It's been a while, folks. Thanks for waiting around (or for clicking on this link form my Facebook page, which I'm sure is the case for most of you. No worries.) I have a few things to update you on, chronologically. If you want to end on something more up-beat, try reading this post bottom-to-top.
1. Thanksgiving. Since the beginning of November, I had been wishing and hoping and planning for a great Thanksgiving celebration. I wasn't sure how we could pull it off (or even who "we" would include, but what I do know is that I have a DANK stuffing recipe (Thanks mom) and I only get one chance a year to use it. Well, Thanksgiving day was a normal day at work, which meant there was NO WAY I could put anything together (A "normal day" for me consists of waking up somewhere around 10am, sitting on the bus for half an hour to get to the University, and not coming back to my edge-of-town dormitory until long after dark). However, this day was a special day. As I waited for my 7pm class to start, I got a call from a student: "Well, I know that today is sort of a holiday for you, and, well, if you don't have anything else planned, I wanted to invite you over for dinner so that you could celebrate?" this turned out to be one of the greatest Thanksgivings I've ever had. The menu featured meatballs rather than turkey, spaghetti noodles instead of crescent rolls, potato pancakes in lieu of mashed , and in place of cranberry sauce: fried eggs--- but I couldn't have asked for better company. The next day my international friends and I had an enormous feast prepared by our Chinese classmates, and Saturday was our own home-style Thanksgiving potluck where I got to showcase my stuffing, but the best part of Thanksgiving was sharing it with so many great people. (Awwww.)
2. Siberian Teacher's Conference. We had been planning this since my arrival in Irkutsk, but the annual conference at our university was to feature (by my invitation) other Fulbright ETAs from different cities, including myself. We came, we presented, and the Russian teachers had very little to say about it. This may have been because of our theme: Extra-Curricular activities to supplement language learning. Russian teachers, like teachers in the US, are overworked and underpaid. Russia is a little bit worse off in this department, though... teaching is not considered prestigious in the least, most tell me, and many teachers feel resentful of the amount of work they already have to do." Extra-curriculars? We don't need no stinking extra-curriculars." Not to mention the lack of resources, limited space, and scheduling disasters that are inherent in any school or university in this country. I may talk more about that later... Anyway, we had a great weekend otherwise, and my colleagues were extremely welcoming of our new guests. I work in the greatest place on earth...
3. Current events. Part of the reason it has taken me so long to write a decent post is because of the string of happenings, all rather close-to-home, which have basically rendered me incapable of sitting and writing positive, quirky updates on my life in Russia. The first of these was an extreme shock which directly influenced my work. After a routine and successful trip to a nearby high-school with some colleagues and students, we entered the office to find another colleague about to leave. She had cancelled all of her classes and told her students to go home, because one of the other students from their group had been killed. She told me the student's name --- a very general Russian girl's name, which sent all of us in a tizzy trying to deduce exactly which girl this was. She was a first-year, worked with a wonderful group of talented students. I had lead a class on fashion just a week before where she described her style as "classy yet comfortable". Days later she answered a call from someone "looking for a nanny" and was found that weekend, dead, in an abandoned apartment near the center of town. I didn't know how to feel about this, but I still teach the same group of students, and everything has to continue as usual. Teaching was hard for a while after that. Then came the news from Connecticut, which I try to avoid talking to my students and colleagues about (because they already think that all Americans own guns just for kicks). Just another thing that made teaching harder, from an emotional standpoint. I'm not saying I had to fight off tears to get through my day, but teachers everywhere had this on their mind --- STILL have this on their mind as they go about their teaching. And then came the very serious talk of Russia banning adoption of Russian children to American families... which has since been passed into law. Maybe you don't know this, but for the past two summers I have worked as a Russian teacher in a children's camp where a generous percentage of our students are adoptees from Russia. I've heard some of their stories, and I know that many of them wouldn't even be around today if it weren't for the adoptive family that jumped through all the hoops to bring a child from the often dismal conditions of a Russian orphanage into an average American home. This new law, Putin's senseless retaliation against American policy, will take away the chance of that future for about 1,000 Russian orphans this year; from kids who have disabilities, who (in all likelihood) won't be adopted by Russian families because they can't afford/don't have access to the proper care. All these kids --- at camp, at the university, private pupils --- These kids are my students. I love my students. They are the reason (the only reason, really) that I am a teacher. Honestly, sometimes I really hate teaching; I tell myself that I'm only doing this because I have no better prospects, or else I get overwhelmed and just want to cut and run, but I know that I can't. I live for these students, and the thought that I could lose any one of them in a very permanent sense... well, it kinda freaks me out. It makes me a little upset --- mad, even. But mostly these "current events" makes me value each of my students even more.
