Scientific Experiment #2: Showing Your Stripes

As you know, I am a Republican. If you've been reading my blog you know that SPU is a very liberal college. Also if you've been reading my blog, you know that I was planning on showing my support of McCain and Palin on the whiteboard outside of my dorm room. For those of you who are interested, Here are the results of that experiment, i.e. The things that people wrote on my board.

This is what the original sign looked like:

McCain
Palin
2008

Here are some of the variations I got (italics are things that others wrote):

McCain (Old guy)
Palin (Bimbo)
2008

McCain
Palin
2008
Wanting to F*** the U.S. The next four years
--The interesting thing about this one is I erased all but the F of the bad word. The next morning it had been replaced by "screw"

McCain
Palin
1908

McCain
Palin
2008
Yes! Yes!
--This one made me feel less alone.

McCain
Palin
2008
Eat the Poor!!

McSame
Failin
2008
--This liberal does get points for creativity

I ran this experiment over two weekends, and Happened to go home. When I got back the first time, the board looked like this:

Obama
Biden
2008
Change we can count on

The second weekend I came back and my sign had been completely erased to be replaced by more pro-bama slogans. I rewrote it and when I left my dorm the next day the board looked like this:

McCain
Palin
2008

and here are the last few collected:

McCain
Palin
2008
Because one Depression just wasn't enough

McCain
Palin
2008
Honoring the time cherished value of lying

And the final one which was written just yesterday:

McCain
Palin
2008
Is this for the Hugh Hefner look-alike contest?


Now, one other interesting thing about this, is not just the reactions I got when I wrote it, but what happened after I did. When I wrote this on my board, there was only one other person in my hall who was showing their political stripes. It was an Obama supporter who had signs outside their door and their board said "Obama Biden" etc. Not long after putting up McCain/Palin, I realized that a lot more people had written on their boards which candidates they supported. Yeah, 90% of them are Obama, but I just think it's really interesting. Even the guy who had stuff up before me got more elaborate. He drew one of those O's on his board with the flag thing that is a symbol of all things Obama. I felt kind of bad because people came by and kept erasing parts of it. When I came back from this last weekend, he was out fixing it, and I talked to him a bit. Well, actually mom started it. She said something about "Oh you have the same problem she does, people keep messing up your board" and then he was like yeah, and said something about the Conservatives are all hiding and I said "that's because we get beat down by liberals every time we mention who we're supporting." What was interesting is that we both came to the realization that we were tired of people putting us down for whichever candidate we were supporting, and we can't wait for the election to be over. Okay, so maybe not all of the liberals at SPU are crazy.

Generally, I think this was a very interesting experiment and I learned some interesting things from it.

Losing It

From "And the Words Poured Out..." the author's paper journal.

Thursday, October 16th 2008

I was really down yesterday. I realized that I don't feel Russian anymore, and it feels like part of me is missing. It's the most depressing feeling in the world. I remember how it felt, to be living there, to be part of that and to go to the district conference and be able to slip between cultures, though i really felt more Russian. And yeah, I can interact with Russian speakers here and I can remember my language, but I'm not Russian. I mean, not that I ever was or could be, but it's just this feeling, a sort of pride. Pride in the fact that you are comfortable in your language and culture, a language and culture that used to be so alien to you. The ability to be able to say "Well, this is how we do it in Russia," and I've lost it. My heart feels purely American and it makes me want to weep. Of all the things I was worried about losing/forgetting when I came back, I never thought it would be my sense of Russianness. I told mom last night and she said it doesn't mean I might feel that way again. I know that's true but I'm afraid that the only way I'll feel that way again is if I go back and who knows when that will be?

I wish I could describe it better than "empty"but it's sort of like that. It's this sort of sensation that you carry around with you and you don't realize how it filled you up or how heavy it was until it's gone. For some reason, I've always felt Russian as heavier than English. I don't know why. Now, with my Russian self gone, I feel too light, as if I'm just going to float away into the sky, or blow away with the wind. I dislike the feeling.

