Snow in Simf City!

Was it really only just a month ago I arrived and bragged about spotting tank tops?

So what exactly have I been doing?

Perhaps it is about time I give a project-related update, lest you all think I'm spending my days perfecting my borscht recipe and dreaming about libraries.

My first month here has been considerably busy considering how little I feel I've gotten accomplished. At least 14 hours a week are filled with language lessons - I study Russian 10 hours a week with a private tutor, and Crimean Tatar for 4. I'm also trying to keep up with my Turkish by reading and listening to online news. I've heard about a Turkish conversation club at a local university that I think I'll attend with two aims - to keep my Turkish fresh and meet some new people outside the study-abroad crowd.

My other main preoccupation this past month has been graduate applications. I'm applying to Anthropology PhD programs for the second year in a row, but feel much better about things this time around. I'm applying to Michigan, Chicago, NYU, Berkeley, Washington University, Yale, UCSD and Indiana. My backup plan is a FLAS-funded regional studies MA, but I'll worry about that after the PhD applications are out of the way. It is amazing how time consuming (adult molar-grinding stressful?) this process is.

My project is slowing starting up. I've found an advisor at Tavrida University, Professor Adile Emirova, who has been extremely helpful and encouraging. She has connected me with a few more individuals and given me a great deal of materials to read, which I've been slowly but surely crawling through. After the application season and the holidays, I will have much more time to devote to visiting schools.

Every once in awhile I pop out for no other reason than to explore. There is a beautiful park near my house that I like to jog in, and a walk into town following the river that is quite nice (picture above). I've discovered an nice Indian Restaurant that is quite affordable, and came across a lokanta (named Mega Fast Food - Halal) yesterday with ezogelin worth writing home about (which I suppose is what I'm doing now). The market is my most frequent trip, and I'm enjoying some of my favorite fruits while they're in season. My fruit lady is always pretty happy to see me as she knows I'll fill up my entire backpack with her delicious tomatoes, apples, pomegranates and mandarins. But not the precious persimmons - must carry those by hand as they're so ripe they're threatening to burst. Wish I had a picture to share but suppose it will have to wait.

Yes, Virginia, borscht does taste better the second day!

I think borscht could be the perfect American food for the holidays. First off, I do not believe there is a standard Christmas soup. The 4th of July has barbecue and hot dogs and Thanksgiving has Turkey. What could be a better time for soup than December! Second, it's red. Now all we need is Heintz to create green sour cream, and we've got a new American classic.

I've been playing around with my borscht recipe since my roommates in Bishkek shared theirs with me in April. I made a particularly tasty version yesterday, which was even better today. For my dear cold-climate dwelling readers, I thought I'd share with you my recipe to help you through this winter.

A quick note: I cheat with my borscht, as I don't add meat and I don't make a stock ahead of time. I doubt I've got any stickler babushki reading my blog, but if so, let me say it now... I don't claim this recipe to be authentic! That being said, I suppose there is no "one" way to make it. Poking around a bit on recipe sites, this recipe seems to be a safe bet, however, so take a look if you're interested.

My Borscht Recipe, estimated

2 onions

Fresh or dried parsley

Fresh or dried dill

4 cloves of garlic

2 beets

bouillon (optional)

3 potatoes

1 carrot

Parsnips and celery (optional)

Salt and pepper

1 small head of cabbage

Sour cream (garnish)

Chop the onions and garlic. Sauté them over low heat with the parsley and dill. Add tomatoes.

Peel and prepare the beets. They should be chopped in "sticks" rather than cubes. Add these to the pan and sauté for about 10 minutes more.

Heat up some water in a big pot, and if you feel like it add some bouillon. Add the mess you've sautéed in the pan.

Chop up potatoes and carrots in sticks as well, if for no other reason than they look good like that and the Ukrainians seem to do it that way. You can also prepare other vegetables to add, such as parsnips, celery, or whatever you have lying around. Borscht can be a bit of a stone soup in that way. Throw all of this into the pot. Chop up a small cabbage, or half a head of a large one. Purple or green can work.

