I don’t think words can describe how amazing these last two days have been. The unbelievable level of friendship and hospitality that I’ve encountered in Ulan-Ude is humbling and entirely without comparison. The friendships that I’ve been able to forge in the short time that I’ve been here make whatever small bureaucratic inconveniences I’ve had to endure seem petty.
So, starting from the beginning of Wednesday. I had thought that I had agreed with the history department to sit in a class on The History of Buryatia at 1:00pm. Well, I arrived early, found a seat, and waited. And waited. And waited. And no one showed up. This, of course, happens pretty often in Russia. So I went to the international office and met a few of the English students at BSU. The international office decided that we can figure out my history classes some other time, and now was as good a time as any to try to introduce me to the English department. My desire to help out in the English department has several motivators: First, I want to meet as many people as I can. Second, it will help cement a positive relationship with the university. And thirdly, many of the students in the foreign language department want to work in the tourism industry. As one of my main research questions is what motivates people to work in the tourism industry in Buryatia, I think I can learn a lot by meeting aspiring tour guides. Unfortunately, most of the professors were out, so I set a meeting with the deacon for 2:30 Thursday afternoon.
After that, I met with Masha and she helped me buy a SIM cart on BaikalVestCom, and then we visited several real estate agencies. The common story was that apartments are disappearing fast. After eating a small lunch/dinner with Masha (my meals here are hard to classify), I returned home.
The girl I met on the airplane, let’s call her Ira (again, for privacy and such), had invited me to a celebratory dinner Wednesday night. She told me that she’d pick me up around 8:30, and when I got into the car, I found out that it was her mother’s birthday celebration. Ira’s cousin drove Ira, her brother, and me to an Uzbek restaurant and when we walked in, I realized that the entire restaurant was filled with her family members. I sat close to her brother and cousin and across from an elderly gentleman who attempted to explain everything that was occurring to me throughout the evening. He also assumed the responsibility of getting me to drink as much as possible. He told me a story about how he had been in Cuba and decided to see who could drink more, a Cuban or a Russian. He said, “When I fell to the floor, and looked up the Cuban and said, ‘You!’ And then the Cuban said, ‘Although I can drink, I can’t drink as much as an American.’” The elderly gentleman looked at me expectantly, and then laughed. There were many toasts throughout the evening. Different branches of the family would stand up together, each would say something in honor of Ira’s mother, and then there would be a toast. The elderly gentleman informed me that one of the speakers was a 4-time world champion in boxing, and another was an archery champion. At the end, they asked me to give a toast in English, as Russian, Buryat, and few other languages had already been spoken. So I did my best. At the end, I rode back home with Ira’s cousin, who works in the tourism industry and was full of questions about America. He was extremely nice and lives nearby, so we’ll probably hang out sometime.
So on Thursday I woke up and went to a real estate agency again, where we found out that there was practically nothing left. So, we both had a few hours free so we got lunch together, I bought a new phone, and we took a tram to another part of town to walk around. At 2:30 I met with the deacon of the foreign language department, and talked about various ways that I can help out students.
After my meeting, I called my main contact here in Ulan-Ude, and she invited me to drop by her apartment. She almost immediately sent me to work translating for her. Next week, Ulan-Ude is hosting a huge international tourism forum. We’re trying to get me registered, but I will be helping out with a delegation from Korea, for whom my contact is organizing a few excursions. I translated the schedule of the forum for them today, and I am currently working on translating their program into Russian. It’s nice to finally feel useful. After finishing translating the program, we went to meet contact’s friend’s (let’s call her Sasha) former host son, who was arriving on a bus from Mongolia. After chatting for a while, Sasha invited me to help her with some volunteer work on Saturday, and then to her dacha on Sunday. I, of course, accepted. After watching the new fountain on Soviet Square, Sasha, who had invited me to come home with her and meet her youngest son for a little while, realized that she had mistakenly left her lights on and that her car battery was dead. Almost immediately after that, a group of young people asked Sasha for help. It turns out that they were a group of Mongolians who spoke a little Russian and a little English and hadn’t managed to catch a cab. Sasha found out where to take them, and while we waited for her son to come and jump-start the car, I chatted with the Mongolians to the extent that we were able to understand each other. They were going to catch a plane from Ulan-Ude to Turkey and were staying with a friend for the night. They let me try some of the food that they brought for the road. They had some dried fruits that were delicious, a crumbly bread-like substance that tasted like cheese, and an extremely hard substance that also tasted kind of like cheese. I rode along while Sasha drove the Mongolians to their friend’s apartment, and then she drove me to one of the highest points in the city. It was an absolutely fantastic view; the lights of the city were spread out in the valley, but didn’t drown out the stars. Afterwards she drove me home, and now here I am, writing. And the best part of all of this is: this is still just the very beginning...
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