Spreading the Word

The past few summers SPU has hosted a Language School for four weeks in the summer. Juniors and Seniors in high school pick one of a variety of less common languages such as Russian, Chinese, Arabic, and Hindi. They then spend a month on campus taking classes and doing their best to learn the language. When the four weeks are done they then have Saturday sessions once a month where they spend all day expanding their knowledge of the language. By the time they are done, students have completed the equivalent to two semesters of their basic language. This means, if they are in Russian for example, that when they start school, if they choose to continue study of their language, they will already be in an intermediate program. Puppy has connections to the Language School (or as he calls it, the concentration camp. I told him gulag was more appropriate.) He attended it two summers ago and then last summer he worked as a tech guy/student helper. So he knows the people.

Saturday was one of the weekend sessions. Puppy invited me to go eat lunch with some people he knew who were attending the school in the Russian program afterwards, he was going to be helping with some stuff and invited me to tag along. Since I wasn't doing anything else, I thought I would. It gave me something to do as well as show me how the school works since I'm hoping to be able to work there as a Teaching Assistant next summer. Mister Doctor who, as I mentioned in my previous post is the head of the Russian department was there because he's also one of the people in charge of the language school. He also works with the Russian program. Obviously. So I showed up and got put to work which was fine with me, since it was better than sitting there being awkward. When there was a bit of a lull, Mister Doctor came up and asked how my semester was going. I told him well, and told him which Russian class I'd ended up in. then I said something to the effect of "I'm going to see my adviser on the 20th and I'm planning on declaring Russian." He was like "oh that's good! Then I'll be one of your Advisers" and that was the extent of the conversation.

Yesterday, I walked in to my Russian class and my Russian Prof. Starts talking about all the classes she's teaching next semester. In the middle of it she goes "by the way, I heard that you were going to declare Russian." I love our small Russian department!

Moments of Triumph

I'm listening to Sufjan Stevens and feeling pretty pleased with myself. It is amazing how much I encounter Russian here. The hard thing though is to make myself interact with it. It was the same when I lived over there. I had to force myself to interact with native speakers. It was a matter of survival. Here, I have no problem interacting with non-native speakers. Most likely because if I make mistakes they won't care or won't notice. At least I think that's my sub-conscious reason for doing it. I don't know, but I really have been trying to interact more with the Russian speakers I encounter.

Last week, Mom and I went to a Russian festival at a local Orthodox Church. Naturally, I had to make a little fun of the stuff, and criticize the "Russian food" that they served (although the Borsh was really good!) but we happened to run across some Russian speakers. My mom said "go on, go talk to them" and I was really nervous about it. Even though you do it all the time as an Exchange Student, it's really really hard to go up to random people and just start speaking to them in their native language. Especially since that's probably the only thing you have in common. So mom, being her personality type, took the lead and went up to the woman, and said "hey, my daughter speaks Russian and wanted to talk to you." so much for introductions heh heh. So I chatted a bit with one lady and then another. I talked about where I lived, and the Moscow metro and Another random thing or two. They told me I spoke Russian well, and that was about it, but I felt good about it afterwards.

Sunday night, I went to an Orchestra concert here on campus. It was free with my SPU ID and one of my friends was playing so off I went. The seats weren't assigned and so I sat myself down and was waiting for the concert to start, half listening to the people around me. The two people sitting behind me were talking about "Something something twenty something" and I'm sitting there thinking "that's nice..." when all of a sudden it hit me that they hadn't been speaking English. (funny how when you know another language your brain just processes it.) So I turned around and looked and met this guys gaze and realized I was staring so I turned back around, although I definitely continued to listen to the conversation. I told myself I would regret it if I didn't talk to them and so at intermission I got up the courage and asked the girl where she was from (in Russian). She told me, and then asked where I was from. I told her I was American but that I'd lived in Russia last year. And the usual kind of conversation followed. The girl was from Turkmenistan and the guy was from Central Russia. It was fun to just chat with them. They told me that except for Mister Doctor who's the head of the Russian Department here, I was the best American Russian speaker they'd heard in a while. I told them that I didn't speak well (because I don't feel that I do. I make so many mistakes and things) and they insisted that I did. It was really fun to just talk to them, and once again I felt really glad about it afterwards.

