So here is the first update from Moscow. You ask why I am writing it at 1:18 am – the answer is part of the life of couples separated by oceans: I am waiting for Peter to get home from work and call. I just talked to him on ICQ but there is only one computer in the house with a working internet line and I am not the only one who needs the computer.
Two full days in Moscow and already I have seen and learned a lot. At this rate, I can’t imagine how much it is possible to learn in a month.
- The escalators in the Metro remind me of 1989 in Moscow with Peter. So do young kissing couples in the subway. Though I haven’t yet seen any kissing on the escalators like we did.
- The subways are perfectly beautiful. Every one is different with amazing decorations and style. You can ascend the escalator into a white ivory dome and walk past stained glass windows hanging on the wall. And those are the most mundane subway experiences.
- I haven’t even begun to make out the metro yet – but there are two destinations I know how to get to and they both require the same subway trip of bear to the left, two stops, transfer, one stop. One requires only going to the left and crossing the street. The other involves an underpass, a right turn and a left turn. ?
- Language is much easier than I had feared. Three years ago the signs on the street made me tired trying to decipher them. Now they don’t take any energy to understand. I get the biggest thrill when I recognize a new work somewhere, like this evening walking home from the subway we passed the “парикмахерская” meaning barber.
- Spoken language is also not as hard as I thought. It seems to me it is like this: When you don’t really have to speak another language but you do, it takes energy and will power because you are trying to get it right. When you have no choice but to speak a language, you very soon start doing it without energy and will power because 1) you have to 2) you are going to make mistakes no matter what you do 3) people don’t have all day to wait around until you have found all the right words. Therefore, you just speak.
- I, of course, by no means understand everything everyone says. I walk a narrow line in this regard: I want people to speak freely with me, so I often let them know I understand when I am only just starting to understand because to interrupt with a “what?” will only disrupt their speaking and my understanding. On the other hand, I don’t want to let people think that I have understood something that I haven’t. So I hover somewhere in this range most of the time. It is something like playing catch with multiple balls. Someone starts throwing you a series of balls and you must let them know you are catching them (i.e. you are in the process) before all the balls physically get to you. So really you have no idea if you will catch them all when you indicate you are catching them. This isn’t bad in many cases. However with jokes it doesn’t work at all. If you understand everything except the punch line, you haven’t understood anything.
- Still, everyday is hard work and I come home at night pleased simply that I have made it through the day, learning as much as I can.
It is of course always harder for me to write about serious things than the mechanics of life. But, the work of the organizations I have been to is very serious and important.
In the last two days I have visited three offices (whose organizations are closely interconnected), been to one round table and one wedding celebration.
- The first office is home to the Migration Rights Network, a program of Memorial Human Rights Center, which is a network of lawyers throughout Russia who provide legal assistance to refugees, internally displaced persons, and others. For this organization, I have started editing an English translation of a document on the guiding principles of dealing with internally displaced persons and how they are embodied in the Russian Constitution but not in practice.
- Memorial Human Rights Center was the second office I visited. Memorial has a library, museum, archive and great staff dedicated to the memory of what happened and who died during the Soviet repression, especially in the camps (the Gulag) and during Stalin’s time. The small part of their collection that I saw is extremely moving. Memorial also has programs actively protecting human rights in Russia, including the Migration Rights Network.
- The third office I visited was the Civic Assistance Committee, where refugees come for legal advice and support, material goods such as clothes and shoes, and much more. It was amazing to be there. It was extremely crowded and busy, moving at a non-stop pace. People getting shoes, asking for money for hospital bills, asking for help getting a passport or registration. For this organization, I may help out teaching English to refugee children & youth.
- The round table discussion was on film and terrorism and my mother-in-law spoke there.
- The wedding celebration was at Memorial between a Russian woman and a Chechen man – quite a big deal during war time – and it was quite beautiful.
- And in all this, I have gotten to spend quite a lot of time with Peter’s mother – who is head of the first program, a leading person at the second and one of the founding directors of the third. It has been great!
Tomorrow (actually today) is Saturday. Time to finish one paper for school, get a better grasp on getting around Moscow, see some friends, and maybe relax a little and hang out with my mother- & father-in-law.
