I felt like I was in high school Spanish class all over again, where it took me 2-3 hours a night to study vocabulary, and to this day I do not understand verb conjugations, in any language.
We had a political science course with Professor whose nickname was Misha. I thought that he was British when we first met, because he had a flawless accent. It wasn’t until after I learned his name that I figured out that he wasn’t. Great guy, with a Monty python- esque sense of humor. This was my favorite class.
We also took classes in history multi-cultural literature and geography. Our course load totaled about six or seven classes. The credits actually transferred back to Mansfield, and we got to choose the equivalents to MU classes. I already had my language requirements met before I went over, but as a result of going to Russia, I have double the credits for it. If I would have known that I’d be doing this back in high school, I would have saved myself the misery of taking an AP Spanish class.

main campus building from my dorm room window.