Entry 22: The Debeardening 2: So this is What it Sounds Like when Wolves Cry...

Almost cut my beard the other day... No, actually, I really did. Truth be told, I don't really like the way I look in a beard, and one can carry around only so much dill and sour cream on one's face (saving it for later, of course), before a summer face-warmer starts to seem impractical. But after I decided that I would definitely shave off the beard, I realized that I was in something of a bind... you see, one can't just flat-out shave off a beard with an ordinary razor. I've done it before, and it took a change of about seven blades, which I wasn't about to buy this time around. I would have to use clippers or a trimmer or some other such machine first, none of which happened to be at my immediate disposal. Fortunately, however, one day I noticed Alyosha (Natalya Mikhailovna's daughter's boyfriend) shaving with an electric razor and asked if I could possibly borrow it to finally shave my beard off. He told me that he'd willingly oblige, but that it would be better to use clippers, which he, fortunately, had along with him. So I clipped my beard as close as possible and then went back home and shaved the rest off with my razor, finally glad to be rid of my light, fluffy burden.
My students, some of whom didn't recognize me immediately, had mixed reviews of my new look: the girls were all overwhelmingly in favor of it, while most of the guys said I looked cooler with the beard. The tie was broken, however, when the old women on watch at the dorm raved about how much better I looked minus the beard (that last phrase would be a good name for an indie band, except that beards have been pretty popular in indie bands lately). Since I'm mostly trying to impress 15 year-old girls and 55 year-old women, I consider my disembeardment to have been a wise decision. Nevertheless, submitted for Your Readership's approval is a picture of me in profile at the height of my bearditude, letting my freak flag fly.

P.S. Also, I'm assuming that, this time, Gold didn't get a ladder to the face, although it would be an interesting twist of fate if he had.

Entry 21: What Happens in Belokurikha... Gets Posted on my Blog, or "Havin' it Your Way in the BK"

