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Brief Overview of a Very Rough Week:
1. -30 Celsius
2. 4 days without power
3. Very important final
4. No coat
5. No phone
6. No clean Clothes
Last week started out like any other. I pulled an all-nighter to get out a paper for Monday, went to school, turned it in, then went off to run some errands. My phone wasn't receiving text messages, so I took it to the shop the Thursday before. They weren't answering calls, and I was owed a temporary phone. I went to the store, they didn't have any temps, and told me to call on Wednesday. Then I dropped my warm coat off at the clothing repair shop. I have been warned that it would be getting colder, and since the zipper was busted, I thought now would be a good time to get it fixed. Mind, the week prior the temperature had hovered around zero, so I didn't feel like a crisis was on the horizon ... I had failed to understand a key word.
Friends called me last week asking if I was prepared for the "moroz." The standard definition of "moroz," is "frost," and that's what I went with. "Oh no," I thought, "there'll be some white stuff on the grass in the mornings!" Last year I actually had a discussion about this word with some friends, trying to pin down its exact meaning. I clearly understood that it refers to frost, but they also told me you could use it to refer to the weather. Since frost is a pretty mild weather condition, I guessed it meant "nippy," or "fresh," when talking about air temperature. I couldn't have been more wrong. The second definition in the dictionary reads "intensely cold weather." Which corresponds roughly to weather.com's description of "bitterly cold."
After giving my coat for repair, I came home to vege for the rest of the day, not really in a state to get anything else done. I had my last final on Friday, and I figured I had the rest of the week to prepare. It was the exam I was most frightened of, and three days of cloistered study seemed in the cards. I went to bed that night actually looking forward to the next few days.
I was woken up at 10am by a friend who called to tell me that it was -27 (-16F) outside, and he'd just spent an hour and a half trying to start his car. I mumbled that I wasn't planning on leaving my apartment, but wished him luck on his way to work. I wasted most of Tuesday fiddling around, I have a real problem with procrastination. That evening, as I was having dinner, the power went out. After fidgeting with the fusebox, I decided that it must be an external problem. Frustrated, because I had truly wanted to start studying after I ate, I attempted to read by candlelight, before giving up and turning in to bed. One day of studying gone.
The power was restored by Wednesday morning, but I spent the day in town, visiting people. On the way, I saw a semi-truck stopped in the middle of the road. Its driver had started a fire underneath the engine block in an attempt to get it warm enough to work. This was the coldest weather I'd ever been in, and in another post I attempt a description of what -30 feels like. I called the phone place, and they said I could pick up my phone on Thursday, which made me very happy. One week without a cellphone had been very hard to deal with, though by the end I had kind of gotten used to it. I returned home in the evening and made dinner. Like clockwork, as I was eating, my power went out. Livid, I again tried to read by candlelight, but eventually went to bed, frustrated at losing another day of study. One day left.
Thursday morning again saw power, but I spent the entire day out. First I collected my phone. It took 30 minutes to walk from the metro station, in -30. The lady at the counter said the delivery hadn't come in yet, and I should come back after 5. It was 12. "You see," she told me, "it's very cold, and the guy probably has problems with his car." "Oh I know it's cold," I responded, "I came here on foot, and I don't want to do it again! The person on the phone said anytime today!" One of the things I've learned in Russia is that in order to have any customer service at all, you have to yell. If you're nice and quiet, they think they can just ignore you and push you to the side. Another salesperson heard, and asked what number my order was. I gave it. Lo and behold, my phone had arrived. So you see, rather than check the day's manifest, the girl had just looked at the computer, not updated, and told me to come back. After all, it was easier than getting out of her seat. Pleased to have my phone back, but overall very unhappy with the service, I left to go to the university.
In Russia, the day before an exam, you have a consultation with the professor. I always find these useful, because you get hints about what's on the exam. This one was rather productive, he told us that one of the questions was about the course and the other about a current event in Russia-EU relations. I guessed that the second was the Ukrainian gas war, which, pretty obviously, turned out correct. I was way off on the first question, and spent what few hours I did have to study on the wrong area of the course. Then I finally, after two days of -30, picked up my coat. To this point I had been using my light winter coat, which is good around zero, and can handle a little colder if I'm active.