The last thing happened just today. We were talking about Europe in my "Where in the World Are We?" lecture. We were talking about different languages and then the teacher decided to show different alphabets. The first one was the latin alphabet. Then he showed the Cyrillic alphabet. I got all excited, especially when there was a little blurb in Russian up on the screen he asked if anyone could read it and I raised my hand. So he asked me to read it and I did, I translated it and read it in English. Was very proud of myself because I read it right out. Sometimes when I'm translating my brain does weird things to my English. It was a little thing about some registration for a conference in 1997 or something. Afterwards, the teacher told me good job and told everyone to clap for me. It was pretty funny.

I guess my point is that even when you're not on exchange, those little moments of triumph still matter. You still find them in random places, and they still tend to just make your day!

New York and McCain

Found this video through The Drudge Report today. It'll take you about five minutes to watch. I thought it was very interesting.



Here in my dorm at SPU we have white boards outside our doors. Some people went around and were writing Obama 08 on them. I wanted to, as an experiment, write McCain/Palin 08 on mine to see what would happen, but I was a little scared. Think I'm definitely going to though. I'll let you all know the results.

Another Sort of Culture Shock

Over the weekend I randomly had the chance to go to see my cousin Aay who is going to school down in Tennessee. Naturally, I blew off everything else to that I was going to do and headed down there with Aunty and Uncle. It was a good trip, and I really enjoyed getting to see Aay. Hadn't seen her since she went down in August and didn't expect to see her again until Thanksgiving so it was a nice treat. Where does the culture shock come in? well actually we were talking about dorm rules. See the little thing I didn't mention about Aay's school is that she's attending a small Christian college. So we got to talking and naturally, her dorm is all girls, yeah okay, I can deal with that. I can't remember how we got on the subject but she mentioned something about how guys are only allowed into the room for like fifteen minutes at a time and they have to keep their feet on the floor. This just blew me away. I mean, I'm a hard core Christian and I understand why they do it, but it was just completely mind blowing. I guess because I'm used to the whole "guys living down the hall from you and people having their boy/girlfriends coming and spending the weekend with them" thing. I never thought I would experience that kind of culture shock here in America. I guess I see it as here, we're all adults and so you have to act responsibly. Where Aay goes to school, they're still all adults, but being a Christian school they have different Moralistic Ideals. Or whatever. I just thought it was interesting.

Which brings me to another point. I've decided that God is good, and I've been praising him, actually before I even went on this little weekend getaway. Because I've come to the conclusion that good old SPU is exactly where I need to be for college. I mean I've met some really cool people here, I speak Russian almost every day and I'm learning to stand up for myself. I was always one of those people who wanted a good education from a christian college, but I don't know, in some ways being at SPU is causing me to grow more spiritually than if I were at a Christian College. So I'm really content with where I'm at.

There was one more story I wanted to tell you last week, but I didn't get the chance because I went off to Tennessee. It happened last Wednesday in Comparing Governments. As you know, we are doing different presentations about different countries. Last Wednesday was the Germany presentation. One of the most interesting things that happened was that a girl mentioned that in Germany, they are very proud about their German heritage and even if you were born in Germany and lived there all your life, if your parents were foreign you would be considered foreign too. I raised my hand and said something to the effect of "I think that's very interesting. Do you think perhaps this comes from part of Germany being occupied by the Soviet Union because Russians feel the same way." Then, a guy in the group went on to talk about how he'd been reading and how the reason Russia reacted like they did to the Georgia thing is because they still considered those people Russian. I seriously was like "Thank you! Because I tell people that and they don't believe me!" What was great was here was a guy who's never been to Russia, he just reads a lot and he came to this conclusion. See, often we as Americans just take what people tell us as the straight truth without ever looking any deeper than the surface, and I'm not just talking about in regards to Russia I'm talking about the world and politics in general.