December 13th- The End

The frozen River Voronezh at sunset on the Last Day.

Well, dear readers, my time has come to a close here in Russia. It’s been a hectic last few weeks here, so forgive me the lack of posts this month. I just got my hair cut, I’m starting to get packed, our exams are over, grades are in, and it’s finally starting to hit me that my time in this city, so dear to my heart, is coming to an end. The next 24 hours here are going be filled with heartrending goodbyes, tears, and friends parting for the last time. I am not looking forward to it. Every time I walk around the city, I see and hear the echoes of the memories that I’ve filled this town with. Each park has a story, each building, store and shop a special place in my heart. It will be a hard goodbye. Probably the hardest I’ve ever had in my life. There’s no, “See you next year!” For most of us, this is it.

But enough of being sentimental. I’m in a brooding mood, but I’m sure no one wants to hear my ramblings about how sad I am to leave the place of so much past happiness. So, I suppose I should focus this last post (indeed, this will be the last) on something of a reflection on what I’ve learned and experienced while I’ve been here. A kind of summary if you will. Geographically, I’ve canvassed Russia pretty well. In the north, I’ve been 50 miles from the border of Finland in St. Petersburg. In the south, we were 5 km from the Georgian border on Mt. Elbrus. We made it the vast distance to Irkutsk in the east, farther from Moscow than San Francisco is from Washington DC. Finally, in the west, is Voronezh. We are actually really close to Ukraine here, and on the trip south to the Kafkaz, part of the railroad is half on Russian soil, half on Ukrainian soil. That’s about as far west as you can go I’d say… But I feel that the geographical aspect of this trip serves best as a metaphor for the width and breadth of experiences that I’ve accrued. Many of these experiences are ensconced in this fairly comprehensive blog, but there are always the little happenings that seem unworthy of a mention here that may have had a large effect on my life/outlook/etc. Sometimes you can’t see the forest for the trees, I suppose.

Ok, in keeping with the disjointed nature of this post, I’m now on the plane home (home used in a broad sense), somewhere over Greenland, and I figured I should make some more headway on this reflection. The good bye was brutal, but we had a great turn out. All the Russian Cadets where there, all of our guys had at least one girl there to see them off, I had my Amy, and there was even a holy fool there, replete with bare feet in the snow begging for alms. So very Russian. It was a tearful goodbye, and the last day was pretty terrible as well. The night before, like something out of a fairy tale, the Voronezh River had frozen solid. In one night. For all I know, this could be normal, but the St. Johns River isn’t really known for its ice fishing prospects, so forgive my lack of experience in these matters. Either way, it provided an incredible backdrop for my last walk along the river, complete with multicolored sunset straight out of Siberia. Voronezh, being keen to make my last day something special, gave me not only physical beauty but spiritual as well. Having promised Amy that we’d go see the cathedral near school one day, we finally made it, albeit only hours before I left… better late than never, I say! I was intending only to show her the beauty of the place (which is covered in gold, icons, and other Orthodox things that really do a lot for a place of worship in my opinion) but again, Voronezh had other plans. Apparently we’d accidentally chosen the candle light choral service. A bit hard to describe, but it was essentially ten Russian Orthodox priests standing in a circle in the middle of the church singing in conjunction with a women’s choir hiding in the wings some hidden corner of the church. The acoustics were superb and you really felt as if a choir of angels was responding to the chants of these priests.

Ok, so I feel like this should be my last contribution to this reflection as I am now in America, at school, and truly finished. Everyone I see here asks me, “How was your semester abroad? Did you have fun?” I find that I’m at a loss to describe it. Yes, I had fun. Yes, I learned a lot, especially Russian and about Russians. But what I truly experienced, what I truly saw, felt, and learned can’t be explained in the context of a normal conversation. Someone who has been stuck here at school for the past four months can’t possibly understand the freedom, the brilliance, the sheer vivacity of living abroad in Russia. It is beyond their mental capabilities; as it would have been beyond mine just a few months ago. Now that I’m home, it’s hard to believe that just three days ago I was walking the streets of Voronezh, enjoying the beauty and soaking up the atmosphere. But looking back, I realize that I’ve seen a lot of life these past months. I have lived, truly lived in every sense of that word, in a foreign country with a family who didn’t speak my language. So many things that go with living with freedom I did for the first time in Russia. I bought my first cell phone, bought plane and train tickets, booked hotel rooms, went camping, made reservations, cooked, made toasts, etc. (and many other things that probably shouldn’t be put on the internet). These are all things that I imagined I wouldn’t be doing for quite some time, and definitely not in Russian. Being in Russia forced me to grow up in some ways and helped me retain my youth in others. I know that for the last year and a half at West Point, I will be able to use the memories made and the life lived in Voronezh to help me through to the end.

