birthday

I love birthdays. I think they are a wonderful excuse to feel happy (if it’s your birthday) or brighten someone’s day (if it’s someone else’s birthday).

Yesterday was my birthday, and I had an exceptionally great day. I worked for four hours in the kindergarten, went next door for a Russian class, and two hours later returned to the kindergarten for another four hours. (I think if everyone took two-hour breaks in the middle of their workday they would be happier and more productive.) My lessons went well all day; my students were (generally) attentive and affectionate; all the teachers at the kindergarten (even those who don’t speak English) expressed well-wishes in some way; the sun was shining all day and the sky was blue; and I was given a lot of chocolate.

When it was time for the kids to take their naps, I hugged each of them — the ones who drew cards for my birthday, the ones who pay attention in class every day, the ones who don’t, and even the one who, only a day earlier, had resorted to a self-defense I-don’t-know-my-own-strength-because-I’m-only-six kick to my stomach as I swooped in to scold him for yelling during naptime. (In fact, this particular student hugged me for so long that I had to actually pry him off me, the remorse clear in his serious eyes (he had just received a bit of a speech — from a Russian teacher, so he would understand everything being said — about respecting teachers and not kicking people).)

On the playground I was pushing V on the swings as usual, my arms beginning to hurt (a half-hour of pushing a five-year-old on a metal swing five times a week really adds up), when suddenly he asked me to stop and climbed off the swing. “Now you sit,” he said, and when I did he started pushing the swing, his face glowing with pride.

Earlier in the day, as the kids were preparing for naptime, K asked to look at my watch. I gave it to him, and he sat silently, watching the hands move, for ten minutes. Then I asked the kids what they thought I should do to celebrate my birthday. “You should sleep,” K said, “because then you might have a good dream.”

little creatures

I recently agreed to work two extra shifts at the kindergarten each week. My morning shifts, which I work five days a week, end at 1:30, when the kids take naps. Most of my afternoons are filled with one-on-one English classes (which I teach at the building next to the kindergarten (which is part of the same impressive English-language-instruction empire as the kindergarten)) or Russian classes (three hours a week of speaking very (very, very) slow Russian with my very (very, very) patient teacher), but on Tuesdays and Fridays I now return to the kindergarten at 4 (after spending a few hours next door relaxing and planning my many lessons) to work an afternoon/evening shift.

The tricky part of this situation is that in the afternoons I teach the younger kids, who are three and four years old. This means a lot of drying tears, wiping food off mouths, buttoning coats, fixing hats, and struggling to get kids’ attention. I can already see some major differences between these students and my older students, who are five and six (some of whom are even the older siblings of the younger kids). I feel very attached to my older students and even a bit reluctant to learn new names and faces, but I think it will be fun — especially because almost half of this shift is spent watching and playing with the kids outside (at least while the weather’s nice; we’ll see what happens in the winter) as their parents arrive slowly, over the course of an hour or two, to take them home.

The playground is a great place to get to know the kids, especially the quieter ones. Every day V, who is shy, asks me to push him on the swings for at least fifteen minutes. He usually just sits there quietly, smiling as I talk to him, his little feet swinging up and down as he soars gleefully, but he has started opening up more during my lessons now that we spend this extra time together.

Even though most of the sociable older kids keep to themselves and their own games on the playground, sometimes they seek me out. This morning there were ladybugs everywhere outside — on the grass, on the pavement, on the walls, on our clothing, flying through the air. The ladybugs had black bodies and orangish-red spots. The kids picked them off the ground and placed them on their dirty fingers, commanding the little creatures to fly. (Alert: Talking Heads reference (originally intended, in the title, to describe the younger kids I now teach in the afternoon).) M insisted I watch at least ten ladybugs fly off his hand before letting another student drag me off to look at the ones she had caught and put in a bucket. Next, K showed me the ladybug he had found near a pile of sand. “She isn’t flying because she’s afraid,” he told me in English, careful to use the feminine pronoun (either because the Russian term for ladybug, “божья коровка” (bozh’ya korovka) is feminine, or because “lady” is part of the English name). He looked at me with very serious eyes and placed the ladybug in the grass.

the lonesome crowded bus

There are always very few people on the bus when I leave work in the afternoon. Not only is the kindergarten located at the beginning of the route of the bus I take, but it’s also in Akademgorodok, which is a quiet area of Krasnoyarsk.

