Я уже не на меридиане 83 градусов. Не знаю, на каком меридиане теперь нахожусь,
Во-первых, добро пожаловать на мой б’дневник. (Если хотите знать, почему я его называю «бдневник», а не «бдог», напишите мне и всё объясню. Но это не очень важно.)
Добро пожаловать на мой б’дневник.
Меня зовут Атомный Пёс, а иногда Кевин. Я из штаты Миннесота. Я прожил в Санкт-Петербурге пять месяцев в 2007 г., и потом в Новосисбирске больше года (с августа 2009 до июня 2010, и опять с сентабря до декабря 2010). Я с середины сентабря вновь проживаю в Питере. Буду преподавать английский язык в районе Купчино, в Гуманитарном Университете Профсоюзов.
Я начал писать Longitude 83 чтобы вести протокол своих мыслей пока я преподавал английский язык в Сибири. Но после несколько месяцев там, я стал заниматься многими другими делами и потерял интерес. Возвратившись к этому заданию, я решил перевести некоторые из моих записок с английского на русский.
Почему это делать? Я хочу упражняться в своём третьем языке... и наверно насмешить своих русско-говорящих читателей. ) Кроме того, это ведь справедливо если требую, чтобы мои студенты говорили по-английски перед своими одногруппниками каждый день. Надеюсь, что не будут бояться говорить и писать на английском из страха ошибок.
Тоже надеюсь, что если русские люди найдут этот сайт, будут эадавать мне вопросы о чертах американской культуры, которые им представляют интерес, расскажут мне про русскую культуру, и скажут мне как лучше выражаться на русском. Если хотят знать, не хочу, чтобы стеснялись спросить из-за неуверенности в своём владении английским. Если им захочется, тоже прошу, чтобы исправляли мой русский. Приветствуются любые советы по этому поводу. ))
Я политолог. Пожалуйста, спросите о политике и скажите мне свои мнения, но если мы расходимся в взглядах, давайте по крайней мере стараемся обсуждать вопросы вежливо и прилично.
Это пока всё. До скорого.
28.12.10
Back to the bdiary…
I’m no longer at longitude 83. I don’t know what longitude I’m at now, because I have no internet connection as I’m writing this in my room at 6:00 AM (the signal’s off and on here). But I don’t need to tell people my coordinates anymore, because everyone knows where St. Petersburg is.
Yes, readers, I am now writing from that glorious city where I spent my fabled Smolny semester, where I posted my first post on a bjournal, where I first honed my Russian in extensive conversation with native speakers and decided once and for all that this language would be a part of my future, where I discovered anew the daily excitements that life could give me… I have returned to the banks of the Neva.
That is, half an hour from the bank by tram (or bus) (19 rubles), then metro (22 rubles). But why nitpick?
There is still very little to relate about what I’ve been doing in the city itself, but I suppose I need to fill the gaping hole of information that I left by neglecting this bjournal for over a year.
To anyone who doesn’t know, I got through my Fulbright grant period in Novosibirsk, with brief but spectacular trips to other Fulbrighters’ Siberian host cities: Tomsk (where Brendan Mulvihill was teaching), Krasnoyarsk (Helen Stuhr-Rommereim), and Kyzyl (Riley Witte). Of which more in later posts (“flashbacks”).
Not having finished grad school applications on time, I decided to teach some more English in Russia. I went to St. Petersburg in June 2010 to see Riley and Helen one more time and pass around my resume to different language schools. I didn’t hear back from them so, after a restful summer at home, I went back to Novosibirsk, where the wonderful host of the International Department had already secured employment for me in another university as well as SibAGS.
Zhenya, who had quit at SibAGS and was working on postgraduate research, knew I would rather work in St. Petersburg, so she polished up my resume and sent it to different universities. I got one reply back from the Гуманитарный Университет Профсоюзов (Trade Unions’ University of the Humanities) saying they could hire me if I arrived on December 15.