So, LE Russia decided that we would have a mid-point break in Belokurikha, a resort town not far from Altaiskoye, known for its skiing, spas, and nightlife. Apparently, it's a fairly big getaway destination for Altaiskians, who get a big kick out of riding Belokurikha's ski lift, going to the indoor Aquapark (which only has two waterslides, but people here, accustomed as they are to swimming in cool mountain lakes and springs, are fascinated by the concept of chlorinated bodies of water), checking out the 4D Theater (the sort that you'd find at your garden variety Busch Gardens [or Duff Gardens], for example), and generally reveling in the presence of more than one night club (there are 5). Since one of our volunteers lives there, and the BK (as it is often called by American Altaiskians, by which I mean me) is the next town over, I arranged to get there a night early and stay with her and her hostess, in order to reap the full benefits of nightlife and speaking English with another native speaker, the prospect of which made my over-palatalized tongue water. So, we arranged for the father of one of my students -- who works as an electrician and a taxi driver (it's not uncommon to have two jobs here to supplement one's income: Natalya Mikhailovna sometimes works as a notary) -- to pick me up after class and take me to the bus station in the BK. I was greeted by Isabel -- the other volunteer -- and Tanya, whom Isabel sometimes calls a friend for politeness and brevity's sake. Tanya is a 20 year-old student of hospitality and hotel management in Barnaul (the Altai region's largest city), who Karina (Isabel's host) set Isabel up with in hopes that they would both benefit from a little practice in each other's language. That, of course, would be fine enough, but Isabel thinks that Tanya, who sports low-cut, semi-transparent shirts and gaudy silver-plated Playboy bunny necklaces (I suppose "gaudy" was superfluous) is too much of a "typical Russian girl." And indeed, she does have that quintessential Russian girl trait of loving to have her picture taken, artificially posing for every one, and then asking to see the picture afterwards to make sure it captured her good side. Also, Isabel thinks that Tanya, who starts every sentence with "In Barnaul..." -- as though it were the center of the universe --, is boring. Well, actually, she was initially willing to give Tanya the benefit of the doubt and assume that this was due to the language barrier, but Karina later confirmed that what Tanya said in Russian was also none too interesting.
So anyway, the three of us went back to hang out with Karina and help her prepare for her birthday dinner, which was to consist of Hawaiian-style open-faced sandwiches, with cheese, ham, and pineapple (and mayonnaise, although we specifically made some for me without it), cucumber and tomato salad, and "sandwiches" consisting of only eggplant and tomato -- now, while I've gotten to the point where I can tolerate open-faced sandwiches being called "sandwiches" (I personally believe a "sandwich" has to have something between two things that are alike), I simply will not stand for a breadless no-faced sandwich being referred to as anything of the sort. And, naturally, there was vodka... Not picking up on any of the vibes we were throwing her way, and completely going against all rules of tact and social decency (Russian as well as American), Tanya invited herself to Karina's birthday dinner (I should add that Karina doesn't like Tanya either), though, fortunately, she left to go home afterwards, when Isabel, Karina, and I were heading out.
We tried to go to the 4D Theater, though that turned out to be closed by the time we got there, so, instead, we decided to go drinking in the park -- yes, you can do that in Russia! So, we took a taxi to the resort zone, an area right at the foothills of the mountains where all the hotels and spas are, and lugged along a bag of beer and chips. The chips in Russia, it might be interesting to note, are Lays, like in the US, but they often have such decidedly Russian flavors as "Dill", "White Mushroom and Onion", and "Red Caviar" (seriously!). Anyway, things get somewhat blurrier as the night goes on, but I remember that, by the time I got a call at 10 AM to join the rest of the group for a picnic, I was in no state by be eating, socializing, or even generally walking around. Instead, I lay around in bed with Karina's cat for a good part of the day, trying to hydrate with boiled water (and often scalding myself), until I called Brett (our group leader) at 4 and told him I was finally up for doing something. "Perfect," said Brett, "we just finished our picnic, and now we're coming back to your place." Turns out, I had missed the entire group event (I can only imagine what sort of group activities I missed out on), and most of the volunteers had already gone home. Fortunately, however, Brett and Alfred (a volunteer in Novoaltaisk), along with Dasha, our program coordinator, decided to stay the night. Well, to be more specific, Brett and I decided to spend the night, while Alfred and Dasha were planning to stay out all night until their bus came at 5 AM.
