Entry 19: October 24, 2011
I hadn't realized it had been so long since I've updated. I feel that I'm getting more and more busy which is great. However, it means I spend less time writing, and when I get around to writing I have more to write about. I'll attempt to be brief...but naturally I make no promises.
On Wednesday I arrived at the American Cener to find several girls waiting for me. I thought we had agreed to meet after the first class, but apparently they thought we were meeting during the time of the first class. I'm not sure where the miscommunication happened, but I was only a few minutes late and we got right to cracking (That may not be a proper adjustment of that particular idiom, but sometimes, being a linguist, I take liberties I feel I can explain away. I will, however, spare you from such an explaination). They had a list of words demonstrating different English vowels, some tongue twisters, and some sentences they needed to go over. We began with the tongue twisters. One girl would read the tongue twister after which I would repeat it slower. Then I would break it down into parts and have the whole group repeat after me. If I heard an issue, I would repeat something until I heard it corrected. Then, we went through the list of words. I would say the vowel sound in question first, then read the words one at a time to have them repeat after me. Three sounds that tend to be difficult for native Russian speakers are the “i” in “hit,” the “ir” in “bird,” and the “u” in “cup.” These sounds either do not exist in Russian or do not exist in a stressed position. Thus, it makes it difficult for a native Russian speaker to hear these sounds right away. If they weren't hearing it correctly, I would try to explain what they needed to do differently and would sometimes just make them hold out the sound so that they were listening to it. As a last result, I would repeat what they were saying and contrast it with what they needed to say. Although I tended to go straight through the list, if there was a problem word, I would periodically go back to it. The word “girl” we revisited several times. I swear that's probably one of the most difficult words in our languages. A rhotarized schwa followed by an lateral approximate? What were we thinking making “girl” a basic vocabulary word?
When we went through the sentences, I would read the sentence alone, and then I'd go around the circle and have each girl read it. I would then repeat any problem words or phrases, and the girl would repeat it back. A few words, I had everyone work on. “Three” is actually quite a tricky word. “Th” is another curse of the English language. There are no clues as to when it is voiced as in “the” or unvoiced as in “though.”
I worked with the group for about an hour and a half. I saw improvement, and I think they had a good time. I certaintly had a blast. I think my dream job would be working with people on their accents.
Originally, I had thought that the folk dancing night I was leading on Thursday was sponsored by the American Center, but it was not. It was an open event. Therefore, I realized on Wednesday that Russian needed to be my primary language of teaching. This, naturally, struck instant terror into my heart because it meant I needed to learn how to say several things like “on the ball of your foot,” “take your partner's forearm” and so on and so forth in addition to making sure I was using the correct imperatives. Luckily on Tuesday, I had written out the dances extensively in English so that I could do some translating. Yuliya was grading papers on one side of the table and would occasionally ask me questions about sentences. I, in return, would ask her how to properly explain certain things. I asked her how to say “twist” as in “doing the twist.” She asked me to demonstrate, and after I did, she said it was best just to say, “Делаете так” (Do this) and then show the movement. I realized that was probably going to be my favorite phrase the following evening.
Thursday morning, I worked on finalizing a few things for the idioms club. I had made the handout the week before, but I wanted an additional game so I drew up a game board. As the theme for the week was food, nearly all of the idioms would be easy to play pictionary with. Therefore I invented my own version of pictionary with a more interactive board, and asked around until I found some dice.
In mid morning, I went to proctor a test, as the instructor had another engagement at the time. The class was pretty well behaved. I know the instructor had talked to them about how bad cheating is considered in America. It's a little different here. There were a few students who got rather stern looks from me during the exam, but over all, they were fine.
