Entry 7: September 22, 2011
I know I have been amiss in my posting this week, but I haven't felt I had much new to report on. Moreover, I have been fighting with my computer which has made me very irritated and upset. I have tried several system restores, to no avail, and now even when I'm not trying to connect to the internet, Skype will not load fully and is wreaking havoc upon my CPU until I can get windows to dismiss it. A few nights ago I didn't know whether I felt like crying or throwing my computer against the wall and smashing it into a trillion pieces of oblivion. I restrained myself from doing either, but was very put out and disheartened.
Ludmila was out on Monday and part of Tuesday due to a family illness, so I did not attend the first few lectures I was interested in earlier in the week. On Wednesday I went to talk to a class about the interviewing process in America, what to expect, how to prepare, etc. As all of my visitations have gone thus far, once a topic has been reasonably exhausted we talk about Alaska, America, and anything else the students are curious about. I've been bringing my photo album with me and end up showing pictures to everyone. The one reaction I get consistently every time I show pictures is one of surprise at the size of my family on my mom's side. I usually talk about the different traditions my family has, and so far the group favorites have been the Easter egg hunt at Grandma and Grandpa's and our family secret Santa at Christmas.
I was given a package of course outlines, goals, and topics for the English Department, which I spent a lot of time reviewing. I wrote out a list of subtopics that correlated with the course goals that I felt I could speak on and gave them to one of the professors. She made copies of the list and put it on the counter at the American Center, and I have noted that most of them have disappeared over the last few days, though anyone has yet to approach me in regards to them. I also had an idea for a pet project of my own: an American Idioms Club. I knew I wanted to do some sort of fun learning event series, but I couldn't figure out a topic for the longest time. Jackie had mentioned that she has been teaching slang, but, after a linguistics course I had a few terms ago, I found that my knowledge of slang is rather lacking as several actions, states of being, or things we tend to have a lot of different slang terminology for in English are things which I either do not association with, participate in, or care to know more names for. Therefore, slang was automatically out. I had noted that there was an American Idioms dictionary on one of the shelves in the American Center library, and I thought to myself, “Self, what about an American Idioms Club?”
Me, myself, and I all felt this to be a much better course of action than one relating to slang. I had a few different ideas in mind about how to teach them and make it interesting such as playing pictionary, making skits with newly acquired idioms, or having to “translate” for someone using idioms into plan English. When I posed the idea to Ludmila she was all for it, and we decided to host it at 3:10 pm on Thursdays. I made up a flyer with the following advertisement:
(Imagine these first two phrases going on a diagonal in a fun wordArt manner) Cat got your tongue? Are you drawing a blank?
AMERICAN IDIOMS
Do American idioms leave you feeling like you're missing half of the conversation? Are you left in the dark? Worry no longer! Come jump on the bandwagon and come to...
THE AMERICAN IDIOMS CLUB
(information about the when and where placed here)
Led by an American student from Alaska, you'll learn American idioms in non-traditional ways and have fun while doing it!
(End advertisement)
If you noticed the use of idioms, yes, that was intentional. I thought that the information was still specious enough and hoped the idioms used would make people want to come to figure out what in the world the whole advertisement meant. Nadia and Yuliya, the two girls that work in the American Center, helped me find a good border for it in Microsoft Word. Once we had a poster we sufficiently liked, we made several copies. Yuliya decided that it needed color, so the three of us went to town with some highlighters (coloring: an eternal pastime). The result was a few colorful and eye-catching flyers, which we then put around the school.
A few smaller flyers were also given to some of the teachers, and the word was passed around. However, we had no idea how many people were going to show. I started flipping through the idioms dictionary and picked out a few of the first good ones that I thought people should know. I decided on 12 different idioms to begin. They are as follows:
1. To get someone's goat.
2. Hard/tough act to follow
3. Cost an arm and a leg
4. Cover all the bases/have all the bases covered
5. To twist someone's arm
6. Climb/jump on the bandwagon
7. Got up on the wrong side of the bed
8. To be (or not to be) big/hot on something
9. To draw a blank
10. To be chompin' at the bit
11. To get brownie points
12. Over my dead body
In preparing, I not only wrote out the meaning of each for myself, but also the stories behind them, if I knew them. I am happy to say that for all but one or two, I had an explanation. I also learned that “to get up on the wrong side of the bed” comes from the superstition that if you put your left foot down first when you get up in the morning, you're supposed to have bad luck all day. Therefore, it seems to me that “to get off on the wrong foot with someone” comes from the same superstition. Interestingly enough, I know from reading Dostoevsky that Russian culture used to share the same superstition.
