About an old woman

This week me and Tanya have been doing her research work on homeless people. We use a survey form to ask questions from the people visiting the shelter. I sort of just sit there and follow, since they probably wouldn't understand any of my Russian. It's really interesting to listen to the stories of these people. I usually understand the general idea of what they're talking about. This people are all amazing in their own way. I wish I could photograph them but I haven't even dared to ask.

Today is the first day we got to interview some homeless women. I'd like to tell you about one particular бабушка (babushka, grandmother). This old woman came into the office where we do the questionnaires. She was walking difficultly and had a limp. She looked like she used to be a lot taller, she had collapsed from the spine the way old people do. Here face was really old, she had huge bags under her eyes. Her face was wrinkled, especially around the mouth (smoker's wrinkles). Half of her teeth were missing and the one's she still had were grey. I've worked with old people in Finland and to me she seemed to be at least 75–80 years old. She told us she lived on a small pension and had lost her home when her husband had died. Her husband had hit her regularly. Like most of the homeless we've talked with, she seemed to have accepted her share in life and was at peace with it.

What shocked me the most?
This бабушка was 54.

Russian temper

Reasons for getting yelled at in Russia:

• Having your jacket on indoors. 
• Trying to pay with notes too big. 
• Forgetting your chocolate on the kiosk counter. Boy was she angry!
• Not understanding Russian well enough. 
• Standing on someone's way on a really crowded bus. 
• Knocking on a door and waiting for a response instead of just going in (this has happened in lots of different places).
• And many more to come!

Here people have more room for all kinds of emotion in their daily interaction. Workers at the homeless shelter get angry at one another all the time. Usually it lasts for about thirty seconds and then they've already moved on to the next topic. This is such an opposite to the Finnish/Scandinavian way, where negative things are usually left unsaid. I tend to over-think what other people think of me, and I get upset quite easily if someone's not happy with something I'm doing. All of that has to change now, since I get yelled at almost on a daily basis here. I have to learn how to ignore those comments, and have sort of learned a little already. It helps that often I don't fully understand what they're saying. I think it's a good lesson to learn: I can't please everyone and it's not even worth it trying. I can't let random strangers ruin my day with their comments. At home, I could easily be worrying for a whole day how someone somewhere got angry or frustrated with me. And what for, what does the opinion of those people matter? It's time to toughen up a bit!

Kyrgyzstan..? Well you know, that country right next to Tadzhikistan and Uzbekistan

I wonder if it's even possible to feel all these emotions at the same time! I'm so touched I could cry and so excited it's hard to sit still. I've just booked flights to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.

I lived in Kyrgyzstan with my family for a year when I was fourteen, so almost exactly ten years ago. I don't think I'd be here in Petrozavodsk if it wasn't for that year. In Kyrgyzstan I became interested in the Russian language and Russia itself and there I also decided I really wanted to be a high school exchange student. And without that one year in New Zealand I certainly wouldn't have dared to apply for uni exchange in Russia. These times living abroad have played such a significant role in making me who I am today (and honestly I don't expect any less of Petrozavodsk).

I always thought I'd go back to Kyrgyzstan some day, but I certainly didn't expect it to be this spring. It's all a sequence of coincidences. It started with a Swedish exchange student going to Bishkek to see a friend and there was no convincing whatsoever needed to get me to join. There will be 3–5 of us going and I'm so excited. We will be going for a few days at the time of the local spring festival in March.

You can google Kyrgyzstan if you want to know more about it. Right now I have my mind filled with memories of sashlik, plov, lyeposhka (these are all food), bazaars and how they smell like, the smell of burning rubbish, prayer calls from the mosques, that song "Numa numa" by O-zone playing in the parks really loudly, felt hats and slippers, mountains and rivers, horses, sheep and little villages.

I can't believe I'm going back. And I can't believe I've found other people, who want to travel there too!

