Привет студенты! Come check out the new Russian board games in the World Languages Studio!
Below: Лото, the Russian equivalent of bingo. A great way to practice your numbers!
Below: Найди Cолво, or Russian scrabble, is a great way to test your vocabulary skills!
Just come to the World Languages Studio and ask to borrow these games at the front desk. They are yours to enjoy. 
If you didn’t make it to the White Fort concert on October 16, you missed out on a real treat. To recap: it was Jimi Hendrix reincarnated on violin, and Led Zeppelin’s secret Siberian twin on guitar.
Above: White Fort in Cone Chapel
The virtuosi, Yruiy Matveyev and Artyom Yakushenko, together make up the band White Fort, and their music is a unique blend of “rock, jazz, & folk, propelled by a Russian ethnic pulse and rocket fuel,” as described on their website. What they played, however, was so much more than that. From a personal standpoint, I have never heard such a whole sound come from only two instruments, and two string instruments at that. The fact that they have no vocals or percussion and are able to create symphonic and complex compositions is even more remarkable: the violin plays the part of carrying the melody, while the guitar keeps the beat as well as harmonizes. These two are juggling quite a number of hats as they play, and yet get so lost in the music that they seems almost hypnotized by their own sound. Artyom can commonly be found head banging as he rips through some great notes on his crimson violin, while Yuriy almost mouths the way his guitar sounds, as if he’s able to sing along with the chords.
None of this is particularly surprising when you find out that they won 1st Place in the Instrumental category at the 2011 International Songwriting Competition, as well as countless other awards.Yuriy and Artyom have both been playing music since they were young enough to pluck the strings of their instruments. They met each other in college and found that they complemented each other while procrastinating their studies and playing music together instead. They were bashed by the Novosibirsk Fine Arts Academy for playing rock and jazz when they were classically trained. However, the two have become revered for their exquisite ballet score and three studio CDs. White Fort disbanded for a deserved sabbatical in 2008 and only just started playing again in April 2012. This made their visit to Willamette University even more special, as we are one of the first to see the reconvened White Fort. We were privileged to host such an amazing group due to a true Willamette connection. Professor Williamson of Chemistry’s wife, Jeanine, is their manager for all countries other than Russia. To them both, a big thank you for bringing such talent to our campus.
Ultimately, listening to music live doesn’t compare to it recorded, but if you want a taste of what their music is like, you can check them out at www.whitefort.net and if you like what you hear, you can order their music by emailing CoolHatRecords@gmail.com.
Are you a Метро fan? Have you ever wanted to see the ornate artwork in the Northern Star of the largest country in the world? See here for a great article about the most remarkable stations of the Saint Petersburg Metro Subway system. But today’s blog edition is about another great way St Pete’s Metro is bringing art to people.
Metro has decided to add a train car named “Watercolor” with an art exhibit so that many people who get caught up in the daily commute/work/boredom routine would have art come to them. In fact, there is a photo-essay on a search engine Rambler depicting the way that the exhibit was incorporated in the train car.
Here is one of the images from the Rambler photo essay, you should go check out the photos on their website (it’s very readable for any-level Russian learner and those who don’t speak it at all… it’s a photo-essay after all!)
All the credits go to Rambler.ru and TassPhoto.
And below is a photograph one of photo-bloggers has put up on YandexFotos, depicting what Metro is for him: dark lines, descent and ascent and movement. His metro-themed shots are here.
Check these out and make sure that you include Saint Petersburg Metro on the list of places to definetely check out while you’re there!
May first is celebrated as International Workers’ Day around the world, and is considered especially important in Russia and the former USSR. As a holiday, it is generally celebrated by giving people the day off, and there are frequently parades and demonstrations to mark the occasion as well. Areas outside of Eastern Europe also celebrate it!
с неом Международный Женский день! Happy International Women’s from the Language Learning Center. It originally began as a Socialist holiday, and hence was more serious in Eastern Europe when it began in 1913. It was first celebrated in the United States, sponsored by the American Socialist Party. It became a holiday to celebrate women’s progress, and to petition for suffrage and equal rights in all nations that celebrated it. It’s traditional in Eastern Europe to give women flowers on this day, and many people around the world have the day off.
Have you ever wondered what teenagers and college kids in Russia and Eastern Europe are listening to today? Our textbook refers to “рубиновая атака” and other Russian “рок групи”, but the 
rock movement was a product of the USSR in the 1980s. Today, Eastern European music is different, just as American music has changed since that time period. The Slavic Languages and Literature Department at UCLA sponsors a website about modern Russian music called “Far from Moscow” www.farfrommoscow.com. There’s all sorts of cool music there, in Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, English, and French. I really like Orange House….
–Rachel
One of the rituals for young women
Ivan Kupala
One way or another, since ancient times all peoples of the world have celebrated the end of June, the peak of the summer. Russia’s version of such a holiday is Ivan Kupala. On the night of 23 June, everyone celebrated this mystical but at the same time jolly holiday full of ritual acts, rules and prohibitions, songs, chants and all kinds of fortune-telling, legends, and beliefs.