It’s in the Kupchino district, farther from Nevsky Prospekt than I ever ventured during my previous stays in the city (except on day trips to Peterhof and Pushkin).
But it’s St. Petersburg. Come on. How could I have turned this down?
Zhenya, I am forever in your debt.
More to come.
Yes, readers, I am now writing from that glorious city where I spent my fabled Smolny semester, where I posted my first post on a bjournal, where I first honed my Russian in extensive conversation with native speakers and decided once and for all that this language would be a part of my future, where I discovered anew the daily excitements that life could give me… I have returned to the banks of the Neva.
That is, half an hour from the bank by tram (or bus) (19 rubles), then metro (22 rubles). But why nitpick?
There is still very little to relate about what I’ve been doing in the city itself, but I suppose I need to fill the gaping hole of information that I left by neglecting this bjournal for over a year.
To anyone who doesn’t know, I got through my Fulbright grant period in Novosibirsk, with brief but spectacular trips to other Fulbrighters’ Siberian host cities: Tomsk (where Brendan Mulvihill was teaching), Krasnoyarsk (Helen Stuhr-Rommereim), and Kyzyl (Riley Witte). Of which more in later posts (“flashbacks”).
Not having finished grad school applications on time, I decided to teach some more English in Russia. I went to St. Petersburg in June 2010 to see Riley and Helen one more time and pass around my resume to different language schools. I didn’t hear back from them so, after a restful summer at home, I went back to Novosibirsk, where the wonderful host of the International Department had already secured employment for me in another university as well as SibAGS.
Zhenya, who had quit at SibAGS and was working on postgraduate research, knew I would rather work in St. Petersburg, so she polished up my resume and sent it to different universities. I got one reply back from the Гуманитарный Университет Профсоюзов (Trade Unions’ University of the Humanities) saying they could hire me if I arrived on December 15.
It’s in the Kupchino district, farther from Nevsky Prospekt than I ever ventured during my previous stays in the city (except on day trips to Peterhof and Pushkin).
But it’s St. Petersburg. Come on. How could I have turned this down?
Zhenya, I am forever in your debt.
More to come.
Американец старается писать на русском языке
Возвращение к бдневнику.
Я уже не на меридиане 83 градусов. Не знаю, на каком меридиане теперь нахожусь,
Во-первых, добро пожаловать на мой б’дневник. (Если хотите знать, почему я его называю «бдневник», а не «бдог», напишите мне и всё объясню. Но это не очень важно.)
Добро пожаловать на мой б’дневник.
Меня зовут Атомный Пёс, а иногда Кевин. Я из штаты Миннесота. Я прожил в Санкт-Петербурге пять месяцев в 2007 г., и потом в Новосисбирске больше года (с августа 2009 до июня 2010, и опять с сентабря до декабря 2010). Я с середины сентабря вновь проживаю в Питере. Буду преподавать английский язык в районе Купчино, в Гуманитарном Университете Профсоюзов.
Я начал писать Longitude 83 чтобы вести протокол своих мыслей пока я преподавал английский язык в Сибири. Но после несколько месяцев там, я стал заниматься многими другими делами и потерял интерес. Возвратившись к этому заданию, я решил перевести некоторые из моих записок с английского на русский.
Почему это делать? Я хочу упражняться в своём третьем языке... и наверно насмешить своих русско-говорящих читателей. ) Кроме того, это ведь справедливо если требую, чтобы мои студенты говорили по-английски перед своими одногруппниками каждый день. Надеюсь, что не будут бояться говорить и писать на английском из страха ошибок.
Тоже надеюсь, что если русские люди найдут этот сайт, будут эадавать мне вопросы о чертах американской культуры, которые им представляют интерес, расскажут мне про русскую культуру, и скажут мне как лучше выражаться на русском. Если хотят знать, не хочу, чтобы стеснялись спросить из-за неуверенности в своём владении английским. Если им захочется, тоже прошу, чтобы исправляли мой русский. Приветствуются любые советы по этому поводу. ))
Я политолог. Пожалуйста, спросите о политике и скажите мне свои мнения, но если мы расходимся в взглядах, давайте по крайней мере стараемся обсуждать вопросы вежливо и прилично.
