Accomplishments of the Day

1. Teaching a high school student how to say “bum a cigarette.” I should probably have an ethical problem with this.
2. Finishing Chuck Klosterman’s book Killing Yourself to Live. Very excellent.
3. Getting the ball rolling on learning Turkish.
4. Listening to the Seattle live Pearl Jam concert and remembering the amazing bridge to “Betterman” that you can only hear in live versions. If you think you have heard “Betterman” without this bridge...think again.
5. Writing an improved lesson plan for Critical Thinking class tomorrow. Trying to incorporate a listening component...we’ll see how it goes.
6. Having an ethical battle with myself over reading Paul Zindel’s The Pigman or loaning it to a student first. Sorry, Fulbright, but my love of children’s literature is getting in the way of me actually teaching it. (I don't think this can be counted as an accomplishment.)
7. Posting photos of Bucharest on Facebook with descriptive captions.
8. Figuring out how to put Facebook friends on a Limited Profile list...mwahaha!

Virtual Tour of Comrat, Part 3

These are some of the more mundane sights of Comrat...

This is a rather ordinary street in the center of Comrat.

Hey, want to move to Canada? Apparently a lot of people in Moldova do.

One of our two main markets. I bought a gorgeous scarf here this week.

Some Communist Party graffiti. The last president was a Communist, but I think they're losing power. The political situation is weird.

We have a museum, but I haven't been yet. It's on my to-do list.

This is where I buy most of my groceries. It is pretty cool. It only opened up about a year ago. I keep my fingers crossed that it won't close due to the economic crisis.

This is the electric company. These are the people I blame when I have no electricity.

This street is named Gavrilova. See below...

There are several plaques around the city explaining why streets have certain names. I find this cute. I think this person was a World War II soldier. The picture didn't turn out too legible.

Here's a well. People in the villages get basically all their water from wells, but we have indoor plumbing, luckily!

Virtual Tour of Comrat, Part 2

The virtual tour of Comrat continues with playgrounds and memorials...

A cross I found near the cemetery. There are lots of crosses everywhere. I still haven't managed to catch a shot of one the roadside Jesus shrines.

A playground near the World War II monument. This is just a small part of it. It's a pretty cool playground.

Monument to fallen soldiers of World War II. Everyone who gets married has their picture taken by this monument. People from this part of the world take World War II pretty seriously. Like much of Moldova, the town was under Romanian fascist control during the war, so the street near this monument is called "The Street of Liberators."

Plaque on the monument with names of fallen soldiers. I'm not sure if the names are soldiers from Comrat or people who died defending the city.

Another plaque. People mostly lay artificial bouquets so they last longer.

No town or village in the former USSR is complete without a World War II monument. Almost every village you drive through has two major constructions: a huge sign with the name of the city, and a big monument to WWII. I'm trying to remember where Mesa's World War II monument is located. I know in one of the parks downtown there is a monument to the British soldiers who trained in Arizona during the war. There must be a formal World War II monument...somewhere. (I know there is definitely a monument to the pioneers in Pioneer Park.)

Virtual Tour of Comrat, Part 1

After several weeks of highs in the 40s, we in Comrat have received an unexpected reprieve from winter! Magically, the temperature has soared to a peak of 70 degrees, and I have been grabbing at these last straws of fall the best I can. I've spent a few hours the last few days wandering around Comrat, listening to "This American Life" (ironic, I know), and taking pictures.

So, without further ado, I present a virtual tour of Comrat. Unfortunately, it's somewhat limited by the fact that I feel awkward about taking pictures of people's houses, cemetaries, and other personal places. Hopefully, these picture will give you a better understanding of our fair town!

This is Comrat's city hall. I know my dad will be happy to see that I have taken a picture of it. Everyone at work last week was cursing the mayor's office last week because they started heating this building before the kindergartens. Yeah...some people have no shame.

