Culture Shock

Life in Siberia is like a Mario Kart race. When I arrived, I was a little nervous, but things got started off perfectly. I hit the accelarator at just the right second, and was quickly out in front. I can usually handle all of the curves that life here throws at me, and oftentimes, afterwards I enjoy the difficulties, just like you can get a speedboost on turns in Mario Kart. But there are still those completely random, unavoidable moments, when a blue shell comes from no where and stops me dead in my tracks. Blue shells can come from anywhere, even places that I've been to many times, but for some reason, this time that item box turned up blue. Other days it's just lonely as hell out here. It was definitely worse in the dead of winter. But the great melt has some unintended consequences. For example, I'm not sure if it's expanding metal or trees, but fairly loud explosiony sounds are becoming a daily occurrence. This can be fairly unsettling. Also, now that it isn't so cold, more and more of the people that I should avoid at all costs are on the street, in between me and the university. Paranoid? Maybe. But a tourist did get beaten nearly to death, you guessed it, where I walk everyday to get to and from the university. Exploding sounds in such environs does tend to stress me out a little, especially if I have my computer or other valuables with me.

The melt also can be fairly funny. Each day, a little more of a beer bottle that has been trapped in the cement-hard ice/snow mixture that has covered the ground since December is revealed. Although they're dangerous, the icicles falling from the tops of buildings onto walkways are comical, at least to me. Ancient vomit piles are revealed, and new ones are created at an increasing rate.

But this year isn't just about the cold and darkness. It's about transitioning from being surrounded by friends at all times to being alone in Siberia for an entire year. It's almost like exile, but I chose it. And fortunately, I don't have to do hard labor. My circumstances are, at an entirely superficial level, similar to the tsarist political exiles sent to populate Siberia. And more than anything, it's completely awesome.

I still sometimes feel like I'm in a dream. The other day I was sitting and eating lunch, and for some reason I began to think about the LDC. There is absolutely no similarity between my lunches here and the lunches I ate at Carleton, except for the tray. No fountain drinks. No different stations. No different kinds of bread. I had a drink that consisted of crushed Siberian berries and honey, a salad (there is no lettuce here, btw), and a pastry stuffed with meat. And of course, I rarely know anyone as I gave around the cafeteria. This is my lunch here. But I never feel culture shock because of lunch.

I met an American woman a few days ago. She is actually helping to organize a school to train tour-guides methodically. Her focus is mainly ecotourism. I got to speak with her a little bit. I hadn't talked face to face with an American in two months. I was depressed and lonely for the rest of the day. I wanted to go home.

Maybe culture shock happens when you find unexpectedly find familiar things in unfamiliar places. In Russia, that happens all too often. This is actually much better expressed in Russian. In Russian, things are divided in svoi and chuzhoi. Svoi is yours, chuzhoi is the opposite. But even though the mix of the two can make me feel culture shock, it also makes for some of my best moments here.

The sky is the most familiar thing here. I look up at night and see Orien. In the day, the sky is blue and there are clouds. But the weather here is different. It changes faster than you can imagine. One moment, there's not a cloud in the sky, the next it's snowing. This happened today as I was walking home. I walked outside and it was sunny, but snowing heavily. There were clouds near where the sun was setting over the mountains. Everything was orange and red and snowy. It looked like a filter on a camera for a Eurotrash action film. It was unbelievable. There are moments when you feel far away and its frightening, and moments when you feel far away and it's entirely liberating.

There are so many familiar feelings as spring arrives. The temperature, the birds beginning to sing, the wind begins to blow, the mud everywhere. But it's the lack of Easter, Rottblatt, Spring Concert, and general mayhem that will make this spring difficult. On the other hand, I have several upcoming trips that I can't wait for that have nothing to do with what spring meant to me for the last several years. I get to go ice fishing on Baikal. I get to go mountain climbing. And the Carleton study abroad group will even be arriving in a few months. So maybe culture shock is just struggling to move forward in life. I want to go back to the institutionalized days of assignments and weekends, but I'm stuck in this world of undefined deadlines and responsibilities. So what can I do? Well, for now, I just wait for my kart to stop smoking and get back into the lead to wait for the next blue shell. Because as far as I can tell, life is still stuck in Mario Kart 64, you can't do this. And while this race might end in a mere three months, the next one begins immediately after this.