Mosques and Lenin

 This Wednesday was our group's excursion to the religious sites in Ufa. Since the Bashkiri and Tatar people in the state are primarily Muslim, we visited two mosques, a memorial to the 'friendship' between the Bashkiri and Russian peoples, and an Orthodox church, that was unfortunately closed.
The first mosque we visited was close to the heart of the city, near a large garden. My tutor told me that her family attends services here occasionally. Her mother is Muslim and her father is Christian Orthodox, but their whole family will go to the mosque, while only her father and brother go to church. A religious leader (I think his title is technically a mulla, I'm not sure, though, hopefully someone can set me straight) welcomed us to Bashkortostan and spoke to us about religion and life. The people who spoke Russian very well seemed to appreciate what he said, but unfortunately he spoke very quickly, so I only really got the parts about not drinking vodka. He also chanted a prayer and asked us to pray with him.

The second mosque we visited is called Ljalja-Tjulpan and I believe its named that because its twin minarets look like tulips. It stands just outside the city and is absolutely stunning! The building is relatively new, it wasn't finished until 1998, and is shared with a nearby theological college. 

The Ljalja- Tjulpan Mosque towering above us.

The tulip minarets

 As someone who enjoys the atmosphere inside older churches and cathedrals, I found both the mosques to be very peaceful inside. They were quiet, well-lit and decorated with soft colors, intricate carpets, beautiful inscriptions - overall, ideal places to pray and meditate. I actually felt like our big group disturbed some people praying. By the way, the girls did have to wear head-coverings and cover our shoulders and legs (to the knee) when we visited the mosques. But gowns and kerchiefs were available at both of them, if you needed them. 

An older woman praying in Ljalja-Tjulpan.

We also visited the Statue of Friendship between the Russian and Bashkiri peoples. Funnily enough, I go by this every day on the bus on my way to the university, so it was nice to finally find out what it is. It was built in 1965 and in what I would consider to be the typical style of Soviet monuments.

Statue of Friendship between the Russian and Bashkiri peoples

Speaking of Soviet style, Friday we went to the house in Ufa where Lenin lived while he was in exile. Never mind that he lived there for less than a year (probably even less than six months) - he lived there. End of discussion. Basically, the house just showed a typical Russian home in 1900 and our guide talked a bit about Lenin's life, especially what he did leading up to going to Ufa and immediately after. All things considered, Russian history is something I need to brush up on (along with Russian language, Russian literature, and Russian politics, etc...). I know surprisingly little about this country, actually, but that's what I'm here to learn! We also got to see some pictures of Ufa in 1900, including some places I see everyday now. There was also an impressive collection of statues and paintings of Lenin.

"In this house in 1990 lived Vladimir Illyich Lenin."

Well, this is getting to be a long post, so I'm going to wrap it up with just a quick story from this Friday. I was with one of the other girls on the CLS program in a cafe to grab lunch and there were a couple of Russian girls waiting in line in front of us. One of them turned around and starting talking to my friend like she knew her, saying she saw her on the bus that morning. We weren't really sure what to make of it, so we asked her to repeat what she said, thinking maybe we just didn't understand it. It turned out that they just mistook my friend for someone else, but then they asked us where we were from and why we were here. They are physics students at one of the other universities in the city and one of them had seen the report on local tv about Americans studying in Ufa. One thing led to another and we ended up having lunch with them! It was awesome!

Finally, I found this funny article about Ufa online, if you're interested. I'm not sure about all of it, but I can attest to it that the thing about awful traffic is true.

Today I ate the Soviet Union...

Apparently communism tastes good?

... and it was chocolate-covered and delicious! I had an ice cream bar that is advertised as the kind that used to be popular in the USSR.

This week was really crazy, but I'm finally starting to get the hang of riding the bus and walking everywhere. Classes are starting the pick up and the pace seems pretty good, but I'm not sure what their focus really is yet. We have four courses, phonetics, grammar, Russian language and vocabulary, and Russian press and media, all conducted in Russian, with the occasional English word thrown in for translation's sake. They all have their ups and downs, but my favorite course by far is phonetics, which is basically practicing pronunciation. We spend some time just practicing making the sounds, then learn rhymes and songs. Its great! Although I hope that I find some more time to do some reading on my own - I'm trying to read "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," but we have so much homework, that I haven't really gotten started yet. Besides regular classes, we have 'field trips' to museums, plays, mosques, churches, etc... Tomorrow we're touring the religious sites around Ufa - I'm pretty pumped.

