Thursday, July 26, 2012

The Past Ten Days


7/17
Some impressions of Russia/Russians
The hairstyles: many women have hair down to their butts. Many middle aged women have short hair dyed bright red. Guys are rocking mullets and rattails, and sometimes a combination of the two. A lot of little boys have normal haircuts that just look a little shaggy in the back, so it’s like the mullet just crept up on them.
Fewer people than I would have expected speak English and, of the people who do speak English, they are not as fluent as I would have expected. It’s not like France, where you can get by even if you don’t know the language. In small towns, you wouldn’t be able to find a single person who could speak English well enough to have a conversation.
They place an incredible amount of importance on physical beauty and fashion. Little girls at the camp would be in skin-tight pants, skimpy dresses, belly shirts, and some would even wear crazy high heels. They all have their hair perfectly arranged. However, the biggest difference is in how they carry themselves. Middle school aged girls in America are incredibly awkward and self-conscious, which you can tell by watching how they interact with others and how they present themselves. However, in Russia, even young girls act like they know they’re beautiful. Not in a particularly conceited or self-absorbed way, but more as if they take it for granted. Guys are pretty much separate from this preoccupation with beauty.
Russian men tend to be chivalrous to the point of sexism. They absolutely refuse to let women carry anything heavy. It seems like it’s less about wanting to help the women, and more about not wanting to look weak in front of their buddies. They’ll just say “Oh, I must do this because I am a man”, as if that’s a valid reason.

7/18
The food here is the worst food I’ve ever had. The camp, naturally, does not offer the finest example of Russian cuisine, but they actually do a pretty good job with what they have. The main problem is that the type of food offered is not something I would ever want to eat. Their meats are often unidentifiable , they eat fish whole, and most things are drenched in some sort of nasty sauce or gravy. In fact, if you ask what kind of meat or fish you’re eating, people will look at you like you’re an idiot and simply say “It is meat.” Also, the fish is not prepared normally. It has all its bones and the skin is attached. The kids just pick it up and gnaw the fish off the skin. Dill is on everything, and so strong that it drowns out all other tastes. Cucumbers and tomatoes are their equivalent of apples and oranges. The drinks at the camp are either comports, tea, or sour milk, and all sweetened so much that they are inedible. Even though I haven’t been here long, I’m already so sick of dill that, no matter how hungry I am, when I walk into the cafeteria and smell the food, I lose my appetite entirely and end up picking at my meal. Fortunately, there is bread at every meal, and it has become the staple of my diet. I also eat whatever the grain is, either potatoes or rice, and I’ll nibble at some of the vegetables. Fortunately, there is a little general store about a 20minute walk from the camp, so I got some cornflakes and chocolate to help me survive these next few of weeks.
7/20
So I’ve been teaching here for almost a week. I really, really, really like all of the kids. They are more polite than American kids and, for the most part, are pretty eager to learn. If they aren’t interested, they at least aren’t disruptive (although there are some notable exceptions). On the first day, the kids took a test, wrote an essay, and were interviewed. We then sorted them into seven groups according to language ability. Every day, we teach three 35 minute English lessons and then one extra language study lesson. They have the option to take Italian, Spanish, French, German, Swedish, or supplemental English classes. Every day has a theme for the lessons-something like government, elections, business, or law for the older kids and family, jobs, weather, or schools. I really love groups 1 and 2, the younger kids with very little English. Fortunately, I have enough Russian to explain the day’s activities to them and there is always a kid who understands what I am trying to convey and will explain to the others. We usually play a game to introduce new vocab, play a game to practice the concept, and then play a game at the end as a reward for doing so well in the previous games. With the older kids, it a lot harder to get them to speak and some of them would rather be on their phones than pay attention, but I try to have a lot of activities. For example, tomorrow the theme is law, so we will be having a mock trial. In addition to regular lessons, we teach Creativity Workshops. We have the kids for an hour a day every week and work towards a final performance in front of the whole camp. This past week I decided to base the workshops around the American South. I taught the kids the dance to Cotton Eye Joe and they all wore denim and cowboy hats.

Every other evening everyone in the camp goes to the campfire. It begins by having a discussion about a certain topic, like friendship or patriotism. Then, everyone sings songs. The kids sing some, councilors sing, and we sing some English songs. Russian songs are really pretty and the kids all enjoy singing. The first night, I sang them an old song from Wilderness Adventure. It’s supposedly an old Aboriginal rain dance (a fact that I may have made up to get the kids interested). It starts off with me singing one line really softly and then the kids repeat it. The whole song goes “Ooh kalayla/A me-a tikki tamba/A mazza mazza mazza/Ooh alooo-ay, ooh ay, aloo-ah” As it repeats, it gets louder and louder, but the last line always stays quiet. The kids absolutely loved it, and I was surprised to find that the older of the Russian councilors recognized the song as a traditional campfire song and Stephen said he sang it way back in his Boy Scout days. After that song, when I would walk through the camp, kids would yell “mazza mazza mazza” at me, and they beg me to come to every campfire so we can sing it.