Don't mess with my students.
Merry Christmas, Everybody.
Sarah
1. Thanksgiving. Since the beginning of November, I had been wishing and hoping and planning for a great Thanksgiving celebration. I wasn't sure how we could pull it off (or even who "we" would include, but what I do know is that I have a DANK stuffing recipe (Thanks mom) and I only get one chance a year to use it. Well, Thanksgiving day was a normal day at work, which meant there was NO WAY I could put anything together (A "normal day" for me consists of waking up somewhere around 10am, sitting on the bus for half an hour to get to the University, and not coming back to my edge-of-town dormitory until long after dark). However, this day was a special day. As I waited for my 7pm class to start, I got a call from a student: "Well, I know that today is sort of a holiday for you, and, well, if you don't have anything else planned, I wanted to invite you over for dinner so that you could celebrate?" this turned out to be one of the greatest Thanksgivings I've ever had. The menu featured meatballs rather than turkey, spaghetti noodles instead of crescent rolls, potato pancakes in lieu of mashed , and in place of cranberry sauce: fried eggs--- but I couldn't have asked for better company. The next day my international friends and I had an enormous feast prepared by our Chinese classmates, and Saturday was our own home-style Thanksgiving potluck where I got to showcase my stuffing, but the best part of Thanksgiving was sharing it with so many great people. (Awwww.)
2. Siberian Teacher's Conference. We had been planning this since my arrival in Irkutsk, but the annual conference at our university was to feature (by my invitation) other Fulbright ETAs from different cities, including myself. We came, we presented, and the Russian teachers had very little to say about it. This may have been because of our theme: Extra-Curricular activities to supplement language learning. Russian teachers, like teachers in the US, are overworked and underpaid. Russia is a little bit worse off in this department, though... teaching is not considered prestigious in the least, most tell me, and many teachers feel resentful of the amount of work they already have to do." Extra-curriculars? We don't need no stinking extra-curriculars." Not to mention the lack of resources, limited space, and scheduling disasters that are inherent in any school or university in this country. I may talk more about that later... Anyway, we had a great weekend otherwise, and my colleagues were extremely welcoming of our new guests. I work in the greatest place on earth...
3. Current events. Part of the reason it has taken me so long to write a decent post is because of the string of happenings, all rather close-to-home, which have basically rendered me incapable of sitting and writing positive, quirky updates on my life in Russia. The first of these was an extreme shock which directly influenced my work. After a routine and successful trip to a nearby high-school with some colleagues and students, we entered the office to find another colleague about to leave. She had cancelled all of her classes and told her students to go home, because one of the other students from their group had been killed. She told me the student's name --- a very general Russian girl's name, which sent all of us in a tizzy trying to deduce exactly which girl this was. She was a first-year, worked with a wonderful group of talented students. I had lead a class on fashion just a week before where she described her style as "classy yet comfortable". Days later she answered a call from someone "looking for a nanny" and was found that weekend, dead, in an abandoned apartment near the center of town. I didn't know how to feel about this, but I still teach the same group of students, and everything has to continue as usual. Teaching was hard for a while after that. Then came the news from Connecticut, which I try to avoid talking to my students and colleagues about (because they already think that all Americans own guns just for kicks). Just another thing that made teaching harder, from an emotional standpoint. I'm not saying I had to fight off tears to get through my day, but teachers everywhere had this on their mind --- STILL have this on their mind as they go about their teaching. And then came the very serious talk of Russia banning adoption of Russian children to American families... which has since been passed into law. Maybe you don't know this, but for the past two summers I have worked as a Russian teacher in a children's camp where a generous percentage of our students are adoptees from Russia. I've heard some of their stories, and I know that many of them wouldn't even be around today if it weren't for the adoptive family that jumped through all the hoops to bring a child from the often dismal conditions of a Russian orphanage into an average American home. This new law, Putin's senseless retaliation against American policy, will take away the chance of that future for about 1,000 Russian orphans this year; from kids who have disabilities, who (in all likelihood) won't be adopted by Russian families because they can't afford/don't have access to the proper care. All these kids --- at camp, at the university, private pupils --- These kids are my students. I love my students. They are the reason (the only reason, really) that I am a teacher. Honestly, sometimes I really hate teaching; I tell myself that I'm only doing this because I have no better prospects, or else I get overwhelmed and just want to cut and run, but I know that I can't. I live for these students, and the thought that I could lose any one of them in a very permanent sense... well, it kinda freaks me out. It makes me a little upset --- mad, even. But mostly these "current events" makes me value each of my students even more.
Don't mess with my students.
Merry Christmas, Everybody.
Sarah