First whole week in Petro

This week I had the first really good days here in Petrozavodsk. I must admit that the first week was quite hard. Nothing was working out the way it was supposed to and I barely knew what was going to happen the next day. I don't know why the общежитие (dormitory) shocked me at first, I had quite a good an idea what it was going to be like, after all. I guess I feel a little old to be living like this, under surveillance. Friday night the администрация (administration) of the dormitory came in to check whether we had any alcohol in our rooms. Of course me and a few other exchange students living here were right in the middle of watching the olympics and drinking beer. I have a feeling we might have our first warning coming. Not that we even knew you're not allowed to have any alcohol in the общежитие. Also, you can not get in the dormitory between 1 am and 6 am. If you go out, you have to make it till the next morning. Which is what we did on Friday.

Student dorm

Our first real night in Petrozavodsk was jus great. Living in a "small" city like this (more than 250 000 inhabitants) with not too many foreigners means that people are interested in you. And they want to come and talk with you. Apparently it's something that always happens when you go out. It happens during the daytime as well, people stop you and ask you were you're from, want to switch phone numbers etc. I think it's lovely. It's definitely one of the reasons I wanted to come to a smaller city, instead of going to St. Petersburg or Moscow. At some point some young Russians joined our group and were really interested in us. In the morning went to a café to eat something before taking the trolleybus home. The Russians who'd joined us insisted to pay. They themselves hadn't even eaten anything, they just drank a few beers. They wouldn't take no for an answer, although we tried to refuse. In the end we were left feeling very guilty for these local people, practically teenagers, having paid for us. Apparently another thing you'd better get used to when living in Russia. 

The shelter "Преодоление" (Overcoming)

I've continued my social work training at the local shelter for homeless people. Although calling it 'training' is an exaggeration, 'observing' would be more accurate. Although I haven't done much so far, it's really interesting to be there. Just to see the homeless people come and go, follow the workers do their thing and read the files of the homeless. Which by the way doesn't seem too right, I mean surely you shouldn't give a random foreigner documents filled with personal details. Oh well, это Россия, it's Russia. (Common phrase here to explain all kinds of odd things and happenings.) The shelter is surprisingly tidy and in a good condition. From what I've understood, it's mainly a night shelter and the occupants aren't allowed to be there during the day. I think the people there are granted a certain amount of nights at a time. During the day time, new people come in and wait to talk with a social worker. First thing they then start to sort out is their documents. In Russia, people need all kinds of documents, the most important ones are passport (there's a domestic passport and an international one) and a registration document. 

The shelter is an interesting mix for bureaucratic formality and informality. It seems strange how the office areas and the shower room are located right next to one another. The homeless are always addressed to with polite language but workers might still joke with them. For example, a guy was yelling from the shower that he needs a pair of underwear. A worker then yelled "Somebody get this guy a g-string!"

Besides the training, I've also started going to lectures. Which wasn't as easy as you'd think. The only way to find out which courses are provided and when they're held is by checking out the university notice board. I already did that the previous week and wrote down the courses that seemed interesting. I figured all I had to do then was to show up in the right place the right time. But that would be too easy! Of course the timetable was changed. I went to the university two times last week just to find out that the course didn't exist anymore or the time had been changed. On Friday, I at last managed to attend to lectures. These were two courses held in Russian, the other one is Russia in global politics and the other one is called Modern Russian politics. Both of these were held in the same way. A teacher would come in the classroom (these were classrooms instead of lecture halls), sit down and start talking. No power points, no over-head projectors, no hand-outs, nothing. The students would then make notes in their notebooks. No one had a laptop. I saw a few people do something with tablets before lecture but they put them in their bags and took out their notebooks when the teacher started talking. Of course going to lectures in Russian is hugely challenging but I assume to learn a lot that way. I managed to follow which topic the teachers were currently talking about but didn't understand much about what was actually being said about these topics. 

Things here are done so differently to home. It's best never to assume that something will be easy and simple to work out. There is an upside to this: the feeling of accomplishment when you actually get something done. At home, managing to find your way to a lecture wouldn't be much of an achievement. Here, the fact that I found my way to two on Friday made my day.