7/22/12
I am exhausted today, but in a good way. I went down to the beach to play with the kids, and as soon as I got there they swarmed around me and dragged me into the water. I spent an hour chasing them, being chased, fighting them off, and throwing them into the water. It’s funny how little the language difference matters; playing with kids is the same in any country. Also, today we actually had decent food. For dinner we had the worst shepherd’s pie I’ve ever had, but it was the best food I’ve had here. Russian lessons are also going well. For the most part, we just practice our conversational skills and today we talked about immigration problems in Britain and the US. It’s nice because I’m getting an education about life in the UK as well as in Russia.
I’m also tired because we spent last night drinking on the beach with the Russian counselors. One of the teachers has a major crush on a Russian guy who doesn’t speak much English, so I was in the awkward/hilarious situation of sitting by them and translating her flirting into his language. I’d say my Russian was a success there, because they managed to get to a point in their romance where speech was no longer necessary, or even really possible. I’m reaching a point where I am really, really sick of talking about guys. We are in Russia, having an incredible experience, and all some of these girls want to do is talk about some guy who had the audacity to break up with them two years ago. It’s quite boring.
7/22
The kids had a talent show last night, which was very impressive. They came to this camp mainly to learn English, but they are all quite talented singers and dancers. We have performances of some sort every night and, while most American boys would hate all the singing and dancing, these kids get really into it. Tonight, we had some little girls do acrobatics, kids sang a traditional Russian song, a 13 year old boy, Gleb, sang “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean” in this unbelievably pretty voice, hitting higher notes than a lot of women could reach. My favorite performance was by Georgi, who did a traditional Georgian military dance. Georgi is in the highest English class and is a very bright kid. His dad is from Georgia and Georgi is very proud of his heritage. He can play the traditional military drums, has a big coin collection, including money from before the revolution, has a full replica of a military outfit, and is an amazing dancer. He is so curious about everything and always eager to learn. I’m just glad I’ve had the opportunity to get to know him, because before I didn’t know anything about Georgia.
7/24/12
One of the most interesting things about teaching these kids is that I get to hear firsthand what the youth think about the Russian government and how they perceive the United States. The defining element of their political consciousness is an incredible sense of apathy and hopelessness. They don’t think that there is anything they can do to affect their political futures, even in a minor way. They do have definite ideas about what they would like to happen, but no hope that that will actually take place. None of the kids like Putin, and some of them really despise him. Others, however, simply believe that he is the best of many bad choices for political leadership. I asked them what exactly they want from government and it seems that Russians do value a strong government over a government with more transparency, freedom, or democracy. They would like those other values, of course, but I think because it’s such a big country, a government that can keep order is critical. They also are aware that people in other countries aren’t exactly crazy about Russia and want a government strong enough to protect Russia’s interests internationally and protect domestic security. Obviously, I can only talk about political issues like this with the older groups, and even then there are a number of kids who have no interest in politics, but there are kids with very strong opinions and I love chatting with them.
Even with younger kids, you can get an interesting peek into their cultural consciousness through some of the games we play together. For example, playing a word game, one girl gave the clue “These are bad in Russia” and everyone instantly guessed “roads.” In the same game, a boy gave the clue “domesticated animal” and was answered with “bear,” which I thought was funny. When you ask them to describe Russia, the same answers always come up: beautiful nature, national parks, bears, vodka, balalaikas, babushkas, Putin, and fuzzy winter hats. I think it’s because Russia is so big and so diverse that even native Russians have to resort to stereotypes when asked to generalize about their country.
Tonight we are going to present our second round of Creativity Projects, an event I am looking forward to with anticipation as well as apprehension, because my group hasn’t had as much time to practice as I would like. For this project, I brought a bunch of duct tape with funky patterns from the home and I taught the kids to make duct tape wallets. They really enjoyed it and were very creative with adding different decorations. Then, we came up with a company name, product name, slogan and price for the wallets. For the presentation, we will do an advertisement for our product. The kids decided on Space Age Scotch as a company name and KosmoКашёлки (CosmoWallets) for the product name. Our slogan is “Wallets of the Future/кашёлки будущего

1 comment:

  1. Hey lis. It's great to hear about your trip and it seems like you're having a very unique and interesting experience and hopefully an experience youll take with you for the rest of your life. We're at the shore and were all passing around the iPads to read about your adventure. We miss you. By the way, by next tuesday I'll be in Scotland and so well both be abroad. Keep posting! And hopefully well see you soon.
    Jack

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