Это пока всё. До скорого.
Я уже не на меридиане 83 градусов. Не знаю, на каком меридиане теперь нахожусь,
Во-первых, добро пожаловать на мой б’дневник. (Если хотите знать, почему я его называю «бдневник», а не «бдог», напишите мне и всё объясню. Но это не очень важно.)
Добро пожаловать на мой б’дневник.
Меня зовут Атомный Пёс, а иногда Кевин. Я из штаты Миннесота. Я прожил в Санкт-Петербурге пять месяцев в 2007 г., и потом в Новосисбирске больше года (с августа 2009 до июня 2010, и опять с сентабря до декабря 2010). Я с середины сентабря вновь проживаю в Питере. Буду преподавать английский язык в районе Купчино, в Гуманитарном Университете Профсоюзов.
Я начал писать Longitude 83 чтобы вести протокол своих мыслей пока я преподавал английский язык в Сибири. Но после несколько месяцев там, я стал заниматься многими другими делами и потерял интерес. Возвратившись к этому заданию, я решил перевести некоторые из моих записок с английского на русский.
Почему это делать? Я хочу упражняться в своём третьем языке... и наверно насмешить своих русско-говорящих читателей. ) Кроме того, это ведь справедливо если требую, чтобы мои студенты говорили по-английски перед своими одногруппниками каждый день. Надеюсь, что не будут бояться говорить и писать на английском из страха ошибок.
Тоже надеюсь, что если русские люди найдут этот сайт, будут эадавать мне вопросы о чертах американской культуры, которые им представляют интерес, расскажут мне про русскую культуру, и скажут мне как лучше выражаться на русском. Если хотят знать, не хочу, чтобы стеснялись спросить из-за неуверенности в своём владении английским. Если им захочется, тоже прошу, чтобы исправляли мой русский. Приветствуются любые советы по этому поводу. ))
Я политолог. Пожалуйста, спросите о политике и скажите мне свои мнения, но если мы расходимся в взглядах, давайте по крайней мере стараемся обсуждать вопросы вежливо и прилично.
Это пока всё. До скорого.
An American tries to write in Russian
I am going to start writing posts on this bjournal in Russian. The parallel Russian posts will be called Американец старается писать по-русски (“An American Tries to Write in Russian”).
There are a few reasons to do this:
First, I think it will give me good grammar practice, build my vocabulary, and help me get more familiar with the Russian keyboard. (I already know my way around it pretty well, but still have to look at the keys to type fast).
Why do it publicly? My written Russian will be quite stylistically poor, and will not improve much without years of experience or close supervision by a native speaker/good writer.
But that will make it all the more fun for my students to read if they find it. And I hope it will encourage them if they see that I have a sense of justice; I am willing to display my own imperfect command of my second language publicly, like they do for me, and they shouldn’t refrain from trying their English for fear of making mistakes. It will also be more interesting for my Russian colleagues and friends (esp. philologists, linguists, and English teachers) interested in how Russian (at least, their Russian) and English (at least, my English) differ in idiom.
If nothing else, my Russian will make them laugh.
Finally, I’m going to welcome comments and criticisms. If someone can tell me where I’m using a wrong or archaic word, if they can correct my syntax, if they can say, “It would be better to say it like this…” it might help my Russian (especially my written style) improve.
Most of the Russian I write here will probably be translations of what I write in English, so if my Russian is completely incomprehensible, my readers can go back and see what I meant in the original.
If this works, I’ll start doing it in Spanish too. All this translating might end up shortening the original posts… but I should learn to write more concisely anyway, right? This is already too long.
