Breaking the Ice (Yes, In June)

I'm really happy to report that, finally, this month, I've been having some very promising social contact with people.

I'm not sure how much this has come across in our posts here or in individual correspondence, but this is truly one area where our life here has been slow to develop -- and where we've felt the strain. As we often remark jokingly, wistfully, frustratedly to one another, "we ain't got peeps."

As I mentioned in my last post, the first half of June was, for me, abustle with professional activity and creative inspiration. It also brought contact with the visitors (and the local participants) who had gathered for a history conference, which was also rewarding. But I find that there are several directions I want to be spending my -- now, of course, with Anya, seemingly limited -- time and energy, and it's tough to figure out how to organize them all and not feel like I'm doing many things only at half tilt. I want and need to spend time with Anya, of course, and spending time with Dan is also important. Professional activity is a priority, too. You can't ignore your own private, personal time, either, whether trying to get in a little exercise or reading -- that kind of thing. But then there's one more area, which I now realize probably would have demanded a little less energy in this first year of parenthood if we had not set out here in a completely new place, knowing no one, and of course not being native speakers of the language, and that is the social.

So far, I think our feeling about the very small diplomatic post (and in a place with very few expats in other, non-diplomatic spheres) is that it's pretty limiting socially. Partly it's an issue of one of us having already spent the entire workday with these people, and then you come home, only to have the same small set of people naturally at your doorstep to socialize with. Partly it's also that old issue of choice, which worried us coming in: given a somewhat random grouping of fewer than ten people, what are the odds that you're going to be socially compatible with them, for anything more than the occasional meeting-up? Not much, I will answer with some experience.

And, of course, we had hoped before we moved that my work would represent the outlet beyond the American diplomatic circle, but for various reasons that hasn't really panned out. I'm more happy spending time with Anya than I'd expected, and I haven't sought out (yet?) some of the more active kinds of things I'd expected to engage in (and the things I have done, for instance the high school teaching, brought less interaction with other people than expected).

But in the last few weeks, while Marina, our nanny, has been on vacation, I've been restricted in how much work I can do, which has meant, on the other hand, that I've had more opportunity to meet people. And you will never guess how it's happened...

See, there's this amazing thing called the In-Ter-Net (or is it Internets? Oh, you know what I mean, those tubes...).

No, but seriously, and more precisely, it really has been an online discussion forum that's helped. It's actually quite interesting what technology makes possible. I never would have predicted that this would be an effective way to make friends in, of all places, Russia, but it has. (And, above and beyond the social contact it has facilitated for us, it's amazing to me what a valuable language tool this form of communication can be. I can't imagine another manner in which you could so effectively listen in on native speakers speaking/writing in slang, unnoticed if you want, and therefore take all the time in the world to read and figure out what they are talking about... It provides such an amazing window into contemporary Russian language and culture, which I find fascinating.)

At some point in the spring, I found a website called "VladMama.ru," with some information on local events and on parenting in general, but by far the most interesting part of the site to me is its discussion forums. Just like its English-language counterparts, this local forum has the full gamut of subjects and subsections -- from discussions of pregnancy and parenting to cooking, crafts, cultural events and local things to do, jokes and games, etc., etc. I started out posting a little bit to this one "English language corner" subsection, where people were taking the opportunity to practice their English (and which since then unfortunately has actually fallen a bit into disuse -- which I hope I didn't prompt by poking my virtual head in as a native speaker! It honestly isn't clear why it's died down -- maybe just that it's summer, and nobody's stuck inside any longer).

Then, in April, I got so busy with teaching that I didn't have time to look at it much. But since school has ended, and especially with Marina gone, I've had quite a chance to read (and take part in) some of the discussions more closely, as well as to meet several of the women in person.

Since I've never been much of a forum participant in the U.S., all I can do is assume that typically these things don't translate into much of a social network in the "real world." But for whatever reason, surely in part because this is largely a local forum, a good portion of these people meet up in "real," as they say ("в реале"). In the past month or so I've gone from taking part in discussions on the public part of the forum and getting to know people that way to exchanging private messages with a few people on the part of the site that allows this, to instant messaging with one young woman who lives in our neighborhood, to meeting up with a large group of "VladMamas" at a local playground and bliny (Russian pancake) cafe one recent sunny day, and to meeting up on-on-one with a couple of women and their kids. And finally, today, I took part in a group charity outing at a local temporary rehabilitation home for kids. And it all feels really great!

Of course, as with any contact at the very beginning, you never can tell where it will lead -- whether it will really be possible to forge lasting friendships with these people. (I should say, of course, that it won't be possible to make such connections with most of them -- that's just a fact of life.) But it feels so good to have some contact with people, by definition pretty much all of whom are having many of the same experiences as us right now (well, so far it has just been the moms and the kids getting together, but I'm hoping to get the rest of the families together in a few cases). It also felt surprisingly good today to go out and do a little something to help some kids who aren't as lucky as ours, and to play with them and show them some tenderness, for which they clearly are very hungry. I guess the latter is a feeling not of making some tentative individual connections with people, but rather one of being a part of a larger whole, getting involved in an organized set of interactions that really strive to do something good (and what a pleasant surprise to find this in Russia -- the Land of the Lacking Civil Society!).

All of which is to say that this budding social life is of course taking some of my attention away from work, but I tend to look on this as just as important -- if not moreso -- in making our life here in Vlad more normal, and in getting us the human contact that one always needs.