Happy New Year, friends from far and wide,
Lots to share since my last posting. And as my Moscow life turns more and more the life of a humble, housebound grad student, the less exciting, the more humble the adventure. So in that spirit....
I capped off a week of college counseling and essay editing for an oligarch scion, a kid whose father seems to be a really successful, self-made, and even completely law-abiding entrepreneur. A real nice kid who, though quite smart and with great spoken English, was clearly never asked in school to write creatively about himself, nor to write anything with multiple drafts. He had a compelling family story, which I don't feel comfortable sharing with the whole world. In short, though, a rewarding experience.
I also made the mistake of accepting an offer to tutor (with Ruble signs in my eyes) a 12 year old oligarchik at his mansion outside of Moscow along the capital's most prestigious road, Rublyevkoe Shosse, aka "the Rublyevka." It's along this stretch of road that the elite all seem to make their home, from Pavel Bure to Putin to Medvedev to everyone in between. Bure lives in a typical subdivision of "taunkhauzy" in an American style, behind a large brick wall. Putin and Medvedev's compounds cannot even be seen from the road. I'll post some video next time of the little kid's subdivision, a little Epcot-center of world architecture, done with all the subtlety of Vegas, on plots of land so small as if to maximize the pedestrian's ability to take in years of architectural history with one brisk walk (Italianate, Russian turn-of-century, baroque, Spanish Medit., etc, etc.) This was a bit less pleasurable tutoring experience, primarily because the kid was greeted on Day 1 of his vacation with, what else, but English class!! And he attends an English-language international school in the south of Spain and is already pretty darned fluent. So we did lessons of Russian history and Soviet soccer, and I even made him read the famous War and Peace description of evacuated Moscow as a beehive without its queen, under his loud protests. He came away with an interesting assortment of new words, such as "belligerent," "hostile," "sacred," "mistletoe," and "parochial."
As you can tell, he must have just loved me.....
I spent New Years with friends of Quinn's, a fabulous family in a typical working-class neighborhood in far southeast Moscow. Quinn and Sveta were roommates many years ago and now she lives in London, and works as a journalist and copyrighter. She's the only Russian I know who's seen Morrissey live in concert, and reported that he ripped off his shirt, twice, much to everyone's horror.
As you may know, New Year's is by far the most important of Russian holidays, largely due to seventy-some years of Soviet rule and an effort to transfer the sacredness of Christmas to something a bit less spiritual. So we celebrated in classic Russian fashion, with a family dinner starting around 11pm, lots of mayonnaise-based salads, caviar, vodka, fruit, and smoked fish. It was absolutely delightful to celebrate with a family, packed around a cramped table, full of the joys and sadnesses that accompany the recollections of any family after another year together. We made toasts - thankfully Quinn handled the foreigners' share - sang karaoke (I would title the collection, "Classic Russian Crooners"), danced, and took a late night walk around the neighborhood. Snowy trees and silent streets, factories, and several Lenin statues that we paid homage to with a bottle of white wine and our glasses raised. I'm sure he nodded approvingly from under his coat of snow.
I found out something very important that night: if you eat heavily and stay awake till 8am, you can drink a lot more vodka than you would have ever thought possible, without a ringing headache in the morning. I think that's due to the mayonnaise and bread lining the stomach...
So Quinn, Sveta, and her friend Liuba and I stayed up till the break of morning, and were joined essentially toast for toast, dance for dance by the gracious host, Aunt Nadya, and the mildly predatory (a taste for Quinn, it turned out), Aunt Ira.
It was great. And Moscow at this time of year becomes quiet under the layer of snow, with most of the population away on vacation or hunkered down with friends and family.
Happy New Year, everyone. We raise a glass for those we've lost since last year, we honor their memory, and we look forward to new dances, new dinners, and enjoying each other's company in the coming year.
I've been told time and time again here that the way you ring in the New Year determines the sort of year you'll have. I'll raise a glass to that.
Love,
Charles
PS - oh, also, see the above 1am present-to-self shoe purchase. Half soccer ball; half cross country ski boot, all Moscow.