So I met up with the group, and we headed out to go find a place to have dinner. I was pretty adamant about getting some Chinese food (we're actually not too far from the border with China, so, who knows, it might be good), but after taking a look at the pricy menu in the "Chinese Kitchen" (which was complete with standard smiling Buddha and happy dragon, but without any actual Chinese personnel -- just a silly Russian baba in a kitschy jade dress), we decided to find somewhere else, finally settling on an Armenian restaurant (also with high prices and conspicuously devoid of any representatives of the appropriate ethnicity -- this really is a tourist town). "What will you have?" our waitress asked. "Beef shish-kabob." "Oh, we're out of beef." "Ok, then I'll have this pizza." "Oh, we're out of pizza too" (pizza comprised a quarter of the menu). "I'll have the rabbit stew, then." "I'm sorry, we don't have rabbit either." "Fine, then I'll just have this rice pilaf." "Ok, that'll be 45 minutes." Fortunately, my pilaf did have beef (apparently, they were only out of kebab-able beef [that's fun to say!]), but, unfortunately, it turned out to be mostly giant pieces of fat and coated in a nice greasy sauce -- not exactly the most appetizing post-epic-hangover meal. So, we supplemented our food with ice cream, which I suppose also had a high fat content but more than made up for this defect by providing us with a generous dose of nature's most essential nutrient -- deliciousness. We were anxious to hit up a club, but, aware that the clubs didn't open for a couple more hours, we dolted around for a bit, checking out stores that advertised "Korean clothes and apparel!" and "the latest in fashions from Poland!" and watching a man limping around in a giant evil-looking bear costume (I noted that he looked as though he had cerebral palsy), mauling and otherwise terrorizing innocent tourists. We found a path called "The Road to Health," which was supposed to help your feet by having you walk on dirt, then stones, then more painful stones, and finally, prickly pinecones (operating on the principal that whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger, I guess). I had a fairly easy time of it, owing to my light frame, but Alfred, who's a bit bigger-boned than I, found the experience to be a good deal more painful. "Come on, Alfred," Dasha cheered. "I'm trying, I'm trying," he returned in a clearly pained voice, though eventually managing to make it through due to sheer strength of will. I suppose Alfred serves as proof that the Road to Health really is paved with good intentions...
Finally, 9 o'clock rolled around, and we were ready to hit the clubs. Unlike in Altaiskoye, we had a wide array of clubs to choose from (5!). First, there was "Dancing" (spelled in English, though sometimes spelled "Dansing", and, in any case, invariably pronounced with a thick Russian accent as "Done-scene-k"). We noticed that the "c" in the sign was burnt out, which we figured might have been an intentional move on the part of the owners to hedge their bets, since signs were ambivalent about whether the word was spelled with a "c" or an "s". Next, there was "Rest" (my translation, this time), which we figured was a good place to go take a break after too much "Dans/cing". Then there was "Ruslan," which we never found, and "Bowling" (pronounced "bow-ooh-lean-k"), which was apparently an overpriced bowling alley with a bar and dance floor (like "Lucky Strike", I suppose). And last, but certainly not least, there was "Paradise" (also spelled in English), which was supposed to be a strip club, but advertised karaoke as well. We were attracted by the prospect of karaoke at "Paradise," but when we went in, we found the place to be a bit sketchy, and, after a brief chat with the proprietors, Dasha found out that it was actually a strip club where people pay to get up on stage and use the pole! ...Like open mic night, only with stripping. Being a bit turned off (the mark of a bad strip club), we went to check out "Dans/cing". Apparently, their