Mon., July 13th and Tues., July 14th
Hey Everyone!
It’s been a depressing couple of days. First, our director Brett left Novyaltaisk to go visit the other volunteers, leaving me as the only volunteer in this city! My condolenses go out to my host family also. I know that yesterday my host grandfather was admitted to the hospital. I’m not exactly well versed on medical jargon in Russian, but from our conversation I figured out that something happened to his arm (I think my host mother may have said that he broke it). Today however, I found out that someone had died. I don’t think it was my host grandfather, but rather the father of a family friend. I know he died of a heart attack, because the Russian word for it is pronounced “insult,” which I had to look up because at first I thought that my host mother was trying to tell me that she found something I did offensive.
I’m going to get a little political now because I feel like this is something I need to address. Russian people have a tendency to over-consume on meat and dairy products, which increases the probability of having heart palpitations and can potentially lead to death because of the massive amounts of cholesterol the body absorbs. Paired with a poor healthcare system the picture does not look good, and the problem is only exacerbated by rampant alcoholism that has taken over the country. Since alcohol damages the liver, as does the medication available here for high cholesterol, the result is either a dead liver or clogged arteries, neither of which is good.
This actually causes a large national security issue for the Russian federation. Not only is the average lifespan of a Russian male 55 years (which is one of the lowest among developed nations) compared to the Russian females life expectancy of about 70 years, but Russian females greatly outnumber Russian males, even more than China’s male to female ratio of 110:100. This leads many Russian females to seek companionship elsewhere (hence Russian “mail-order” brides), and it also doesn’t help feminism here either, since woman must compete for the few available good men. And men on the other hand have no problem not wearing deodorant or washing or remaining sober since they almost certainly will find a woman desperate to start a family.
Just yesterday Dasha and I walked into a productui (small food store) to buy some bread and four completely wasted Russian men came inside to get more alcohol (It was about 4 o’clock, by the way), and when we went outside there was another drunk man pissing out in the open. Dasha turned to me and said “now you know why I don’t want to date Russian men!” Can’t say I blame her!
Our article comes out in the paper tomorrow. Dasha stopped by the newspaper office today to pick up a copy, and we got the ENTIRE page. There are 3 articles and 3 pictures of us on it. One article talks about learning enterprises, one about me and Brett teaching in the classroom, and one about the interview they had with Brett and myself the following day. Watching what you say around reporters is a trite statement in the US, but it holds true here too. I mentioned in passing that I may work for the US government, and they printed that. They also printed a comment Brett made about how cheap their advertising was for their own publicity (He worked on a newspaper for a while, so he was comparing them during the tour). Either way, our celebrity is growing in town. I was on the bus today and the man next to me was on the phone and said to whoever he was talking to “I’m here with the American.” We’re in a town of about 250,000 people, but I guess word spreads fast. Even faster after they print the article tomorrow.
This Saturday I will be able to meet up with the other volunteers in Bellakoreka, a resort-like town where one of the other volunteers (Isabel) is living. It’s going to be great since I haven’t seen them for almost 2 weeks. I hope they are all doing well and having fun! That’s all for now.
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