Sept. 12

Overview: First week of teaching

To be quite honest, my first week of teaching was pretty much a nightmare. Almost all of the kids’ behavior fit into one of three categories: out of control, unresponsive or very frustrated/upset. I was getting really fed-up with this, until an experience gave me a better perspective on things.

One morning, I was “reading” a book about animals with a little 3 year old named Nastia. I’d point to a horse and say, “Look Nastia, ‘horse,’” to which she glared back at me, pointed and corrected me: “Nyet. Lo-shech.” I nodded, again said "horse" (since that's what I'm supposed to do) and continued reading. Well, as the story progressed, this poor little girl got more and more bugged at the fact that this grown-up seemed to insist upon creating false names for these animals that she had probably just finally learned the Russian names of a few months ago. So, I started saying both the Russian and English words for the animals, hoping it’d click… She was still upset. Finally, storytime ended abruptly right after I pointed out a “dog.” Nastia stood up, ripped the book out of my hands, screamed, “NYET!! SUH-BAH-KUH!!” chucked it across the room, and then began chewing me out in Russian. I obviously had no idea what she was saying, but figured it was something like, “What kind of sick joke is this, huh? I’m trying hard enough to learn how to speak Russian here, let alone whatever ridiculous language you and your friends keep using!”

While the kids in Pre-K don’t quite grasp what we’re doing, our older group of 4-6 year olds definitely comprehend that we are teaching them English. This fact may seem like it should work in our favor; however, it really really doesn’t: mostly because they all know that they can say whatever the heck they want in Russian, and we won’t understand a word of it. Three little girls in particular—named Aylia, Liza and Varvara—are definitely on the path to becoming the Russian version of “The Plastics” here in a few years. I never wish I was fluent in Russian quite so much as when those little girls start ganging up on another little kid on the playground, or say something smart at me and giggle when I ask them to participate in class… Ugh.

But, anyway. Despite the fact that things have been challenging, some of the kids are really just adorable and sweet. There’s a little boy with dimples and the biggest blue eyes named Sasha I’ve already decided is somehow coming home with me at the end of the semester. Hopefully, as we keep working at all of this, things get better.

Folk Dance

While teaching’s been a challenge, SO many things made this last week worth all of the crying and biting and book-hurling we’ve endured at the school. The highlight of the week, hands down, was attending a Russian folk dancing concert Saturday night in Moscow. I’ve never seen anything like it: the dancing was unbelievable, the detailing on the costumes was unreal, the music was great… Anyway. While the women were super graceful, and all somehow “floated” around by walking on their tippy-toes all over the stage while keeping their head at the exact same level (quite impressive), the guys dancing was just plain awesome. Wierdly enough, a lot of it reminded me of the Polynesian Hauka (sp?) dancing stuff I’ve seen—kind of meant to be a show of strength and even a little intimidating I guess more than the pretty stuff the women had to do. Anyway, the whole concert was definitely worth every ruble.


My roommate Kaitlyn and I enjoying the remarkably cushy seats in the hotel's performance hall before the folk dancing


Russian Folk Dancing Men (not taken at the concert :))



Exhibition

Before attending the folk dance, we spent the afternoon at a big exhibition in Moscow. It was in a big square where this famous fountain--called the People's Friendship Fountain--is located (I'll post pics of that soon). Anyway, this huge square was just lined with exhibitions and shops and cool old buildings to see. Here are a few pics:



Without a doubt, Russians are proud of their prominent place in aerospace history. We've seen lots of pictures, statues, figurines etc. of rocketships since we've been here, but this structure I'm standing on was by far the coolest. This was basically a HUGE jungle gym made out of old rocketship parts. It was super scary to climb up, because there were no guardrails and dozens of places where you could've easiliy slipped off and fell to your death, but there were about 10 Russian kids climbing all over the thing, so I couldn't let them pass me up. They were nice kids too... one helped me climb up one stretch at the beginning, and even offered us cigarettes after we all got back down. Just what you want to hear from a 12 year old... ugh.



Another thing that Russians seem to be very proud of (which I think they also definitely deserve to be) is their contributions to WWII. While just the construction of this sand statue thing was impressive, the story behind it--which one of my roommates shared with me--was really interesting. I'm no history expert, so we'll see if I can get it right: The statue is supposed to be of the leaders of the "Big Three" right before signing the treaty that officially ended the war. While Roosevelt and Churchill were allied with Stalin, Roosevelt was (quite understandably) not a fan of him, yet needed to maintain good relations throughout the war. The treaty signing, though, meant not only an end to the war, but to this alliance Roosevelt really didn't like. Roosevelt didn't like to be seen in public as having to use a wheelchair, so he was usually seated in a regular chair before, and then not moved again throughout anything public. Before signing the treaty, though, Roosevelt made a big statement by, in front of everyone, asking to be moved to the other side of Churchill, away from Stalin. Anyway, kind of interesting that the artist chose to sculpt what it looked like prior to that whole thing happening.

District Conference

This Sunday was district conference, so our church meeting was in an entirely new part of Moscow. Needless to say, we got lost for a while, and ended up having to sneak in the back 20 minutes late, but luckily got there in time to snag the last of the radio/headphones so we could understand what was going on--the entire thing was in Russian. Since my set required me to squeeze them to my ears to hear anything, and since the translators were a bit monotone (the translating was definitely impressive though... I'm sure that is no easy task), I got a bit bored and started to just do some numbers. There looked to be about 400-450 people in the room, and at least 1/4 were American (I could tell b/c they were also squeezing headphones to their ears). Out of the 8 people that spoke, only one spoke in English, and she had a translator standing next to her, and they would trade off speaking one sentence at a time. The funniest part of the meeting was when a Russian translator--bless his heart--was interpreting for one of the district presidents and said this: "There is a common... idiom... in English, that should fit right here... "There are no... large people, or small people... only, average people..." Made me smile. :) Anyway, while I obviously didn't maybe get as much spirituality out of this meeting as I should have, it was still so awesome and comforting to be gathered with other members in this little conference room in the midst of these huge, foreign city. Church is definitely worth the trip. :)

Now that I’ve went on about the activities of the week, here are just a few of the thoughts I had about Russia in general this past week.