Every day I get on the empty bus and sit in a corner where I prepare to watch the forest turn to city through the dirty windows. Then, as we zip down the street, stopping to pick up passengers at the Kirensky Institue of Physics (all of whom I always assume are physicists (even though half of them are young children)) (also, I mentioned the Institute in a previous post), the Siberian Federal University (where nearly all the passengers are students, or at least are teenagers and twenty-somethings traveling in giant groups, wearing backpacks), and various other bus stops — and as forest does indeed turn to city — the bus fills up. And it fills all the way up.

a picture I found on the internet of the type of bus I take to/from work. in the afternoon, though, it’s usually an older bus that’s a bit shorter.

The type of bus I take home is small, with sixteen seats, so by the time we arrive at my bus stop, there are always people standing. Usually there are too many people standing to walk comfortably, and a bit of pushing (or light tapping (though it seems like a bit of pushing isn’t always considered rude)) is necessary.

But sometimes, like yesterday, by the time we get to my stop there are so many people standing that it’s impossible to move. People are packed from window to window, from the front of the bus to the back. Elderly men and women sit in the sixteen seats, while young people, headphone wires dangling from their ears, hover over them, leaning on whatever they can — seats, windows, other people — to stay upright as the bus bounces down the bumpy streets.

As I climbed on the bus in the mid-afternoon sun yesterday, I looked optimistically around the empty vehicle, its worn seats all unoccupied, entertaining the idea that today would be the day that they would remain unoccupied until my stop (or at least that I’d be able to walk the length of the bus to the exit without having to push people out of my way). I noted how short the distance was between my seat in the back corner and the front door, unable to imagine even the densest crowd of passengers making the exit difficult to reach.

By the time we approached my bus stop, though, what had seemed so easy only fifteen minutes earlier seemed impossible. Having surrendered my coveted seat when the bus filled up, I had been swallowed by the swarm of passengers; I was just one body in the middle of the mass that had expanded into all four corners of the bus; I was surrounded by bodies (short, tall, young, old, smelling of perfume, reeking of body odor, teetering on tall heels (just kidding, they don’t teeter; they walk with shocking confidence), slouching over shopping bags), holding on to the handrail on the ceiling as if my life depended on the strength of my arms. (Good thing it didn’t, though, because my arms are pretty weak).

Lacking the energy to push my way through the crowd when we got to my stop (and lacking the belief that it was even possible to push through), I got off a stop later than usual (or, rather, I was swept off my feet by the large group of people exiting suddenly, carried off the bus by their feet (pausing to pay the attendant sitting by the door, of course), and deposited on the sidewalk as they dispersed.)

(Title adapted from the title of a Modest Mouse album. I think we all have experienced loneliness in a crowded place (right?).)

boundaries

I love to walk. (It’s in my blood: My ancestors have been walking for about six million years (hah).) I love to walk so much that I regularly take walks even when I have nowhere to go.

Krasnoyarsk isn’t a small city, but it’s not huge. If I turn down the wrong street I can feel its emptiness as I walk, a sensation that comes from under the soles of my shoes and works its way up to my head, which starts turning left and right quickly as I try to evaluate where I am and why the street ends and turns into an abandoned, overgrown lot. There’s always more city on the other side of these lots (I don’t live near the edge of the city), but sometimes when I walk, or when I sit on the bus, or even when I look out my ninth-floor bedroom window (which I am looking through as I write), I see where the city stops churning out apartment buildings and pauses to breathe out trees, and I really feel the sparseness of this city.

