Halloween...(insert scary laugh here)

Well, yesterday was a very busy day around the AH: it was time for the annual AH Halloween party. We've been preparing, but we still had lots to do. After the last midterm takers were gone Friday night, we stayed for several more hours to move tables, put up decorations, pick out music, and all the rest. We also set up our graveeyard in the front yar, featuring prominent members Pushkin, Rasputin, Ivan the Terrible, and Vlad Draculea.

Then, on Saturday we had two parties. The first, at 2:00, was for what we (sometimes not so) affectionately call "the hooligans." This one went pretty well. We had a haunted hause in a couple of the classrooms, games such as limbo and bobbing for apples, and dancing.We also had a Halloween costume contest for this group, which was won by this kid is in level 6, but appears to be about ten years old (despite the AH rule that all students must be 13). He didn't have a costume when he showed up, dressed this way. A little black make-upto the forehead and, vois la, Garry Potter. (There is no "H" sound in Russian, so he's definitely "Garry.")

After this party was over, it gave us a little time to clean up, grab some lunch, and steel ourselves for round two, which consisted of the college age and adult students. Things went pretty well at this party, it was much more lively and also more people. There were groups of girls running around taking pictures of anything and anyone in sight, as if we were at Disney World. Some of my older AI students showed up:









There was much dancing, playing games, taking pictures, and all the rest.







We took pictures with lots of people. That's Nicole in the center with Zhenya, our new teacher's assistant on the right, and our friend Kostya in Ghost Busters get-up between them.






We also had a team pupmpkin carving contest, which turned out to be very hard for the impromptu committee of six teachers to judge.All-in-all, it was a great success, but we were exhausted by the time we finished up the party and cleaned up.






Here's a fun picture that Amanda took. Eric is looking rather smug in his Pushkin get-up, but little does he know that I am lurking. I was supposed to be a Navy SEAL, but most of the Russians thought I was a terrorist.

Putin's Russia

Yesterday we got a little piece of some interesting Russian politics. Putin appeared on TV for about three hours yesterday during the day to answer questions posed by everyday people through telephone, email, and from various remote camera locations outside of Moscow. This is apparently the fifth time he has done this. It would be interesting to be a fly on the wall and know just how spontaneous the questions are. Most of the questions focused on domestic issues like the economy, social benefits, ethnic tensions, and immigration. One of the most interesting questions was about what he will do after the May 2008 election, which he is barred from running in by the Constitution that Yeltsin instituted in 1993. It will be interesting to see, but my money is on him becoming chairman of GazProm, the state oil and gas company. It has huge economic powers and wide influnce throughout the country. Plus, there is no doubt he will retain political influence over whoever his hand-picked successor will be.

NYT on Putin

Halos and Midterms

Well, the middle of Midterm week is here. We are all glad that the oral exams are over with now, and I don't have to hear any more AI students say, "Yesterday, I walked with my friends." Plus, we don't need lesson plans for Thursday and Friday. This is great, because lesson plans take up a fair portion of out working time.

The other upcoming event that is worth looking forward to is Halloween. As you can see, we are preparing by wearing various things to class to get our students interested in coming to the party on Saturday. I did my part by showing up in my own true guise, an angel! Pretty cheesy, huh? Thought so...

When ESL Goes Horribly Wrong...

...this is what happens. Nicole stumbled upon a blog, through the wonders of Google, that is, in a word, disturbing. It's kind of hard to figure out the details, but it appears to be by a Brit who taught English in several places, without the temprament it takes to teach English. While we here at the American Home do not endorse his teaching methods, the writing is pretty good. Maybe the jokes are funnier for us, but I still think they are worth a read...

Your Daughter is Very Beautiful...
Venezulans
Cretins

If you like these three, you can scroll down a little ways and there are several more under the heading "Teaching English."

A Little Sunday Morning News....

I have a couple of quick stories from the NYT about Russia that bring up a couple of important points

Condi In Moscow

Condi is in Moscow this weekend on her way back from Asia and she is talking about the lack of independant media. I don't know if it hit the news in the States much, but Anna Politkovskaya, one of the biggest critics of the war in Chechnya, was murdered a couple of weeks ago in what was clearly a contract killing. She worked for one of the few independant newspapers left. In addition, a new law went into effect this wekk that forced foreign NGOs to register with the government. A pretty large number of them have been told to stop operations while their paperwork is processed. Only in Russia can organizations like Amnesty International be such a threat to the governemnt that they invent ways to shut them down.

The other thing is immigration, which is the beloved issue of extremists in both the US and Russia (and a good part of Europe too). The thing is that in Russia, there seems to be an accepted amount of racism and distrust for foreigners who appear to be from the Caucasus or Central Asia. The unspoken assumption is that they all are under the control of organized crime which supposedly controls the wholesale food and goods market and artificuillly raises the price of goods. While organized crime exists, its a stretch to say that every person who looks dark haired and dark complected (chorny, Russian for "black") is a criminal out to steal from Russian people. When we go to the market, we are constatly warned to watch out for the people who will supposedly rob us blind.

NYT Article About an Anti-Immigration Leader in Russia

Saturday

So, here it is...six o'clock on a Staurday night. Most of us are here, at the American Home, ostensibly working, but mostly just goofing off. It is sad though, we hang out at work on our "off day." Enough said....

Midterms, Snow, et. al.

This week has been very busy so far and I just wanted to write a little bit about it. Last Saturday, Eric and I headed up to one of the local schools for basketball with some of the local kids. They are younger than us and, suffice it to say, in quite a bit better shape than we are. But, we had fun and showed them that the Americans can play a little too. We are hoping to take advantage of an opportunity or two and try to play about twice or three times a month.

On Tuesday night, we were in serious need of some entertainment, so we headed over to a place near Joanna's that has billiards. We had the entire place to ourselves and so we tried our hand at Russian billiards. If you want a little more info, check it out here. The thing is, Russian billiards is quite a bit different from pool. First, the table is a lot bigger, as are the balls. The regulation balls are either 68 or 71 mm, which are numbered and not colored. The pockets are about 2-4 mm. wider than the balls, so as you can imagine, there is not much room for error. The most common game is played with 16 balls just like regular pool, but once the pyramid is broken with a red cue ball, any ball can be used as a cue as long as you strike another ball with it. Joanna and Eric played as a team against Sara and I and, in the end, Sara and I triumphed! It is a pretty fun game and is a lot cheaper than bowling, which is seen as a novelty and can cost more than $20 an hour at night.

Other than that, we are busily writing mid-terms for our students, which have to be completed today so that the students can review for the exam next week. We are also busily trying to plan for our trip to Petersburg that is coming up in a little over two weeks. We are hoping to spend a couple of days in Petersburg on the cheap and then maybe take a train to Tallinn or Riga. We shall see how it works out, but I am excited to head back to Petersburg!

Три Дурака

I've spent the last several hours staring at the computer screen working on grad school applications, so I decided I needed a change of pace: naturally, I decided to blog.

I've been saving these pictures for a rainy day. In Cathedral Square along the main street, in front of the Usspensky Cathedral, stands a woderous Soviet-era monument to the history of the city of Vladimir. Affectionately known to the locals as Три Дурака (the Three Fools,) It is a three sided obelisk with a statue representing a key group from the city's past. The first two, a Medieval builder and soldier, make sense: they harken back to the city's glory days in the 13th century, when it was the political center of pre-Muscovite Rus.

The third is also important to the city's history, but nonetheless appears rather rediculous. During Soviet times, Vladimir was famous for its tractor factory, whichfell on hard times and closed during the lean years and privatizations of the early 90's: now, the building is occupied by a three storied mall. The statue is of a tractor factory worker holding a scaled down model of the factory's product. Which is tiny in his hands.



I have a feeling that the humor of it all doesn't really come through in the pictures. They don't do justice to the incongruity of standing in the center of the square with a bustling modern street on one side and a UNESCO World Heritage Site on the other side: in the center, a man with a toy tractor.

Questions From My "Big" Sister

So my "big" sis stepped up with some questions to keep me busy, so I will try to answer them the best that I can.

1. Are you students interested in hearing about random things from the states?
Most of them are pretty interested in America in general. Of course, there are students of all different ages, abilities, and interests. Many of them are curious about traditions, holidays, culture, and many other things. In general, people here know a lot more about America than people in America know about Russia. That said, there are often big misconceptions about real life in America. I think this mostly comes from lack of information. During Soviet times the news about America was distorted and no one believed it. America was someplace mysterious. Now, people see American movies and TV all the time and I think some of them have a lot of misconceptions due to that. The most common misconception is that everyone in America is rich and they have a hard time believing that we don't have a lot of disposable income here.

2. Have any of them invited you to do anything outside of the school?
Yes, we have been to cafes and things like that with some students, althought not so much because we are still in the process of getting to know the students. We have gotten to know a few of Joanna's students that she knows from last year. If you look back to the post about our picnic, you will see Konstantine. He was one of Joanna's students from last year. He is still in one of the intermediate levels, but he is very fun to hang out with.

3. Are you meeting more Russian people outside of your students?
Not really, we spend practically all of our time here at the American home either teaching or preparing. I have briefly met a few other people, but not many. We have plenty of people to get to know here.


4. Is the heat on yet?
Yes, it came on last week for me. It is quite toasty at home, I sleep with my window cracked right now. Some of us aren't so lucky. Some don't have heat yet and Sara hasn't had water for two days. We are lucky: if our hot water fails at home, we can take hot showers here at the American Home.


5. Do your babushka's cats like you yet?
Actually they seem to have made peace with me. The female one isn't fixed and it freaks out meowing at everything every month, but the other one is calm and likes to sleep on top of my writing desk all day.

This week is going very quickly. We have all been pretty tired; struggling to recover from the trip to Yaroslavl'. If you want to read a little more about the trip, read Joanna's post about it.

Yesterday was Amanda's birthday, so I think tonight we will be celebrating a little. We are alooking forward to our five day break coming up at the beginning of November. I think that most or all of us will be going to St. Petersburg, which should be a fun time.

Adventures in Yaroslavl-land

Note: there are tons of pictures in this post, so I made them small. You can get a full sized image by clicking on it.













So we are back and everyone survived the trip to Yaroslavl. I think that "survived" is a good word for it. We had about a five hour bus ride to get from Vladimir to Yaroslavl (with what saeemed like a million stops in between.) We arrived an went to the center of the city and checked out the monastary/kremlin that is in one of the town's main squares. We even got to climb some ramparts!

The next event, as you can see, involved bumper cars at a little amusement park on an island in the Volga. I haven't driven bumper cars in years and I didn't stop laughing the whole time (except when I was getting whiplash.)


This is the Cathedral of Elija the Prophet, which has tons of frescoes on the inside and was really beautiful both day and night.










This is us about 6 am. We thought that McDonald's (yeah, I know) would be open at 6:00 am.: but, we were wrong. The DRIVETHROUGH was was open at 6:00 am. So, lacking a car...what do we do? That's right, we WALK thorugh. Other than a an "О Господи!" (Oh Lord!) from the cashier, we had no problem getting our food and then we headed for the train station to eat. That bright light is emanating from McDonald's drive-thru.













You can see the results of the trip to the train-station: sleep.













So with that trip to McDonald's, we wrapped up our stay in Yaroslavl, only to arrive at the bus station to discover that our nice clean, modern, well-heated bus has been replaced with a pinch-hitter: A GAZel. For those of you not familiar with this devilish Russian invention, consider yourselves lucky. It's basically a thirteen passanger van with a minimum of safety features, little in the way of suspension, and only one heater in the front. Where do you think the coldest and wettest passangers on the bus got tickets for? In the back. Oh well, we survived and arrived back in Vladimir after another bone rattling 5 hour ride over Russian roads intact but exhausted. I think I slept a grand total of twenty minutes...It will be easy to get to sleep tonight!