Borshte!

So far, there has only been one Russian food I have not been able to make myself eat: beets. We were served big piles of shredded beets the other day at school. And even after adding tons of Russia’s version of Mayo to the stuff, I couldn’t get myself to eat more than a few spoonfuls. My best description of them was that it tasted like I was eating the outdoors. The next day, when the cooks set bowls of soup in front of us that were the same hot pink-ish color as the beets, we all knew we were about to taste Russia’s signature food item: Borschte. I was pretty sure it was just going to taste like soupy outdoors. Well, somehow, it was delicious. I had thirds. While I’ve started to miss some American food (ie. my dad's burritos), I (so far) think I could live on Russian cuisine the rest of my life and get by just fine.

This is an ACTUAL picture of the borshte we were served at the school. Look appetizing?



I love American restaurant customs

While I’ve really enjoyed Russian food, Russian restaurant practices leave something to be desired. At the exhibition, we all decided to eat at this restaurant, so two of my roommates and I decided to split a lamb dish that had written out to the side in bold “500 rubles”—about $5.50 each. Well, not only was it really small and kind of unremarkable, but our ticket after our meal said we had to pay over 1,000 rubles, which is over 30 bucks. Our Russian guide later explained that the prices listed are for a certain set weight, and they cooks just stick however much they want to on your plate and charge you for it. How ridiculous. I couldn’t help wondering how Jessa would’ve responded to that one. :)

Along with that, Russian restaurants don’t give you free water. Not even the McDonalds do. Nor are there water fountains anywhere. I’ve definitely taken free water for granted!

Does ¾ of Moscow’s male population really work for the mafia, or is it just James Bond?

The other day after school, there were two men who each came to pick up their kids. And everything about them—leather jackets, black shiny Land Cruisers with super-tinted windows, really buff, seriously displeased looks on their faces—just, screamed I’m a scary Russian hit-man (which fact made it really strange seeing them come pick up their kids we had just taught “5 Little Monkeys” to). More often than not, the men I see seem to fit the stereotypical mafia description. My roommates have felt the same way. After discussing it, though, we've concluded that most Muscovite men are probably not mafia, but the fact that every bad guy in movies seems to be Russian. We then started to list off the top of our heads how many movies had Russian bad guys... So many! I've decided that this guy is definitely the scariest though.




Sick.

Excuse me?!

While misinterpreting others and being misinterpreted ourselves has been both common and frustrating, sometimes the misunderstandings end up being kind of funny. Our little elementary school has 3 security guards on duty all the time. They all look about 19 years old, too, and love waiting for us to go through their gate every morning and evening so they can say some short English greeting to us, wait for us to respond, and then run off as they laugh hysterically... yes, its sort of odd. Anyway, a few days ago, one of my roommates who’d had to stay at the school longer than the rest of us came home with a "funny story" for us: apparently, when she’d come to the gate, the most giggly guard (yes, he giggles) was kind of "posing" by the gate and asked, “Kock-dee-lah?" in a flirty kind of tone. All of my roommates kind of laughed at her story, but I--whom I later found out was the only one who didn't know what "Kock-dee-lah" meant--was totally shocked by this. Although I didn't know exactly what he'd said, because of the context perhaps (well, and also b/c of how the phrase sounds), I was pretty sure it was not very appropriate, and I didn't understand why no one else seemed to be feeling even the tiniest bit offended at this. I then found out it just means "How are you?" Oh. Anyway, I got kind of embarrassed about getting worked up over it. I'm definitely going to work harder on learning my Russian.


Sept. 7th

On a scale of 1-10 (10 being best day ever), this day would get a 1.
First time really teaching, and I think every fear I had about this whole thing was realized x10. Kids were off the wall. Our head teacher though, Sarah, told us that the first two weeks are awful, and then things get better. Just when I was thinking Russian kids were the cutest things ever… ugh.

I know I’m being dramatic, but I’m going to continue anyway.

To top this day off, a guy brought back our computer—which, he indicated, was supposed to give us back our internet. Spending roughly twenty minutes total on the world wide web in over a week? Less than even missionaries get. After tweaking with it for a few minutes, while we all danced and whooped in the background, the guy just shook his head and said “To-mah-do” and left. Tomorrow… Yeah, right… We’ve been told that lie before, you Russian computer man!!

My dad sent me an email today with updates on my family, and it made me miss them all a ton. I can’t wait until I can Skype my family.

Sept. 6th

Today was both overwhelming and tons of fun. Since teaching English was the main reason we came, our exploring has been put on hold and we’ve started teaching at the elementary school. The language barrier makes things hard sometimes, but it also seems to make the more outgoing kids extra excited to talk with us and show off what they know. This morning, the pre-K class was especially fun. I spent the hour “reading” several books to a cute little blonde girl named Nastia (they were all in Russian… My created stories were much better than what was written though I’m sure) and playing baby dolls with “Veesna.” This last girl wouldn’t say a word yesterday, but today I got her to warm up to me and say (and I think understand?) quite a few English words. Anyway, its been a challenge (ie. I spent recess trying to keep one little girl named Dasha from chewing on the other kids…) but also been fun. I know I’m going to get pretty attached to these little kids here.