Tonight another teacher and I took part in a Pecha Kucha night here in Vladimir. For those who are unfamilliar, Pecha Kucha is a presentation format where you have 20 sides which are timed for 20 seconds each. I learned about this type of presentation in college, and we were taught that the slides should be only pictures, which creates a very cool, very visual presentation. People here in Vladimir didn't follow the no-text rule, but the presentations were interesting nonetheless. Also, the presentations are short; each one takes only six minutes (too bad my professors couldn't have followed this format...). There were a total of eight presentations tonight, and they ranged in topic from an etymological history of Russian good-luck proverbs to a very-detailed overview of the ancient Chinese game go to a summary of Slavic women's gymnastics, which, from what I gathered, is basically a hyper gender-normative version of yoga (the lady who gave the presentation said that this brand of gymnastics is only for women and will help women reconnect with their essential feminine nature).

We did our presentation on American food--more specifically, about American sandwiches. We told the assembled audience about 19 popular American sandwiches, everything from PB&J to po' boys. We listed the main ingredients and talked a little about the popularity or the history of each sandwich. And, of course, all this was done in Russian. We went last, and of course it was a bit nerve-racking waiting around and thinking about how to use my Russian to phrase 20-second blurbs about American sandwiches. But it all turned out well, and I think people found our presentation, if not interesting, then at least appetizing   Here are some pictures: