Vladimir:1 AH:0
What do I do when I’m not in the American home?
What don’t I do!
It’s somewhat sad that I spend so much of my time in this little American Island. I’m not sure if its the construction in the main part of town or just me, but Vladimir isn’t the most exciting of places to live. Everyday I live life one step from the monotonous and gray that was soviet Russia, and is still seen commonly today. Rather than writing an eloquent and enlightening essay, I’m going to post some pictures, and through them tell some sort of incoherent story that is an example of my free time in Vladimir.
This is the White House (Белый Дом), kind of like the State capitol building. I pass it almost daily on my way to work and almost never on my way home. Mostly because by the time I leave to go home, the public transportation has stopped working and most taxis take other routes. Buses and minibuses cost about a quarter, electric buses (much slower) about 20 cents and taxis are about 4 dollars. Its not expensive at all, but we only get paid about $100 every 2 weeks, so late night taxi rides can add up.
When you get closer to the white house you find this neat little reflective map of the Vladimir Region (Владимирский Област). I cleverly got a self portrait out of this shot, so everyone can see what I look like with a phone/camera for a nose. I’m pointing at Vladimir, although its probably a little to the left nearer the river. I think all of the other cities on the map are smaller than Vladimir, kinda like eastern Iowa and Cedar Rapids. So if you think Iowa isn’t interesting, you probably know what its like here (just more soviet).
What you just looked at is a picture of Park Friendship (Парк Дружба). It’s a really small park with a lot of open land behind it. Its alternating woods and fields, with little paths where people aimlessly walked around before you. Around the entrance there were some carnival type games, and benches for picnics and cooking shish-kabobs. All of the carnival games were shut down, and it was too damn cold to go on a picnic when we went. The temperature was around -3 celsius (24 F).
Amanda, who most of the readers already know, is also a teacher at the AH and graduated with me in June. She, Anya and I went for a walk in Park Friendship when it was much too cold for walking around, and none of us were really dressed for it. Anya studies at the AH in the 3rd level, she knows very basic conversational English. We mostly speak Russian when we hang out, which we are doing tomorrow at an Azerbaijani restaurant called Shesh-Besh (Шеш-Беш).
Next time I’ll write about work, or something.
I went running in Park Druzhba on Saturday when it was snowing (there was actually snow on the groud) and there were groups of people making shashklik. So I guess it’s not too cold for picnics…It is, however, too cold to go running, get lost, run through a swampy area and a cornfield in an attempt to get back on track, and fill your shoes up with freezing water and mud.