Mister Yakutia

Thursday night, the Austrian girls and I were given free tickets to go see the annual "Mister Yakutia" competition, in which 24 of the most beautiful male Yakutians are brought together to demonstrate their talent and beauty. It was surprisingly entertaining.

The show began with the men being paraded onto stage, shirtless with traditional Sakha peasant (slave?) pants, following a man dressed as a wealthy toyon, or Sakha noble man, drums beating in the background. They performed a short dance/ceremony for us and then each came forward and introduced himself in his language of choice--about half spoke Russian, half Sakha. Most were university students, between the ages of 18 and 24 and many did not necessarily fit what you might imagine as the stereotypical beauty contestant participant. Some were tall and thin, others short and hefty, some super fit, others a little pudgy. There were stern, stoic faces and big, silly smiles. Most were Sakha ethnicity, but there were a few Russians in there as well.

After introducing themselves, they left the stage to change clothes and we were shown film clips from the previous days' sports competitions--almost all traditional Sakha sports like wrestling, pulling a stick (two contestants sit opposite one another, holding a horizontal wooden stick and try to pull it from the other's hands), long jumping and then, hopping on one foot.

When they came back on they were dressed as soldiers in the army, marched around the stage in a few formations and then one by one came forward and showed a little dance/kung-fu like move. Some were quited talented break dancers, others just did something silly. The best thing about the evening was that they all seemed to be taking the contest light-heartedly and even making fun of themselves a bit. The next number was a costume show--they each picked some kind of costume that showed off their style and sense of self. A couple dressed as traditional Sakha warriors, others dressed in sillier outfits--like a pirate, a sad clown, a doctor, a snowboarder, etc.

Finally, the "jury" left the hall to discuss the final results of the evening. We were kept waiting an hour or more and with the anticipation building, they came back in to announce the winners. First, each of the jury members chose one man as their choice--kind of as a runner up prize. Then, the top 3 were announced. The winner ended up being a young man from one of the provinces of the Republic who studied in the institute of physical education. He was given a hunting rifle as a prize (almost all the men in Yakutia are active hunters) and the opportunity to go to Moscow to compete in the Mister Russia contest.

All in all, the whole evening was surprisingly relaxed and fun, everyone enjoying the silliness of the beauty contest. Some of the men had their support groups in the audience cheering for them, but everyone was just up there having fun.

Men's Day (or Susan becomes a celebrity)

In Russia, the 23rd of February is men's day. Well, officially, it's "the day of the defenders of the fatherland" (den' zashchitnikov otechestva), but since most men serve in the army, it has become kind of the analog of March 8th (International Women's Day--international in the sense that all the former communist countries celebrate it). Anyway, they have big celebrations all over the country in honor of all the men, whether or not they served in the army. On a frozen lake, near where I live, they had music and other kinds of performances all day long, people gather together with friends and family, women buy their fathers, brothers, sons and husbands/boyfriends small gifts, and, in the evening, young people go out to the clubs, where a whole set of events are staged in honor of men.


My friend, Masha, is a kind of event coordinator in the city, so I had the opportunity to go club-hopping with her as she went around to different places to MC the festivities. First, we went to a restaurant where a group of doctors/medical students had a party. Masha had men volunteer to take part in various games--for instance, who can braid a girl's hair the fastest, who can blow up a balloon until it pops the fastest, who can tie up a girl the fastest so that she can't get out, etc. After a number of these games, she tells them she has a present for all the men. An American young lady has come all this way to congratulate them, and not just in Russian but in Sakha language! And she calls me up on the stage, insisting that I say a few words in Sakha--which for me is still quite difficult. I was mortified as I stumbled through a greeting. and she kindly apologized saying that I was shy... And then, later, after the final game, the prize turned out to be a dance with this same American girl...

A word of explanation: Americans very rarely end up in this part of the world and so I end up as a kind of celebrity at times. America, by virtue of its endless outpouring of hollywood movies, appears as the center of the world, a land of milk and honey where everyone is beautiful and everyone eats in restaurants all the time. So, to simply be from this world is something fascinating for people here. And then, that I can speak Russian and a little Sakha language on top of that gives me far more social capital than I deserve.

