A Good Weekend in Vladimir

Those of you who have lived in Vladimir might read the title and think "Как это может быть?" but it's true. Despite the amount of time we spend complaining about there being nothing to do in Vladimir, it is possible to have fun.

After Thursday, when our favorite mini-series (Тихий Дон or Quiet Flows the Don, and actually we hated it but were addicted to watching it anyway) ended, things looked grim. But we found that life does go on after Тихий Дон. On Friday after class Aaron, Eric, Sara and I headed to this tiny cafe we had seen near my apartment. We were surprised and delighted to see a "No Smoking" sign on the wall. But the biggest plus was karaoke. We asked the waitress if we could sing and she said of course. We didn't have a big audience; everyone there (from zero to five or six other people during the time we were there) was friends with the waitress. Our first song, which we all sang, was our favorite Кино (Kino) song, "Камчатка (Kamchatka)". Sara and I followed that with "I Can Show You the World" (I was Aladdin and she was Jasmine) and I sang another Кино classic, "Когда твоя девушка больна (when your girlfriend is sick)", to commemorate my recent illness.

After the cafe Aaron, Eric and I grabbed plastic bags and went sledding. The conditions weren't optimal, but we had a couple good runs and ended up with a few good bruises, always a sign of successful sledding.

On Saturday Nicole and I tried to go the gym, but found to our dismay that the gyms we went to didn't open until 10 and 11. I guess no one here works out on Saturday mornings. But the morning wasn't totally disappointing, because at 10:30 we met more of our friends at the banya. Most of you probably have heard me elaborating on the wonders of the banya, but if you haven't, you'll have to wait until another time. It deserves a whole post to itself. In short, we had a great time scrubbing, sweating in the sauna-like room, and relaxing. After a good two hours of banya, we met up with the boys and left. But we had only gotten about three steps out the door when we smelled a wonderful, meaty smell. We followed it around the corner and found a very small cafe that serves шашлык (shashlik, like barbecue or shishka-bobs). We crowed around a tiny table and ordered our meat. It turned out to be really good and not too expensive.

After filling up with delicious meat we went to my apartment to drink tea and eat more. We folded down my couch (it's like a futon) and laid down to watch TV. But the after-banya exhaustion hit us fast and most of us fell asleep. Even after a couple hours of doing nothing it was hard to get up.

We did get up though, and good thing we did. If we hadn't, we never would've seen the quality film that we watched--Snakes on a Plane. Everyone knew it was going to be ridiculous, but we weren't prepared for just how ridiculous it was going to be. It had the added benefit of being a film that doesn't lose anything in translation.

On Sunday I broke out my skis for the first time this winter. I went to a big park that has fields, woods, and plenty of trails. Even though it was dusk, there were lots of people out. There was snow sticking to every branch of every tree and it was beautiful. My skiing skills weren't so beautiful, but it was the first time of the season.

In the evening we went to a blues concert at a new club. The first band was a local group that I'm pretty sure I saw last year at a different club. The second band was from Germany. Both groups played dance-able music and most of us made it out to the floor and broke it down. My finest moment was when I was swing dancing with Nicole and didn't notice a little ledge behind me. I stepped into it and fell backwards into a poor woman's lap who was sitting there. Well, everyone makes mistakes.

I had my lessons planned before the weekend started and made up my mind not to do any work. And I managed to fill up my weekend with very minimal time spent at the American Home. It is possible! With so many things to do, who knows, maybe Vladimir is the next Prague...

The doctor made a house call on Saturday and declared me almost healthy and ready to teach this week. So yesterday I returned to the classroom for the first time in almost two weeks, greeted by heartening joyous exclamations from my students.

In my still slightly weak condition, it's good that I work in place where everyone is attentive to my health. This includes Tatyana Constantinovna, probably the oldest member of the American Home staff, who doesn't speak a word of English as far as I can tell. Her position here is a little ambiguous to me, but I do know that her responsibilities include giving us our salary, cleaning out the refrigerator, and hiding tea snacks so no one eats them between tea times. Today I was drinking tea in the kitchen while she was engaged in the second of these tasks. She found an almost empty bottle of cognac in the refrigerator and told me to pour it in my tea because it would help treat my throat problem. I told her I was already done drinking tea. She said that was ok, just pour some more. She was very insistent about the health benefits of cognac, so I poured myself another cup of tea.

I'm still getting yelled at for running outside in flips flops and making myself sick (most often by Tatyana Constantinovna), but at least there's a crazy cure to combat the crazy cause of my illness.

After four nights and three-and-a-half days, I've finally been discharged from Galina Petrovna's Sanatorium for Sick Teachers. But unfortunately I'm still not authorized to teach. I had to go to the doctor again yesterday and she said my angina is still going strong. There is definitely something going on in my throat (strep maybe? -- there are white spots back there) but at least I haven't been running a temperature lately. Anyway, the doctor said I still can't teach this week and I should still take it easy. I made it back to the American Home today for the first time in a week, but I'm not supposed to work for too long. So I guess I better head home. GP called me here to tell me to go home, take my temperature, and give her a call (and of course gargle!). I'm really starting to miss my students, so I hope this throat ailment runs its course and I can function normally in society again.

I’m sorry for the long delay in writing. It’s due to an imposed confinement that began on Tuesday evening and was broken only by a trip to the doctor on Wednesday, a trip to the post office (across the street) on Friday, and a taxi ride to my boss’s apartment last night, which is where I am now.

