Greetings from Mother Russia
Study Abroad in 2001
From the 2011 GSI Starr Report

Michael Steele

As featured in the summer 2009 issue of USM’s Aspire magazine, Kate Schebaum–strongly encouraged by Dr. George Steger–became the first Saint Mary student to win a prestigious and coveted Fulbright Scholarship for U.S. students. As part of the program, Kate spent two years in South Korea, and now plans on attending graduate school in Seoul. Kate started a trend! In the spring 2011 semester, GSI was able to assist three USM students in studying abroad. Political Science major Alex Perica studied at Schiller International University in Heidelberg, Germany, and USM juniors Alex Waite (Political Science and History) and Michael Steele (Criminology and History) attended the Московский Гуманитарный Университет (МосГУ), or GRINT Centre for Education on the campus of Moscow University for the Humanities. Inspired by a USM-sponsored trip to Russia in 2009, Waite and Steele asked GSI to help arrange their trip through the College Consortium for International Studies. This is an update from Michael when he was in Moscow:

Alex and I are all settled in and are getting used to all the cultural opportunities Russia has to offer. It took us about three weeks to master the Metro (subway), and it’s a lot easier to use now that we’re learning to read the signs.

We have mastered the Russian Cyrillic alphabet, some Russian greetings, and some of the basic sentence structures. Vocabulary is a constant challenge since everyday in class we learn more and more words. We have Russian language classes four days a week, which last for about three hours. On Wednesdays we have a three-hour lecture which is focused on Russian politics and history. We started off talking about Tsar Nicholas which led into both revolutions ending with the Bolsheviks. Lenin was a big topic and then last class we talked about Stalin who our teacher thinks “was not necessarily a good man, but was a wise man.” During the week we participate in “event excursions” here in Moscow, including trips to Star City—a school for Russian Cosmonauts—and key cultural locations like the Tretyakov Gallery and Lenin’s Mausoleum.

Alex Waite

I have come to believe that in a study-abroad program, as much learning takes place outside of the classroom as in it. Every time I go out, whether it is to the market or just to McDonalds to order a cheeseburger, I have to apply some of the language that I’ve learned as well to try think the way Muscovites do. I watch people and see how they interact. Russian fashion differs from what we wear in the U.S. Russian men wear tighter fitting clothing and generally wear dark colors, especially black. They wear boots instead of shoes so they can immediately pick me out as a foreigner with my white Nikes on.

Race and ethnicity seem to be an issue in Russia, much more than I observed on our previous USM-sponsored trip to Russia. Even though there are laws against any segregation and discrimination, it still happens here. All non-Russians are discriminated against to some degree, especially Asians and Chechnyans. Life is particularly difficult for the homeless I see near the subway stations, and there seems to be less of a support system here than there is in the larger American cities. Most surprising to me has been the inaccessibility of public facilities for the disabled.