Anyway, the night went on and we ended up at a club called "Sporthouse" where further men's day events were being staged--here this included a belly dancer to entertain the fellows. and of course another greeting from the American guest. Fortunately by this time, I had figured out what I was going to say and so no longer looked like a complete fool. Sporthouse is one of the more popular clubs in Yakutsk (although the most popular is without a doubt "Dragon"--a 3-story European style club that has different kinds of techno music on different nights-drum and base, house, etc.). Sport house is two stories--the first floor being the discotec and the second floor for billiards. (I was surprised to find out that Russian billiards is actually played quite differently than in the States--there are no colors and no stripes, any ball can be hit into any other ball. Just one ball is orangey-yellow and is worth more points than the others if you can manage to hit it into the pocket.) After the main festivities, we were introduced to the owner of the establishment who turned out to be overjoyed at the presence of foriegners in his club (at this point some girls from Austria that I knew from the dormitory had met up with us as well--America is not the only place with prestige). We were showered with free drinks and invited to sit and eat various Siberian delicacies with them while we were there. In addition, the idea was proposed that we be given free passes to Sporthouse in order that our presence would somehow give the place greater prestige.


We finally extricated ourselves from our host's hospitality around 2:30 am and headed home. No limousines showed up, but anyway, such was our night of celebrity...

Lost in Translation

An embarassing, but yet funny enough story that it must be shared...

Since I arrived here, I have been plagued by static electricity--wearing heavy winter clothes all the time in a rather dry climate creates a lot of it. As such, every time I take off my hat, half of my hair stands up on end. So, since I've arrived I've been thinking of trying to find some kind of hair product that would help with that--in particular mousse, I thought, would be just the thing. Of course, how to say "mousse" in Russian--I hadn't yet figured out. Well, the other day, as I was taking a shower, I noticed that one of the other girls who uses the same shower had a bottle of something called, in Russian, "moos." and then something about hair, but I didn't look too closely or pay too much attention, assuming it must what I was looking for.

Well, a bit later, again frustrated by my hair, I decided she wouldn't mind if I took just a touch of it. I sprayed it onto my hand, and indeed it looked like mousse, so I put a bit in my hair to just flatten it down. The first thing I noticed was that it smelled absolutely terrible. Thinking, what kind of strange Russian mousse is this, I tried to pull a brush through my hair so that it spread through a bit more. But I couldn't even pull the brush through my hair--it seemed to have become completely like straw. Still not thinking it might not actually be mousse (I never use hair products at home, so I'm not used to what the results ought to be), I washed it out of my hair--I had to wash it three times and my hair still smelled a little.

Next, when I was brushing my hair, I noticed that my lap became covered with small pieces of hair--I thought, that's odd but was in a hurry by this time and didn't really pay attention. Later that evening, I was telling the girl who's bottle it was about her strange mousse--she looks at me with this pained expression on her face. "You put that in your hair?" she says, "Susan, that's not mousse..." It turns out that rather than mousse, it was "moos dlya ydaleniya volosi"--meaning, cream for getting rid of hair--that is, the stuff like Nair, that you put on your legs to dissolve your leg hair instead of shaving. So, not only was it not helping my hair to lay flat, it was actually dissolving it!

Fortunately, I didn't use very much, so it could have been far far worse. As it is, I'm still brushing small pieces of hair out whenver I brush my hair and, if you look closely you can see that I've got quite a lot more shorter hairs, flyaways, but it's not really noticeable to anyone but me. Of course, the static has actually gotten worse because of the top layer of short hairs that all stand up straight when I pull off my hat. But, they will grow long again and I've at least got a funny story to tell...

At the Market

Last Sunday I went shopping--which always seems to be an adventure here. I was trying to act as the tourguide this time, however, as 3 Austrian girls had just arrived in Yakutsk and didn't know their way around. Of course, despite having spent a considerable amount of time in the city, I managed to put us on 3 wrong buses before we got on the right one and found our way to the market we wanted to go to, that is "krestyanskii rynok" or "peasant market". I wanted to go here in particular because it's one of the larger markets and has a wide variety of both food and other products. Half of the market is outside, while half of it is in a large 2-story building. The cheaper products are, naturally, all outside, while the more expensive things are inside.