program also included stripping, but it was something of a moot point anyway, as the club was closed for a private party. "Ruslan" and "Bowling" were out of the question, due to the conspicuously inconspicuous location of the former and the outrageous cover charge of the latter. So, we went to go check out "Rest", which we found out had a reasonable cover charge, though its program for Saturday night also included a striptease (meaning that literally all our options involved stripping of some sort). So, we went to "Rest" and took our seat at a table underneath a big TV screen showing Russian music videos, and not far away from the stage, which was particularly remarkable for its big, prominent pole (that's what she said?).
We hung out for a while, drinking Russian champagne and ordering sushi -- which turned out to include a bit too much cream cheese and caviar for our American palates -- whilst we waited for the place to fill up a bit. We watched music videos and played a game to see if we could find one that didn't feature a half-naked woman... it took us an hour, but we finally succeeded. Meanwhile, the dancing started up (I had mistakenly thought that dancing would be restricted only to "Dans/cing"), but after about half-an-hour, the emcee, a somewhat pudgy 40-something woman, announced that the program would begin. First up, she announced, was the titular (funny word, by the way) heroine of Pushkin's short story, "The Queen of Hearts," (she could have been featured in a "Ladies of Literacy" calendar... she certainly used her allusion) who turned out to be a tall blonde with a red cape and well-glittered buttocks. While "tasteful" isn't quite word I would use to describe the performance, I can at least say that it didn't seem creepy: the artist (using the term very loosely) didn't strip completely and didn't come up to the audience (which even included more women than men), but mostly stayed on the stage and did a choreographed routine. Next up, our emcee announced, was the SpetsNos, the Russian equivalent of the Green Berets. Out came a muscle-bound man in fatigues and a ski-mask, with a wand tied to his waist. He began doing push-ups to the head-banging krautrock in the background (Rammstein, I'm guessing) before air-humping the pole in the center of stage and brandishing his wand phallically. Finally, he pulled off the ski-mask to reveal one of the most absurd mullets I've ever seen. I hope the reader doesn't judge me too harshly when I say that I enjoyed the male stripper's performance more than the female's -- it was just flat-out hilarious. After that, there was a break for more dancing, followed by more stripping, this time with the she-stripper as a traffic cop, and the he-stripper as a biker (somehow even more homo-erotic), followed by more dancing, and then... the big finale! This time, they spared no expense and pulled out all the stops: our two protagonists played an angel and a demon (a possible Dan Brown reference?) and strip-danced in tandem, chasing each other up and down the pole, and finally coming out to the dance floor for the striptease's climactic denouement, which -- spoiler alert -- involved pyrotechnics.. and partial nudity, naturally (there also might have been some adult themes, as well). Somehow, within the final act, our performers managed to wrap up all the loose ends and answer all the questions left open in their previous routines (with the exception of what they look like fully naked)... I can only hope for a big-screen adaptation some day.
The next day, after Alfred and Dasha left, Brett, Isabel, and I puttered around for a bit before my bus came, meeting up with two German teachers who were curious to meet these Americans they'd heard so much about (and Tanya, who, yet again, invited herself). Ira and Anya (pictured right, with Brett and Tanya on the left), for so they were called, were both 23, but, not surprisingly, looked about 30. Everybody here, it should be noted, looks older than they actually are... my students thought my 50 year-old mother looked about 38 and couldn't believe that my grandmother was over 80 ("Impossible!" they cried. "She's not hunchbacked and has all her teeth!"), while some of my 15-17 year-old students, I might add, might as well be called "jailbait". We told the two pedagogues about how strange it was that we had looked at all the clubs, and all of them featured a striptease in some way, shape, or form. "Oh, every club has stripping on Friday and Saturday night," Anya replied matter-of-factly. "It's just what they do around here." Truly, we're not in Kansas anymore...