There are a few reasons to do this:
First, I think it will give me good grammar practice, build my vocabulary, and help me get more familiar with the Russian keyboard. (I already know my way around it pretty well, but still have to look at the keys to type fast).
Why do it publicly? My written Russian will be quite stylistically poor, and will not improve much without years of experience or close supervision by a native speaker/good writer.
But that will make it all the more fun for my students to read if they find it. And I hope it will encourage them if they see that I have a sense of justice; I am willing to display my own imperfect command of my second language publicly, like they do for me, and they shouldn’t refrain from trying their English for fear of making mistakes. It will also be more interesting for my Russian colleagues and friends (esp. philologists, linguists, and English teachers) interested in how Russian (at least, their Russian) and English (at least, my English) differ in idiom.
If nothing else, my Russian will make them laugh.
Finally, I’m going to welcome comments and criticisms. If someone can tell me where I’m using a wrong or archaic word, if they can correct my syntax, if they can say, “It would be better to say it like this…” it might help my Russian (especially my written style) improve.
Most of the Russian I write here will probably be translations of what I write in English, so if my Russian is completely incomprehensible, my readers can go back and see what I meant in the original.
If this works, I’ll start doing it in Spanish too. All this translating might end up shortening the original posts… but I should learn to write more concisely anyway, right? This is already too long.
21.12.09
SUNDAYS AT VERONIKA’S: MIKE...
…had been visiting Veronika and her apartment-mate Marina for while and also been on an excursion with them to the (relatively) nearby city of Mariinsk. Mariinsk is Veronika’s hometown and one of the best-preserved “islands” in the gulag archipelago. Mike is mild-mannered guy, a retired photographer. Not an art photographer… he apparently took scientific photographs for textbooks in a lab (I think)… but that’s over anyway. He now works and volunteers part-time as a teacher in London’s state schools.
He shared his impressions of Siberia with the growing crowd: How everyone seemed much more trusting in Russia than in England; he was surprised people would trust strangers to pass their fare up to the driver on the bus. How the ill-kept the roads in Novosibirsk are… as he explained, if you see so much as a pothole in London, you can call a local office and they’ll send a road crew to fill it ASAP; that’s as compared with the canyons and ridges you have to negotiate on any side street in this city. He read some poems he’d written. He answered questions.
Most interesting to me was when he started talking about attitudes of ownership. Most people, according to Mike, had massive debts in England… most on their homes but some on something else. He said he had the sense that this wasn’t the case in Russia… that it seemed people didn’t buy things until they could pay for them. People in the room said yes: In Russia, if you haven’t paid for something in full yet, it’s not yours. It might just show how shamefully ignorant I am about the economy here, but this had never occurred to me as a major difference between Russian and Western economies. I knew credit cards were virtually never used here. I knew people lived with their parents well into their 20’s if they couldn’t get an affordable apartment. But I had the impression that any economic woe we were dealing with in the West would be not only present, but much worse here. I’ll look into this more…
After most of Veronika’s neighbors had left, I had a chance to talk with Mike personally. I’m sure this was one of the reasons Veronika invited me. Mike might have felt a bit left out if the Russian conversation started getting too fast or deep to translate…
I asked him about British politics, and if he’d be voting Tory or Labour in the next election—I’m never shy about asking these kinds of questions, and I always tell people they don’t have to answer if they don’t want, but they usually don’t mind. He said he’d probably be voting Conservative. I didn’t comment, didn’t want to preach or judge. I just said I understood that a lot of people had been fed up with the job Labour was doing, and he confirmed.
He said his biggest concern was with the growth in membership of far-right parties. He didn’t trust extremists like that, he said, but the strange thing was that if you actually listened to what they claimed to support, it didn’t sound that bad. They claimed not to want to stop immigration altogether, just control it. And he agreed it needed to be better-controlled, because England almost wasn’t England anymore.
Mike is open-minded person. He certainly got along well with Russians and seemed happy to spend time in the middle of Siberia, something that’s certainly not true of all Westerners you might meet. If this is how a kind-hearted, moderate voter in Britain thinks right now, it probably sheds some light on why far-right parties have been gaining ground in Europe lately. Mike is probably right: the younger generation is noticing the same demographic shifts in Britain that he is. But, being young, naïve, and hotheaded, they don’t understand (or don’t care) that when a neo-Nazi talks about the need for “controlling” immigration, it should be interpreted as a euphemism for something more extreme.
It makes you worry that the progress the West has made in attitudes about race is easily reversible, especially as memories fade and people forget what Nazis did when they were in power. Enlightened attitudes about ethnicity are supposedly one of the most important things that distinguish late capitalist European (and American) citizens from post-communist citizens… and it’s true, many Russians remain frankly, even innocently, racist, anti-Semitic, or homophobic, if the ones I meet day-to-day are representative. But the Russians’ low-intensity, pervasive, traditional prejudices are just objectionable. I think reactionary racism, of the kind represented by the Western anti-immigrant parties, has the potential to be a lot more dangerous.
He shared his impressions of Siberia with the growing crowd: How everyone seemed much more trusting in Russia than in England; he was surprised people would trust strangers to pass their fare up to the driver on the bus. How the ill-kept the roads in Novosibirsk are… as he explained, if you see so much as a pothole in London, you can call a local office and they’ll send a road crew to fill it ASAP; that’s as compared with the canyons and ridges you have to negotiate on any side street in this city. He read some poems he’d written. He answered questions.
Most interesting to me was when he started talking about attitudes of ownership. Most people, according to Mike, had massive debts in England… most on their homes but some on something else. He said he had the sense that this wasn’t the case in Russia… that it seemed people didn’t buy things until they could pay for them. People in the room said yes: In Russia, if you haven’t paid for something in full yet, it’s not yours. It might just show how shamefully ignorant I am about the economy here, but this had never occurred to me as a major difference between Russian and Western economies. I knew credit cards were virtually never used here. I knew people lived with their parents well into their 20’s if they couldn’t get an affordable apartment. But I had the impression that any economic woe we were dealing with in the West would be not only present, but much worse here. I’ll look into this more…
After most of Veronika’s neighbors had left, I had a chance to talk with Mike personally. I’m sure this was one of the reasons Veronika invited me. Mike might have felt a bit left out if the Russian conversation started getting too fast or deep to translate…
I asked him about British politics, and if he’d be voting Tory or Labour in the next election—I’m never shy about asking these kinds of questions, and I always tell people they don’t have to answer if they don’t want, but they usually don’t mind. He said he’d probably be voting Conservative. I didn’t comment, didn’t want to preach or judge. I just said I understood that a lot of people had been fed up with the job Labour was doing, and he confirmed.
He said his biggest concern was with the growth in membership of far-right parties. He didn’t trust extremists like that, he said, but the strange thing was that if you actually listened to what they claimed to support, it didn’t sound that bad. They claimed not to want to stop immigration altogether, just control it. And he agreed it needed to be better-controlled, because England almost wasn’t England anymore.
Mike is open-minded person. He certainly got along well with Russians and seemed happy to spend time in the middle of Siberia, something that’s certainly not true of all Westerners you might meet. If this is how a kind-hearted, moderate voter in Britain thinks right now, it probably sheds some light on why far-right parties have been gaining ground in Europe lately. Mike is probably right: the younger generation is noticing the same demographic shifts in Britain that he is. But, being young, naïve, and hotheaded, they don’t understand (or don’t care) that when a neo-Nazi talks about the need for “controlling” immigration, it should be interpreted as a euphemism for something more extreme.
