Living Large in Ryazan

Oksana from the Fulbright office came to visit and I had the unfortunate dilemma of figuring out something to do in Ryazan. It's just kind of a working city without places of interest. So, of course, we went to the Ryazan Kremlin, the one place you can count on every Russian city to have. Here's the cultural lesson I gave:

Ryazan is one of the older Russian cities, among the first to be incorporated into Muskovite Russia. The first Ryazan was actually about 60 miles downriver (on the River Oka) but the Mongol-Tatars destroyed it in the 13th century. New Ryazan was Pereslavl-Ryazan. It has all the trappings of a regular Russian city: nice Kremlin, lots of blocky cement buildings with Russian neo-classical buildings interspersed, good bus service. The city itself is quite small, about the size of Iowa City but with a larger population (about 500,000). The downtown area is basically a triangle from Victory Square, where the electronics firm Eleks recently declared victory over high prices, to historic Lenin's Square, where Lenin finally admitted to himself that he was really bald, to Theatre Square, where nothing important has ever happened. It's all pretty well built up but as you get outside this area there are the Soviet style apartment buildings and older wooden houses further out. No fast food places. On Sundays the Central Market has chickens and rabbits for sale. It's famous personalities include the poet Sergey Esenin and behavioral psychologist Ivan Pavlov.

Last few weeks I've been exploring the city more, teaching, living, not posting. Here are some highlights:

-Students in Group E go nuts for the song "The Distance" by Cake, which got two encores, after which they borrow the disk to make copies and still haven't returned it two weeks later
-Students in Group E not so crazy about "Frankly, Mr. Shankly" by the Smiths or "Kate" by Ben Folds Five
-Set up on a very blind date with a high school student by a teacher at the university
-The basketball players suggest that we go to the banya to relax...and get prostitutes
-I learn how to tactfully refuse unwanted invitations
-Apartment move in finally complete with purchase of couch, shower curtain and toilet seat

Retraction

I am now in possession of my watch, so I take back my nickname for the Ryazan University team. They can be the Wildcats. John R. Tunis would be proud.

Good news aside, I've been assigned to play with what is clearly the B Team. Coach actually called it something different but I didn't catch it so I don't know if it was comforting or insulting. Anyway, my thinking is that the rest of the guys are inferior players but in my case he just wants to give his full attention to eligible players. Right? Silver lining is that I'm the biggest guy both in height and weight so I can pull out my Shaq game. The Dredle patended post spin hasn't made this many appearances since Amish Electricians scrimmages.

Also, to my fellow teachers С Днем Учителя! These school holidays all seem like excuses for teachers to take bribes of flowers or candy in exchange for excusing absences or letting students go early. As for me (to borrow my students' only phrase to preface a personal opinion or experience), the film class gave me a nice pen and I let them go early. I figured that they had been good enough to humor me playing See No Evil, Hear No Evil that I owed them anyway.

Lyceum #4

As recommended by the Fulbright Organization, I contacted a school to arrange to give lessons/speeches for higher level English classes. When I went there to set things up, the teachers seemed half enthusiastic; it's nice to have a native speaker but it would be better if I were British, or Australian. They gave me some vague instructions about coming anytime during a six hour period on Tuesdays and that I could talk about anything I want.

When I came to Russia, I prepared a couple one-shot lessons for situations like this. Unfortunately, they're about history or baseball and students just aren't interested. Basically, the audience breaks off into two groups: the students, who want to know what Americans think of Russia (Do they, you know, like Russia? or do they "like" like Russia?) and the teachers, who want to know about "American Values." Today, they had a lesson on addiction and after I talked about 12-step programs, the teacher started to grill me. My favorite question was when she asked if American values included conquering the world. My second favorite was if I had tried drugs and, if so, did I hear colors. My answers, all lies: no, no and no.