Wow that was a busy week! I didn't get around to keeping this blog updated like I wanted to; I was swamped with grading journals for all the Dashas and Pashas, correcting quizzes, having office hours, and teaching classes.
On Monday and Tuesday I hit my classes with the first bit of really new information. I think some students had been kind of bored in the first week because we were just reviewing material that pretty much everyone already knew. Then came before and until, and oh the looks on my students' faces when they realized that these two very important words commonly translate to just one Russian word. I got a lot sentences like, "Max brushes his teeth until he goes to bed." Talk about gum recession....
So I had several students come to my office hours on Wednesday, and I'm happy for it. This was the first time I could really see how much people were "getting it," and I identified a few extra points to hit in my classes on Thursday. In those classes, I reviewed the difference between teach and learn (I got a lot of journals with the sentence "Teachers learn students"); we talked about uncommon plurals, such as policeman-policemen and salesperson-salespeople; and I gave them some practice on articles, which is always a tough point for Russians because Russian doesn't have articles. Trying the explain the difference between "Barack Obama lives in the White House" and "my parents live in a white house" without resorting to using articles as the defining part of the description is tough.
So after that week, I turned in early last night and slept like a rock. Today, after a delicious brunch of kasha (oatmeal), blini (crepes), buterbrodi (one-bread sandwiches with cheese and sausage), coffee, and compote (my favorite Russian drink--it's a really fresh-tasting juice made my boiling fruit and adding just a little sugar), I'm heading to the theater with my host family. The Vladimir Drama Theater is hosting a all-Russia theater festival this month, and theater companies from all over the country are doing plays here. We'll be seeing Waiting for Godot, which is being performed by a theater company from the far-northern city of Petrozavodsk. This sounds like a play I might not really understand in English, so we'll see how it goes in Russian....
One funny little episode happened at the sportzal yesterday morning. I was in the locker room after my workout, and my phone rang. It was my host dad asking if I wanted him to make me a haircut appointment for this weekend, and so we spoke Russian. There were two other guys in the locker room, and I'm on handshake terms with both of them. But here I am speaking--as one of my fellow teachers calls it--ugly Russian, and to top it all off, I was wearing my Cleveland State basketball jersey. I was the token foreigner. The second I hung up the phone, one guy asked me where I'm from. So now the morning sportzal crew knows I'm American, which I guess is fine--at least now they won't think I'm asshole for not being able to really banter with them in between sets.
On Monday and Tuesday I hit my classes with the first bit of really new information. I think some students had been kind of bored in the first week because we were just reviewing material that pretty much everyone already knew. Then came before and until, and oh the looks on my students' faces when they realized that these two very important words commonly translate to just one Russian word. I got a lot sentences like, "Max brushes his teeth until he goes to bed." Talk about gum recession....
So I had several students come to my office hours on Wednesday, and I'm happy for it. This was the first time I could really see how much people were "getting it," and I identified a few extra points to hit in my classes on Thursday. In those classes, I reviewed the difference between teach and learn (I got a lot of journals with the sentence "Teachers learn students"); we talked about uncommon plurals, such as policeman-policemen and salesperson-salespeople; and I gave them some practice on articles, which is always a tough point for Russians because Russian doesn't have articles. Trying the explain the difference between "Barack Obama lives in the White House" and "my parents live in a white house" without resorting to using articles as the defining part of the description is tough.
So after that week, I turned in early last night and slept like a rock. Today, after a delicious brunch of kasha (oatmeal), blini (crepes), buterbrodi (one-bread sandwiches with cheese and sausage), coffee, and compote (my favorite Russian drink--it's a really fresh-tasting juice made my boiling fruit and adding just a little sugar), I'm heading to the theater with my host family. The Vladimir Drama Theater is hosting a all-Russia theater festival this month, and theater companies from all over the country are doing plays here. We'll be seeing Waiting for Godot, which is being performed by a theater company from the far-northern city of Petrozavodsk. This sounds like a play I might not really understand in English, so we'll see how it goes in Russian....
One funny little episode happened at the sportzal yesterday morning. I was in the locker room after my workout, and my phone rang. It was my host dad asking if I wanted him to make me a haircut appointment for this weekend, and so we spoke Russian. There were two other guys in the locker room, and I'm on handshake terms with both of them. But here I am speaking--as one of my fellow teachers calls it--ugly Russian, and to top it all off, I was wearing my Cleveland State basketball jersey. I was the token foreigner. The second I hung up the phone, one guy asked me where I'm from. So now the morning sportzal crew knows I'm American, which I guess is fine--at least now they won't think I'm asshole for not being able to really banter with them in between sets.
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