The semester here at the American Home is wrapping up, and it's hard to believe how fast it has gone by. It feels like I just started! We are doing final speaking tests today and tomorrow, and the final written exam is on Monday and Tuesday. I have definitely seen a lot of progress with my students, and there are some students now who know vastly more English than they did 4 months ago (although, when you start from almost nothing, it isn't too hard to make a big jump forward).

Every teacher, of course, has some bad students and--my least favorite--students who clearly have potential but who just don't put in the effort. I will definitely have some students fail, and I feel bad for them because, unlike other students who quit when it was obvious that they didn't have the time or the aptitude (I started with 63 students, and now I have 51), they have stuck it out until the end, and, unless they manage to pull off a miracle of last-minute exam preparation, there is little chance that they will pass the final. I'd like to give them an A for effort, but that won't get them very far in the next level, especially when they pose questions such as "Is drugstores on your neighborhood?" (asked during my speaking exam today).  

I has been below freezing for most all of the past few weeks, and it is really pretty and snowy here in Vladimir. Tonight a meteorologist was on the nightly news and said that central Russia--the middle of the European part of the country--should expect a cold, "Russian" winter with temperatures hovering around -20C (0F) through January.

That is great news for me; I really wanted to experience a real Russian winter, and it looks like I will get to. Actually, it is much better if the temperatures don't rise above freezing for a long time because everything gets really messy and muddy when the ground thaws out. And, to make things even worse, we had a mini-thaw last week, and it caused the whole city to turn into a giant puddle that then quickly froze into a solid sheet of ice. Walking anywhere became very dangerous because no one made any attempt to do anything about the ice that still covers every sidewalk and parking lot--salt is rarely used in Vladimir, and sidewalks, parking lots, and minor roads are not plowed or cleared in any way. Pretty much every one of my students has a story about falling, and one of our staff fell outside her apartment building and gave herself concussion. I haven't hit the ground yet, but there's plenty of winter left for that. Although, last weekend it finally snowed, so now the deadly ice is covered with a nice layer of snow, so it isn't so dangerous anymore.

I mentioned to a guy at the gym last week that it was cold outside, and he chuckled and said that it was just -8C (17F), and that cold is -40C (-40F)--something that he said usually happens in Vladimir at least for a day or two most winters. I'll have to bundle up! It could be worse though; in the Siberian city of Norilsk, it is already a balmy -33C (-27F), and the sun hasn't appeared for a few days.  

The train ride back to Vladimir from Moscow yesterday was one of the stranger experiences I have had in Russia. I boarded the 14:29 local train from Moscow's Kursk Station to Vladimir and found a bank of seats all to myself. This was an electrichka--a Russian suburban train. These are considered short-distance trains, although you can travel on them for several hours, and they are an uncomfortable, sometimes smelly, and not-very-pleasant way to get from place to place. You buy a ticket simply to get on the train; you don't get a reserved seat, and the train can be so packed that there aren't enough seats (I once traveled from Lukovitsi to Moscow--almost a three-hour trip--standing up because there were no seats). These trains are usually old and are pretty clunky and drafty, and a normal local train makes stops every few miles. 

Fortunately the train yesterday wasn't crowded, and I didn't have to share my bank of seats with anyone for very long. But there was a very drunk guy sitting a few rows ahead of me, and everyone in the car was giving him sidelong glances as he alternated between drunkenly cursing at the public service announcements and lying down on the bench seat. I didn't really pay him much attention and just listened to my music and looked out the window. 

But soon the conductors came around to check tickets. You have to keep your little receipt-like ticket until the end of your trip because conductors come around periodically to check and sell tickets. Some smaller train stations don't have ticket offices, so people who get on at those stations buy their tickets from the conductors. Also, it is very easy to jump fences or walk off the end of the platform to get around paying the fare at stations with ticket offices, so there is a always a whole crowd of people who try not to get caught by the conductors so they don't have to pay the fare. Anyway, when the conductors got to this drunk guy, he refused to show his ticket and started to curse out the conductors, who at first were being pretty nice. But soon they had had enough, and the train guards--big, burly guys who didn't look like someone I would want to mess with--sat the drunkard up and started to get firm with him. Then, one of the conductors lost her patience and grabbed the guy and dragged him into the area where the train doors are. 