I’ve never felt stuck inside a grid of city streets in Krasnoyarsk — because in my neighborhood there isn’t even a grid of city streets to get stuck inside. Streets curve left and right, up and down small hills. I don’t get that sensation of walking in a city when I take walks in my neighborhood, a sensation I opened myself up to so much that, after exploring enough cities in the first 21 years and 11.5 months of my life, I now feel comfortable in cities despite only once spending as much as two months living in one. Instead, in Krasnoyarsk, I get a sensation of pushing the boundaries of a small space (even though, to repeat, it’s not really a small space): If I push hard enough at the areas of my neighborhood where streets end or turn into paths leading to apartment buildings, the streets will straighten themselves out into some sort of neat network of roads that makes sense; urban buildings will fall into place along the edges of streets, close together; and parks will grow where there are no buildings.

After exploring the more traditionally laid-out center of the city on Saturday, I tried not to feel frustrated when walking through my neighborhood on Sunday. I felt that if I only walked another couple hundred feet something (at least just my attitude) would change, but I grew cold and my feet started hurting in the boots I’d been wearing all week, and I went home feeling like I hadn’t seen anything except sprawling apartment buildings.

Next time I will adjust my attitude and set off in a different direction.

free english

and now for something completely different (an abrupt change of facade)

On Saturday I took the bus downtown with M. It was overcast when we left home, but by the time we got to the center of the city the sun was shining and I shed my scarf and hat. (Spoiler: That might have been the last warm day of the year. It was chilly the day before Saturday and has been chilly ever since.) We walked to the school where M teaches, which is actually just a couple classrooms on the third floor of a strange-looking building (which I’d photographed the last time I was downtown (before realizing it was where M works) because of the comical change of facade).

While M was scheduled to teach a class (which no one wound up attending (nice gesture to a teacher who gives up his Saturday afternoon, right?)), I met up with J and we took a walk. As we passed the entrance to a small park, we noticed a whiteboard standing on an easel on the sidewalk, on which was written, in simple handwriting, the words “Free English” (in English, with some Russian written below). Two men dressed in suits were standing by the easel, searching the faces of passersby for interest. Irrationally wearied as I am by conversations with strangers offering or selling things on city streets, and wary as I am of approaching unknown men on city streets in foreign countries, I prepared to continue walking past the sign without stopping. Luckily J realized there was a potentially interesting conversation to be had, and so she led us to the men.

Turns out they were missionaries from the Mormon Church — one from America and one from Kazakhstan — who offer free English classes weekly to fulfill the service component of their mission. We had an interesting conversation about their impressions of the city and Russian culture, as well as their missionary work. The American came to Russia from Texas knowing no Russian, and began his missionary work after two months of intense classes. He described his experiences favorably, saying he liked the city (despite the fact that the dust destroys his shoes). Both men seemed optimistic about their two-year stay in Krasnoyarsk (they’ve only been here a couple months), despite the winter weather they will have to endure to advertise their classes in the winter (and just the winter weather in general), and despite the reactions they might get from people who find their work strange.

Next, J and I met up with M and went looking for food. We came across a Turkish restaurant, where we ate dinner (which lacked most of the necessary spices, but I’m already used to that aspect of Russian food) and drank tea (no complaints there). Shout-out to our patient waitress for answering all our questions. Sorry it took us 20 minutes to read the menu.

meet the parents

On Tuesday and Wednesday evenings I attended parent-teacher meetings at the kindergarten. Parents (mostly mothers (only two fathers showed up)) sat in a circle, introduced their families, and listened to teachers describe schedules and curricula. Since the meetings were conducted entirely in Russian, I just sat there silently, acting as living proof that the students indeed have a teacher who doesn’t speak Russian (at least not well enough to participate in such fast-paced conversations (although I understood most of what they said when I was paying attention (but it was easy to get lost in my own thoughts because they were, well, a million times easier to sort through))).

As I sat there quietly, reminding myself every two minutes to push my shoulders back and lift my chin (only to notice my body slouched slightly forward again two minutes later), it really hit me that these very well dressed parents (whose shoulders were all back and whose chins were all lifted) are paying a lot of money (not that I’m earning very much by American standards) for me to teach their kids English — and they have very high expectations. At first I worried that my slouched shoulders and lowered chin (and 21-year-old face and muddy boots and in-between-two-lengths (two DIY lengths, at that) haircut) would give me away as a fraud.

