** Click here for Episode 133 **
Here is a plea from Annabelle in Durham, North Carolina:
I am a junior in high school in the US. This summer, I am getting paid by the State Department to go to Russia for two months and learn Russian (I feel just like James Bond).
They have sent me various safety handbooks, mostly full of slightly scary things like “We are not saying to lie if you are gay and say you are straight while in Russia, we are just saying the Russian police like to brutalize pride parades” and “Dealing with misogyny and sexual harassment while in Russia”, as well as several things that don’t really affect me, telling us how much trouble we will be in for drinking or going to clubs.
Answer me this: is there any advice you would give to a teenage girl regarding being in Russia?
Well, when I was 15 I went to stay in a suburb of Moscow, where I learnt that to fit in with the native teenage girls you need to wear tinsel in your hair and be an enthusiastic advocate of Bon Jovi. But times have changed since 1995 – just ask the band Menswe@r – so if any of you have more up-to-date advice for Annabelle in her Russian adventure, please bestow it in the comments.
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Answer Me This! Podcast 
May 8, 2010 at 9:20 am |
Oh PS I see a link to my blog has appeared in my name – I have posts about Russian life back in the archives from November 2006-January 2007 if my extremely subjective view is of any help to you 🙂
May 8, 2010 at 9:18 am |
I wasn’t a teenager when I spent 2 months in Moscow in 2006-2007, but my general strategy was just to keep as far away from the squillions of machine-gun-toting police/soldiers as I could, and it worked for me! I also got those kind of dire warnings (and a run-down on what the going rates for bribing the police for various offences like drinking in public and not carrying your passport were) on my first day of work there – it was scary, but in the end I had no problems! And I’m from New Zealand where police don’t routinely carry guns at all, so even more of a shock to the system to see them! I was there in winter, and the Russian girls were still out and about in fishnets and stilettos, I have no clue how they did it, so I got pretty much zero attention in dowdy coat and sturdy boots. I’m pretty jealous that you get to go in fact, you’ll have the experience of your life I’m sure! Ни пуха, ни пера (good luck)!
May 6, 2010 at 8:43 pm |
They don’t take kindly to underage drinking, if my 2001 Russian exchange to St Petersburg was anything to go by.