Home I come, mentally prepared to eat dinner and start studying. The test is the next day, and I've already lost two whole days due to errands and power failures. True to form, halfway through my soup, the lights go out. My blood starts to boil as I call my landlady. She won't be home until 8, and it's 7:30. I call up a classmate, and plan on going over to his place to study and spend the night. My landlady finally calls, I explain that this is the 3rd night without power, and she tells me to wait while she calls and finds out what's up. An hour passes and I'm ready to walk out the door when the lights come on. Thank God, I can actually study. I get in a good hour's work when, at 10:30, the power cuts again. I'm furious. At this point, it's too late to leave, there are no more buses, so I'm stuck here. Since the other times the power had been restored in the early morning, I decide to go to bed and wake up around 6. My exam's not until 2, and I can cram.
Off goes the cellphone alarm, it's still dark outside, and I go to turn on the lights ... nothing. Fine, I'll try again at 7 ... nothing. I'm not even mad anymore, just dejected, resigned to my fate. At least the sun'll come up and I can study in daylight. Unfortunately, all of my notes and most of the articles are on my computer, which is dead without electricity. I read the two articles I have printed out, and arranged to meet a friend at a cafe at 11:30 so that he could give me my notes, which I had earlier given to him and he printed. 10am passes, and still no power.
We meet, I get some major cramming in. I focus on the Russian identity and its conception of Europe, which is what I guess the question will be. It turns out I'm completely wrong, I'm asked about the "Four Spaces" of European Union-Russian relations, their legal foundation, and relations to other bilateral documents. This I didn't study at all, I bet my money on philosophy, not law. So I did what I could to minimally answer the legal foundations, and then I shifted it all over to philosophy, so I could actually write about what I had studied. In the end it all worked out, and I got a 5 (an "A").
I'm at the university until 6 waiting for my grades, then afterwards I go out for dinner. I get home around 9 and, surprise, there's no power. The landlord comes over, and he calls the power plant. There are problems, like every other day this week, and there's nothing to do but wait. I go to bed, praying that there will be power the next day. To cap it off, my phone, that I had received on Thursday, was dying by Friday night. And I had no way to recharge it. Oh, and my flashlight bulb burned out, and I can't get replacements over here. Fortunately, it seems like they've got everything in order, and after 4 days without, I've had power all today.
Prior to this, my record was 3 full days without power. This whole past week I've had to walk up to the 9th floor because the lift wasn't working. Though it did have power, it was just so cold that it couldn't function. In fact, even the locks on my front door are difficult to turn, it's so cold. The most frustrating thing about not having power was that the majority of my building, and the city, had power. Fine, I understand that I was unlucky. There was a power plant explosion, and out of the whole city, it was mine. But why does three-quarters of my apartment building have power? My neighbors, both below and next door, all had power. Why is one building hooked up to more than one power plant?
I looked out at the building in front of me, and they always have power! I lose electricity about once a month, they never do! Then I realized that while the vast majority had power, there were some windows where I saw candles burning. I wasn't alone. But there was no rhyme or reason to it. Randomly, one out of every few apartments didn't have power, even though most around them did.
As if the lack of electricity wasn't enough, it's like an icebox in my apartment. It's around 10C (50F). If I'm not under my covers, plural on purpose, I have to be in full gear. Just to sit at my desk I wear long underwear, a t-shirt, and a sweater. My feet are cold, even in winter socks, and my hands are just barely above the point where I want to put on gloves.
I went out today and bought a small, oil radiator. I tried it in the tv room, but it didn't seem to make a difference, so I've moved it into the bedroom, and I'm optimistic that it'll help, at least a bit. I was very confused when I went to the store. I thought I would have to fill it up with oil every now and then. Fortunately, it's powered by electricity, which heats up the oil.
Lastly, I've been needing to do laundry since the beginning of the week, but I couldn't without power. So I spent the whole week in iffy long underwear. There's a very comfortable and warm Russian shirt called a "telnyashka." It's the striped one you always see Russian soldiers and sailors wearing. Well, it hasn't left my body for the past five days. I've even had to sleep in the thing. I guess one of the few good side effects of the cold is that I haven't been sweating...