Proud to be an American

Before I came to Russia I received the same round of briefings as the last time. In general, these orientation events are designed to scare you a little bit or as time fillers. They tell you about what the political climate is like in Russia, how you can expect people to react to your nationality and, should they react badly, how to make everyday items into weapons. With respect to the second topic, I have encountered very little anti-American sentiment directed at me personally except at a truck stop somewhere between Yaroslavl and Moscow. With all this in mind, I was completely unprepared for my reception at the history class I'm auditing, a lecture on Medieval Russia. I walked in, sat down in the back right corner and heads started to turn. Clearly, I was out of place. After about 5 minutes of this the professor walked in, introduced me as his American Colleague and the entire class (about 70 people) broke out into spontaneous applause! Pretty easy crowd. Turns out they were just fans of my work.