This dog was very vigorously rolling in the grass. We have a lot of stray dogs here in Comrat. You have to develop stray-dog-blindness in order to not sort of freak out when they are swarming around you. Makes you appreciate Bob Barker. "Don't forget to spay and neuter your pets!

I really like this basketball court. I should see if I can get one of the Peace Corps Volunteers to play some hoops with me.

Memorial to soldiers from Comrat who died in the Afghan War of the 1980s. I find the expression on the soldiers face quite poignant. It always has a lot of flowers.

Comrat's House of Culture. The sign says "Welcome" in three languages: Gagauz, Moldovan (Romanian), and Russian. I guess it used to be a movie theater, but now they just hold concerts and big presentations there occasionally. I think there was a bodybuilding contest there last week.

Here's our lovely statue of Lenin walking boldly into the future, located on Lenin Street. I'm not sure why they decided to keep this statue of him around, but people here seem to view it with some amusement. However, there are still flowers regularly placed on the base of the statue.

This is the Turkish library, named after Ataturk, located directly opposite Lenin. This is part of the Turkish government's charm offensive toward Gagauzia (the Gagauz people speak a language quite similar to Turkish). I'm not sure that Turkish foreign policy is really effective here; most people seem to be fairly indifferent toward Turkey.

Next to Lenin is the lycée/lyceum/whatever you want to call it. I think it's the most prestigious school in the area. This is where I take Russian lessons. The little kids running around when school lets out are pretty cute.

I think I've already posted a picture or two of this church, but it's worth putting up another one. The Gagauz are Orthodox, so this is an Orthodox Church. I haven't actually been inside yet.

I've got way more pictures to post from my walks around Comrat, so keep an eye out for Part 2.

Swine Flu

Apparently, the flu epidemic warranted closing all the schools in Moldova for the next week, giving me a whole week off! I am planning on going to a random place in Romania.

Seriously, I wish they'd just be honest and say, "We're not closing the schools because of swine flu. We're closing the schools because we're too cheap to heat them." I guess in theory this makes sense. If you're not going to heat kindergarten classrooms, at least don't make kids go there and then get sick from constantly fighting the cold.

People here seem to be concerned about swine flu. I am also concerned about swine flu, but my response is to wash my hands more often, not close all of the schools. I feel like all these international organizations think they are doing something by putting up H1N1 posters. Why don't you buy our department a bottle of hand sanitizer? 1) We have no running water in our department so you can't wash your hands the normal way. 2) Washing your hands is a better way of protecting yourself than simply not going to work. 3) Hand sanitizer is totally unknown here so you would be introducing a nice, useful product that could compensate for poor utilities. Sigh.

Well, I can't really complain too much, because it did get me a week without work. How I will finish teaching all the hours I'm required to teach, I have no idea, but I'm getting ready for Romania!

In other random news, my homestay mom and I hosted a Peace Corps Volunteer who got stuck in Comrat when the last bus out of town was full. The expatriot connection network strikes again!

Moldovans are nice

Recently, one of the Fulbrighters mentioned to us that an American she knows in Chisinau had told her that he got tired of the rudeness of people in the shops in Moldova.

This caused general consternation in our group, because we all think that Moldovans are by and large extremely nice.

Of course, people don’t exactly smile at you when you walk down the street. You can’t expect waitresses to beam at you when you order a soda. Nevertheless, you will often find authentically friendly people working in the shops. It is more pleasant because you know that they are being gracious because they want to be, and not because their boss will get mad at them if they don’t. People seem kind of cold when you first arrive, but now that I have started to get to know the cleaning ladies and the copy guy at the university, I will hear a chorus of “Hello!” at the beginning of the day and “Good bye!” at the end (in Russian, of course).

Moreover, when I have been traveling, like Blanche DuBois I have always depended on the kindness of strangers. People on the buses will gladly help me find my way when I’m not sure where to get off. Once people know you are a foreigner, they will even chat with you a bit. One time a woman gave me very detailed instructions and even tracked down a taxi for me when I was trying to hail a bus to get back home from the town of Hincesti. When I said thanks, she replied, “Мы же люди!” (We are people, after all!)

My colleagues have also been quite nice. Last Friday I attended the wedding of Tatiana, one of the German teachers. It was very touching to be invited because I know she didn’t have many spots available because she had to invite all of her distant cousins from all over Moldova. Three of us from the department went as representatives and had a very fun time. Her mom even came by and asked me if I was understanding everything, which I thought was cute. There were about 150 guests and they really put out quite the feast! I forgot my camera, but Tatiana said I could download a photo or two to show my friends, so expect a picture update soon!

Probably the coolest thing has been the enthusiasm of Moldovans who live in America to introduce us to their families. Not one but two Moldovans that I knew through friends in the States have gone out of their way to give me the phone numbers of their families to visit here. Keep in mind, these were people that I knew through the most tenuous of connections! One Moldovan happened to go to school with my cousin in Georgia, and another was friends with the foreign exchange student who lived with my parents’ friends. What is surprising is that people are actually sincere! They will actually get offended if you DON’T contact their relatives.

I think this is one of the benefits of being in a small country. People are pretty tickled that you actually care enough to come here, so they are happy to help confused foreigners like myself.

“Horizon,” the Theoretical Lyceum

Last week I went to a Turkish-English private school located in Ceadir-Lunga, not far from Comrat. I was asked to visit by Adem, one of the students from the Turkish student groups. He had been asking me to come for about a month, and it only just got organized last week.

I was fairly apprehensive when we were setting up a time to visit the school, because Adem started talking about me going there on “MondayS” and not just “Monday.” I was like, oh no, do they think I’m going to be teaching there every week?! I’m all about helping young Moldovans learn English, but I don’t really have time in my schedule to spend three and a half hours getting to and from Ceadir-Lunga and prepping for two lessons.

So I found Adem bright and early. Actually, it wasn’t bright at all--I don’t think I’ve seen the sun in four days here. Anyways, we took a taxi to Ceadir-Lunga and Adem started telling me all about the school. It seems pretty interesting: basically, it is a private boarding school founded by a rich Turkish lady. Instruction is in Russian and Romanian for the humanities and in English for the sciences. The students also learn Turkish. Many of the students are from Gagauzia, so Turkish is not that hard for them to learn, since they are both Turkic languages. Adem teaches Turkish to two students there on a weekly basis. Athough he attends university in Comrat, Adem actually commutes from Ceadir-Lunga everyday. I guess he likes living there better than living in Comrat.

My Turkish students are always complaining that Comrat is boring. I kind of see their point. After all, we don’t even have a movie theater. There isn’t much going on on weekends--just a few cafes are open. It’s a nice change for me to live here after going to school in Phoenix (after all, Phoenix is the fourth largest city in America, as I constantly tell everyone here), but I can see that coming from Turkey to here is pretty much a let-down for them.

Anyways, the students I met on the first day were somewhat awful in their general rambunctiousness and liberal use of profanity that they learn from rap and American movies. I’d like to mention first that I was NOT told that this was an all-boys school until I walked in to the classroom. “Hmm...there are no girls here. This must be an all-boys school. Thanks for the heads-up, Adem!” was my internal reaction.

It was quite the culture shock coming from the university, where all of my students are nice village girls. These boys were kind of insane...one kid was actually playing his PSP in class. Seriously, a PSP. I talked to Adem about it later (turns out he also is their dormitory monitor) and he told me that the students there have money because their parents work abroad. What they don’t have, unfortunately, is real parental figures. It’s the side of labor migration that we don’t really think about. All of these kids are at a boarding school with just the monitors and teachers for guidance. A lot of them haven’t seen their fathers or mothers in forever. Hence the brattiness. Unfortunately, Fulbright didn’t give me any training in classroom management.