Entry 20: Vasya Forever! or "My Kingdom for a Horse!"

So one day, realizing that all we had for the day was an extremely boring text, and that I had to do something to hold my students' interest while we went over a long list of vocabulary, I decided that I would give all my students new names (other tactics to keep their interest include dancing on tables and eating their papers [seriously]). Well, at first I just flat out pretended like I didn't recognize one of my students and made her introduce herself (I must've done a good job acting -- she seemed truly put off), and then I started calling all my students by different names. First, I just started calling them each other's names, and then I got a bit more creative: Natalya Mikhailovna, Dostoevsky, Prime Minister Putin, William Shakespeare, Michael Jackson (I can't escape him!), Dima Bilan (Russia's most famous pop singer -- he won Eurovision, which, apparently, the United States also participates in [I can't imagine we take it seriously... I'm guessing we just send William Hung every year]), Megaphone Beeline-ovich (which I formed out of the names of Russia's biggest mobile phone service providers), and Ksenia Sobchak (a scandalous Russian reality-show star affectionately referred to as "The Russian Paris Hilton"). All that thinking on my feet and I was pretty tired by the second time we went around the room. Once I got to Nastya, I had no idea what to call her, but then her cotabulatrix (the girl who sat at the same table with her) said "Nastya" in a low voice, which I misheard as "Vasya" (a short form of the male name "Vasily"), and by which I thenceforth proceeded to refer to her, as the rest of the class somehow found it pretty hilarious.
So, borrowing an idea from a Portuguese class I once had, I decided that we'd try to go around the room and create a story together, sentence by sentence. Not surprisingly, a number of our newly renamed classmates made it into the story, and, much to my surprise, we actually ended up producing a long, semi-cohesive narrative with everyone's participation. Having said that, I propose to reproduce our story in its entirety, with explanatory marginalia:

