то, кто знает свою географию, понимает свою политику

Things have been happening around here lately. I've been meeting more people and have generally been much busier than in the previous weeks. A lot of the new people I've met are Peace Corp Volunteers, though only one of them actually lives in Simferopol and she's leaving for good this weekend. Her name's Alison, and Maria put me in touch with her because I was looking to buy a guitar and Alison was looking to sell hers. She actually brought it with her from the US, so it isn't some cheap Russian brand. It's actually a Fender in pretty good shape, and she gave me a pretty fair deal on it as well. I'm happy to be able to play around on a guitar again, and since getting it I've even come up with a bridge for a song that I've been tinkering with for seven years or something crazy like that. Last Friday, Alison took me and another PCV named Sam to the Window on America in Simferopol. Many towns in countries around the world have these, and they are basically Embassy-sponsored American cultural centers where people can access US news material, books, movies, and all kinds of general information in English. They also offer "clubs" or classes on different topics lead by Americans, and Sam and I went there to get set up to lead some of these clubs ourselves. I'm waiting to hear back from them about what they'll have me do exactly, but it sounds more like straightforward English teaching than anything else, which should be pretty fun. I think the clubs are usually weekly, so it isn't too big of a commitment. It will be good to have something like this to structure my days / week around.
Alison also had a sort of going away party for herself and some other Crimea-based PCVs that are headed out soon, and there were others there who will be sticking around for a while. On Saturday night we all hung out in Alison's apartment drinking and playing charades for some reason. There are some pretty cool people around here in Peace Corp, and now I have some contacts for people in some different towns around Crimea. On Sunday, Alison again introduced me to some new people by inviting me along to dinner with her friend James. James is Chinese-Malaysian, and a student at the local Medical University. The school has a lot of students from Malaysia, as well as a number from India, the Middle East, and Nigeria. Apparently the school actively recruits students in these countries, and appeals to those who can't afford to attend universities in the West. After Malaysia recognized a degree from Crimean State Medical University as a legitimate medical degree, a huge wave of Malaysians came. Apparently the government has since revoked the decision to recognize the degree, once it came to their attention that the school isn't so great, but all those who had already come will have their degrees honored. So, James cooked us a delicious Chinese dinner, and we ate with him and his roommate Wong in their dorm room. On the way there we got stuck in the dorm's elevator for about five minutes before Wong came to break us out. Both of these guys were super friendly and spoke great English. James had gone to an English boarding school in India, so he was particularly well-spoken. Over dinner they told us more about life at the university, and about being Asian in Crimea. Apparently most people are used to seeing them around by now, and they don't get stared at as much as they did when they first arrived. Wong told us about the characteristics of our respective Chinese zodiac signs, then read our palms and showed us his tinctures. I had a very nice time with them, and hopefully I'll get to hang out with them some more in the near future. There's a night club here called the Cobra Club that apparently all the Malaysian students go to, but James has never gone. I told him that if he ever wanted to go I would go with him, so maybe I'll be checkin that out at some point. While at the university, Alison also pointed out where the Middle Eastern restaurant hidden among the dorms is, and now I'm excited to go back and check that out.
The other thing that's been going on lately is the arrival of a journalist who's writing a series of articles about the Crimea situation for the inline magazine Slate. His name is Joshua, and Maria had met him in DC and gave him my email address. He arrived on Saturday, and I arranged it so that he can stay in my new apartment during the week or so before I move in. While waiting for our meeting with the landlord, I showed Joshua around town a bit. We ate lunch at a Turkish place I hadn't been to yet, and wandered around the downtown area. On Monday the two of us took a day trip to Bakhchisaray, where we met up with Maria and wandered around town taking in the general Crimean Tatar-ness of it all. We saw the first medrassa in Europe (currently undergoing reconstruction), and I visited a master jeweler in his workshop. Joshua asked him some general questions as he started to form in his mind the article that he'll be writing about the Crimea Tatars. After our meeting and a little lunch, we checked out the Khan's Palace, which I had missed the last time I was in Bakhchisaray. Maria's ethnographer friend met us there to give us more background on the Crimean Tatars. He showed us around the grounds for a bit while Joshua asked some more questions and Maria translated. We got to see the legendary Fountain of Tears, about which Pushkin's famous poem "Bakhchisaray Fountain" was written. This poem was basically responsible for the sparing of the Khan's Palace and the small remnants of Crimean Tatar culture in Crimea during the Soviet period (apparently Stalin was a big fan). Considering the legend behind the fountain, I found it to be quite disappointing. It wasn't all that cool looking, and there was barely a trickle of water coming out of it at all (check my flickr page for a picture). After the palace we headed through the old town and up the hill behind it towards the Crimean Tatar settlement on the other side. This is where many of the Tatars settled in makeshift houses after returning from Central Asia beginning in the late 80's. There are a lot of settlements like this in Crimea, especially all around Simferopol. These settlements have since been given legal status, and the houses have been improved, but they are still generally very poor areas. The sky was getting very cloudy, dark, and sinister-looking, and made for some great pictures. I got a great one of the local Mosque with the creepy sky (again, check flickr). After a long walk back down the hill, Maria headed off and Joshua and I headed back towards the bus station to catch a ride back to Simferopol. Once we got there it started to rain for the first time in about a month here, so we jumped on the first marshrutka headed for our neighborhood. This was unfortunately heading the wrong way, so we had to backtrack a ways towards Bakhchisaray, and once we reached the end of the line had to ask the driver to let us on for the ride back into Simferopol. At least we got to stay out of the rain.
