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.
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.
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