One day, a long time ago, Natasha [one of our students] was walking with her friends – Vasya, Fedya [Dostoevsky -- "Fedya" is short for "Fyodor"], Michael Jackson, William Shakespeare, [Ksenia] Sobchak, and Dimka Bilan.
Approximately one week ago, Ted and I [this part was written by David, our most ambitious student, whose sentences have a habit of rivaling those of William Faulkner] met all of these guys, and Michael Jackson began to dance for us on the table, and Vasya said, “Wow! Shakespeare, please write down everything that’s happening!” and, after that, Sobchak took her horse and kissed it, and, after that, the horse gave her a wedding ring, and then Dimka Bilan began to sing “Da, dum da dum, da dum da dum" [I think they meant the wedding song].
And so, Vasya and Natasha left with them, and then went into a VIP room, and… [they insisted on the ambiguous three dots] Vasya gave a star to Natasha.
And, after that, Fedya took some vodka and gave it to the horse, and, after that, everyone started crying, “Горько!” ["Gor'ko" - "sour"; what people cry at a wedding to get the newlyweds to kiss, although it stands to reason that the prospect of a sour kiss would more likely be something of a turnoff].
After that, Vasya began to cry, “I’m a pervert! And I want you, horse! I want to have a lot of children with you! And I believe that their names will be ‘Vasya’s horse’”.
Dostoevsky got wasted and hit Vasya with an axe. He quickly went home and started writing. Shakespeare and Ksenia Sobchak walked their dog in the park and talked about songs and musical groups. After Vasya’s escapade, Dimka Bilan and Michael Jackson organized a dance battle; at this moment, Vasya appeared with a bottle of “Putinka” vodka [a pretty shitty brand] and cried, “I want both of them!” Vasya and Dimka Bilan drank a lot of vodka and got into a fight. After that, Vasya hit Dima with a stick while Dima was sleeping.
And then Dimka took international stars like Metallica, System of a Down, Avril, Nirvana, and Rammstein and tried to sing songs in their style, but, during the song, he began to cry. All of the rock stars called him a little girl. Dima thought everything would be ok, but, since he doesn’t have a good voice, they killed him [one of our more goth-y students thought up this part].
Michael Jackson kissed Sobchak and said, “Excuse me, I love your horse!” Sobchak slapped him in the face and went into the other room. Dostoevsky, who likes to write short stories about love, wrote a story about himself (and his horse). Sobchak and Natasha went for a walk in the street and meet Dimka Bilan.
Vasya is a punk. Since Vasya killed our friend Dima Bilan, Michael Jackson knocked Vasya down with a full bottle of vodka. Since Dima Bilan is well-loved and admired, he rose from the dead and sang, “Dimka Bilan forever!” Vasya got intoxicated, because the vodka was shitty.
After that, Dima Bilan became a zombie. But then the horse kissed Vasya, and Vasya rose from the dead, but Vasya told the horse that he didn’t loved him, and that he would make sausage out of him. Since Dostoevsky was an alchemist, he raised all of our heroes from the dead. Vasya sang “Vasya Forever!” to his beloved horse.
And then Vasya, Dima, Sobchak, Fedya, Michael Jackson, Shakespeare, Natasha, and the horse got married and lived happily ever after.
THE END

Ok, possibly not as coherent as I remembered it being, but likely all the better for it. Considering the Russianity of the story, the reader may not be surprised to note the strong presence of vodka, an allusion to "Crime and Punishment", and the presence of that certain peculiar proclivity rumored to have caused the death of Catherine the Great -- you know the one I'm talking about...

Entry 19: The Rural Juror

So, one day one of my students asked me if I knew any tongue-twisters in English. Of course, I know the standard ones about Peter Piper (who supposedly picked a pack of pickled peppers, though there are no eyewitnesses to verify this claim) and Sally selling seashells (although it always seemed to me that the sea shore was the least profitable place for one to be selling them... you don't sell wild berries in a berry field [sorry, berries on the brain again]), but it seems to me that these aren't really difficult, at least for Russians, who have no problems minding their "p"s and "s"esses. So, inspired by an episode of 30 Rock I had seen, I decided to see if I couldn't craft my own tongue-twister around the impossibly ugly phrase "rural juror". So, here you have it, the fruit of my labor (loins?), which did indeed prove nearly impossible for my students -- particular those who've retained the Slavonic habit of rrrolling their "r"s -- along with my Russian translation, which my students found particularly hilarious:

A lurking rural juror lured and murdered a puerile Ural burger server and a nursing neural surgeon out of pure furor at a urinal in suburban Burma.


Скрывающийся сельский присяжный поманил и убил ребяческого уральского человека, приносящего гамбургеры и нянчащего неврологического хирурга от чистого фурора в писсуаре в пригороде Бурмы.

Say that five time fast (in both languages, if possible)! [I can just imagine Mike trying to read the Cyrillic -- "ckpabibayow, backwards "N", backwards "N" with a squiggly, ca, backwards "R"]

Entry 18: From Russia Without Love

"There is no love," Natalya Mikhailovna proclaims today on a particularly cold morning over a breakfast of soggy bread and baloney-like 'sausage' -- "Only habit." I've just brought over a long letter I plan on sending to Maddie (my fourth, although one envelope also had a postcard I had written earlier). "In vain," the embittered fifty-something divorcee continues sententiously, "You'll just fall out of love. Live a bit longer, you'll find out." "Well, I don't want to find out. I prefer to believe in something, at least... In love." "I've lived long enough not to believe in anything anymore," Natalya Mikhailovna declares resolutely. So it goes in Siberia... I've enjoyed my time here, but I wouldn't want to stick around too much longer. People don't age well, and, besides, I want nothing more than to be getting back to my Maddie as soon as possible, Russia be damned!