Even in the time of the ancient pagan deity Ancient Russians used to have Kupalo, the God of summer fertility. In his honor people sang songs and, come nighttime, jumped over the bonfire. This ritual has become an annual celebration of summer solstice, combining a pagan and Christian traditions. Kupala got the “first” name of Ivan after the baptizing of Russia, when he was replaced by John the Baptist (the way he was perceived by common people), who baptized Christ and whose birthday was celebrated on 24 June.
On that day people wore small bunches of flowers and wreaths of herbs. They reeled, sang songs, stoked bonfires with poles topped by burning wheel, the symbol of the sun.
Songs that were sung in villages mentioned Kupala as loving, clean, and cheerful. On the day of Ivan Kupala girls made wreaths of herbs and flowers, and in the evening they would let them float on the water watching them go away. The sinking wreath meant that she could be unlucky in love or that she would not be wed that year.
Another tradition was to pour dirty water on everyone in sight. It was believed that the more often people run to swim the purer their souls would become. The most healing swimming was considered at dawn.
The swimming night was lit with purifying bonfires to dance around and jump over. The highest jumper was the luckiest. Mothers used to burn the shirts of their sick children in those bonfires hoping to get rid of the diseases. Young people participated in noisy games, brawls, running competitions. Everyone would be running , enjoying the fire-lit night and soaking in the heat of the summer and the peak of the growing season.
People believed that all the miraculous and healing herbs bloomed during Ivan Kupala night. Therefore, knowledgeable and experienced people, and especially the village healers never missed that night and collected medicinal roots and herbs to keep for the whole year ahead.
There was a rumor that at midnight one particular fern starts to bloom. Miraculous fiery flower could point to a buried treasure no matter how deep it had been hidden. Around midnight a bud appeared on the wide leaves. It rose higher and higher and then started to ”jump” around. As midnight came, the ripe bud burst and a fiery red flower came out. No man could pick up the flower. But if you saw it any wish would come true.
There was always something miraculous about the day of Ivan Kupala. No one slept at night, since it was believed that all evil became active: witches, werewolves, vampires, mermaids … People thought that Ivan Kupala was the day when witches had their holiday too, trying to cause as much harm to humans as they possibly could.
That was how the holiday of Ivan Kupala used to be – rituals, divination and other cheerful and pranks in good humor.
This Autumn-inspired issue of the Russian blog will give you an insight at the photo-coverage of the metamorphose of the nature in Russia by the ordinary people who are not professional photographers and will provide you wish some handy Fall-related Russian vocabulary.
Back home, we give each season a chance. Summer is loved for the sun and the fruition of the nature and Winter is known to be a testing time, from which a triumphant Spring emerges. The Russian folk has always had a particular affectionate attitude towards the Fall, from the ode sung by infamous Pushkin talking about the golden hues that the Fall adorns the forests with to the modern song-writer and singer Alekssandr Shecvhuk referring to Pushkin in his song “Last Fall”, saying “why didn’t you tell us, Aleksandr Sergeevich, about how you loved and suffered in you last Fall?”
It can be sad, it can be joyous, but no matter where in Russia you find yourself, it is beautiful. One of the major Russian search engine moguls developed a photo-sharing database similar to a system of blogs, cenetered around photography and art. Yandex Photos organizes a series of contests throughout the year on different topics, and this Fall season one of the contests was themed “Under the Rain” – «Под дождем».
If you click on it, you will see the photographs in the descending ranking order, and the majority of the rain-themed photographs indeed have something to do with the change of the seasons. Contest happened in October, but it does have some summer rain depictions in it.
Here are a few seasonal words to keep in mind when you look over the images below:
No matter which time zone, no matter which climate, the season of Fall is inseparable from rain and falling leaves in Russia. Rivalry between Moscow and Saint Petersburg extends far beyond spheres of political influences Muscovites and Saint-Petersburgians without a doubt keep their loyalties when comparing and contrasting which city is more beautiful in the Fall.
Someone from the YandexPhoto blogging community has posted the following image takes in one of the once-royal-residences near Saint Petersburg
Another Yandex user has posted the following photograph, taken in a more urban setting perhaps in the city of Saint Petersburg itself
Moscow is not in any way lagging behind in having its residents glorify the beautiful season in their city by posting more flattering pictures of Moscow in the Fall:
Sources of the photographs:
1)http://fotki.yandex.ru/users/arch35/view/89568/?page=0&p=0&#_child-1-74273046
2) http://fotki.yandex.ru/users/ellaushakova/view/19127/?page=0&p=0&#_child-1-74274110
3)http://fotki.yandex.ru/users/lusi-s/view/10442/?page=0&p=0&#_child-1-74274277
