Last weekend, we had a party for our adult students at a hall in the center of Vladimir. It was a great time, and we did a presentation, had live music, and did plenty of dancing. A local TV crew showed up to do a report on the party (the American Home gets a fair amount of local news coverage), and, without any warning, they asked me to do an interview in Russian. So put my best face on and answered their questions. The TV crew then hung around for a while and filmed the festivities.
One part of the party was designated time for "mingling," which is a concept that doesn't seem to have made it to Russia quite yet. As any young professional (or old professional, for that matter) knows, mingling is that awkward 40 minutes or so before a presentation when you feel obligated to talk up some potentially well-connected strangers in order to expand your network. Or, alternatively, it is a time to grab about five small plates and just talk to the people you came with. Regardless, we Americans all understand that mingling is a completely unstructured time that really revolves around basic social skills. As this seems to be is a foreign concept to Russians, we made a little scavenger hunt ("find somebody with the same birthday month as you") and made a little competition out of it.
Our mingling "game" worked about as well as one might expect--people mostly talked to the people they came with--but it caught the attention of the TV crew. They said that mingling is a famous American game, and, to add insult to injury, they worked my interview into this whole mingling mix up. They said I've been playing "mingling" for several years (how one wins at mingling I'm not sure) and that, although I'm single, I hope that I can find my "second half" by playing this game. I don't exactly know where they got that idea, and while I'm certainly not opposed to finding a second half through what amounts to just talking to people, the whole of Vladimir now thinks that we Americans have some sort of mingling club or something.
Anyway, check out the interview. It's in Russian, of course.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttn28dTgvX0
One part of the party was designated time for "mingling," which is a concept that doesn't seem to have made it to Russia quite yet. As any young professional (or old professional, for that matter) knows, mingling is that awkward 40 minutes or so before a presentation when you feel obligated to talk up some potentially well-connected strangers in order to expand your network. Or, alternatively, it is a time to grab about five small plates and just talk to the people you came with. Regardless, we Americans all understand that mingling is a completely unstructured time that really revolves around basic social skills. As this seems to be is a foreign concept to Russians, we made a little scavenger hunt ("find somebody with the same birthday month as you") and made a little competition out of it.
Our mingling "game" worked about as well as one might expect--people mostly talked to the people they came with--but it caught the attention of the TV crew. They said that mingling is a famous American game, and, to add insult to injury, they worked my interview into this whole mingling mix up. They said I've been playing "mingling" for several years (how one wins at mingling I'm not sure) and that, although I'm single, I hope that I can find my "second half" by playing this game. I don't exactly know where they got that idea, and while I'm certainly not opposed to finding a second half through what amounts to just talking to people, the whole of Vladimir now thinks that we Americans have some sort of mingling club or something.
Anyway, check out the interview. It's in Russian, of course.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttn28dTgvX0
That's quite a funny story, caught on tape too! :)
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