Now you can add more parsley and dill, as well as salt and pepper. Go ahead and add Mrs. Dash as well if you feel like it. Let it simmer for an hour. Serve with sour cream. Bread is pretty good with it as well, but of course the best of all is pampushki. These are delicious (and adorable) garlic-buttery buns.

Of course you'll be hungry when it is finished, but if you've made enough you can wait until the next day to have the (even better) leftovers.

If you try it out, please let me know in the comments. I'd also love to hear any of your own borscht recipes you're hiding!

Postcards

As you may remember from a previous post, I've been finding all sorts of things in my apartment left by previous tenants. I suppose if I started looking through the pile of my landlord's boxes in my bedroom:

I'd find even more.

Something notable I just found in a drawer is a collection of postcards from the 60's, 70's and 80's featuring various Soviet monuments and buildings. I'm still not sure how I feel about collecting Soviet memorabilia, but these postcards are interesting and shouldn't just be lying in a drawer. I would in theory feel bad about breaking up the sets, but a few already seem to be missing.

I've been looking for an excuse to get back in touch with people and send some postcards. Leave a comment or send an email with your mailing address if you'd like one. And on the off chance I have readers of this blog I don't know personally, I'd love to send you a postcard too! Just send me your address. They may come in an envelope as some are too large to send as a postcard.

Another bit of writing about reading

While the potential list of topics for self-indulgent blog posts is perhaps endless, I am sure writing about reading must be one of the more common themes. I know I shouldn't join in (who am I, Anne Fadiman?), but nonetheless I can't resist.

Living abroad my relationship with books has changed considerably, especially with English-language books. Sure, it is nice to immerse yourself by diving into the local literature - but who am I kidding. I've been reading English for 20 years, Turkish for 3 and Russian for only 1... and there is nothing like flying through a book in a native language.

In Istanbul I was spoiled. With Pandora and Robinson Crusoe, there was no real reason not to have my hands on nearly any English book I wanted, if I didn't mind a wait and paying full price. Their in-store selections as well are wonderful and make for good browsing. In Ukraine I haven't had as much luck; I found exactly two English books I wanted in Kyiv, and have yet to have anything catch my interest here in Simferopol. Although New Headway English Course: Intermediate seems tempting.

But not a drop to drink

No, here I have the books I brought with or a sea of Russian. The only other alternatives I seem to have at the moment are trading books with missionaries or getting into the pdf book swapping scene.

It is not even a matter of specific books that I want. You could offer to send me any 3 books I wanted and I would still complain. The ability to go to a library - even not a particularly good one - and pick from a selection of books that I may want to read. That is what I want!

This next part may be controversial, but so be it. It is not even that I necessarily need to be able to read the books. Let them lay around on the desk, the bed, the floor. I'd like to check out a few books, similar or wildly different, leave them stacked up for a week or two while I read one or two or a little of all, or even none at all, and then return them for another collection, chosen completely by whim. So what if my love of books is related to but also separate from my love of reading. Should a letter writer feel guilty about collecting stamps?

The stacks

When I was in Gaylord this summer, I paid a few visits to the Otsego County Library. The silver lining in the meager selection is the impossibility of browsing without reminders of past visits. Every time I go I see a few books that spent some time on my desk (or floor), even if I didn't exactly read them. A failed attempt to teach myself German. A childhood obsession with Miss Manners.

On my last visit, I picked up Nabokov's Pnin, which I had never read before. I fell in love with the book, and even more so the edition:

Confession: I wanted to steal the library book. I wanted it to be mine. Mine! Never mind there are plenty of other residents of Otsego County who are still to discover this wonderful edition of Pnin, or even Nabokov himself, who of course should not be deprived of such an opportunity.

One of Heidi's friends cited some alleged OCL policy where each patron may "lose" one library book in the lifetime without penalty. Sounded to me like the "students can leave if the teacher is 15 minutes late" rule, but I briefly considered. Regardless of the fact that my go was probably used up when I was a child and the library unfairly accused me of losing some book about a mouse, it didn't seem right. But as I searched online for a picture of that cover to accompany this post, I came across an even better edition. Now if this had been the copy in question I might have had to reconsider.

Want. And no, I don't read Nabokov in Russian, as I can hardly comprehend him in English.

(Of course, for perhaps one of the best editions of all, sneak a look here. Also thanks to Life's archives, you can imagine this as an early version.)

My own libraries, at home and in expatia

Of course I would never go through with stealing a library book. Not even saying I'd lost the book to see if the replacement fee was cheaper than that edition on the used market. Why, that is worse than littering in front of the courthouse, lying on a census or not voting! Try as I may, I am stuck with a deep respect for the institution of the library. Even good ol' OCL.

In fact, as a young, asthmatic perfectionist, I even attempted to create my own. My first act as librarian of the basement was to organize the fiction. Cutting tiny white stickers out of nametags and placing them on the binding of the books, I carefully marked the books with two lines of text. So Matilda looked like this:

FIC

Dah

The non-fiction was a problem, as I did not possess the magical "key" to figure out how books were assigned call numbers under the Dewey Decimal System. I spent a good deal of time trying to solve this problem. I believe I might have been planning to ask our librarian for a "list" before my mother intervened. That is how I remember it, anyhow.

After my first trip to a university library, I lost all remaining faith in Dewey as I learned that not all followed his mysterious code. So like most private collectors, I created my own system. In my little corner of Simferopol, with my small assortment of books, I've settled on the following: books I'm working on strewn in the comfortable reading zones of the flat, the largest four volumes forming makeshift stands for electronics, and the remaining, after much contemplation, organized by some combination of aesthetics and size without heed to subject matter.

İyi Bayramlar, albiet a bit late

This blog as been a bit neglected this week while working on graduate applications. 1 down, 6 to go!

I've been watching videos of the Crimean News Agency (Qırım Haber Ajansı) to follow the local news and to get exposure to the Crimean Tatar language.

Thought any Turkophones reading this blog might be curious about the Crimean Tatar language. I'm no expert, but I'll be making a post soon about my experience so far studying it. The following video is about different Crimean Tatar dishes, especially those made at a specific restaurant in preparation for Kurban Bayrami (Eid al-Adha). This year the bayram fell on the same weekend as Thanksgiving, celebrated from Friday to Monday.

Looks pretty good to me...

Not yet a legal alien...

Thanks, Wikipedia

My legal status here is as follows: although I have a one year scientific visa for Ukraine, I must register within the first 90 days of my residence. Consequences for not registering can amount to fines or a ban from future entrance to Ukraine.

My first two months in Ukraine I was in Kyiv studying Russian. I couldn't begin on my registration there because I had to register in the city of the university I'm affiliated with. As soon as I moved to Simferopol, the swine flu quarantine was in place and someone at my university told me it was impossible to register me until the quarantine was over. I made the mistake of listening to her. When I showed up to the office of International Students the first day of school after the quarantine (the day before my 90 days expired), I got an ear full about not coming into the office, because apparently they were working the whole time.

That was Monday, this is Friday and my registration is now late and still not filed. Shall I continue about the rest: the documentation, the multiple trips to the police station, the tax office, some other office that has something to do with residence, and the university? The 50 dollar "insurance" fee? The pack of paper (!) my landlord had to buy for a police officer for him to give us the document we needed, because he "didn't have any paper to print the document on"? The conflicting versions of the law that have confused the university this past week (there's the Kyiv version, and the Simferopol version)?

I see your eyes are glazing over. Perhaps I should let that be, and just mention that I am not yet a legal alien, and if I left the country at this moment, I would not be let back in.