We also have some smaller projects that are more open ended. I will have to do a short presentation on Belarussian culture and Belarussians in Russia  and I think I'm going to focus on religion, since it seems like Belarussians are more observant of the Orthodox Church than Russians. We also have another cultural project that I haven't really decided on yet. I would like to do something related to the Bashkir (or Bashkort) language, which is the language of an Islamic (for lack of a better word) ethnic group in the state I'm living, Bashkortostan. I'm especially interested in the language politics here, since although the Bashkir group is relatively small in numbers, the Bashkir language (which is related to Turkish, but written with Cyrillic letters) is written right next to Russian on almost every sign - bus stops, grocery stores, and what not. Also, the Bashkir language is taught in schools and is considered a state language in Bashkortostan, while Tatar (also a Turkic language) is not, even though there are more speakers. In general, the Bashkiri people seem to be highly respected here, which is refreshing. How bad is it that I'm surprised when a minority ethnic group is held in esteem? I guess studying ethnicity and nationalism so much just has that effect.

Statue for the Bashkortostan hero Sulavat Yulaev in Ufa - he lead the region in an uprising for independence from the Russian Empire. And the city's hockey team is named after him.

Anyways, I'm keeping busy. On Friday we went and saw a play about the effects of perestroika in a small community. It was depressing - quite a few people died - and I almost cried even though I understood less than 50% of the dialog. Nonetheless, it was more a play about change and an individual's choices than anything else, not nostalgia or praise for the time prior to perestroika. We saw another play Monday night, but this one was a student group's production. It was ok, but it was a romantic comedy, a bit silly, and way longer than it needed to be. Otherwise, I've been hanging out with my tutor an her sister a lot and walking around the city. Each CLS participant is matched up with a Russian student to help them get comfortable with the language and the city. I love talking to my tutor and her twin sister. They both study Translation (English and German) at the Pedagogical University which is hosting us and they are wonderfully patient when I have trouble remembering vocabulary or explaining something. Also, we talk about everything, so my Russian really gets a work out! 

By the way, the local television came to our classes to interview us for a story last week. Its mostly in Russian, but check it out:

Arrival

Backlog, 6/13 9am: After a long two days in Washington D.C., followed by a sleepless ten-hour flight to Moscow, a seven-hour layover, then another two-hour flight, I arrived in Ufa yesterday evening. The representatives for the CLS program in Ufa, that is the trip organizer and a few of the teachers met us in the airport. Then we were all loaded in to taxis and sent off to our host families. The taxi ride was great, since we had landed just before sunset, so the view over the river as we drove into the city was beautiful. And it was my first chance to really break out my Russian, besides ordering food in the airport. My driver pointed out sights - the city center, the statue to regional hero Salavat Yulaev (I'm not sure why he's famous yet, but I'm sure I'll find out soon). I asked the driver what kind of food he recommended that I eat and what was absolutely worth seeing in the city and, much to my delight, he told me that he is Bashkir and grew up in a town about 100 kilometers outside of Ufa. The Bashkir are a Muslim ethnic group who live mostly in the Bashkortostan state, which Ufa is the capital of. I'm hoping maybe to learn a little bit of the Bashkir language while I'm here, which is Turkic, so not at all related to Russian. He told me to try some Bashkiri food and gave me the name of a restaurant. He also was really insistant that if I had a free weekend, I should go out to the countryside and see the towns around the city (especially his hometown, of course). Also, he was really surprised that I was wearing a seatbelt and told me that I didn't need to because the taxi had special shades on the windows so that the police wouldn't notice if I wasn't wearing one.

My host mom, a retired teacher, seems like a force of nature. She has a lot to say and speaks very quickly, so I can't really keep up with her yet. My host brother, Roman, on the other hand, didn't have much to say, but we had fun looking up the translation for 'peanut butter' and he thought it was funny that I liked the cookies they served us on the airplane. The apartment is small, but comfortable - standard Russian living arrangements, I think. There is a family of pigeons outside my window, which I listened to all morning, because I was awake at like 6am Ufa-time, even thought that is like 8pm EST. Luckily, I think that I hear everybody else waking up, so I'm going to venture out for my breakfast and see how we're going to celebrate the today's holiday, Russia Day! Tomorrow I'll go to the university to take more placement tests and begin classes.