Sunday, of course, happened to be one of the coldest days yet since I've been here--well below -40 degrees, a fact discernable by the thickness of the fog the enshrouds the city. Below -35 or so there is a thin fog and it gets thicker the colder it gets. So, Sunday we could hardly see 5 feet in front of us, meaning that it was likely around -47,-48, which partly accounted for my inability to actually get us to the market. Despite the cold temperatures, all the outdoor merchants had their little shops set up. No one, however, was there shopping. Perhaps out of boredom or perhaps to keep themselves active, they all decided to harass the foriegners--as we obviously were. So, before we even got to the indoor 2-story building, we had to pass through the gauntlet of outdoor merchants standing in front of piles of frozen rabbits, squirrels, fish and moose meat. They had no problem grabbing our arms to lead us to their stands. Initially, the interest was in getting us to buy products from them, but soon they stopped caring about that altogether and poured an onslaught of questions--where are you from? why are you here? what do you think of yakutia? aren't you cold? how old are you? what is your name? I have a cousin in America! Do you know Brittany Spears? And one man, who was very proud of his limited English speaking ability, decided to demostrate with repeated declarations of "I love you baby," accompanied by attempts to hug and kiss me. It gets to feeling a little like being an animal in a zoo sometimes.

Having frozen ourselves fending off the outdoor vendors, we made our way inside the two story, brick building. On the first floor is where they sell fruits and vegetables (during the summer this is all outside as well, but understandably can't be in the winter). These are all in one large room. There are about 4 or five kiosks there, selling potatoes, onions, carrots, cabbages and even oranges, grapes, apples, tomatoes and bananas. The latter group are extremely expensive, however, (grapes were $6 a kilogram) and not the best quality. So I find it best to stick with the root veggies. All of the vendors sell precisely the same products for precisely the same prices--I can't for the life of me decide how people decide who to buy from because I simply don't see a difference in quality, price, or selection. I choose randomly typically.

Passing through the fruit and veggie room, you get to a corrider that winds around a large staircase. The corrider is lined with various shops selling assorted products like toiletries or movies or simply socks or handbags. On the second floor of the market is a much larger room where meat and dairy products are. Again individual vendors sell much the same products, lined up one after another in front of little refrigerators showing their butter, cheese, ground beef, large chunks of beef, horse, etc. and even intenstines, tounges and heads of various animals. They call out as you walk past "what are you looking for?" "here, take some cow toungue--the highest quality! I'll give you a discount, special for our visitors (priezhie)."

Also on this floor are small stores similar to those that are everywhere in the city that sell a wide range of groceries. Like in other stores as well, all the products are displayed behind the counter and you have to ask the cashier to grab things for you. However, shopping in the market is generally much more pleasant than elsewhere as you can wander around and look at what all the different vendors are selling and think about what it is that you want to buy. Some will even barter with you a bit if you push them to--"those are so expensive, you can't give me a discount?" Although, bartering culture is not super highly developed here as in other places I've been--the posted price is generally a fair price, so that you're not expected to haggle and if business is good, the vendors won't go any lower. I often give it a try, because things are not cheap here--I think because of the cost of importing things, oftentimes some products are even more expensive than they would be in the US.

Valentine's Day in Siberia

Today is Valentine's Day and, indeed, the people of Yakutsk have embraced this holiday and all the Hallmark traditions. Young children give me small cards with short messages like "we go better together" and recieve heaps from their friends at school. Teenagers and young adult couples go out to restaurants or to the movies. Even the old ladies greet you with "happy valentine's day!"

Today, I visited a grade school (the city lyceum), where they were having a giant valentine's day celebration. As I walked into the main hall, it seemed the whole school was gathered in front of the stairs, while two girls, wearing red heart pins to hold up their pig tales spoke into microphones, music playing in the background--announcing the results of some kind of contest. Once I got through the crowd, I was greeted by the teacher who had invited me there and she led me to her class where Russian children were learning Yakut language. Today was to be the day that the students recited poems in Yakut language for the teachers and me (as the distinguished guest from America). So I sat and watched as student after student got up and recited a few lines.

People here love contests. At school, the students not only compete for grades, but often are competing for awards. The awards include "best reader of poems in the 5th grade", and other types of honors. As an oddity, I am often invited to come watch or sometimes even to participate as part of the "jury"--which is always an odd place to be. I always thought that our culture is very competitive, caught up with ranking people, etc. and I always had difficulties grading students papers for that reason. But, here, I am asked to rank students constantly and I'm not even their teacher. I want to simply say, you all did a great job and leave it at that but I am often pressed to say who is the best out of all the students. I think that these kind of awards and rankings are in a way more meaningful for people than are grades. But yet, at the same time, they don't take them as seriously as I sometimes think people do in the states, i.e. getting a low rank doesn't seem to bother them. But then again, perhaps I am projecting my own complexes onto all American people =)

Food

One thing I certainly miss most when I'm here is the foods that I'm used to back home. Some of you might remember my stories of various parts of cows and horses and moose being served to me. Those are actually delicacies here and people rarely eat them on a day-to-day basis. Most days its just soup, pasta, rice, chunks of canned beef or chicken legs sent from the US. The chicken legs they call "Bush's legs" because they were first sent during Bush senior's presidency. They sell fresh vegetables in the wintertime, but they're expensive and they're very watery. The best veggies to eat are cabbage, beets, carrots, potatoes and onions. Everything else, you might as well not buy.

Living by myself now, rather than with a family, I have to cook for myself--which, honestly is quite a chore. I love to cook in the states, but here, finding any ingredients that I know how to cook with is difficult. And furthermore, you don't get much time to think when you go the stores. They are not like supermarkets in the US. You're typical "grocery store" is quite small and everything is kept behind the counter. You have to think before you go in what you want to buy and ask one of the cashiers to grab it for you. Almost without fail I forget something in the process. You don't really get a choice of brand either. And you don't necessarily know what they have and don't have. More often than not, all the stores will be out of bread or some other really common staple--you'd think it was still the Soviet Union.

But things are changing here. There are one or two bigger stores that let you wander around, but the constant police presence is slightly menacing and furthermore, there's not much greater of a selection. Things there are more expensive anyway. The most pleasant place to shop is the outdoor markets, where local farmers come to sell their wares, or "entrepreneurs" set up stands to sell things they import from China or elsewhere. Even in -40 degree weather the market is open and the sellers are there. Although fewer farmers and more hunters, with frozen fish, rabbits and squirrel beseech you to buy from them.

Arrival

I have now been in Yakutsk since Thursday (it is Monday now), after 3 full days of traveling, from Washington, DC to Atlanta to Moscow and then to Yakutsk. I unfortunately spent the weekend in bed due to an illness that was aggravated by the long trip, but am up and moving around now and feeling quite good in fact. I've moved into the dormitory here, where I'm happy to say, I should be able to access the internet as soon as I have it set up. There are only two other international students there at the moment, two Koreans who unfortunately do not speak much English or Russian so it is difficult to communicate with them. But they say another group of 5 Koreans should be arriving soon, two Austrians and and Polish guy. So, it should be relatively lively place shortly.

A few words about the city. It is quite similar to the first time I came here, almost 3 years ago now. It has not been a severe winter for people here--in fact, people say it has hardly dropped below -40 and it is around -30 now. While that may sound to most of, if you have spent time in conditions such as this there is quite a difference between -40 and -30. If you can imagine, -30 is tolerable, people have no problems going about their daily business. When temperatures drop below -50, however, the whole city just about shuts down--it is almost impossible to do anything out of doors.

But, enough talk of cold. The city is quite beautiful right now. When I arrived, a quite dreary fog sat on the city so that the sun was hardly even visible, just a glowing patch in the foggy sky, but on Sunday, the fog lifted and it even got a little warmer so that I was able to go for a walk. When the sun shines it is amazing. It glints off the trees, which are all white, caked in snow and bend over the walkways, themselves covered in snow, making it seem truly like a winter wonderland. The people who live here all dress in fur, which further contributes to this wonderland like feeling. The women look like princesses in the long coats and felt boots, ornately decorated with beads. The men don't look like princes, but are impressive nonetheless with their oh-so-stereotypical Russian hats--you know the ones that have the long ear flaps that can be tied on top? and they rarely let those flaps down--I wonder their ears don't fall off.

I hope this finds all of you well. I will write more soon.

Susan