Entry 18: October 18, 2011
On Saturday morning I worked on some homework and some phonetics records for LUNN, but I started to feel antsy and wanted to do something. I gave Jackie a call to see if she wanted to get together and hang out for awhile. We decided to go to a cafe, and then go over to her place to watch a movie. Although we were going to use my computer, because it has better sound, she has a couch, so her place is better for movie watching. However, during this conversation, I got a text from Katya, so I told Jackie I'd give her a call back. Jackie was looking up the menu at a cafe we had walked by several times to see if the prices were reasonable.
Katya said we could go to the museum around 4:30, but instead of the festival or the theatre, she planned to go to Forro in the evening, which is a Brazilian dance style similar to salsa but without the hip movement. Naturally, that sounded like a blast to me, so I said I'd love to go with her. Jackie was interested in the museum, but not dancing, so Jackie and I planned to meet up and then part ways after the museum. After ironing my fun dancing skirt and bemoaning the fact that I left my dancing shoes in the 907 (which, if you're not from Alaska, is our area code. It's turned into college student slang for our state), I headed out to meet up with Jackie.
The cafe was very nice, and we had a whole little alcove to ourselves. There were some more American like things on the menu, but I decided against the burger and fries. Jackie, however, went to order the burger with cheese, and the waitress want to make sure she understood that there was no meat on the cheeseburger...it was literally a “burger” of cheese. Jackie said she wanted the burger with meat, and when the waitress left we looked at eat other very confused and trying to hold back laughter.
When we were done enjoying our lunch and warm drinks (the day was bitter cold), we headed off to get some art supplies so that Jackie could color the drawing she's working on for our Capstone project. After we were done at the art store we still had an hour or so to kill and didn't really have any desire to be outside for long periods of time. There was a small mall a little ways away, so we decided to go in and look around. We walked in and there was a string quartet playing, which made me very happy. We walked around window shopping, and then sat on a bench on the second floor listening to Mozart and Vivaldi. When we were walking back to the place we were going to be meeting up with Katya we were both humming all of the songs the quartet had played, and that got us started on other classical songs. Although I think that we should probably both keep our day jobs, it made the walk back more fun.
We met up with Katya and two of her friends by the Theatre of Drama, which was not far from the museum. We walked back around a few buildings to an apartment building. There was a doorbell-like button with the word “художник” (artist) above it. Katya pushed this, and the artist himself came and opened the door. I think this gentlemen is now my favorite artists. He does not use any paint in his art. Instead, he collects leaves throughout the year, presses them, and then creates all of his pictures out of them. He said he just uses glue and a scalpel. The pictures are breathtaking and phenomenal. It's interesting to see how many colors there are in leaves. If you have access to facebook, I've put an album up there of some of his work. Some of them look nearly like photographs. I was shocked to see that he was selling his work for 600-1000 rubles (1000 rubles is about $33). If there was an easy way to get pictures back to Alaska, I would have purchased several of his. I'd never seen anything like it before.
After the museum, we all parted ways. Katya and I went to a store to pick up some snacks for the tea break at dancing later, then went to the Minina Square to catch a bus. We ended up taking a trolleybus to a different stop and then taking a second bus from there. I must say that I much prefer the trolleybuses. They are less crowed and cleaner. They also sound like something from the original Star Wars when they accelerate.
When we arrived at our destination, Katya called her friend who was teaching Forro that evening for more directions. We walked down one street to a backstreet, then along the side of an abandoned-looking building, which just so happened to be the building into which we were going. Apparently the last time they had Forro, it was at a different place, so Katya hadn't been here before. There was a sign on the door that the Libertad studio, where we were to go, was on the fourth floor. There were no lights on on the first through third floors, and it seems a little like something from either a horror movie or a mental ward. I joked with Katya that hanging out with her is always an adventure. The fourth floor, however, was very friendly, and the studio was very nice.
To begin with there were about four guys and eight girls, but we gained a few more during the evening. For some reason it took me until the time I got there to realize that I would be learning this dance in Russian, not in English. The fact that things in Russia happen in Russian should be obvious, but as all of the dancing I've done has been conducted in English, for some reason dancing just happens in English in my head. It was good to see how things are explained in Russian, though, as I'm leading a dancing masterclass on Thursday. We were at dancing from 6-9 or so, and I had a great time. Dancing always makes me happy, and it's fun to learn new styles.
Sunday was the “Day of Open Doors” at LUNN, which is a day when prospective students come to learn about the programs and ask questions. I had be asked to come and hang out in the American Center in case any students came by. Katya, Yuliya (Katya's classmate), Yuliya (who works in the American Center), Nadia and I were all there, but basically no one came. Katya, Yuliya, and I had a fun time talking and joking around, despite the fact that we were all very tired. I also learned that Yuliya tends to go to Argentine tango on Sunday nights...so that is on the prospective horizon for the next weekend.
