Enjoying my recent sleep sessions, July 9, 2006
On Thursday afternoon, the person in charge of internships, Stas, took Brad and I to our internship site—the main building of the Novgorod Boarding School for Orphans. It is located in a quiet part of the “old city” near the Volkhov River.
We met the directors of the orphanage who were more than excited to see us, which made for, both a very warm and nearly overwhelming, tour of the facility. They spoke very little English and Stas had to translate for us.
They said we will be mostly taking the kids to the beach and watching over them. But they hoped we could help teach them some English—something Brad has direct experience with while teaching in Indonesia. And they would like us to help them use the computers in their small computer room.
“I have a degree in that,” I quickly interjected in Russian.
So combined with my experience as a camp counselor, this internship seems perfect.
On our tour, the ladies at the orphanage, with unreserved excitement, showed us the various rooms and talked over each other in Russian—making it even hard to understand their descriptions and explanations. I am really looking forward to meeting the kids and working with them. It’s my favorite age group, too, 12-16 year olds.
Some of the kids live in the city with their parents, but come to the orphanage for the day to get food and play because their parents are too poor or are never there to take care of them. The older students, at age 16, are transitioning out of the orphanage system and are there for the summer, using it as a halfway home. The other kids here this summer have specific issues that prevented them from traveling to the summer camp where the remainder of regulars are currently at.
The situation seems positive but unfortunate. There is obviously very little public funds poured into such social services and I image the dedicated women working the orphanage make little more than what is spend on each child in their care. I am more than happy to be volunteering my time with them.
After we said goodbye to our future co-workers, we grabbed a bus to the center and Stas explained to me how to buy vodka in Russia.
“There are three gradations of vodka. You want to find the bottles that have ‘lyuks’ in their ingredients on the back,” he revealed.
We go to the Volna Mall (as I said in my previous entry) after I had expressed interest in checking it out. Upon entering, the first store we come across is in fact the liquor store. Stepping through the entrance, I slowly realize that half of the entire shop is dedicated to vodka—racks after racks after racks. Stas shows me one of his favorite brands and I make a mental note of it.
Next, we go to the music/film/book store. These are the legal copies of CDs and DVDs in Russia. Most copies, though, are pirated, including the stack of films Vanya owns sitting on a shelf in my room. Some how, he has The Da Vinci Code on DVD. I have not yet watched it to look for moviegoer’s heads or listen for audience comments.
What I wanted from the video store was some Russian classic films, such as Eisenstein’s masterpieces, only with English subtitles. This was a crapshoot. You have to actually check each film individually in a DVD player for the existence of subtitles; and it is unlikely that a DVD includes them. I find nothing except a slew of popular American films from the last few years, painstakingly dubbed into Russian.
That’s right… dubbed—the sacrilegious practice of recording over the original actor’s voices and intonations. The Russians refuse to read subtitles like every good European or American connoisseur of foreign films. I ask Stas why this is.
“Russians are lazy,” he replies with a smirk.
He re-qualifies this statement, though, suggesting that other groups like the Swedes, who have a decent handle on English can use subtitles simply to aid their comprehension, where as most Russians know very little English. I remember him telling us earlier in the week that we can count on anyone over 30 not knowing any English.
When I got home, I took a nap and prepared for my evening. Most of my nights have been spent with television.
I flip on the tube and surf the channels. There are a lot of programs and serials from around the world, recast or simulcast on Russian TV. At any one time, I can find an American serial, dubbed into Russian, of course. I find the voiceover incredibly distracting and in some ways sad.
Even though television shows are far from the peak of cultural expression, I still find it unsatisfying to witness globalization and exportation of Western culture in this medium being so pervasive and consuming. Which brings me to commercials (reklama); they are broadcast 2-3 times an hour in 5-10 minute strings. And most of the products, and even their commercials, are Western. I see the stereotypical, attractive American women laughing and mouthing advertising scripts with jubilant Russian dubbed over top. The visual layers of the products’ labels recovered with the Cyrillic equivalents. Any vestige of a bipolar world system must live in the heads of conservative holdouts only, because living here reveals a very unipolar Earth—a fact completely confirmed while I watch a documentary entitled “Laura and George” about the American president’s life up to now, shown in coordination with the leader of the free world’s birthday. And yet… no one likes him here, as far as I can tell.