Entry 17: The Kid's Aren't Alright

What's surprised me most about the younger group of children is how developed their personalities already seem to be, even though they're only between 7 and 10 years old: there's Lera (who I spend the most time with, since she often has lunch with me and Natalya Mikhailovna)-- the sassy one, Katya -- the quiet overachiever (though she did draw this picture of an anthropomorphic heart getting drunk... only little girls in Russia!), Alyosha -- the unflaggingly optimistic hunting enthusiast, Vitya -- the sensitive, ever polite one, Sonya -- who seems shy at first, but already has a great sense of humor (she makes the funniest faces when she messes something up), Zhenya -- the jokester who always makes you want to say, "Oh, that Zhenya!", Denis -- who'll talk your ear off about anything without letting you get a word in edgewise, and Sasha (the boy -- we have a female Sasha too) -- the absent-minded one who constantly tries to tell jokes but can't get one right to save his life. I almost feel like I could make some sort of Mickey Mouse Club inspired Siberian pop group out of them... "-98 Degrees", or something like that. I've grown extremely fond of all of them, and they, it seems, feel similarly towards me -- whenever we go to the cafeteria, it's always a battle to decide who'll sit next to me, and it usually ends up with about ten of the fifteen children sitting on the same bench with me, all of us pressed up tightly one against the other, packed like sardines in a rush-hour subway car (mixed metaphors?). Some of them have even started grabbing my hand when we leave the classroom and dragging me with them to make sure they'll get a seat right next to me, but even this, too, has proved problematic, as everybody wants a hand unto themself, and, not having been raised near any Soviet nuclear plants, I, unfortunately, have only two.
Sometimes the children get a bit out of control, refusing to sit down and throwing shit around the room (not literally... they are still a more highly evolved form of primate, after all), but, generally speaking, they're all fairly well behaved, and, if I have any problems, it's not with any individual, but with the class as a whole. There is, of course, one exception -- Seryozha. Seryozha -- probably the youngest in the class -- not only seems to fail to realize the great boon a good education in English (even bad English... or happy English) will one day bring to his career (I suspect he'll have a wide rang to choose from: everything from janitor, to fishmonger, to coke mule), he also seems intent on torturing both me and all the other children, throwing tantrums, screaming, biting, and everything else short of throwing his shit around (literally, this time).
Earlier, our tactic was just to try to ignore him, or even literally push him out of our way, but one day I noticed Natalya Mikhailovna acting a bit differently... she had him sitting down on her knee and was trying to read him a book I had brought from home for the children -- "Frog and Toad Together" (its companion piece, the highly praised "Frog and Toad Separated," helps teach young children about dealing with same-sex, inter-species divorce). He was behaving surprisingly well, sitting still, listening intently, and even asking relevant questions. At that point, it dawned on me... maybe he just needed attention. Soon, he came over to me at the computer, and I decided to show him on a big map of the United States where I had lived. He seemed surprisingly interested in the map, and was particularly fascinated to see how many inhabitants lived in each city (although I took issue with this particular statistic -- I was pretty sure DC and Boston both had over a million inhabitants each, though I haven't had the Wikipedia access to supply me will my usual steady diet of trivial knowledge). "Do you know how many people live in China?" he asked me. "Four billion," I bee-essed, having no idea, but hoping that might shut him up. "One billion," he said, then proceeding to tell me how many inhabitants there were in Russia, and then the particular environs of Altaiskoye. At this point, I had an idea. "Do you know how much a video game costs in America?" I asked (all children here play computer games, as they can get pirated versions for just a couple dollars). Seryozha cocked his head slightly, clearly intrigued. "Fifty dollars," I told him, and before I could make the conversion, he said, "Wow! That's 150 rubles!" As suspected, our little terror had something of a knack for math. He then began asking about the prices of everything in America, from computers, to electronics, to houses, and I, doing my best to estimate the prices of goods I had, myself, never purchased or even thought about buying, obliged, just glad to have him not trying to bite me for once.
Once lunch time rolled around, my usual girls came to grab my hand and claim me as their own, but, this time, Seryozha staked (stook?) his own claim: "I want Ted to sit with me," he said, wresting a thumb free from one of the girls, and, during lunch, he sat across from me, with me doing my best to pay special attention to him, while he, once again, behaved surprisingly well. Afterwards, Natalya Mikhailovna told me that Seryozha came from an unusual family situation: his mother, apparently a strange enough bird as is, pays absolutely no attention to him and cares only about her 1 1/2 year-old daughter. One day, Seryozha had even asked his father and grandmother if they could possibly get a new mommy. Not especially surprising, then, that he acts out so much and begs for attention, and, even though he makes my life pretty difficult sometimes, I still can't help feeling sorry for him... every child deserves a loving family and a decent childhood.
Tragic though it is, Seryozha's situation is not an isolated one. As a matter of fact, I've noticed that a lot of the children around here come from "broken homes" -- and although this may be my mother's favorite euphemism for families with divorced parents, I'm talking about something much more serious. Natalya Mikhailovna's niece, for example, lives with her grandmother because her parents decided to abandon all their responsibility and abscond to Portugal (on the Trans-Iberian, most likely). Sasha (the girl), who I've mentioned in a previous post about the death of her uncle, also lives with her grandmother, because her parents are off trying to make money in Vladivostok. The aforementioned Lera and her sister also live with their grandparents. In their case, the mother ran off to St. Petersburg, and the father still lives in Altaiskoye but has absolutely no desire to care for his two little girls (who, by the way, are two of the most adorable little girls I've ever seen)... he even has a second wife (19 years old!) and another daughter, both of who he also seems to care very little about (Natalya Mikhailovna suspects he's even got his eye on a third wife). Little Alyosha's father is apparently a bigamist, living two separate lives with two different families at the same time. I imagine there's a lot more going on that I haven't heard about (I just know secondhand through Natalya Mikhailovna's embittered gossiping), but I think the examples I have from my young students alone serve to paint a pretty vivid picture: a culture of irresponsibility and a lack of family values or a desire to commit to anyone but oneself (sorry if that sounds like a very Rush Limbaugh-y thing to say). Now of course, this should be taken with a grain of salt: I've met some amazing, loving families (and their children have, accordingly, turned out to be very well-adjusted), but I've just been extremely disappointed to discover that small rural towns, at least around here, are not so idealistic and Capra-esque as they've been made out to be in all those films by that one director... the name's not coming to me right now, although I remember he made films with Jimmy Stuart... ah, yes, Hitchcock. Yes, sadly, Altaiskoye isn't as idealistic as that small town in "The Birds". Apparently, the Altai region is one of the few in Russia that has managed to escape the much-feared Demographic Crisis (picture "Children of Men", only the desolate streets are covered with dill and sour cream), but it's only a tragedy that many of those who have children here -- and such wonderful ones at that -- couldn't seem to care less about them. I'm only half-joking when I say I almost feel like adopting them all myself (with the likely exception of Seryozha). Funny, I never gave any thought to having kids before, but I think that, teaching here, I've reached the conclusion that I would definitely like to have some of my own some day.

