Tatyana Sergeyevna

During my first week here, I asked Lena where I could find someone to give me private Russian lessons for my CLEA. Lena recommended a teacher she knew personally and gave me her number. I called Tat’jana Sergejevna (also Tatyana Sergeyevna, Tatiana Sergeevna, Tat’jana Sergeievna, and so on; hereafter T.S.) and we arranged to meet at the café at Krasnyj Prospekt metro-station the next Monday. Saying everything in Russian and then translating, she told me she was blonde and middle-aged, and would be wearing “black glasses.” “Black glasses” (чёрные очки) is the literal translation of the Russian phrase for sunglasses.

On Monday, there was an embarrassingly prolonged comedy of errors which ended happily when I realized (after more detailed directions from Tatyana Sergeyevna on her cell phone) that she had meant the café over one of the entrances of the station, not actually something inside. Silly me. She was waiting outside the door, and was, as described, blonde (with short hair) and middle-aged (born the same year as my dad, I found out later), but the lenses in her sunglasses were red, not black. My first lesson with this natural-born teacher began three seconds after I met her, but it had nothing to do with Russian language:

Tatyana Sergeyevna took me by the elbow and directed my gaze to each of the four station entrances, one on each corner of the Krasnyj Prospekt/Ulitsa Gogolja intersection. Speaking in Russian, she identified the buildings at each corner (the Officers’ Building, an universam, and so on) and helpfully drew my attention to the fact that only one of them contained a café. I said I understood that now. She wondered aloud how I could have missed it. I didn’t have an explanation that I could articulate in Russian, but I doubt she was really expecting one. This methodical review of everything I’d done wrong has since turned out to be one of T.S.’s favorite teaching techniques.

We went into the café, but didn’t spend much time there, and didn’t order anything. I’m not sure if this was why, but I told her I didn’t think it would be possible for me to hire her in a private capacity. Under the conditions of the grant, I needed someone with an institutional affiliation, who could provide me with an official-looking receipts to show IIE. I would have to ask, I told her, but I didn’t think the prospects were good. It was too bad, I thought as we left, because I liked her a lot and thought she would be a good teacher.

Since there was still some chance we would be working together, T.S. walked me through a park and showed me her apartment building, where lessons would be held if we did manage to arrange something. The whole time, she was asking me questions about what areas of my Russian I most needed/wanted to improve (I told her I thought I needed most work on listening comprehension, but after the way I’d bolloxed up the meeting arrangements, that pretty much went without saying). I was happy to hear her say my pronunciation probably didn’t need much more work. This conversation, all in Russian, continued all the way through the park and back. I knew she’d come from work to meet me and, even though I wasn’t sure if she had expected to start rendering her services that day, I was planning to pay for Russian conversation anyway, so I offered to pay her for her time. Even as I made the offer I knew that she would refuse, like all honorable Russians in such situations. So I thanked her and promised to ask IIE if there was a way I could hire her, then left.