Well, my readers, it’s time for me to go, to put an end to this blog now that my trip is at a close. I’m as sad about ending this as I was about to saying goodbye to the people and places that I’ve come to love. But time goes on and the time has come, so there’s no reason to delay. Thank you!

Best Wishes,

Christopher Hawkins

December 2nd

I’m sorry it’s been awhile since the last post, and I’m doubly sorry for the unfortunate reason that I’m even writing this. Yesterday at dinner Gina and I found out that Olga Arkeedevna, who is in the hospital for TB, has cancer. I’m not sure how bad it is, or what kind it is, but I feel like that’s really beside the point right now. Three weeks ago, her sister was in the hospital with appendicitis and the doctors discovered that she had cancer too. All in all, it’s been a tragic few weeks here. I haven’t seen Olga Arkeedevna since she left for the hospital a week ago and it’s been a tough week here, with just the guys running the show. I’ve been doing the dishes and Gina’s been doing… well, everything else, but this house definitely isn’t the same without Olga Arkeedevna. Anyways, the time I usually spend writing this blog has been taken up with talking to Gina and running errands (he still has to go to work) but I hope you’ll forgive me. Please keep the whole family in your prayers.

November 29th Thanksgiving Edition

Court Garrettson carving the Thanksgiving turkey

The "Russian Queso"

Thanksgiving 2009, Воронеж style was a great success. A huge success really. One of the Russian gals we were with was overheard exclaiming about our boys, “They cook, they dance, they’re funny, and they’re going to be officers in the military. They’re too good to be true!” And I was inclined to agree. I was truly impressed by the turnout that we managed in difficult circumstances with foreign ingredients. We had two perfectly cooked turkeys with some of the best stuffing I’ve had the pleasure of eating, delicious cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, salads, sweet carrots, sweet corn, two pumpkin pies, an apple pie, several cakes (carrot and chocolate), wine, champagne, vodka, oh and I almost forgot, these potato bread rolls that Brenden made from scratch. He worked from 3 PM to 11 PM the previous night getting ingredients and just making the dough! Court Garretson, one of our seniors, got man of the match award with making one of the turkeys, the pumpkin pies and the apple pie, slaving away in the kitchen for hours before the party started. I was charged with making an appetizer so I for some odd reason settled on queso and tortilla chips. If there was going to be anything that I couldn’t make here, it would be that… So I went into improvise mode and wandered around the grocery store trying to make the best of what they had. Instead of Velveeta cheese and salsa, I ended up with two bottles of extra hot ketchup with peppers, spreadable Russian cheese, several sprigs of green onion, a clove of garlic and four bags of tortilla chips (the surprise find of the night) and two bottles of champagne (I seem to recall that whenever we do a holiday toast at home there’s always champagne involved, so I imposed this little family tradition on all present last night). I mixed in all the “salsa” with about half the container of cheese, added in about five sprigs of green onion, chopped up, then diced the entire clove of garlic into fine pieces and mixed it all. To my everlasting shock, this random concoction turned out to be a great success and it was pretty much gone by the time the food was ready. It would have been better warm, but there was a critical lack of stove space so it was a good thing I didn’t have cheese that needed to be melted! We had a Thanksgiving champagne toast, we all made beautiful speeches and it was time for the feast. The night ended with hours of dancing and laughing and just generally having a great time. I think Brenden and Rebecca (one of our USAFA gals) were DJing (and doing a great job of it) and through a computer malfunction, my iPod was the music selection- it did me proud (from hip-hop and Russian dance music to country slow dance songs and relaxing ‘70s classics, there was everything- we had people waltzing and fox-trotting on the floor at one point). Luckily for me, that meant I had home field advantage on the dance floor because there isn’t a song on there that I wasn’t familiar with. It was a wild and crazy night! To be sure, I would have loved to have been with my family on this Thanksgiving, the first I’ve ever spent away from home, but I had the next best thing: a wonderful Thanksgiving with incredible friends. People I never knew existed three months ago and will likely never see again after I leave here, but who will forever have a place in my memory as people whose combined individuality, whose strengths and faults, whose sense of humors and quirks have helped to make this the best three months of my life. I suppose have a lot to be thankful for this year.

