Educational Institutions

I thought today I might write about the St. Petersburg State University, but today was also the beginning of the New York Institute, and that was certainly worth mentioning too. Let's see if both of them together make a coherent post.

Russian universities don't work quite like American universities. St. Petersburg State University (henceforth SPBGU) is probably monstrous by American standards; I can't tell, because the buildings are spread out across the city. Really, I've seen them all over the place. Instead of enrolling in the whole university, students enroll in one faculty--which is kind of like one department, but might be closer to one school. Our program, for instance, is through the philological faculty, which has its own departments for each language. And there are so many of them! I don't know if there's anything comparable in the US--I've seen French and Spanish and German and English, of course, but also Hungarian and Magyar and Turkish and Irish and I don't even know what else (sometimes literally--I don't always recognize the language names in Russian). They have a Canadian studies department.

All of this is housed in a big square building around a central courtyard. The building is probably close to as old as the city--you know, 300 years--and it shows. There are cracks in the walls and the floors are uneven and the steps are worn down and the corridors are narrow and the floor plan makes no sense at all. There are some long, straight corridors, but most of the time they tend to switch between sides of the building, the rooms aren't in any kind of uniform sizes, the floors are all done in different materials, and sometimes you have to go up stairs and then down stairs to get to places on the same level. No sense at all. Plus, that's not counting the labyrinth (where we have our classes) and the catacombs (not actually catacombs, but I'm not kidding about the name; it may house a library), which are both partially underground. The general shoddiness of the place bothered me a little at first, but I like: it has more character than any other building I've ever been in.

I've heard rumors that there are dormitories, but I don't know where they are.

So, that was that. Now, the New York Institute:

The New York Institute is about five years old, apparently, and it involves Stony Brook University bringing some professors from New York and some students from everywhere to St. Petersburg for about three weeks of seminars (and, in some cases, language classes). Since our program already occupies most of our time, we only attend one seminar MWF. Fortunately (since these seminars start at 4:00, after our normal days), the seminars are in English. I'm taking one on syntactical problems specific to Russian, because the professor was obviously very good, and because I really do love linguistics. You already knew that, though.

In that class, we had a bunch of Americans from the program (say, ten of us), a few Americans from Stony Brook (maybe half a dozen of them, with about two years of Russian between them), about ten Russians (from SPB, Moscow, and as far as three days' train ride away), six Croatians, a German, a Dane, and possibly some small change.

Speaking of small change, I found a one kopeck piece today. It is the least valuable piece of currency I've ever held.

Anyway, after the seminar, there was sort of an, I don't know, opening social. About half an hour into this some people came out into the courtyard and started singing Russian folk songs. And, after they finished some of that, they started recruiting us for what could probably be called Russian square dancing.

I'm not sure precisely who my audience is, but my suspicion is that every single one of you would have found this hilarious. Unfortunately, it's unlikely that any of us will ever see the hard evidence.

What else? There was more socialization. I got to see a direct Russian translation of the grungy-smoking-rebellious college-age daughter, who was telling us (literally) that she wasn't afraid to swear and holding forth on how Russia is no better than a prostitute if she sells her resources for money. (There ought to be a shorter way to express her stereotype, but I'm not sure what it is). I also talked for a while with some people about the differences in Russian and American politics, culture, stereotypes--topics along those lines. Plus miscellaneous introductions.

I'm going to go ahead and admit that pretty much all of this was in English. Pretty much everyone at the NYI speaks English better than I speak Russian, and they're all very excited to hear native speakers. Also, I love languages, but I like people better.

Ok. I think that's all for now.

Oh, and my host mom has started buying milk in 1.5- instead of 1-liter cartons.

That's all.