С праздником!

Russia has holidays for just about everything. Often I think they are silly, but yesterday I experienced the joy of being on the recieving end of one of these "random" holidays; день учителей (Teachers' Day). And what do we get on Teachers' Day: chocolate of course!

Weekend Plans

I just realized that before yesterday I had posted for like four days in a row, which is a pretty good stretch for me. There's not too much to update today; just some plans and a request.

Yesterday we went down to the bus station and bought tickets for a Saturday morning bus to Yaroslavl. Yaroslavl is another city, like Vlaidimir, which is on the Golden Ring. It dates to around the same period of pre-Muscovite Russia. It is bigger than Vladimir and during the 16th and 17th centuries was the nation's second city behind Moscow. It had many weathly merchants who richly endowed the city with numerous churches and cathedrals. We are looking forward to a little bit of tourism and a change of scenery. If your curiosity gets the better of you, you can check out Yaroslavl on Wikipedia. I'll try to get some pictures and stuff up next week.

The other thing is a request for questions and comments. Last time, when I was in St. Petersburg, I had Mom's 5th graders ask me questions all the time so I had some input on what people wanted to know. Since I don't have that luxury now, I'm hoping for some more questions and comments to guide me and make sure this is a little more than just my random thoughts.

Тетрадь - The Notebook

The notebook: not The Notebook. A Russian notebook is a work of art. They are all about the size of your typical exam bluebook in college, but with all sorts of decorations, cartoon characters, objects, or other random things. Some of them are rather in your face: I have one student with a notebook that has a picture of a cartoon rabbit and the phrase [in English] "Thank God I'm not ugly." That, however, is not my favorite notebook. The honor goes to this one, because "v" and "w" are pretty interchangable anyway, right? Who doesn't love flovers?

Today was gorgeous and I couldn't take sitting inside working all day, so I quit and went for a little walk and a trip to the supermarket. The weather got pretty cold last night, I'm pretty sure we broke the freezing point. It is clear and cool and very plesent, the big problem is that it is like a nice Novemeber day at home...on October 2nd. Winter is beginning to approach on the horizon.






So, my little walk lasted about 45 minutes and along the way I took a few pictures. This on is a picture of the main street in town. This is the reason why getting anywhere is a pain for a lot of people...construction. Luckily for me I like in the other direction and lucky for everyone else they are supposed to be done in a month or two.This other picture is of a church, I have no clue what it is called because I didn't get that close to it, but this is a pretty nice picture and shows the blue sky and a few changing leaves.

Also, I took a picture of the concert hall that we went to last week and stuck it in that post, so have a look and marvel in all of its 60s style Soviet glory!

"Real" Russian School

I thought after that last post was so heavy on text that I should put something up today that is a little easier on the eyes. This is the Russian school that is right around the corner from where I live. Six mornings a week, and often evenings too, I pass by to see the Russian school-kids busy playing on the playground. Most of the students are between 7-14 years old. I think that they have to choose a different school in a different building for the equivalent of high school.

My understanding of the Russian education system is a little shaky at times, but it seems that they really concentrate on what we would call technical or vocational training. Russian students don't go to a university and get a liberal arts degree and then go work as a business consultant or other unrelated field. Instead they get a degree in accounting and become an accountant or a degree in mangagement and become a manager. They are totally mystified when we, as Americans with a liberal arts education say, "I have a degree in English and I don't know what I want to be when I grow up." This concept is totally foreign to most Russians. The only possible exception is with language training. From talking with some students, it sems that if you can aquire good langauge skills, especially in German or English, you can get good jobs in Moscow with any degree. Appaerently only a tiny minority of Alexei's students at the Pedagogical [I can't say this word in in English, let alone in Russian, where it has an extra syllable and a -ski on the end] Institute actually become foreign langauge teachers, most of them take their langauge skills and market themselves in the business world.