Social work training

I'm a Social Policy student from the University of Turku. Here I'm taking a random selection of courses from politics, sociology and social policy and social work. The university offered me an opportunity to do a training period in social work, and for some reason they thought it would be a good idea to start with that. I'm not so sure since my current level of Russian is pretty useless but that's what I've been doing for the past few days. The training takes places in a local shelter for homeless people and will go on for at least two weeks. The shelter is an interesting place, to say the least. There are about 800 homeless people in Petrozavodsk. The shelter facilitates 30–40 people. Honestly I was surprised to find out there was such a shelter at all here, I sort of expected that the concept of social work doesn't exist in Russia. I'm happy I was wrong.

Since I can't do anything on my own with my level of Russian, I'm together with this lovely girl Tanya, who's writing her thesis about homeless people. Today I spent four hours reading the files of homeless people in Russian. Yes, very boring but I made some interesting observations.

First of all, very thorough paper work, all stored in a cabinet and in brown cardboard folders. Secondly, some interesting "psychological evaluations". I haven't studied psychology but somehow I feel that a colour test isn't a valid way to evaluate people (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%BCscher_color_test). This test was on all the files. Also, there were some other interesting tests, including dozens of questions like "as a child, were you scared of dogs?", "do you ever get tears in your eyes when watching a tragic movie?" or "when standing next to an open window, do you ever feel like jumping?". Evaluations and different kinds of statements from doctors, psychologists, social workers, lots of reports concerning health and other certificates. What I sort of missed was the actual measures to improve the situation of these people. Of course, my Russian is poor and I've only seen a tiny fraction of what they do at the centre but still I can't help but wonder. Phrases like "social rehabilitation and psychological correction" were used a lot, though. To me, "psychological correction" sounds somewhat scary!

Oh, guess how the workers at the shelter were dressed? Low cut tops and high heel boots. What surpised me, is how they treated the people coming to the shelter. With kindness.

I have so much to learn.

First days

I think it's a good thing I didn't have internet connection for my first few days here. Otherwise, I think the first post would have been pictures of my current bathroom situation, Russian cleaning equipment, dirty trolley busses etc. I'm not saying there won't be any pictures like that at some point, just that I'm glad the initial shock is starting to pass and I'm starting to realise how those are such minor little things.

Not that I'm not bothered by the dirtiness of everything, I am. The current weather is very untypical for this area this time of year, everything is wet and muddy. I'm only starting to learn not to put my bag down anywhere and trying not to lean on anything. I'm astonished by how the locals manage to look so neat all the time. Ladies in white winter jackets and pretty boots (which are always clean by the way!). The streets are covered in puddles and wet snow, I don't know how they do it. A lady at the bakery called me "молодой человек" (young man) today, I guess it might have something to do with me walking about in my gum boots and a weatherproof jacket...

I live in  a Russian student dormitory and share a small room with a Russian girl. It's the eighth floor of a soviet-time tall building and apparently "the best floor". There is an old elevator but as I learned with another Finnish student a few days ago, you shouldn't use it unless you're okay with being stuck in there for half on hour. On the eighth floor two rooms share a bathroom and a toilet. I just found out the other seven floors use communal showers in the first floor. My roommate has her bed covered in huge stuffed animals and seems quite indifferent of me. I'm slowly getting used to living with a stranger in such close proximity and also trying not to freak out about "her not liking me". I sense that Russia will teach me a lot in that area. Here it's impossible to please everyone, because people don't seem to waste too much kindness on strangers.

About this blog

I'm not very good at following people's blogs and I thought I wouldn't create one this time. (My high school exchange blog still exists, "unfortunately" in Finnish only though.) However, I've heard the requests (there were at least two or three!) and have decided to blog about my time in Petrozavodsk, Russia. This time I'll probably write partly in English, partly in Finnish, according to how I feel, I guess. Sometimes it's impossible to properly express oneself in a second languge (kun vituttaa, niin vaan vituttaa) and I want to leave space for any outbursts of emotion I feel like.

I don't think I'll be writing a diary-like day-by-day account about my time in Russia. Rather, I'm planning to share a story from here and there, little glimpses of my life here.

On Sunday I went to sort of a folk music minifestival here. One of the performing groups had a beautiful song "Не волнуйся за меня" (Nye volnuisya za menya). It means "do not worry about me".