October 11th

Every Thursday, the cadets here in Voronezh have a military history/ethics class taught by a Russian Lieutenant Colonel and with about 10 of the cadets from VGU. It’s mostly unintelligible, but I find it fascinating and I feel by the end of my trip here I’ll have a post about that class. However, the more immediate effect on my life is the korsanti who we take the class with. Three or four of them have really taken a liking to us (and likewise) and so for the past three weeks, we hang out with them about four times a week. It’s mostly a giant game of charades, but we all have a blast (bear in mind, these are not typical Russian “bros” as defined earlier. These guys have their lives on track, don’t drink, they play sports, etc.). Anyways, this week, on Thursday, we were invited to a pickup game of basketball, 5 on 5. Danilla, one of the Russians, assured us that despite the fact that he plays on a basketball team here in Voronezh, that he and his friends weren’t very good. So we assembled an American dream team and set off last night for some basketball. It turns out we were the most exciting thing happening in the English speaking camp that night, because we had a cheering section of at least 10. With the pressure of the whole English speaking world on our shoulders, we set of for the gym. We arrived and, instead of finding a group of five guys who played basketball in their off time, we found five guys, in matching uniforms, ready for a serious game. Needless to say, our “dream team” of guys, none of whom had played basketball past middle school, got comprehensively wrecked. As one of our critics aptly put it, “Yeah, you played with a lot of heart, but after 30 minutes you had two points and three rebounds. The only time you guys got the ball back was after they scored.” None of the other guys spoke any English but that didn’t keep me from hearing one of them say, after 20 minutes of embarrassment, “Let’s go easy on them.” It didn’t help… they just scored less often. Anyways, after 30 minutes we decided that we’d pretty well proven that despite coming from the home of basketball, we were not all magically endowed with the ability to play superb basketball. So we switched up the teams and a great multicultural time was had by all and our unbelievably poor play was covered at least somewhat by our Russian compatriots. I don’t think we’ll be getting challenged to another game of basketball anytime soon, but I could still face them down in the pool any day of the week. Maybe.

.Voronezh Moment of the Day

This actually happened quite some time ago, but I figured I’d give it a go now. So I was running along the river (quick aside: there is no such thing as waterfront property in Voronezh. Sure, the nicest houses are along the river, but I have run along the river for a total of about 16 miles of riverside and in two places have I not been able to run right at the edge. Maybe it was a communist thing, but the river bank throughout the whole city is essentially either boardwalk or public park. Really quite neat if you think about it, especially because I can think of two places [downtown and River Road] that are public along the St. John’s River in Jacksonville. Capitalists…). Anyways, so I was running along the river and rather enjoying the view across the river to the opposite bank, where I live. Another brief aside that’s more integral to our story: people don’t swim in the Voronezh River. It’s got a bunch of factories up and downstream and there’s big signs everywhere that say “NO SWIMMING” with a skull in crossbones (recall this is Russia). So, of course, I don’t expect anyone to be swimming, but this is the Left Bank (Voronezh’s “other side of the tracks.” One of my Russian cadet friends told me not to speak Russian over there because he was fairly certain that I would be beaten to death by packs of xenophobic, racist hooligans. Cool, Russia, cool). Sure enough, as I’m soaking in the view from across the river, there’s a commotion in the water in front of me and this large white manatee heaves into view. Only it wasn’t a manatee. It was instead this enormously fat, enormously naked man heaving himself out of the water like some swollen nymph. I gave a yelp of pain as my eyes were forever seared and then took off running like I’ve never run before.