November 28th

Well then, sorry for the delay with this post! No excuse really… It is an incredibly beautiful day today and as soon as I finish this post I’m definitely going to go outside and revel, maybe walk along the river or go to the grocery store. All the Americans in Voronezh (11 West Point and Air Force, 2 Baylor, 2 ex-pat students, assorted non-American girlfriends) are getting together today and celebrating Thanksgiving so I’ve got to do my part and grab some food from the store. It looks to be quite the feast, we somehow managed to find a turkey and there is talk of a pumpkin pie in the offing as well (I’m doubtful about the whipped cream though). Should be a good time!

Anyways, just kind of another short story about my home life here: I was in my room after school and Gina came in to my room with a basket of onions and asked me if I knew how to prepare them. Thinking he meant cook, I said no (plus I was curious to see where this took us, I’ve never been one to pass up opportunities for Gina to mock me or show me something interesting). But no, he didn’t mean cook. He meant peel, so like I do every time I open my mouth, I looked like an idiot. Who doesn’t know how to peel an onion? He took this moment of weakness to ask me if I knew how to operate matches… Thanks Gina. He then asked me if I’d ever been a “скают.” I’d understood everything he’d said up to this point, and I had to admit I had no idea what a “скают” was. He looked at me like I was a little slow and said, “Скают, you know the kids who run around in the woods and make fires.” Oh. Scout. Like Boy Scouts. Great, I managed to understand everything in the sentence except the English word. Hooray, me. It was all good though and I left that and our many exchanges recently with a warm fuzzy feeling which is nice for a change. Olga Arkeedevna is in the hospital with tuberculosis (I’m really worried about her) so it’s just the guys around the house and I think Gina is happy to have someone to talk to no matter how laughably poor their Russian might be. That’s it I think for today. I suppose I’ll deign to write some more tomorrow, but I’m burning daylight and it’s criminal to be inside on a day like today!

November 25th

The outside of the clinic

Inside of the clinic-the waiting room

The moment we almost lost Matt Faust. He's the one with the red bag three up who's pressed against the cliff for dear life. I'm behind him feeling less then thrilled. Thanks to Brenden's steely nerves for the picture.

Last Irkutsk picture I promise! Again, contemplating life. This picture isn't staged, I often look that pensive and stoic...

Story time!

A father and daughter were riding a horse through the Kafkaz when the horse trips on a stone. The father pulls out his knife and yells, “One!” Twenty minutes later, the horse trips again and the father, still brandishing his knife, yells, “Two!” An hour later, the horse trips a third time. The father yells, “Three!” and proceeds to cut the horse’s throat. As they walk away, the daughter is sobbing and wailing and asking her father why he just killed their horse. The father looks at his daughter, pulls out his knife and yells, “One!”

Got to love it. Or not, if that suits you. Don’t let me be the judge! Anyways, so, Brenden’s clinic experience with the rabies and whatnot. They say that a picture is worth a thousand words, so I feel like throwing a few pictures up of this place will keep me from boring you, dear reader, to tears with a description of the inside of a Russian emergency room. It was wooden, Spartan, and smelt of rubbing alcohol but the staff was professional and put me at ease (of course I wasn’t the one getting stuck with unknown medicines…). So, I really was imagining that I’d have a lot to say about this whole experience, but as I’m wracking my brain, there’s really not a whole lot to tell. The shots were free (socialized health care and all that) and Brenden is still alive, so all’s well that ends well right? I think so.

Attention Reader: as my time here draws to a close, I feel like I’ve focused a lot on my day to day activities and less on broad social perspectives or other things of the sort that I’ve observed. I try to include that sort of thing on the blog, but often I don’t include things that I imagine are routine but perhaps you would have been dying to know. What I’m trying to say in way to many words is this: If you have any requests, anything you’d really like to know about Russia, Russians, or what happens when you poke a bear with a stick, please feel free to post a comment/request or just shoot me an e-mail. All those burning questions that you’ve always wanted to know about but you’ve been to afraid to ask. Like, “how many people can you fit on a 15 passenger bus and still close the door?”, or “how many times do you need to nearly die crossing the road before you become inured to fear of death by motorist?” or “how can I judge the depth of a mud puddle-lake using only basic geometric calculations and what’s the safe operating depth for stiletto heels?” I may not be able to answer (and I’ll try not to make stuff up just to sound intelligent, but I’m not making any promises) but I’ll do my best or find someone here who knows the answer. Off to watch some footy.