When I got back, Katya and I needed to go pick up some snacks for the evening. We hopped on a bus and went to Lenta, which is like the Russian version of the combination of Fred Meyer and Costco. It's an amazing place. We grabbed tea, chocolates, and some tea cakes. Afterwards, we did not head right back to the bus stop. Katya got a phone call so she just gestured as to where we needed to go. When she got off the phone, I asked where we were going, and she said she didn't know exactly. There was a store where you could get plates, napkins, cups, etc. cheaper than usual if you were an organization, and it was used by the American Center. She'd never been there before though. We went to a few wrong buildings before we found it and had to do a little backtracking. Naturally, it was a little sketchy and around the back of a building. Everything is set up and displayed in a room, and you walk around with one of the clerks and say how many of what items you want. Then she put in the order and gave it to us. Then we had to go to a different place to pay. After that we had to go out of the building and walk around back to the warehouse where we found a box of things. Granted we already had two very full bags of food, and now we had a huge box of stuff (200 cups, 200 plates, 14 packets of napkins, which was the minumum, silverware, etc) which we realized at that moment we could not carry on the bus. We asked to two workers if they had a few bags. We had to pay a rouble per bag, even though the box was free, and stuffed them full before heading back to the bus stop. We had a ridiculous amount of things in our hands, it was quite laughable. We were cutting it close on time. We got back about five minutes before the idiom club. Throwing everything down on the couch, I quickly made copies, and then we began.
As I said before, the theme was food. On the handout I had listed out the idioms on one side with blanks where the food should have been. On the right there was a column of all of the foods. I gave the group 10-15 minutes to try to guess which food went where. Then we went through them, finishing off the day with pictionary. Two of the idioms of the day were “to go bananas” and “the whole enchilada.” They don't have Mexican food here, so I had to explain what an enchilada was. When going through the idioms, Katya supplied “enchilada” into the “bananas” blank. We've decided that “to go enchilada” is how we will refer to random salsa dancing outbreaks during Forro, as in Forro you aren't supposed to move your hips.
After the club, Katya and I moved things to the kitchen. She helped me go through my dancing instructions, and then I went home for an hour an a half to rest before coming back to set up for the evening. There is a large open space on the fifth floor, and that is where the event would occur. We didn't know exactly how many people were going to show, but we ended up having somewhere between 25-30 at most.
The first dance went well, but the second one was “And then some...” which, if you have danced with me before, is the dance with haying...and it was a complete disaster. I would try to explain something, and then Katya would repeat it in slightly different words. After a few failed attempts, we realized that there had been a slight misunderstanding between Katya and I as to one important step. We tried one more time, and then just decided to scratch it and try something else. I was trying to figure out what to do. I picked “Guild the Devil” for the next dance because it's the easiest, and is fun because you steal partners. That one went over well, and we ended up doing it twice. Then we had a break to eat food and liquidate. During the break I learned that, although the majority were Russian students, we also had a Chinese student, two Slovaks, and Asa (the Norweigan girl I had meet before) in attendance. I had a good time talking to people, and they did seem to be having fun. I was trying to figure out what to teach next, as the ones I had left had complicated sections. I decided that the Virgina Reel was pretty easy, usually takes a while, and could easily be simplified. Thus, I changed a few things and taught it. It turned out to be the favorite of the night. It was the easiest for me to teach, everyone learned quickly, and everyone had the most fun with it. At the end of the night Katya suggested we dance one more dance but, instead of learning a new one, we could just take a vote for the favorite, and then dance that one again. The Virgina Reel was the hands down favorite, so we closed out the night with it. Over all it seemed that people had a lot of fun, and several people asked when the next lesson would be. I was pretty disappointed with myself over all, as I felt that I had done a poor job and had been endlessly frustrated with my language difficulties. Usually, when I teach, I change the instruction as I go to accommodate the issues I observe. It was very hard for me to do that this time around. Katya helped me out a lot. Thus, I guess the evening was a success overall, but it definitely took my self-confidence down a few knotches. If we have another session in the next few weeks I'll need to choose a few different dances and figure out how to makes certain things simpler.
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