A Little Look at the American Home Student

After several requests and the realization that I have not posted much about the students here at the American Home; here goes. At any one time the American Home has somewhere between 350 and 400 students. Usually, each teacher has four classes that average between 11-13 students each. These classes meet twice a week for an hour-and-a-half; either on Monday and Thursday or Tuesday and Friday. Wednesday is set aside for office-hours, a teachers' meeting, and lesson planning. For some, Wednesdays also include conversation classess that focus more on speaking skills and are open to both current students and others who want to keep up those speaking skills. Nearly every Saturday we show a movie in the afternoon. This is sometimes accompanied by events such as a presentation on a topic of a teacher's choice or an activity like American Football.

Each day of instruction has three hour-and-a-half periods and usually a teacher teaches two of them. I usually arrive around 10 and spend some time reading the news are such. On Tuesday and Friday I have an hour-and-a-half of Russian lesson. The rest of the day is taken up with preparing, making copies, drinking tea, and making the occasional foray into the back yard to toss around a football with Joanna, Eric, and Sara. On Monday and Thursday I have the 4:00 period off followed by a BI (fifth-level) class and then an AI (third-level) class that finishes up at 9:00. On Tuesday and Friday I have two AI classes and then the final period off. Each of my classes has a different character.

My BI class is a mix of adults and students: the youngest is about 15 and the oldest is probably in her early 40s. They are very talkative and enthusiastic, but somtimes I have a hard time keeping them focused and speaking in English.

My three AI classes are also very different. The first has the same sort of mix of students and adults. They are a good class and often ask questions and beg for more explanation. My second class is all teenagers. At first they didn't like to talk very much and I felt like getting them involved was like pulling teeth. I dubbed them my "Silent-as-Death Class," an appelation I stole at Joanna's suggestion from a class last year. The bright spot in that class are the three or four students who sit in the front of the class, who would answer every question if I let them. As much as I complained about them, I think they are coming around. My final AI is the opposite; they are all college students or adults. They are a great class and after some of the struggles with my other classes, I joke and say that this one restores my faith in humanity.

That is the character of my classes, but the students vary quite a bit. However, there are two basic types: the young un's and the adults. The youngest students are usually here because their parents want them to learn English. Some of them enjoy it, some don't. They all study English in regular Russian school, but that has limitations. The Russian schools drill grammar into their heads very well...imagine learning "I am, you are, he is..." the way you learned 3+4=7, 3+5=8, etc. The thing they lack is speaking and listening practice. We have examples of students who can read and write passably but say things like "I from in Vladimir."

The fact that the young students have learned all of this recently is their major advantage over the older students. Most of the older students studied English at some point years ago is school, but haven't used it in a while. The major advantage that they have over the younger students is that they are the ones paying for this and the really want to be here. I guess all told it balances out between young and old in the end.

Shostakovich and More

Last night was the opening of the local philharmonic season. Several weeks ago Galya asked us if we were interested, so several of us jumped on some tickets that cost about $7. Unfortunately Nicole and Molly could not go because of obligations to teach conversation classes, but Bob, Amanda, Sara, Joanna, and I ventured into the world of the arts for a couple of hours last night. The preformance was by an orchestra from Moscow which was very good but was way too large for the concert hall, which was less than half the size of the MAC (for those of you familiar with IU.) We were into the third piece and a piano started playing: I didn't even know there was a piano, it was so far off-stage.

The music was really good. There was no program in sight, so we had to depend on the recitations of some Russian woman on stage who was difficult to understand, so this is the Cliff's Notes version. It started out with a short piece by a composor whose name we did not catch, but who was probably a Romantic. Then there a violin concerto by Saint-Saens. It was enjoyable and the soloist was really pretty good. Then followed a piece adapted from the opera Carmen which featured the same solist and then a break. After the break came Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony, which he composed in 1937 and was first performed in that year. 1937 was the height of the Great Terror and Shostakovich himself had been denounced and was in danger of falling victim. I gathered from the introduction that Shostakovich is a popular attraction this year, as this is the 100th anniversary of his birth. (You can only imagine how much Russians love anniversaries...of anything.) In fact, his 100th birthday would have been on Monday. If you want to learn about Shostakovich and his works, check him out on Wikipedia, here . He is one of my favorite 20th century composors and is not all that well known in America.

