Benches and Superstitions

I’d like to introduce you to my bench.

I’m usually a few minutes early for class, so last week, while waiting for my teacher to arrive an unlock our room, I sat down on the floor next to my classroom. I’d never actually seen anyone else sitting on the floor here, but due to the fact that I was tired and am not to concerned about a little bit I dirt, I sat down. Soon the teacher came, I got up, we had class, I went home and thought nothing more of it. But the next day when I arrived, as if by magic or by bench fairies, this beautiful (ok, ugly, but still wonderful) bench now sat exactly where I had the day before! I thought it  was a very happy coincidence but when I mentioned it to my roommate she offered an alternative explanation…but before I tell you her thoughts, let me be a little divergent for a moment.

Russia is a country of many superstitions. I’m sure that every culture, including my own, have superstitions or “old wives tales” that we’ve been fed since children and blindly believe, it’s just easier to spot them in someone else’s culture. For example, in Canada when someone is sick with a cold we feed them Chicken Noodle Soup. But why? Is there any particular healing powers in this soup? Would my sick friend be just as revived if I fed her Minestrone or Borscht? Or should I really not go swimming for 45 minutes after eating?

Several weeks ago, when I finally got too tired of wearing winter boots all day, everyday, I decided to wear some nice flats instead. These flats were accused by my Russian roommates of being sandals, which they most certainly are not. An argument broke out at our front door about whether or not I could be permitted to leave the house in shoes that would surely make me sick. The roommate that I was going with told me that she would be accused of not taking proper care of me if I went out with her in these shoes, and so, with much grumbling, I changed back into my only “seasonally appropriate” footwear – boots.

The shoe thing, though annoying, I could at least see coming. Some of others have flown at me from left field. For example…Did you know that you can’t eat cucumber and drink milk at the same time because it will give you diarrhea? Or that eating raspberries, or anything containing raspberries, less than an hour before going outside will give you a cold?

I recently offended one of my Russian friends when she told me another similar belief and I ignored her advice and tactlessly told her that it was only a Russian superstition and was not medically sound. She gave me a sweet (loaded with meaning) smile and left the room. Mental Note: demeaning someone’s cultural beliefs is probably not the best way to keep friends.

And now, back to my bench…In Russia, it is believed that sitting on the cold floor is bad for a woman’s reproductive system, and is thus not considered proper behaviour. So, my roommate suggested that the fact that a foreign student felt the need to sit on the floor, might have been the reason that prompted the delivery (likely by janitorial staff, not fairies) of the miracle bench. And so, whether medically sound or not, I’m certainly grateful for the superstition that brought me and my bench together. I plan to spend plenty of time sitting on the floor next to it after class, drinking milk and eating cucumbers and raspberries before walking home in the cold with my sandals on.

Tell me what you think. Superstition or Fact?

Baby Update

I know many of you were curious after reading the last article what would happen to the little girl that we were taking care of. I’m happy to report to you that the family that she has been staying with since being with us want to adopt her. Even more importantly than that the mother has acknowledged that she is not able to care for her and has agreed to sign over her rights to the baby. This is such good news for this precious little girl!

4 Girls and a Baby

Last Friday night’s conversation between me, my roommate Marianne and Rachel, the director of a Street Children’s Centre here in Vladivostok:

Rachel: What are you doing this weekend? You want to take a baby home with you?
Me: (laughter)
Long pause.
Rachel: (straight face)
Me: You’re not joking, are you?
Rachel: No.
Long pause. Obvious consideration on my part.
Marianne: No. We can’t take a baby home.
Rachel: Why not? You have 4 girls in one apartment, surely you can take care of a baby for a few days.

Marianne and I went home alone that night, but not before hearing the full story. The aforementioned baby and her teenage mother had been living in the shelter for almost a year and it was not the first time she had taken off without telling anyone, abandoning her child in the process. She is pregnant again, and they suspect, not mentally well.

One of the few staff that the centre have eventually ended up taking her home for the weekend, but on Sunday night we got a phone call to say that the mother had not yet returned and asking again “can you take this baby?”. So, Marianne and I got in the car, drove across town and got ourselves a 15 month-old baby. Marianne had a flight the following day to Siberia, but the other 3 of us girls in the apartment (well, mostly 2) spent the next couple of days brush up on our babysitting skills.

The experience reminded me a lot of the movie Three Men and a Baby that I liked so much when I was a kid. The main difference being (besides the obvious gender discrepancy) that in the film, all 3 men admitted to knowing nothing about how to care for a baby and in our case, we all ideas of how to best care for a baby, they just didn’t line up with each others. I never would have guessed babysitting would be such an experience in cultural orientation.

