I'm Scary!

I'm scary. Didn't you know? I scare teenage girls! I yell at adults! I'm just SCARY!

Well, actually I don't think I'm that bad. I'd like to think of myself as a nice guy. But, then there are these little vignettes:

I. The other day we had new prospective students to test them for their level of English. Part of this is an oral interview with one of the Americans. I do this pretty often and invariable I get a 13-14 year old, usually girl, who is scared to death of this big American boy who speaks English at them. (I'm also told that I speak "very quickly," but since I'm from Indiana we all know that that ain't true!) Last week, a 13-14 year old girl didn't say a word:

Me: "My name is Aaron. How are you?" Her: Nothing.
Me: "Where do you go to school?" Her: Nothing.
Me: "What are you doing right now?" Her: You guessed it, nothing.
Me, in Russian: "That's fine. Do you have any questions you'd like to ask?" Her: Nothing.
Me: "Okay, it was nice talking to you."

II. I don't like it when people use cell phones and/or cheat on exams. Those students who do this, and persist in it, I tell them how I feel. I guess this makes me scary ;)

III. One of Molly's students used the Russian word "gul" to describe me and my voice. It means "echo" or "reverberation." When Molly asked her if I was scary, she replied: "You can't say he's scary, but on the other hand, you can't say that he's not."

There you have it: You can't say that I'm not.

The Family is Coming, The Family is Coming!

As I was informed in a comment, I neglected to mention that my family is also coming to visit me in Russia at the end of the month.

After a whirlwind tour of London and Paris, Mom; Dad; my sister, and a family friend are coming to Russia! They'll be in Moscow for a few days, then to Vladimir for a short stay and then on to St. Petersburg as the last stop on the voyage.

I'm really excited that they are coming: now they can maybe understand why I've come to Russia twice! I'm going to try and be the best tour guide/interpreter that I can be, but unfortunately they're arriving right at the end of our summer semester here at the AH, which is always a crazy time.

As for that, we had midterm exams for the summer semester yesterday, so today will mostly be spent hanging out and grading them. So far they seem to be doing okay. They need to be graded today because tomorrow we're teaming up with some students and taking a trip to Sergeev Posad, which is a town famous for its monastaries and beautiful churches. I think that we're going to take a picnic lunch and make a day out of it. It will be a long day, but with the cooler weather that we're having, it should be very enjoyable.

The last part of this post is a little picture I took a while back. Can anyone figure out what it is?

School Update

School is going well and very quickly. The summer session is intensive. Instead of twice a week for 3 hours total for 15 weeks, the summer is 3 times a week for almost 7 hours, but only for about 6 weeks. It's the same number of hours over the semester, but two 2hour 15 minute classes in a night are pretty exhausting.

Midterm exams are this week and then we'll have class until June 27, the final day. (We do have one short vacation of one day for Russian Constitution Day or whatever.)

All in all, while I'm going to miss lots about Vladimir (host-babushka, co-workers, etc) I'm really excited to travel to Siberia and also to begin school in the fall. August 21st will be here before I know it and I feel like a little kid getting ready to go to kindergarten for the first time!

Speaking of Siberia and Baikal, we got accepted into the program and so we know where we will be working: Great Baikal Trail Project Our project is called "The Jungles of Kamar-Daban," sounds pretty awesome to me!

End of Class and Good-Byes

Now that I've shared a little about our vacation, I thought I should post a couple of pictures of the last days of class. For the most part, the end of semester was great. Most of my students did very well and we had a fun last day just hanging out and talking. I also got some great gifts from them. (Thanks guys!)

I also have a couple of pictures of other activities from that last crazed week of April:

These pictures are from a last dinner that we fixed for Nicole on her last night here in Vladimir. We had a good time and we miss her already!




Also necessary, is this picture of Gosha, who stalks the American Home yard, but never seams to catch anything or do a good job of defending the territory.

End of the Semster...

...is upon us. I wanted to post some pictures of me and my classes before heading for Ukraine for vacation, but we are losing Internet here shortly, so I guess it will have to wait until later. It might be a few days before I get a chance to get on and blog!

Politics Again

Yushchenko's Opinion Piece about why he chose to call for elections. There is also a piece in The Moscow Times about the Situation in Kiyv. As an American I am inclined to see it from the pro-Western Yushchenko's point of view, but clearly there are a lot of people in the country who support Yanukovich.

Here in Vladimir, winter has made an attempt to return as the temperature plunged yesterday and there were patches of snow here and there on the ground and on buildings this morning: another day in paradise.