Notes on a noteworthy week

This has been a week of epic proportions. Living day by day in a different country and culture obviously results in more epic-proportion weeks than a job in your own country with people who share your language, but this week was more epic than others, proportionally speaking. Some notable events:
1. Chrishenya – It was cool. See previous entry.
2. Discotheque – Preface: I shouldn’t have been surprised. At any given time my host sister tends to be at one of three places: home, school, or “Park City” – the city’s most popular night club, located next to the town park off Constitution Street. Ok. This past weekend, my friend Michael from training in Uzunagach came up from his site in Shuchensk to celebrate his winter break. I have Mondays off with my new schedule and my guest of honor really wanted to “get some free Russian practice.” So, he, Forrest and I met up with some local friends and went to Park City. We drank and we danced, but definitely did more of the latter. Michael spent most of the evening chatting with a friend of a friend that came with us, getting his free practice, while I danced the night away. About an hour after being there, someone taps me on my shoulder just in the middle of my signature “shopping cart” moves and I thought briefly that maybe my dancing wasn’t culturally appropriate and I was being asked to stop (most likely by a big Russian guy with large, Soviet muscles). To my relief, it was not – just my host sister. Phew. Wait. This is awkward. It wasn’t that bad. She said hi and went back to her friends, but it was a little bit like I was at a party with my actual little sister and had to play the “not-do-anything-stupid-so-you-stay-cool-but-make-sure-no-one-is-messing-with-your-sister” role. On a positive note, I did meet some cute young ladies going to the US in May and got my own Russian (mixed with the English they wanted to practice on me) practice.
3. Monday and Tuesday were relatively uneventful except that Ekaterina (Ekat or ye-koshka), my PC regional manager came to visit from Almaty. She had dinner at the house and we chatted about all that is going well and those things that could improve.
4. Wednesday I had my first English Club at my own school with my own school. I do English Clubs at the University and College, but this was all mine. And, it was great. It was my 10th and 11th graders, 16 of them, and we had a grand old English speaking time. We started with some name games to get them talking and to help me remember names like Saltanat, Vassilissa, Kirina, and Assat. I was surprised to find that many of them didn’t know each other’s names, although it makes sense with a school of 1000+ students who have all their classes with the same group of 16 students. I did an activity where they needed to ask each other questions to fill in names on a list of attributes. Ex: find someone who was not born in Petropavlovsk (I was one of two). Interesting information from my informal survey: 80% of my students’ fathers smoke. 0% has been to China. 94% percent have cell phones and were born in Petro. 31% have been to Russia. 0% wants to be a doctor. We played games, did listening activities with Rihanna’s “Umbrella” song. I have a student named Ella and told her the song is not actually about an umbrella but rather about her (Rihanna says “ella” twice as many times as she says “umbrella” in the song). When I left they were asking, “Why can we only do 1 hour twice a week? Can’t we do 2 hours every week?” I would love to ditch half my classes and just do English clubs every day, but I don’t think my counterpart would go for it. It was definitely the most fun I’d had so far in that building. I’m looking forward to seeing where it goes from here.
5. Thursday I learned a Russian song about two trees across the river from each other that are deeply in love and are singing to each other. It’s called “Tonkaya Rubinka” and is a very sweet love song, even if it is about a tree. I also finished reading Life of Pi, which I really enjoyed. That makes six books I’ve read in country. It was about a boy in a boat, with a tiger named Richard Parker, but also had some great points about God, life, imagination, and stories. I haven’t had too many books that made me laugh out loud as this one. I highly recommend it.
6. Friday Ekat observed my lessons about transport in London and then I had my first seminar at the Professional Development Institute (PDI) where I am shared with my school. In over two months, I hadn’t had any official work with them and was wondering what they actually do in their work week. I was finally invited to lead a discussion about the Olympiad tests that the whole country does in every subject. They are issued by the government and are a way to have the students compete on a city, regional and national level in their best subject. The tests happened last week and PDI invited city English teachers to come and check the answers and discuss some of the harder points of the test like phrasal verbs. Have you ever realized how many different meanings the word turn can have depending on what preposition comes after it? Up, down (both the TV and an offer), off, on, away, around, to, over, into… That’s difficult for non-native speakers, and I had never once thought about it. It means that I can’t explain why the phrase is “in all likelihood” and not “of all likelihood” except by saying that “it just is.” The seminar was good, although a bit tedious just going through 4 lexical tests question by question. The exciting part is that the same group of teachers wants to do a monthly “Improve Your English” discussion group. English Club for English teachers if you will. I doubt we’ll be singing “Umbrella” with them, but it will be great to do some in depth topical discussions. I might be able to put my stack of Newsweek magazines to use.

This week has been one of the busiest, most productive weeks since being in country, and I’m at an emotional high. However, an epic week sure does take a lot of energy and I am sure I will enjoy this weekend to recuperate.