This week, I visited again. This time I had class with two other groups as well. The first group was some fairly well-behaved eleventh graders. The second group was once again the crazy rambunctious kids. I actually had to call in their teacher because I wasn’t going to deal with the swearing and their complete unwillingness to listen. (I should say here that only 1/3 of the class is really bad. 1/3 is in the middle, and the other 1/3 yells at the other kids to shut up.) I guess their teacher got really mad because they sent me to another class for the final period. This, I guess, was supposed to be a chemistry class, but I got to take over.

The school apparently divides the twelfth grade into the good kids and the bad kids. These kids were like angels compared to the other class. First of all, two of the kids had been to America. They had qualified for this uber-prestigious State Department program administered by ACTR here. One was in Wisconsin and the other was in Hawaii. So their English was awesome. Actually, the other kids spoke pretty well, too. One kid was even making English language jokes. This kid was always running his mouth but he was entertaining. While another student was introducing himself, he was like, “He likes to box.” I asked the student in question if he actually liked boxing, and he said no. The kid then says, “I mean, he’s wearing boxers. No, actually, he sleeps in a box.” I was kind of floored by this, because I haven’t met many people here who could actually play around with English words, much less kids who are still in school.

After I left that class, the students from the bad class mobbed me in the hallway and were like, “Do you forgive us? If you forgive us, our teacher says we can have lessons with you the next time you come.” I am a softie. I forgave them. At any rate, if I can at least have one class with the nice kids it should be fine. I also have an ulterior motive--since I’m teaching for free, maybe I can convince the school to give me free Turkish lessons next semester. They already gave me a free mug. Maybe I will appeal to their sense of patriotism. Hmm, that shouldn’t be hard to do.

(The students from the rambunctious class have a YouTube video online, which they insisted that I watch, but as it is filled with heavily accented English profanity, I'm going to refrain from posting a link here. I can't be responsible for spreading this video around.)

Day of Pedagogy...Fun Pictures!

The long-awaited (?) pictures from Teachers' Day. Dancing, dancing!

Circle dancing!

A fairly awful picture of me. As you can tell, I was getting into the spirit.

My colleagues at the Foreign Languages Department, earlier in the day.

Gettin' down.

We had a nice little concert and presentation before the dinner. The guy talking is our rector.

The Giver

I’ve spent the entire day working on my lesson plans, which has been surprisingly rewarding. Some highlights:

I’m going to *try* to use an excerpt from Allen Ginsberg’s “America” in my American Culture and Civilization class. If you are not familiar with this poem, you can see why this might be dicey by reading it here. Still, I’m hoping it will be awesome. Other featured authors: Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, and Claude McKay. I think it’s gonna be fun!

I found a good website for English learners that has...American folklore stories!!! This is excellent because I happen to teach a class on that very subject. My lessons on Paul Bunyan and John Henry just got a whole lot easier. Thanks, Voice of America! U.S. propaganda is good for something, after all!

For my class on American music, I’m trying to figure out how to go from Copland to Jimmy Eat world in a 80 minute class. So far, I’ve only found time to go up to Johnny Cash’s version of “Hurt” (representing country music, of course). I’m going to be rockin’ the CCR. I’m wondering how “Fortunate Son” will translate.

The most enjoyable part of prepping has been reading Lois Lowry’s The Giver again. I’m hoping to use the first half or so in my Children’s Literature class. It will be interesting to see if I can get students to read it on their own at all...students here aren’t so fond of homework. Actually, that class has at least a few students who like to read

English on their own, so I think at least some will read it. It is, after all, awesome.

For the uninitiated, The Giver is basically a modern children’s classic. The characters live in a world free from pain, but at the cost of never being allowed to make any of their own choices. The main character Jonas is a young boy who is selected by the community to “receive” all the past memories--of pain, war, and love--that other members of the community are sheltered from for their own good.

Of course, the former USSR is a very interesting place to be reading books about negative utopias. I was having an interesting conversation with my Russian tutor this week about (what else?) Stalin. We were reading Anna Akhmatova’s poem cycle “Requiem,” (English version, Russian version) which is about Ahmatova’s experiences waiting in line to visit her son who was being held in jail (probably to punish her for her poetry) during World War II. So, Stalinism was actually quite topical.