Entry 16: Battle of the Sexes, a.k.a. Men are from Omsk, Women are from Tomsk

So, as hinted earlier, it's been a bit more difficult getting the older students to participate and enjoy class than it has been with the younger children. The main reason for this seems to be that, whereas activities with the younger children often involve more of a physical, visual, or otherwise nonverbal component (drawing, games with a ball, etc.), activities with the older children are, as a rule, strictly verbal. Standard activities in most English classes around here include reading texts and translating them, answering text-based questions, and doing grammar exercises from a textbook... unfortunately, it seems that half of this is that teachers only want to prepare their students for their entirely written university entrance exams, and, even more unfortunately, it seems that the other half is due to the fact that English teachers themselves don't know the language well enough even to engage their students in conversation. None of them seem to have ever been to an English-speaking country (which I don't fault them for... visas alone can be $1,000-2,000 around here; also, I've met some teachers who speak excellently despite a lack of experience abroad), and there are precious few opportunities for interaction with native speakers, so they end up having to rely mostly on materials, which, as I've noticed, use very clumsy, unnatural language at best (though, what's worse, they're often just plain erroneous). Apparently, one of the best primary- and secondary-school textbook series is called "Happy English," which, as I told Natalya Mikhailovna, almost sounds like something you'd find on a menu in a Chinese restaurant.
This is all just a very roundabout way of saying that the older children need something different: something more active and more social, though still comfortable and not intimidating. With that in mind, I often try to come up with original games and activities for them, though this sometimes takes a great deal of thought, and I only manage to come up with a truly interesting activity every once in a while. I remember one day, I was about to put the students into two groups so that they could debate something that I could tell wasn't really going to work out anyway (the existence of UFOs, or some such drivel [I, by the way, believe entirely in UFOs -- I do not, in the least, doubt the existence of flying objects that go unidentified]), when one of my students asked if we were going to divide the class into boys and girls. I liked his decision and decided I was going to try to use the natural competition and sexual tension between high-school-age students to my advantage: instead of the originally planned debate, the topic of our debate would be "Who is Better: Boys or Girls?" I figured that, aside from just my none-too-selfless goal of keeping the class occupied and interested for a good amount of time, I could finally make some sort of contribution to the world at large and settle the age-old question once and for all. The rules were simple: each team would offer an argument for their sex or against the loyal opposition every turn, with the order of turns to be decided by the flip of a coin. Since Natalya Mikhailovna had already freely admitted that she believed boys to be girls' superiors ("Girls are naughty," she argued; "That can be one of their best qualities," I countered), I was to preside as impartial judge... sure, I might be a boy, but, seeing as most of my mothers, sisters, and girlfriends had been of the female persuasion, I wasn't entirely indifferent to plaints of the less-unfair sex.
It turns out I had no idea what sort of epic battle was in store. The debate ended up spanning two days of class and lasting about 4 hours (a long enough time for a debate of any sort, let alone in one's non-native language)... what's more, not a single side even once filibustered. The debate started out tame enough -- boys make up ninety-something percent of all government officials in the world, girls make up a larger proportion of the population, only boys are allowed to serve in all capacities in the armed forces, girls live longer than boys -- but things quickly got desperate, and, consequently, more interesting. I'll leave you with some of the highlights, including...
The bizarre:
-Only boys can be gay
The scatological:
-Boys can write their name when they go to the bathroom
The blatantly sexual:
-Girls can please men in saunas
-Boys never say they have a headache
-Girls don't involuntarily raise the blanket in the morning (this one took me a while to get)
The just plain shocking:
-Boys don't have slits below the waist
And, perhaps my favorite, the illogical, but somehow irrefutable:
-Boys are better than girls because they don't want to sleep with boys (though I argued that this was not always the case)
In the midst of such heated debate, we took a break for lunch, per usual, but this time, the girls were none too amused... although usually more than willing to get everyone's lunch and bring it to the table, they went on strike and got only their own lunches. Fair enough, but they somehow left out their impartial judge... "Oh, now they'll pay," I thought to myself, but, as I went up to get my own food, I heard girly giggling and turned back only to find that my portion had mysteriously materialized right in front of my seat. I guess girls are indeed as smart as they argued they were...
We went back to class and I realized that, having come to the end of the second lesson of debate, it was finally time to put an end to the madness. Fortunately, both sides were starting to grow weary and desperate at the same time, so I decided to settle the debate as fairly and amicably as possible... by an appeal to a higher power (a method I knew all too well from my AA 12-step program). So, we flipped a coin, with the boys calling the side (since the girls had called it at the beginning), and... who won, you ask? O dear reader, I am always most appreciative of your interest and inquisitiveness! Methinks it may not displease you to find out that the female sex is not only the fairest (...they never once cheated during the whole debate), but also, hands down, the best. There, I said it... the question has finally been resolved once and for all. And, strange though it may seem, I'm not the least bit upset about the outcome... You see, I've always got the option of defecting (those heels do fit me perfectly, after all).