So, after our visit to "get cultured," we are back to the real world today. Class, class, preparing for class...you get the idea.

Пикник - Picnic

Yup, you got it, you know know your very first Russian word: picnic. On Saunday, after my excursion around the city Eric, Molly, Joanna, and I met up at the American Home to take a little trip to the woods for a picnic. Konstantine, one of Joanna's friends and former students drove us about ten miles to a small woods with a little lake. We had to share the place with other people who had the same idea and some old men who were fishing. We had a fire, some shashlik, and some other snack foods. Konstantine had a couple of air rifles so we spent some time shooting cans of the Russian equivalent of Diet Pepsi at ranges of no more than ten or fifteen yards. We also tossed around the football and went swimming in the lake. It was pretty clear but really cold!

In all, between the beautiful fall weather, the walk around the city, the picnic, and the invigorating swim in the lake, it was a great day! Plus, to top it all off, we put Bob's newest creation to the test: Sovietopoly. That's right, a Monopoloy game in which almost all of the chance cards are negative and you don't just go to jail, the send you to the GULAG. Sara and I were and a team and we lost miserably. As is true in many Russian games, there was not a winner, just a loser...

An Autumn Sunday

On Sunday I decided to take adventage of the beautiful fall day and sunny skies to wander the center of Vladimir for an hour or so and take some pictures.

Here are some pictures of a church I found on my walk. I had seen the spires before from the bus and so on and decided to go investigate. I don't know what it is called but it was really beautiful in the full sunlight.






This is St. Demetrius Cathedral. It once stood inside the city's Kremlin and was the personal church of Grand Prince Vsevolod "the Big-nest." (He apparently had an exceptionally large family, but mainly I just wanted to type "Big-nest.") It has a whole bunch of rather odd carvings in the white limestone; mainly a series of mythical Greek and Old Testament heros and prophets, something that is almost unheard of in the Orthodox tradition.


This is the Uspensky (Assumption) Cathedral. It was originally built in the middle 12th century. It was rebuilt and enlarged at the end of that century after fire damaged the existing structure. For about three hundred years it was the catherdral where the Grand Princes (the predecessors to the Tsars) were crowned. Think of it as the Russian equivalent of Westminster Abbey. It also served as the model for the Uspensky Cathedral that stands inside the Kremlin in Moscow and was the coronation site of the Tsars.

These last two of are separate churches around the center. The one on the left dates from around the middle 18th century and stands outside a monastary on Bolshaya Moscovskaya, the main street of the city. The other is quite a bit older but in better shape, and stands on a little back street about a hundred yards to the east of the American Home.




This last one is close to the American Home behind the last church. It is a little terrace going down the bluff toward the river. Somewhere down there at the bottom are some houses, the railroad tracks, and the Klyazma River.

Football, American Home Style

So, today being a beautiful fall day and a Saturday to boot, we promoted a little thing we like to call "Learn to play American football." This is Russia and most Russians have never seen a football, much less understand anything about the game. Think of it as similar to the way the average American looks at cricket...yeah, it is that strange to them. But, in the interest of cultural connections we attempted to (I would say succeeded in) teaching some of our willing students to play football. We had over twenty students turn up. Joanna, Eric, Molly, and I were semi-in charge and Bob later joined in.


Most of the students who showed up were girls, but that is not too surprising since the majority of our students are girls and women.

So, this is my team at the snap and here is Joanna's friend Vova (short for Vladimir) on the recieving end of a touchdown pass. This game is fun and easy, right? My team won our two games and, all-in-all, we had a great time.



Also, don't forget to read Joanna's post on the subject.












Yup, and this last one is us playing American football in the shadow of the Golden Gates...a fun juxtaposition, don't you think?