I’ll begin with last weekend, which is when I started feeling sick. I didn’t feel quite right on Friday, and on Saturday I felt a little worse, although the excitement of the Halloween parties kept it out of my mind for most of the day. My fatal mistake on Saturday, according to the Russians, is that on several occasions I briefly ran outside to the snowy yard to fix our fallen “tombstones”, in my “banya girl” costume which consisted of a towel (with clothes under it in case of a wardrobe malfunction), a banya hat, and flip flops (you can see a picture of it in Amanda’s blog). I happen to think that a bit of fresh air away from a hot, stuffy, basement packed with people can only be a good thing, but I will get no agreement on this point from any Russian.

Later in the evening I started feeling really feverish, shaking with chills and then hot. I won’t go into how much I sweated in the night, but it was gross. On Sunday and Monday I felt pretty sick but I hadn’t bought a thermometer so I couldn’t be sure I had a fever. I just took Tylenol and kept working until Tuesday when I did buy a thermometer and found out I did have fever. I taught one class that day, left my second for Aaron, and went home.

During this time my boss, the venerable Galina Petrovna, had been closely monitoring my condition, giving me different medicines that I don’t want to take, and making sure that I took them. She called on Wednesday morning and I made the mistake of telling her that my temperature was 37.5 degrees C (101.3 F, I think) and she told me she was calling the doctor. In less than an hour, I was in a taxi on the way to the clinic.

Apparently we have connections there, because without filling out any papers or waiting in any lines, we marched up to the doctor’s office and she saw me immediately. She took a look into my mouth, my nose and my ears (altogether it took about a minute) and announced that I have “angina” (which is pronounced with a hard “g” and is not a heart attack, but some kind of throat ailment). She prescribed an antibiotic and some other things and told me that there was no way I was going to St. Petersburg on Saturday as I had planned. This mysterious disease can apparently have dreadful consequences including heart and back problems, and who knows what else, so I need to stay home and absolutely not go out in the cold.

Since then my life has consisted mostly of laying on my couch/bed, watching TV, reading, and receiving phone calls from my boss that typically go like this (translated from Russian):
GP: How are you?
Me: Fine. I feel pretty good.
GP: Did you take your temperature?
Me: No, I’ll take it.
GP: Did you take the antibiotics?
Me: Yes.
GP: Did you take the throat medicine?
Me: Yes.
GP: Did you take [some other medicines that she wants me to take]?
Me: Not yet…
GP: You need to take it! What am I going to do with you? Did you gargle?
Me: Awhile ago…
GP: You should do it again. What’s your temperature?
Me: [some temperature that is only slightly above normal]
GP: That’s bad. Maybe I should call the doctor…
Me: I think everything’s fine for now.
GP: Are you drinking lots of liquids?
Me: Yes.
GP: Good. Drink tea with honey, water, juice. Just make sure not to drink anything cold!
Me: OK.
GP: And don’t go anywhere.
Me: OK.
GP: I’ll call in an hour to see how you’re doing.
Me: OK.

I’ve familiarized myself with the wonders of Russian television – lots of news, Russian cooking shows which take place in kitchens the likes of which I’ve never seen in Russia using ingredients I’ve never seen here either, dart competitions on Eurosport 2, old Soviet cartoons, a sitcom called Happy Together where all the characters look and act conspicuously like the characters from Married with Children, poorly dubbed episodes of Friends with the English hearable behind the Russian but usually not understandable, music channels that actually show lots of music videos, and scores of movies starring either Jakie Chan or Vin Diesel, which I always flip past.

On Friday I had to make the decision whether or not to go to Petersburg for our first break, as I had planned. Despite an intense desire to go and make use of one of our few breaks, I decided against it. I still felt a little sick, and knew that they would probably send me to the electric chair or worse if I came home still sick, especially after not teaching on Thursday and Friday (thanks for covering for me Amanda, Eric, and Aaron!). So yesterday I was sitting at home feeling rather sad about not going, when I got a visit from a couple of my BI students. They were loaded down with food – milk, fresh fruit, dried fruit, nuts, sour cream, bread, tvorog, and other things – and the proceeded to prepare me all kinds of treatments while I tried to be a good hostess but in the end did nothing. They stayed for over four hours and kept me company, continuing to feed me and give me massages. Maybe staying home wasn’t such a bad idea. Thanks Sveta and Tatyana!

Despite the royal treatment in the afternoon, I started feeling worse in the evening and got a terrible case of the chills. GP called and told me to take my temperature, which turned out to be higher than it had been the whole week (maybe around 102 F). So she called a taxi to bring me to her apartment, which is where I’m writing from. I slept well and my temperature was back to being only a little high in the morning, and I feel pretty good. I got a delicious breakfast of blini and am looking forward to a delicious home-cooked lunch. Life here is a lot better than alone at home, even if I have to endure constant questions about my health, lots of medicine, and getting my temperature and blood pressure taken all the time. I might complain a little about being bugged about my health all the time, or coerced into taking mystery medicine, but on the whole it’s good to know that I’m cared about and that people are looking out for me. While one of GP’s consultants who she calls often to ask about my health thought that I might have gotten sick again because of taking a shower, I think GP’s husband nailed down the real reason this morning at breakfast. He said that I got sick because it would have been a shame to stay home from Petersburg and end up being completely healthy the whole time. So I’m almost thankful to be a little sick, and definitely thankful for the care shown by the people around me.