The last couple days Joshua has been going around and interviewing various people to collect material for his articles, and I've tagged along for most of them since I'm interested in essentially the same topic. In fact, a few of the interviews were with people that I suggested. These included the head of the Institute for Strategic Research, which reports directly to the President of Ukraine on Crimean issues, and the director of the Central Crimean Museum. I met both of these people last week when my advisor Sergei Nikolaiovich took me to meet them. Both are good friends of his, and they will both be helpful to my research in the coming months. I also took Joshua to meet my advisor at the university, and between the three of these people I think Joshua got some good stuff that he can work with. These Russian academic types, I'm finding, tend to say a lot but never really get to the point, and when they do the things they say are sometimes kind of crazy. For instance, my advisor said that he thinks Crimea has avoided conflict because Russians have a genetic predisposition towards avoiding conflict. This is something that has kind of come up before, and I know he's kind of got some weird Russian nationalist views, but at least he realizes his views as subjective and can still be helpful in guiding my research. Ignoring some of the crazy stuff, these guys made some interesting points about a number of issues surrounding the current Crimean geopolitical situation, and I hope they've been useful for Joshua. I personally didn't take a lot of notes, but it all got me thinking about some things that I'll be able to elaborate upon later with these same people. We also had another meeting with the Editor in Chief of the largest Crimean newspaper, Krymskaya Pravda. Like the others, he made some pretty crazy statements, but generally made some interesting points that he believes reflect the general feeling of the Russian population in Crimea. He said that he met earlier this year with Putin and Medvedev, thereby giving me and everybody I know a direct link to those two in the game of "six degrees of separation." He spoke very good English, but in order to explain everything in detail he preferred to speak in Russian. Joshua had hired a translator named Gulya to do all the translating at these meetings, and I must say it was nice being able to hear everything in English after hearing it in Russian, because there are still a lot of things that I miss in conversations like these. Gulya's a Crimean Tatar girl who has interned at the UN, and generally seems like a really cool person. I got her number, so hopefully I'll be seeing more of her around. Our meeting with the editor went really well, and he seems very accommodating. I told him that I'll be here doing research until July, and that I may wish to speak with him some more, and he seemed all to happy to help me. I'm just glad to finally be making all this good connections around here.
So, there are some interesting things coming up for me: Tomorrow Maria is driving Joshua and myself out to the far east of Crimea to the city Kerch, which is just across the strait from Russia (where I took a ferry a couple of years ago). Joshua is hoping to talk to someone there about the row over an island called Tuzla back in 2003 between Russian and Ukraine, but I have a feeling not much will come of it. It should be a fun trip either way. In the next few days I move into my new apartment, which I'm very excited about. Also in the next couple days, a Moldova Fulbrighter and his brother will be visiting and with them and Joshua I think I might head down to a town called Balaclava near Sevastopol, where they have a really cool submarine museum. Then, on the 25th, I head out for the big road trip to Lviv with Maria. I'm working on my return route back to Crimea, which I won't go into just yet, but it should be very interesting. I'm not sure if I'll get anything posted here before then (probably not, actually), so this may have to tide everyone over for a while. So, see you when I see you.

-Austin