Merry Christmas

Here's some pictures from the Christmas party I had for a group of my students. Good, clean, Russian fun which included a rousing tableside performance of the first verse and chorus of "Jingle Bells" repeated over and over again.


Candid Shot: Tanya and Natasha have a heart-to-heart while Ann and Vasya play music and Nastya and other Tanya dance.


At the table clockwise: me (with bowl haircut), Natasha, Tanya, other Tanya, Ann


At the other side of the table: Lera, Me, Nastya, other Lera


Preparing for dinner, Natasha, Tanya, other Tanya, Nastya, yet another Tanya, Ann


Of course, no Christmas would be complete without an exchange of gifts. My students gave me a very nice photo album for Christmas. I gave them a government required exam.

Soviet Camaraderie

Wednesday I went to a historical conference commemorating the 65th anniversary of the battle for Moscow. I was supposed to give a speech on something like "American Historical Memory of WWII." The whole idea made me a little nervous for a couple reasons:

1. Lots of old soldiers, loyal Soviets, angry pensioners. These are people who may not be so receptive to American perspective on WWII, no matter how much I qualify it by saying it's not my own personal perspective.
2. Speaking to crowds is not my forte, especially in Russian.

More than this, I had no idea what the conference was going to be like, aside from the fact that it was in Mikhailov, a town 60 kms west of Ryazan with about 100,000 people, whose only claim to fame is that it was one of the places the Germans were stopped. As it turned out, the conference was basically my university's History Department plus the old soldiers and, according to the schedule, my section of the conference was on WWII general history. Unfortunately, I was transferred to the "Battle of Moscow Memorial" Section, the section I feared most of all.

In all actuality there was nothing to fear. The conference was rather poorly organized, in that they scheduled 15 speeches in 2.5 hours, meaning each speech was supposed to be 10 minutes or less. Obviously, this didn't happen. Also, at the sections no one was well known enough to attract any interest. So the only people there were the speakers, who were just waiting for their turn to talk. My favorite moment was when the toothless 80 year-old former soldier, carefully watching the time on his cell phone, exclaimed, "Excuse me! Everyone has 10 minutes and you've just passed the 11th!" My speech went over well, in part because it was on a very different subject than the other presentations. Also, I did it in 8 minutes.

A Star is Bernstein

Last week my students invited me to the theatre with them. The play was "Krotkaya," an adaptation of a Dostoevsky short story. The theatre group was a trio from Skopin, a small town south of Ryazan. The play was pretty weird, modern theatre from the provinces, and between the strange performance and my unfamiliarity with the story, I didn't catch a whole lot.

After the play, my students and I were standing outside the hall, talking about the play (ie, my students explaining the play to me), basically alone because all the other spectators had gone to get their coats. Then I saw a camera crew from Ren-TV, a Russian network, coming toward us. I explained to my students that I didn't want to be on TV but, of course, the first thing they said was, "We came to the theatre with our foreigner teacher," and the camera turned on me. They showed it at 7:00pm the next day. I didn't say a whole lot, I think it was something like this: "Yeah, I teach English at the University. I didn't really get the play but it was good, a little strange. I don't know." I fully expect to get a weekly cultural analysis segment with that kinda insight and charm.