The first surprise. When we picked her up we got the rundown of what she eats and drinks. Everything on the list seemed quite normal until we reached tea. Yes, tea. In a bottle. Tea. I don’t know what to say about this except for “why?”. What does a baby need caffeine for? Total mystery to me, but it apparently is quite normal here. Needless to say, on my watch, tea was not on the menu.

Second surprise – Bed Time. By the time we got her home the night we picked her up and had her fed and bathed, it was quite late. Let me qualify that statement for those who define late differently than I do – by the time we put her to bed it was about 11pm. I expected the next night we would shoot for a more age appropriate bed time. But, Monday night, time kept slipping further and further away as I waited for my roommate to return home with her. It was sometime after 9:30 when she showed up. I was handed the baby and asked to make her some dinner, feed her, bath her and put her to bed. My reply was a shocked “she should already be in bed!”. To which I was told “no, 11 or 12 is fine”. ?!??!!!? My 2 Russian roommates stared at me seemingly unable to comprehend my horror. They assured me that in Russia this is normal, so I tried to put on my when in Rome… attitude got to work on her dinner. I’ll admit that one benefit to the late bed time is that she was still fast asleep the next morning at 8 o’clock when I left for school.

Food and bed times aside, I recognize that what this little girl needs most is love and attention. And while I can lend some of that in the short term, she needs a long-term solution.

When Tuesday night rolled around we were relieved of our babysitting duties. Our precious little girl was off to yet another home, this time to a family, who if things work out, would like to be that solution. I pray that it will work out that way.

The tagline from the film was They changed her diapers. She changed their lives. For my roommate, being a “mother” for 48 hours taught her that she doesn’t want to be one for longer than that. I was surprised, given how good she was with the baby, but she said that it made her realize how much she values her independence and has no desire for the responsibility of parenthood. I on the other hand made my peace with responsibility a long time ago and would love to be a mom one day. For me this time served not to change, but reinforce my desire to care for those who have been abandoned.

Dodgy Bits

Have you ever had friends or relatives from out of town come to visit? Did you take them on a tour of your city? When I lived in Australia my parents came to visit and I remember mentally going through the lists of places and things I wanted to take them to see. I wanted my city to put it’s best foot forward and show my parents how wonderful it was! Wouldn’t you do the same? I recently learned that the answer is not a universal ‘yes’ .

I’ve always thought a city tour should be like an introduction, the all-important first impression. When introducing 2 of your friends who don’t yet know each other, you want to them both to see the best in the other person. You want them to understand why you love them both. You want them to like the other person before they see their flaws so that when they do, they’ll be easier to overlook. I can only imagine what an introduction might sound like if that was not the case:

“Sara, meet Julia. Julia is a very sweet person, watch what you say around her though as she is a notorious gossip. Julia, this is Sara she’s one of the most fun people I know, but don’t leave your boyfriend alone with her because she’s deeply insecure and gets her sense of self-worth from men.”

Hmmm, maybe not.

On Friday night one of my new Russian friends, who I met at church about 3 weeks ago, invited me out for a meal. She speaks English really well, which is nice for me since my Russian is coming along at what I’m sure is a normal pace, but slower than I had hoped.

We ate some soup, drank some tea, had some nice conversation and then she asked me what I had seen in the city already. I told her that since this is my third time in Vladivostok I thought I had seen most of the major points of interest already. Even so, she suggested we take a drive and told me that there were some places she wanted to show me. I, of course, agreed and we headed to her car.

We started to drive and even in the dark I felt pretty confident that I had my bearings. She pointed out a few landmarks on the way and eventually we made it to the border of as far as I had ever ventured. This is where she locked the doors. Curious. If I had been in a car with a stranger, I think that’s the moment I would have started to panic. Then the stories started. She told me about how dangerous the part of town we were in was. She shared about when she used to live there, about how every day when she walked home she hoped that she wouldn’t be killed that day, how she had to walk through a group of erratic-behaviored drug addicts to get into her building and about one night when she lay in bed terrified while a man tried to beat her door down. Message received – not a safe place. We drove up and down the pot-holed streets taking it all in.

Our tour concluded with an apology, an explanation and a demand. An apology for trying to scare me. An explanation that it was for my own good because she didn’t want me to accidentally put myself in danger because no one had shown me the reality of how things can be here. And a demand that I promise never to go there at night or even during the day without a Russian with me (in fact she said the even if I was with a Russia I should not speak because if anyone heard my accent I would be a target).

It was nothing like any city tour I’ve every had, certainly not the kind of thing you would sell to the tourists…

No one wants people to see the worst of their home, their friends, or lets face it, themselves, but as bizarre as the evening was there was something refreshing in her honesty. If we’re going to call things what they are, isn’t only showing off the shiny-pretty bits (whether of our city or ourselves) actually deception? I’ll admit it, I have my dodgy-bits too! But rather than try to hide them from you wouldn’t it be better if I openly worked on overcoming them? Do you think you could still love me if you knew what they were?