It makes you worry that the progress the West has made in attitudes about race is easily reversible, especially as memories fade and people forget what Nazis did when they were in power. Enlightened attitudes about ethnicity are supposedly one of the most important things that distinguish late capitalist European (and American) citizens from post-communist citizens… and it’s true, many Russians remain frankly, even innocently, racist, anti-Semitic, or homophobic, if the ones I meet day-to-day are representative. But the Russians’ low-intensity, pervasive, traditional prejudices are just objectionable. I think reactionary racism, of the kind represented by the Western anti-immigrant parties, has the potential to be a lot more dangerous.
SUNDAYS AT VERONIKA'S
Flashback: The First Sunday
From the moment I showed up in the foreign language cathedra, the professors in the Department of Foreign Languages have referred to me as their “colleague” or “coworker.” I appreciate this respect but it makes me feel a little guilty… I’m working far fewer hours and have far fewer real responsibilities than any of them, so I don’t feel like I’ve earned the status and dignity implied by being a colleague…
But anyway, the first or second Sunday I was here (I forget which), one of my “colleagues” who has done a lot more to earn the title, Veronika, invited me to her place the next Sunday to speak English to some guests. As arranged, I met one of Veronika’s friends/former students at the main entrance to the academy. We introduced ourselves as we headed to his car. This was weeks ago, and I haven’t seen him since, so I forget his name. Pavel, I think. Anyway, I liked him; he was one of those big, bluff, unshakably cheerful young Russian men that seem to be ubiquitous here … until the Siberian winter hits in late October and everyone’s spirits plunge.
His car was a Japanese model. Almost every car-owner I know in Novosibirsk (which is not a representative cross-section, but still) has one—and they all have their steering wheels on the right side (which is the wrong side for Russian roads, just so that’s clear).
The car trip was of the kind I’ve learned to expect here but never gotten used to… we weaved through the lanes, within inches of other cars’ fenders, and barely a scythe’s-length ahead of the grim reaper... When we miraculously arrived at Veronika’s apartment, my driver was promptly sent off to schlep the next carload of people. To judge by the number of guests already in the apartment, he had been doing this all day. It had sounded like it was going to be casual and intimate, just some chatting among friends. But when I arrived, Veronika’s modestly-sized living room already had a classroomful of people in it, sitting on whatever surfaces were available—and more kept coming.
They had all showed up to hear two native English-speakers, me and this guy Mike Pritchard from London. He was a friend of Veronika’s and she had brought him to the academy a few days earlier, so I’d met him. Mike doesn’t have much Russian. He talked for a while in English. More on that in the next post.
Then Veronika asked me to talk in Russian for a bit to give all the Russians in the room a break. I explained who I was and what I was doing in Novosibirsk. Part of it, of course, was the additional research I’m expected to do on education and attitudes about citizenship here. I asked them a few questions about this… did a civics curriculum exist in Russian schools? Nope. No surprise. I had already heard this.
Veronika said I could switch to English, and I did. I asked about religion. How many people were not religious, how many were Christians, and how many had some other affiliation? There was a mix of non-affiliates and Christians… nothing else. Did it have any bearing on political views in Russia? The short answer, which everyone seemed to agree on, was “no.” Religion here was a private matter. I explained that the reason I asked was that I felt religion had too much of an influence on politics in the United States… that it should remain a private matter, but had entered into politics to a dangerous degree with the religious right. (I’m sure that won’t surprise anyone who reads this.)
People asked me for details, made their own comments… all very interesting, but with their knowledge of English and my knowledge of Russian, we could only go so deep. Still, it felt very satisfying to have drawn even these few broad contrasts between our cultures from this one discussion…
From the moment I showed up in the foreign language cathedra, the professors in the Department of Foreign Languages have referred to me as their “colleague” or “coworker.” I appreciate this respect but it makes me feel a little guilty… I’m working far fewer hours and have far fewer real responsibilities than any of them, so I don’t feel like I’ve earned the status and dignity implied by being a colleague…
But anyway, the first or second Sunday I was here (I forget which), one of my “colleagues” who has done a lot more to earn the title, Veronika, invited me to her place the next Sunday to speak English to some guests. As arranged, I met one of Veronika’s friends/former students at the main entrance to the academy. We introduced ourselves as we headed to his car. This was weeks ago, and I haven’t seen him since, so I forget his name. Pavel, I think. Anyway, I liked him; he was one of those big, bluff, unshakably cheerful young Russian men that seem to be ubiquitous here … until the Siberian winter hits in late October and everyone’s spirits plunge.