I left around 1:30 or 2, and went home to do some homework. However, I was not feeling very motivated, so I called Jackie, and we ended up hanging out and watching “Я шагаю по Москве” (I am strolling around Moscow) which is a great movie from the 1950s. I find it very hard to do homework here on the weekends. I feel like it's wasting time. After all, how often do you come to Russia? Thus I think I've finally resigned myself to the idea that I'll do homework in my downtime at LUNN during the week, and leave the weekends for adventuring and doing active, self-assigned, language practice.
I wasn't feeling too good when I got home, and I woke up with a really sore throat during the night. All of Monday I felt a bit feverish and queasy. I usually just skip lunch, but I ended up going home and making some mashed potatoes to try to quiet my stomach. I wasn't feeling bad enough to stay home, but I wasn't feeling good enough to be happy or comfortable.
I worked on my lecture on American Values that I had planned to be giving on Tuesday. However, instead of giving the lecture today, it will be on next Tuesday. I'm using the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and quotes from the founding fathers as a basis of where our value system began. I'm going to talk about the root of our governmental system in Protestant Christianity and how that foundation is clashing with movements within our country today such as historical revisionism. I'm also going to talk about how Americans value honestly, loyalty, and liberty, and what we think about ambition. In a discussion I had had with one class at the elementary school last week on Tuesday, the American Dream had come up. The teacher had asked the children what they thought every Russian wanted, and they all insisted that every Russian wanted money and power and refused to budge from such an assertion even after the teacher brought up topics like family and good friends. When I was sitting in the American Center on Sunday making a list of what I thought were important American values, one third year student asked me if ambition was something we valued. I've been thinking about the word “ambition” a lot. To me, it's not a bad thing to have an ambition, but to be ambitious seems to have a bit of a negative connotation to me. Any thoughts?
The teacher's meeting began around 3pm, but Ludmila and I weren't called up until after the first speaker, so we arrived a little after four. I gave a short talk on Alaska with the help of some of my mother's pictures, courtesy of facebook. I talked a little about our history, our population, the remaining Russian influence, our wildlife, common outdoor activities, and ended with the following little bit of Robert Service:
The Spell of the Yukon
I wanted the gold, and I sought it,
I scrabbled and mucked like a slave.
Was it famine or scurvy — I fought it;
I hurled my youth into a grave.
I wanted the gold, and I got it —
Came out with a fortune last fall, —
Yet somehow life’s not what I thought it,
And somehow the gold isn't all.
No! There’s the land. (Have you seen it?)
It’s the cussedest land that I know,
From the big, dizzy mountains that screen it
To the deep, deathlike valleys below.
Some say God was tired when He made it;
Some say it’s a fine land to shun;
Maybe; but there’s some as would trade it
For no land on earth — and I'm one.
After my short presentation, we went to the back of the room to have tea. I did get a cup of tea, which I held in one hand, and I had a cookie in the other, but I didn't really get to eat or drink, because I was answering questions about myself, Alaska, my Russian study, and my perception of Nizhny Novgorod. Then I taught them a short game, but by that time, people were needing to leave, so we ended up not playing for very long. When I got home, I knew I really need to go to the store and do some laundry, but after a long day and not feeling 100% my will to do what I needed to do was pretty week, and I watched My Fair Lady while curled up in a quilt instead. I haven't seen the film since I was about eight years old, and it's like linguistic candy. Despite the rather rude manner of Professor Higgins, he does have some very creative methods and ideas for teaching. Thus, despite the fact that my body wasn't feeling very good, my mind was happy when I went to bed.
Speaking of phonetic instruction, Olga, the professor I've been doing the recordings for, asked me if she could assign some of her students to come and work with me to improve their phonetics. I was quite flattered when she told me that it was obvious that I understood what I was doing and that she felt she could trust me to work with her students.
My life here is getting very busy, which I am glad for, but often tired as a result. It took a couple of weeks to get to know the instructors and for them to be able to see what I could contribute. Now I'm basically teaching my own class once a week (idioms club), being a guest lecturer at least once a week, planning on teaching a dance masterclass, and working as a linguist with a few students. I've been thinking a lot with what I want to do with myself when I graduate in December. Originally I thought I'd just try to work as a translator for a few years to earn some money to go get my Ph.D., but now I don't really know. I also like to teach, and I think that I have somewhat of a talent for it. However, I don't know what I would teach. I'd love to teach linguistics, but I can't do that yet as I'll only have a bachelors. I don't have a TESOL for teaching English, and I don't really feel competent enough to teach Russian. Oh life, you are complicated.
That's all for now. My masterclass is going to occur on Thursday evening after the idioms club, so I'm currently trying to decide which dances to teach and am figuring out how to teach them in Russian as well as English. The next update will hopefully be full of merriment and not disaster. :)
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