My Internship at Moscow Carnegie Center
Anyhow, life has slowed down a lot since I've gotten back and it is a welcome change. Thinking with a straight head is a new thing for me - those of you who know me well will be relieved to hear this (the rest of you will just find it funny). My internship at the Carnegie Moscow Center is going well, work is slow (I want to meet someone who aspires to be a librarian), but there are conferences and seminars during the week that are very interesting to sit in on. Additionally, the Center is located on Tverskaya Street, right across the street from Pushkin Square, and all kind of events take place there. Just this Thursday we hosted a delegation of representatives from the Carnegie Center for International Peace in Washington, DC, and this was enough to provoke a protest from a few ultra-nationalists. It was more funny than scary - most of these people have no understanding of the
situations they protest against, and the delegation was in town to speak with human rights representatives from the Russian government and to hold a seminar on the US elections. (Let's me just mention here that if it were not for such delegations/meetings, these people wouldn't even be able to hold their demonstrations without being harmed or throw in jail.)We're gearing up at Carnegie for more such protests as Kosovo is getting ready to declare independence and has the support of the US. (Russia supports Serbia, and does not want Kosovo to declare independence.) Being a US-funded organization is not a wonderful thing in this instance, though we are only a think-tank, many "mistake" us for the US Embassy and protest outside our doors instead. Anyhow, I get a good view of it all from my view in the library - though I do have to crawl up on my desk to look out on the window (and do, often - as I did to take the picture above.)
Russian Presidential Elections
The Russian Presidential Elections are coming up very soon - March 2nd. It's hilarious to me that Russian government officials even bother to call them democratic. Dmitri Medvedev named as the favored successor by Putin himself in the fall, and the other candidates are all but on the Kremlin payroll, running as opposing candidates as a formality.
However, I do like that public service advertisements are everywhere encouraging Russians to vote. This campaign poster, which is at a bus stop right outside of the MGIMO dorm, reads "We vote as a whole family". I do think encouraging responsible citizenship and high voter turnout is important, though in this case it is important to the Kremlin not for holding democratic elections, but for lending legitimacy to a illegitimate campaign. Even if they don't have to rig the elections literally to get a win for Medvedev, the whole process is a formality - politics here is highly personalized - when a president with an almost 70% approval rating says, "Vote for this guy", it's pretty sure that a democratically complacent society will do just that.
Living in the MGIMO dorm
Well, now that I'm back to cooking in the dorm, I'm getting more creative. I arrived back from New York to discover that one of our two poorly-working stove-tops had been removed from the kitchen on our floor. So, we have two working ranges for the 50 students living on my floor. Yea, I think it's time to go out and buy my own little hot plate. However, I've started to experiment with my little toaster oven. Over the course of the last year, I mastered baked and roasted potatoes, baked chicken, pizza, open faced sandwiches and a bruschetta. Now I'm working with desserts. I started this only recently because actually, dessert is incredibly cheap to buy in Russia. Beautiful cakes, tarts, cookies, chocolates and candies are all over Moscow, and are cheap when compared to the price of the ingredients and time needed to make something comparable.
One thing however, than I cannot find in Russia, is a cake of the consistency that we as Americans would normally associate with cake. Cakes in Moscow are a little drier and denser - not the fluffy, moist confections that we love to gobble up on special occasions. Brownies, too. So, while I was home, I invested in some small, disposable foil tins that I could fit into my toaster oven. My hope was to conduct my first experiment before Valentine's Day, but alas today was my first free moment. So, equipped with the Toaster Oven Chef's recipe for Death by Chocolate Brownies (www.toasterovenchef.com) and my Russian ingredients, I made a batch of brownies today. My working space was cramped, but the brownies came out considerably well and I hope that Hot Tamale will agree with me.
This Thursday I'm off to London to visit a friend for a few days over the Russian holiday weekend. I'm getting very excited....!
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