His car was a Japanese model. Almost every car-owner I know in Novosibirsk (which is not a representative cross-section, but still) has one—and they all have their steering wheels on the right side (which is the wrong side for Russian roads, just so that’s clear).
The car trip was of the kind I’ve learned to expect here but never gotten used to… we weaved through the lanes, within inches of other cars’ fenders, and barely a scythe’s-length ahead of the grim reaper... When we miraculously arrived at Veronika’s apartment, my driver was promptly sent off to schlep the next carload of people. To judge by the number of guests already in the apartment, he had been doing this all day. It had sounded like it was going to be casual and intimate, just some chatting among friends. But when I arrived, Veronika’s modestly-sized living room already had a classroomful of people in it, sitting on whatever surfaces were available—and more kept coming.
They had all showed up to hear two native English-speakers, me and this guy Mike Pritchard from London. He was a friend of Veronika’s and she had brought him to the academy a few days earlier, so I’d met him. Mike doesn’t have much Russian. He talked for a while in English. More on that in the next post.
Then Veronika asked me to talk in Russian for a bit to give all the Russians in the room a break. I explained who I was and what I was doing in Novosibirsk. Part of it, of course, was the additional research I’m expected to do on education and attitudes about citizenship here. I asked them a few questions about this… did a civics curriculum exist in Russian schools? Nope. No surprise. I had already heard this.
Veronika said I could switch to English, and I did. I asked about religion. How many people were not religious, how many were Christians, and how many had some other affiliation? There was a mix of non-affiliates and Christians… nothing else. Did it have any bearing on political views in Russia? The short answer, which everyone seemed to agree on, was “no.” Religion here was a private matter. I explained that the reason I asked was that I felt religion had too much of an influence on politics in the United States… that it should remain a private matter, but had entered into politics to a dangerous degree with the religious right. (I’m sure that won’t surprise anyone who reads this.)
People asked me for details, made their own comments… all very interesting, but with their knowledge of English and my knowledge of Russian, we could only go so deep. Still, it felt very satisfying to have drawn even these few broad contrasts between our cultures from this one discussion…
SATURDAY AT VERONIKA’S
I’ve decided to make a series out of these posts about going to Veronika’s apartment because (1) it’s always interesting and (2) it’s about to become a regular part of my schedule. When I was there six Saturdays ago giving a presentation about art, she asked me if I’d come and teach Spanish to her and a group of her neighbors and friends every week.
So, every Sunday at 13:00 (sometimes 12:00), I show up at Veronika’s apartment building in one of Novosibirsk’s less picturesque neighborhoods (which is, basically, all of them except for the triangle between Ploschad’ Lenina, the train station, and Krasnyj Prospekt metro station)… ride the elevator up sixteen floors, and teach my six faithful pupils how to say, “Nosotros vivimos en Rusia” and “Ksenia tiene los ojos azules.” This Sunday will be our third lesson… we’ll see if people coming. So far, they’re more dedicated and hardworking than my students at the academy.
So, every Sunday at 13:00 (sometimes 12:00), I show up at Veronika’s apartment building in one of Novosibirsk’s less picturesque neighborhoods (which is, basically, all of them except for the triangle between Ploschad’ Lenina, the train station, and Krasnyj Prospekt metro station)… ride the elevator up sixteen floors, and teach my six faithful pupils how to say, “Nosotros vivimos en Rusia” and “Ksenia tiene los ojos azules.” This Sunday will be our third lesson… we’ll see if people coming. So far, they’re more dedicated and hardworking than my students at the academy.
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