But then I realized: I’m not a fraud! (Whew!) Yes, I taught kindergarten for the first time three weeks ago, but everyone has a first job. No, I’m not trained in teaching, which would make the first-job experience easier, but as an English-language teacher the most important thing I can bring to the classroom is English that is articulated clearly and introduced in fun and interesting ways — and that’s easy for me. The kids have a well trained teacher (I’ve seen her in action and learned a thing or two from her) for their two or three Russian classes (where they learn as they would in a regular kindergarten), and my classes are only meant to introduce English vocabulary and conversation skills.

Once I realized that my ability to expose these kids to English on a daily basis (and my (strong) desire to learn how to become the best teacher I possibly can be (which, albeit, the parents can’t tell by looking at me, but still)) removes me entirely from the “fraud” category, I felt much better and relaxed into listening to one parent ask long-winded questions about their child’s progress and another parent badger the teachers about their kid’s ability to speak English and a third parent express their disappointment that we left for a field trip last week before their poor child got to school (an hour late). (Okay, that last one was actually something I heard last week, but it fit well into this list.)

Someday, maybe, my confidence in my teaching abilities will push my shoulders back and lift my chin and make me look like (and, more importantly, make me be) a confident adult all on its own. Someday.

rescue mission

On Friday, another friend of mine, M, arrived from America. If it seems strange that I’m teaching English in the middle of Siberia with two friends from college, well, it is strange (and it gets stranger: a third friend is coming in October). It was a mixture of fate and common sense (we all wanted to go to Russia after graduation, so why shouldn’t we have planned to go together?) that led us to Krasnoyarsk, and I’ll probably write about it in another post.

Anyway, M is working at a different school than J and I (and B, who is coming in October). His school offered to find an apartment for him, just like mine did for J, B, and me. However, while the apartment my employer found was spacious, comfortably furnished, equipped with new appliances, and situated on the top floor of an apartment building in a safe area, M’s apartment was the complete opposite — there were just two battered, grimy old couches in the living room/bedroom combination, and only a sink, a fridge, and a stove (each standing alone; there was no counter) placed haphazardly about the tiny kitchen, and everything reeked of old cigarette smoke (after only ten minutes inside my throat felt like it was closing up (and there were old cigarette butts littering the floor)).

J and I decided we couldn’t let M continue to live in a dingy, under-furnished apartment, when we had an extra mattress and a living room available in our apartment. So he moved in with us while his employer searches for a better place for him.

Due to M’s intense desire to learn Russian, he strikes up conversations with people everywhere; in only four days I have heard tiny bits and pieces of the life stories of a cab driver, a waiter, and a woman selling ice cream in a stand on the sidewalk on Svobodniy Prospekt. I met M four years ago in Russian 101 — a class he signed up for as a joke. Funny how things turn out.

Today in school the students had a moving-up ceremony. The Foxes (five-year-old students) became Jaguars, and the Jaguars (six-year-old students) became Lions (and the younger students have their celebration later this week). In order to “become” their new animals, the students had to complete tasks and do dances and sing songs. I got to wear a lion mask (as I’m the new Lions’ teacher) and set small tasks for the Jaguars to complete in order to “cross the jungle” and become Lions.

I didn’t have to teach any lessons today because of the celebration, which was a relief. I’ve still been having trouble getting the kids to listen to me in class, which disrupts the flow of my lesson plans. I watch other teachers in class every day, though, so it’s just a matter of applying teaching skills better and, more importantly (I think), giving the students a little more time to become comfortable with me as their teacher.

Troya Park, where I sat on a bench for a while in the middle of my walk

Finally, last Saturday I went for a long walk. The weather was beautiful; it was a perfect autumn morning (although maybe the chill was a bit premature, since it’s warmed up again since then).

stranger in a strange land

If I drink a glass of kefir before bed every night, will I become Russian? If I eat cabbage soup with sour cream at least twice a week, will I begin wearing high heels every day, like so many Russian women (young and old) do? (Spoiler: Even if I live off cabbage soup with sour cream for the rest of my life, this will never happen.) If I eat tvorog and buckwheat kasha and yogurt for breakfast every morning, will I stand at the bus stop without self-consciously checking my reflection in the windows of every passing bus, making sure I look normal, convincing myself that people’s eyes are just passing over me, not lingering on me because I look like an alien? (By the way, speaking of aliens, I’ve never actually read Stranger In A Strange Land, but the title was floating around in my head for some reason.)