We met the directors of the orphanage who were more than excited to see us, which made for, both a very warm and nearly overwhelming, tour of the facility. They spoke very little English and Stas had to translate for us.
They said we will be mostly taking the kids to the beach and watching over them. But they hoped we could help teach them some English—something Brad has direct experience with while teaching in Indonesia. And they would like us to help them use the computers in their small computer room.
“I have a degree in that,” I quickly interjected in Russian.
So combined with my experience as a camp counselor, this internship seems perfect.
On our tour, the ladies at the orphanage, with unreserved excitement, showed us the various rooms and talked over each other in Russian—making it even hard to understand their descriptions and explanations. I am really looking forward to meeting the kids and working with them. It’s my favorite age group, too, 12-16 year olds.
Some of the kids live in the city with their parents, but come to the orphanage for the day to get food and play because their parents are too poor or are never there to take care of them. The older students, at age 16, are transitioning out of the orphanage system and are there for the summer, using it as a halfway home. The other kids here this summer have specific issues that prevented them from traveling to the summer camp where the remainder of regulars are currently at.
The situation seems positive but unfortunate. There is obviously very little public funds poured into such social services and I image the dedicated women working the orphanage make little more than what is spend on each child in their care. I am more than happy to be volunteering my time with them.
After we said goodbye to our future co-workers, we grabbed a bus to the center and Stas explained to me how to buy vodka in Russia.
“There are three gradations of vodka. You want to find the bottles that have ‘lyuks’ in their ingredients on the back,” he revealed.
We go to the Volna Mall (as I said in my previous entry) after I had expressed interest in checking it out. Upon entering, the first store we come across is in fact the liquor store. Stepping through the entrance, I slowly realize that half of the entire shop is dedicated to vodka—racks after racks after racks. Stas shows me one of his favorite brands and I make a mental note of it.
Next, we go to the music/film/book store. These are the legal copies of CDs and DVDs in Russia. Most copies, though, are pirated, including the stack of films Vanya owns sitting on a shelf in my room. Some how, he has The Da Vinci Code on DVD. I have not yet watched it to look for moviegoer’s heads or listen for audience comments.
What I wanted from the video store was some Russian classic films, such as Eisenstein’s masterpieces, only with English subtitles. This was a crapshoot. You have to actually check each film individually in a DVD player for the existence of subtitles; and it is unlikely that a DVD includes them. I find nothing except a slew of popular American films from the last few years, painstakingly dubbed into Russian.
That’s right… dubbed—the sacrilegious practice of recording over the original actor’s voices and intonations. The Russians refuse to read subtitles like every good European or American connoisseur of foreign films. I ask Stas why this is.
“Russians are lazy,” he replies with a smirk.
He re-qualifies this statement, though, suggesting that other groups like the Swedes, who have a decent handle on English can use subtitles simply to aid their comprehension, where as most Russians know very little English. I remember him telling us earlier in the week that we can count on anyone over 30 not knowing any English.
When I got home, I took a nap and prepared for my evening. Most of my nights have been spent with television.
I flip on the tube and surf the channels. There are a lot of programs and serials from around the world, recast or simulcast on Russian TV. At any one time, I can find an American serial, dubbed into Russian, of course. I find the voiceover incredibly distracting and in some ways sad.
Even though television shows are far from the peak of cultural expression, I still find it unsatisfying to witness globalization and exportation of Western culture in this medium being so pervasive and consuming. Which brings me to commercials (reklama); they are broadcast 2-3 times an hour in 5-10 minute strings. And most of the products, and even their commercials, are Western. I see the stereotypical, attractive American women laughing and mouthing advertising scripts with jubilant Russian dubbed over top. The visual layers of the products’ labels recovered with the Cyrillic equivalents. Any vestige of a bipolar world system must live in the heads of conservative holdouts only, because living here reveals a very unipolar Earth—a fact completely confirmed while I watch a documentary entitled “Laura and George” about the American president’s life up to now, shown in coordination with the leader of the free world’s birthday. And yet… no one likes him here, as far as I can tell.
posted by Erhardt at 2:07 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home