End of School Year

It's hard to believe that my classes are over. My colleagues and I made it through a 10-month school year at the American Home, and, in general, it went very well. I now know how to describe the use of the present perfect so that non-native speakers of English can understand, which is pretty cool because I hadn't heard of the present perfect (or any other English verb tense) a year ago. I have to say that hardest day I had was the first time I taught the difference between "before" and "until." I had no idea how to answer all my students' questions, and was struggling to find a decent explanation (I got it down in my next two semesters).

We had a farewell lunch last week. My colleagues are gradually leaving; some have left already, more will leave in the next few days. I'm staying here in Russia for my five-week vacation (we start working again on August 8). My family is coming to visit, and I imagine I'll do some traveling and a lot of relaxing here in Vladimir. Here's a shot of the lunch table in the backyard of the American Home:

Yesterday I got some real benefit from the several excursions I have been on in Vladimir and Suzdal. One of the other teacher's family arrived in Russia on Thursday, and they wanted to see the ancient city of Suzdal, which is not far from Vladimir. Their son, however, had to teach yesterday, and it looked like they might not be able to go. I was free yesterday, so I said I would be happy to be a guide for a day.

We took a buses to and from Suzdal, which was a very Russian experience. The first bus was an old PAZ--a Russian mini-bus--and the second bus was running late because of mechanical problems--it looked to have a pretty nasty coolant leak. We got to see a side of Russia that a lot of tourists don't.

But once we got it Suzdal, everything was great. Suzdal has an unfathomable number of old churches, and we poked around, bought souvenirs, and visited some of the historic sites. Of course, you could spend several days there and not see everything. I think everyone really enjoyed it, and I had a lot of fun being the guide and translator.

On our way back, we stumbled across a choral concert on Vladimir's main square. The choir is a famous group from Moscow, and the performance was part of a big festival of Orthodox Christian culture here in Vladimir. Here are two pictures of the scene. Note the guys dressed up as knights in the second shot.

It's hot here in Vladimir. The highs have been around 30C, which is 86F, and the humidity is really high. In reality that isn't all that hot--Cleveland, which is by no means a hot-weather city, regularly gets highs in the mid-90s in July and August--but I think I've lost some of my heat tolerance after the long winter. I get drenched in sweat walking to the bus stop in the hot sun and sitting on the stifling bus (air conditioning on buses is non-existent here). The return trip on the bus is quite unpleasant; even at 10pm, it's still sultry, and everybody's deodorant--assuming they even wore any--has worn off long ago. Russia in the summer can be a smelly place.   

After 11 months aboard, I feel pretty disconnected from America and American culture. I only know what's what's happening and what's popular in the US because of Facebook or my occasional reading of the New York Times of Cleveland Plain Dealer websites. I wouldn't saw that I'm a pop-culture follower in the US, but now I really don't know what songs are popular, what movies are coming out, what TV shows are big, and what clothes are in style. I get a strange flow of songs and movies that come from the US, but I suspect many of them were popular about six months ago or were never all that popular at all. Here's a few American songs that are really popular in Russia right now:

I Follow Rivers by Lykke Li

Thrift Shop by Macklemore

Get Lucky by Daft Punk

I have no idea if these songs are popular in the US right now or ever were all that popular. But they constantly play on Russian radio stations. 

I have been riding my bike to work a few days a week lately, and I often get rides home from friends and students, but I still ride the bus quite a bit. As a former bus driver and driving-starved young man, I notice two things while I'm riding the bus--the way the driver does his job and all the cars that whiz around the plodding bus.

I drove buses for Ohio State University's Campus Area Bus Service for a year and a half, and of course first I had to get a class-B commercial driver's license. That involved taking a written test at the BMV to get a temporary CDL permit that allowed me to drive a bus with a trainer, 50 hours of in-bus training, and a road test that included a detailed pre-trip inspection ("the front windshield is clean, clear, not cracked or damaged, and the windshield gasket is secure and not damaged"), a maneuverability test (straight-line backing, offset backing, parallel parking, and alley docking), and an hour-long road test that included highway driving, crossing railroad tracks, emergency stopping, hill climbing (they found the one decently steep hill in Columbus, Ohio), and general city driving. I really enjoyed my time as a bus driver, and I was a little sad when I dropped off my last passenger and pointed my bus back toward the garage.

Now I compensate by critiquing other bus drivers. I have to say that most Russian bus drivers would get fired very quickly by an American transit agency. They are actually very capable drivers, but they don't have much respect for the law. I felt like the king of the road behind the wheel of a bus; these guys are the tsars of the road. Buses constantly cut off other cars, drive in two lanes at once, and sometimes don't come to a full stop when picking up or dropping off passengers. The drivers talk on the phone while driving (that would get you fired at CABS), smoke (no one even tried that while driving), and let people on and off away from designated stops (also not allowed by CDL regulations). They don't use four-way flashers, don't signal turns, and pull out and turn directly in front of oncoming traffic. Sometimes it can be a little harrowing if you let yourself think about it. I've seen more than a few accidents involving buses here in Vladimir--mostly fender benders and side-swipes. Also, buses don't have CB radios, so there is no way for buses to communicate problems to the dispatcher talk or to each other and space themselves out when traffic gets bad (maybe that's what the cell phones are for). Talking on the CB radio and listening to all the other drivers was one of my favorite things about bus driving. Finally, drivers don't have uniforms, so they wear whatever they want, which, now that it is hot, usually means a wife beater and athletic shorts. Professional.  

Anyway, this is all to say that I would love to climb behind the wheel of a bus when the driver is out for a smoke break and see how it would feel to pilot a 40-footer again. Something tells me the police and the bus company wouldn't find that very funny though.

A Vladimir bus

One of Ohio State's two hybrid buses--I drove this one quite a few times 

Yesterday was the summer solstice, which results in the longest period of daylight for locations in the Northern Hemisphere. For central Russia, that means a really, really long day. In fact, here in Vladimir the sun barely set last night--it was still greyish twilight at midnight, and the sun was already coming up at 3am. In more northerly cities like St. Petersburg and Murmansk it never gets dark during the few weeks around the summer solstice. Fortunately, I'm not bothered by the fact that is brilliant daylight at 4am (my roommates in college were always amused that I slept with the curtains open and the sun blasting in on my face), but it does kind of mess with your body clock. You look outside and notice that it's still daylight and assume that it's still early, but then you look at your watch and realize that's it almost 11pm and you have to catch the last bus home--this has happened to me a few times. The super-long daylight hours facilitate lots of partying at dachas and strolling with friends in the city, and it definitely is a nice treat after the long, cold, dark winter (when it gets light at 10am and dark at 4pm).

The stretched-out daylight has facilitated more than just partying and relaxing, though. In 1941, Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union at 4am on June 22, opening WWII's brutal eastern front. Last night, I went with some friends to Victory Square here in Vladimir, where there was a little ceremony. Unfortunately it was raining and pretty chilly, so there weren't many people, but it was moving nonetheless. Here's a picture I took:

 

Here's a great song that sums up the value of being away from home for a little bit (or a longer bit). As much as I miss everything back in the good old US of A--and I do yearn for some time back in America--living abroad is a tremendously valuable experience. Brad Paisley says it best: