RAJI: On Location in Rostov, Russia

Optimist Prime

By Erin Coe

While swimming in the Sea of Azov off the port of Taganrog on a hot July afternoon, I move through a strange combination of soothing warm streams and chilling icy streams. Strings of warm and cold intermingle like ribbons and seem to hold this body of water together. The wide surface is calm and flat, but below I imagine these warm and cold streams battling with one another for control of the entire sea.

This is Russia

By Jocelyn Brick-Turin

Yesterday I took an old rickety German bus to the airport to buy a plane ticket from Rostov-on-Don to Moscow. My accompanying translator reassured me that the airport is the best, if not the only place to buy a plane ticket and had already been there herself that morning to research when flights were leaving for my destination and how much they would cost. She never batted an eye at making two trips to the airport in a single day during which she flew no where, and took in stride both the need to pay in cash and the cashiers lack of change. “This is Russia!” she shrugged, beaming a glowing smile.

Hip-Hop's Ahab

By John Matson

Russian hip-hop is my Moby Dick.

From the first night I spent in the country, when I heard 2Pac’s “How Do U Want It?” in a touristy St. Petersburg pizzeria, I have been in pursuit of this great white cultural crossover.

Chew on This.

By Erin Marie Daly

I’ve always preferred my pillow firm, but I never thought I’d like it crispy. Russia, however, is full of unexpected things, and crispy pillows are perhaps my favorite. Like a good night’s sleep, they have the power to make entire days of frustration and agony – and the loneliness of being an outsider – dissolve.

Striking Gold

By Mary Pilon

Lately, I’ve felt like a little old man with a gold detector.

Reporting sometimes is like being that over-60 retiree who combs the sunny beaches toting a bizarre contraption with the hope of someday finding a piece of gold which well help pay off the Winnebago. After phoning, talking, translating, thinking, reading, and researching, a reporter might land that killer interview which will prove fruitful and print-worthy. Although I’ve got age on my side and don’t own any Hawaiian print shirts, I felt kind of strange during my first day of on-the-street reporting. I’d been combing for a while, but didn’t feel like any gold was in sight.

C.T. Phone Home

By Christina Therrien

The generosity of the Russian people never ceases to amaze me. Yesterday, after ten days, fifteen attempts and three failed phone cards, I stood crying at the pay phone. It was impossible. The directions? Russian. The automated speaker chirping away in my ear? Russian. It seemed that every time I managed to take a step forward, I went flying six steps back. I had left my dorm armed with instructions on the right phone card, the right phone to use it at, and what I thought were the right directions on how to use it. But after spending two hundred and eighty rubles on the card and a half an hour punching numbers, I felt like the Russian voice was really just telling me to give it up.

Fans Beware!

Entry by Kate Greer

I have never had a water bottle violated before—a first for me in Rostov, Russia, as was my first Russian football game! (Read: SOCCER.) As I was entering the stadium with my fellow classmates from RAJI, the Russian-American Journalism Institute, I wasn’t surprised to be asked to open my messenger bag for security guards. In post-9/11 America, we would certainly be asked to do the same thing. But then one of my new Russian classmates explained that I would have to leave the plastic, screw-on top to my bottled water at the gates.