My cashier in the supermarket today asked me if I had twenty kopecks when I paid, to make the change she gave me even. I didn’t understand, so I began giving her rubles. She smiled and said, in Russian, “No, these,” and pointed to a kopeck. She didn’t roll her eyes when she realized I was a foreigner. She didn’t try to cheat me of the change she owed me. She didn’t throw my groceries on the floor, stomp on them, and exit the store in a fit of rage, leaving a mess of cabbage and kefir and tvorog and buckwheat (look, I’m trying) at my feet. So why do I constantly have to remind myself that the vast majority Russians would not react in such a way to foreigners? (Maybe I have xenophobia-phobia (an irrational fear of irrational fear of what is perceived to be foreign (which is a word I made up (so don’t google it))).)

Regardless of what the people with whom I interact think of foreigners or Americans, I am slowly learning that I need not be embarrassed when I am “found out” as a foreigner (especially because being “found out” is unavoidable as soon as I open my mouth, as I mentioned here). To me, an important part of being a 20-something is experiencing, for the first time, a sense of confidence (and even comfort) in many of the things I do and think — the things that “make me me.” I should not slow this process by over-thinking everything I do while I walk around Krasnoyarsk or over-analyzing every unsuccessful conversation I have in Russian, beating myself up over each mistake I make.

unrequited love

Today, on the way to work, I thought about seeing my students in twenty minutes, and instantly I felt a sort of peaceful happiness, picturing them at their most angelic, surrounding me on the carpet before lessons. I thought of their bright faces, serious eyes, and wide smiles, and I felt a grin grow on my own face.

The next moment, however, I reminded myself of the difference between being excited to see a group of six-year-olds and being excited to see a friend: a peer with whom I am acquainted precisely because we get along well and respect each other. I cannot expect the same amiability, respect, or friendship from my students (at least not on a regular basis), primarily because we are acquainted because I am their teacher: someone who sits them down quietly and teaches them boring lessons in a language they do not fully understand; someone who pulls them away from each other when they fight; someone who takes their shoes and socks off for them when they refuse to cooperate at nap time and takes away their toys during lessons and tells them not to climb the walls at recess.

Today during Speech Development class, A, who very easily falls under the influence of the kids who happen to be acting up on a given day (and occasionally starts trouble himself), helped me out during the lesson. He reminded other kids of my directions, and completed all his worksheets (with a great deal of pride). Then, D, who was in time-out for misbehaving, fell out of his chair (because he was playing around in his chair (which was why he was in time-out in the first place)) and scraped a bit of his skin and started bleeding (and then, of course, started screaming). I left the room for a moment to bring D to another teacher to clean and bandage his cut, and when I returned, half the class was running around the room, laughing and screaming, A practically leading them.

The rest of the lesson was completely unproductive. I was never able to reestablish control over A (though I think he is beginning to respect (and like) me more and more every day ). (Side note: He is the boy who almost always wears blue. Blue jeans and a blue shirt today.)

Yes, I am grateful for the time when A obeyed me and cooperated in the classroom. But if, afterwards, I had begun thinking of him as completely reformed, the type of child (like V or M) who is always quiet during lessons and ready to follow the rules, as if his progress were completely linear, I would have been sorely disappointed by his actions after D’s accident. (Instead, I was only slightly sorely disappointed.)

Sometimes I feel like I love these children and they love me (or at least care that I exist). Other times, however, they are rude to me, they ignore me (and my attempts to show affection), and they humiliate me. Why can’t they love me all the time? I am ready to love them all the time, but they do not notice this because they are six years old.

(I realize that sometimes it sounds like I don’t give six-year-olds enough credit. However, for every time I notice a lack of some adult perception in them there is a time when I notice some positive trait they have that adults lack. Six-year-olds are pretty neat.)

Yenisei River and Communalniy Bridge

And here is a completely unrelated picture of Krasnoyarsk: the Yenisei River and the Communalniy Bridge.