My new friend put her cities worst for foot forward in an effort to keep me safe. I can respect that, it feels like real friendship to me. And despite Vladivostok’s dodgy bits, I’m still happy to be here!

Getting Cultured

About a month ago I read a blog a friend of mine had written about growing a Wild Yeast Culture as a starter for Sourdough Bread (For you non-bakers out there, simply put, this means that you grow a bunch of goop in are jar and it becomes full of live yeast, caught from the air. You then add this goop to your dough instead of using dry yeast that you can buy at the supermarket.). Why bother? Well, it’s fun and makes healthier bread. Ever since reading her blog I couldn’t stop thinking about it and really wanted to try, but wasn’t sure it was worth the effort. Then I mentioned it to my Swiss roommate and her enthusiastic response tipped the scales – I had to do it!

My culture is now in the 4^th day of its short life. I’ll admit, at this point I’m a little disappointed with it’s growth. I had expected a bit more. I am not ready to give up on it quite yet though. I’ve done a little research about how to encourage it if it’s not growing like it should, so I’ll wait a few more day and if necessary give one of them a try.

Unbeknownst to be me, at the same time as I was starting my Wild Yeast Culture I had another yeast culture beginning to thrive.

Let me start with a little background information. I moved to Russia 5½ weeks ago and have been sick for most of that time. About 9 days after I arrived I got some sort of cold/flu and spend 4 days sick in bed with a fever. After those those 4 days I still had a cough, but thought that it would just go away with time. Only it didn’t. It got worse and worse to the point that I couldn’t sleep because the coughing was so bad I was having trouble breathing. My English speaking roommate was in Thailand at the time, so I consulted with my friend in Canada who is a Respiratory Therapist and she said it was a Chest Infection and told me what medicine I needed to be on. The one (and maybe only) convenient thing about Russia is that you can go to a Chemist and buy just about anything without a prescription. Between the translated names of the drugs, that I got on the internet (thank you Google), and the fact that I am extremely gifted at charades I was able to get what I needed. I took my antibiotics regularly like a good girl and after about 2 weeks I was feeling MUCH better.

So…back to my other yeast culture. Please try not to be too grossed out by what I am about to tell you. The day before I started growing my Wild Yeast Culture I notices a sickly sweet taste in my mouth. I was drinking my morning coffee and it tasted like I had put 5 heaping spoonfuls of sugar in it (and I don’t take any). My first thought was that it might have been the milk, but after brushing my teeth the taste persisted. Everything I ate or drank tasted sweet. I couldn’t get the taste out of my mouth. I was shocked when I stuck out my tongue to give it a good scrub with my toothbrush to see that it had turned white and green! I scrubbed and scrubbed but to no avail. This, I will spare you a picture of, thought I did email one to a friend of mine who is studying medicine in the US. I explained the whole thing to her and she and her professor agreed that I have Oral Candidiasis (aka: Oral Yeast Infection. YUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!). Apparently this is quite common after a round of Antibiotics. The Antibiotics kill the bacteria in your body leaving things wide open for the yeasts to take over. So, back to the Chemist I go to start another round of medicine. One of these days I will be healthy again and my coffee will taste like it’s supposed to.

The irony that I am simultaneously trying to encourage and grow one yeast culture and completely annihilate another has not been lost on me. In fact it has helped me process some of what is going on in other areas of my life. Why would you kill one culture and encourage another? Easy, one is healthy, one is not.

My life feels like cultural olympics at the moment. They’re all coming together, all fighting for a place at the top of podium. Canadian culture, Australian culture, YWAM culture, Russian culture (& Christian sub-culture),… Who will win? What will be encouraged to grow and what will be killed? How do you even make those kinds of decisions?

In only 5½ weeks I’ve already come up agains a few things that have been in conflict to my normal culture and worldview. To be honest some of them have really frustrated me. I have been temped to hold on to my way and reject how things are done or seen here. One of the situations has been particularly frustrating to me. I couldn’t seem to let it go. After spending a few days marinating in frustration I finally did gave in and decided to journal and talk to God about it. When it all boiled down I realized that my question for Him was this:

“Is my point of view on this Biblical or is theirs?”

Not because it was a competition to decide who was right and who was wrong, but because that has to be the deciding factor. Doesn’t it? As a Christian, yes. If it’s Biblical, I get to hold onto it, if it’s not, it needs to go so truth can take it’s place.

They say old habits die hard and I can attest to that! Habits of thought are certainly no easier to kill. But I don’t want to think and live like a Canadian, an Australia, a YWAMer or a Russian. I want to think and live like Jesus. I’ll take from each culture what belongs to Him and set about destroying the rest. When the cultural olympics come to an end, I want only Him to be standing on the podium. So, I’ll rely on his grace to get me through this. Let the games begin!!!