Around 4 pm (which is when the American Center closes) on Wednesday, Yuliya, Nadia, and another girl whose name I don't actually know, decided to have coffee and cookies instead of just going home. They invited me to join them, and although I was tired, it was more important for me to get to know them better than to go home and be lazy. It was nice to just talk and laugh together. Nadia made a reference to an intellectual internet slang, and they were surprised to find I knew what they were talking about. Yay for linguistic pet projects and interests.
This morning I spoke in two different first year classes, showing them pictures, and answering any questions they had. We talked about stereotypes of Russians and Americans, my impressions of Russia and Russian, how languages are taught in America, the university system in America, how to get a job in America, tips for foreign exchange students, and the complications of working while being a full-time student. Both of the classes were much more talkative then previous ones had been, and we had a lot of fun. Granted, the second class was supposed to present dialogues in the second half of the class, but they got the teacher to let them ask me more questions instead. Thus, there may have been an ulterior motive in continuing to be interested in me, but I'm not going to complain (which makes me think that perhaps, “Don't look a gift horse in the mouth should be on my next idiom list”).
In both classes I advertised shamelessly for the idioms club. I made 10 copies of the worksheet to begin with, and we were surprised to have somewhere between 15 and 20 students show up for the club. I began by having them work in groups to try to guess what the idioms could mean. Then we went through the one by one, and I explained them. They all guessed the meaning of “to cost an arm and a leg” and “over my dead body,” but the one that stumped them most was “to get someone's goat.” (For those of you who don't know, the idiom comes from when racehorse owners would buy a pet for their horse to keep them company. The pet of choice was often a goat. If a competitor wanted to mess with someone else's horse, they'd take their goat the day before the race. Hence “to get someone's goat”). After we had gone through all twelve idioms for the day, I had them divide up into groups to come up with short skits using as many of them as possible. They did remarkably well. They used anywhere between six and ten of the list, and I gave “brownie points” to one group that also used the idiom “driving me crazy.” We gave a prize to the best two groups, and challenged them to return next week with the Russian equivalents of each of the idioms.
All in all it went very well, and I was quite pleased with both the turnout and enthusiasm on the part of the students. They seemed to have a good time, and I hope they come back next week with more friends. Granted, we're not quite sure where we should hold the club, as we didn't really have enough room for the group, but we've a week to figure that out. I've decided to start next Thursday with a review. I'm not sure if I'll attempt it through playing pictionary, charades, or just doing a simple matching. I want to try and do something different every week to keep it new and exciting.
I got a phone call from Anna Anatolevna, my Russian professor from PSU and our fearless leader in this senior project that has us Flagship students spread all across the world right now. She explained more of the plans for the project and the specifics we need to nail down. Jackie and I are going to try to figure out this weekend what exactly we want to work on. Originally Jackie thought to do a comparison of student life now and in Soviet times, but she's no longer too fond of that idea. We briefly talked about doing a sort of then and now e-book on Nizhny Novgorod. Jackie likes to draw, and I have a camera so we figured we could draw the past and photograph the present. Come Sunday we're hoping to come up with a concrete plan.
Tomorrow I plan on attending the Methods of Teaching Russian course again, and at 3pm I'm meeting up with Veronika (and maybe Lena as well) to go around the city and maybe see a movie. Also, on October 2, which is next Sunday, I'm going on an excursion with several of the teachers to a nearby historical town. I don't know what it's called or how far away it is, but that's alright. Ludmila hoped that Jackie could come as well as she didn't want me to just be alone with the teachers without a peer, although I wouldn't have minded. Jackie, however, has a different excursion on that day, so Ludmila found a girl who works in one of the directors' offices who will come. Her name is Valentina, Valya for short, and I met her just briefly today.
My father plans to call me in an hour or so to do some more troubleshooting on this bellicose box of mine, but it will do no good as it's currently raining, hence the internet is down. Thus I was not able to do my pre-call troubleshooting. I know that patience is a virtue, but it has never been one of mine. It seems God sees fit to work to change that.
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