The guy continued to be obstinate and was yelling all sorts of nasty words and daring the guards to do something, and pretty soon one of the guards lost his patience and punched the guy in the face. The guy was so drunk that he didn't seem to notice, and he shoved the guard back, which prompted the other guards to tackle him to start beating him into submission. 

At this point, the whole car's attention was focused on what was happening. An old woman started imploring the guards to stop, and several guys jumped up and helped get the situation under control. In the midst of all this chaos, someone paid the drunkard's fare, and, once he calmed down and the guards let him go, the conductors told him to sit back down, quietly finish his beer, and ride out the rest of his journey in peace, which is what he did. 

Maybe an hour later, a group a gypsies came into the car. I don't know if I have ever seen a gypsy in real life before, but this time it was obvious. I put my arm around my traveling bag and noticed that everyone else also grabbed hold of their belongings. No one made eye contact with the gypsies, and one lady firmly told a young gypsy boy to get away from her. They rode in our car for a few stops and then moved on, and, as far as I could tell, didn't steal anything or bother anyone. But I have been told many times by Russians to be extremely careful around gypsies and not under any circumstance to allow them to start a conversation with you. Russians claim that gypsies have the power to quickly hypnotize you and steal your things before you can think about it, and that certainly wasn't something I wanted to have happen. 

The rest of the ride was uneventful, although my feet froze from the frigid draft that was blowing across the floor during the whole trip. The heater on the train was very weak, and it was maybe 15F outside, so after three and a half hours of that, I was very happy to get back into a warm place. Here are a few pictures of electrichki: 

I had a really big weekend of traveling, and now I'm totally exhausted. My friend Slava had his birthday party in the little town of Zaraisk on Saturday night, and I headed there for the evening. The trouble is that it takes basically a full day to get to Zaraisk from Vladimir and basically a full day to get back. I left my apartment at 7:00am on Saturday morning, went to the bus station in Vladimir, and caught the 7:45 bus to Ryazan. I would normally travel through Moscow to get to Zaraisk, but I figured I would try something new and go a different way. The bus to Ryazan was a big old rattling thing, and it was packed when we left Vladimir. We stopped at pretty much every little bus stop along the 150-mile road between the two cities, and I did a lot of sleeping, but actually it was kind of a cool trip. Most of the country between these two cities is deep, dark forest with not a house or town anywhere around, and it was snowing the whole time. The forest was amazingly beautiful, and I was imagining what it was like to travel that road a hundred or two hundred years ago when, in place of a rusty old bus, people made the journey on a sleigh.

I arrived in Ryazan around 12:30, and I had a few hours to kill before my bus to Zaraisk left. So I found the historic kremlin in Ryazan and wandered around inside it and went to an exhibit about role that Ryazan played in the history of ancient Rus and how that role changed through the centuries (Ryazan was a much more important city than Moscow until about the 13th Century).

After my kremlin excursion, I caught the bus to Zaraisk and arrived around 6pm. The birthday celebration was already under way when I showed up, and it was a full-out Russian affair with a magnanimous spread of food, jovial company, singing and dancing, and lots of toasts, which of course were followed by shots of vodka.

After all that revelry, however, I had to hit the road early in order to get back to Vladimir at a reasonable time. I took the 9:00am bus to Moscow (I slept quite a bit on that bus), and then I wandered around some historic neighborhoods of central Moscow and got lunch before catching my train to Vladimir at 2:30pm. I finally got back to my apartment at 6:30pm. What a trip!

I have lots of funny stories about things that happened on my travels, but I'll save those for another day. Here are some pictures:

    

Winter break is coming up pretty soon, and I finally firmed up my travel plans for my vacation. I'm going with another teacher to Ukraine from December 23rd to December 30th. We'll head from Vladimir to Moscow on the 23rd, spend the afternoon in Moscow, and then board a train to Kiev at 4:46pm. We'll arrive in Kiev bright and early (4:18am), and spend Christmas Eve day there. Then we'll get on a train that evening at 10:20pm and go to Lviv, which is a city in western Ukraine. I can definitely say that I never expected that I would spend a Christmas Eve on a Ukrainian train, but life is funny like that.

We'll arrive in Lviv at 6:30am on Christmas (no presents waiting for us there). We'll spend the 25th and 26th in Lviv and then go back to Kiev late at night on the 26th. We'll spend the 27th in Kiev and then board a train at 10:05 that evening and go to Odessa. We'll arrive in Odessa at 7am and spend the whole day on the 28th and the morning of the 29th there. Then, we'll hop on a train in Odessa at 2:08pm and head back to Moscow. This last train ride will be quite long--23 hours--and we'll arrive in Moscow at 3:15pm on the 30th. Then we'll get on the express train back to Vladimir and be back in our quiet little city before midnight.

We originally planned to get back to Moscow a day earlier, and we didn't plan to go to Odessa, but the Russian Federal Migration Service (FMS) decided that we needed to spend another day traveling. The law says that all foreigners need to get registered with the FMS within seven days of arriving in Russia. The 29th is the last working day before the long winter holidays (the whole country is on holiday until January 6th or 7th), but we would arrive in Vladimir too late to get in line at the FMS office and get our registration completed. In short, it is mandatory to get registered on the 29th, but it is impossible to do so. So, to get around the bureaucratic mess, we decided to extend our trip by one day so that we will arrive on the 30th--a holiday--and we won't have to get registered until after the winter holidays. That extra day seemed like a perfect time to go see Odessa, which is supposed to be like a country within itself: They have a diverse culture and their own very distinct accent (some people would call it their own language).

I'm excited for this trip! We'll really get to see a lot of Ukraine in the span of just couple days. Although I have been told that Ukrainian trains are not pleasant to travel on, and my tickets for all the train travel in Ukraine cost less than $60. So we'll see how that turns out.... 

Here is a good Russian rock song by the legendary group Piknik. It's called "Purplish-Black".

On Saturday I gave a lecture at the American Home. Each teacher is supposed to give one lecture during the school year about some topic connected with American culture. I decided to indulge my city planning interests and gave my lecture about American suburbia. Russia just doesn't have the same kind of suburban sprawl that America does, and the suburbs are a huge part of the modern American experience (the majority of us call the suburbs home).

I started off my lecture by giving a simple definition of a suburb, and then I briefly talked about the history of suburbanization (a bunch of people in Vladimir, Russia, now know about Shaker Heights, Ohio, which I used as an example of early suburbs). After I gave my little description of what an American suburb looks like (complete with lots of pictures), I talked about what it is like to live in suburbia. This I boiled down to three things: cars, schools, and shopping. Everything depends on the car; schools are often the most important places in the community; and big-box and chain retail dominates. I then showed a lovely shot of some bland suburban strip and asked the other American teachers to guess where it was, underlining the point that the suburbs really are Anywhere, USA. I wrapped up by talking about the future of suburbia, which includes more diversity, minority-majority suburbs, increasing density, and less demand for energy-and -space hogging housing types.

I really had fun with the lecture, and I got a lot of good feedback from my students who were there, and that was my goal. I wanted to avoid a dry lecture, and I knew I had to keep my language understandable and not use jargon that would be incomprehensible even to the most advanced student. So I'm very happy with how it went. Here are a few pictures from my lecture. 

I also played this music video in the very beginning of the presentation to show a little slice of suburban life (and also because it's a great song):