My teacher was definitely familiar with a lot of the facts that were suppressed by Soviet censors--such as the fact that Stalin’s purges of military officers severely weakened the Red Army on the eve of the war. She acknowledged that Stalin did many terrible things, but she pointed out that the line between being strict and being cruel is blurry. She thinks that a government has to be strict to maintain order. She argued that during the days of the USSR, she knew she would always have an apartment and a job and that her paycheck would arrive on time. Now, the government in Moldova is in such a mess that teachers (and professors at the university, too!) never know if they will actually be paid this month or not. If you’ve been following my blog, you know that the government can’t even be relied on to consistently provide gas, electricity, or water. It has been eighteen years since the fall of the USSR and these things are still happening!

Lowry’s book is basically about this exact trade-off. In The Giver, lifetime security and freedom from pain can only be achieved through extreme government coercion and the killing of innocents. I don’t think that Lowry intended her book to be a criticism of communism, (the characters in The Giver shun workers, so you can’t argue that they’re Marxists), but it was obviously an influence. She is basically asking the same questions as my teacher. Where’s the line? Although Lowry obviously doesn’t come down on the side of killing innocent people, part of the book’s power is how she really brings you inside the issue and enables you to empathize with all of the characters.. It’s truly a fascinating take on the subject, and I highly recommend the book.

Updates!

1. Wine is fun.

Last weekend was Chisinau’s annual wine festival! Because the Soviet Union loved specializing industry by republic, Moldova was designated as the main wine producer for the entire USSR. In Gagauzia, this is particularly true. (If I had a lei for every grape arbor I saw walking around the city, I would be one rich Moldovan.) It seems like everyone makes homemade wine. Bottles of wine in the stores usually cost between two and three dollars, so it’s pretty cheap! At any rate, since the fall of the USSR, a lot of their distribution networks were disrupted, but they still provide a lot of wine to former Soviet countries.

I headed into Chisinau last Friday with Stephanie, the other English Teaching Assistant. We initially had major problems securing an apartment to rent, which caused us to rue the day we’d decided to even try to visit the wine festival. During our troubles, we got a brief introduction to the world of Peace Corps in Moldova. They have a headquarters in Chisinau with showers, computers, U.S. military television, and a whole room full of English books. It’s pretty awesome.

Anyways, things got a whole lot better when Amy, one of the Fulbright researchers here, called us and invited us to stay with her and Brian (another Fulbrighter). We crashed at Brian’s amazing Moldovan pad, which has three nice, big rooms and a kitchen with a breakfast nook! It was awesome, mostly because we could relax and just be American for a while.

After a couple of hours of relaxing, we went to the wine festival. It was outdoors, in this exposition area in a nice park. All of the leaves were changing, which was particularly pretty. Along the roads in the park were elaborate stands set up by every wine company in the country. Best of all, the wine was twenty cents a glass! Amazing. Unfortunately, a lot of Moldovan wine is very vinegary, so there was a glass or two that went into the bushes. We had shish kebab for lunch and cherry pastries for desert. There was folk music and dancing. The longer the day went on the more intoxicated dancing there was for us to watch!

After dinner, we went café- and bar-hopping, which was a lot of fine. Comrat has almost no nightlife, so it was fun to just have a beer in a bar. The bars we visited were pretty cool and I hope to explore more of them soon!

The next day, Amy moved into her apartment and Stephanie and I accompanied her. We walked down to the wine festival for another round of drinking, which was quite worth it. We sat down at a stand that had snacks, hoping to buy something to munch on while we drank our wine. Awesomely, they started giving us all of their “young” (not totally fermented) wine--for free! The young wine is like semi-sweet, slightly alcoholic grape juice. It is almost bubbly and basically tastes like something out of Harry Potter. We polished off a pitcher or two, and then realized we were running quite late to a meeting, which necessitated some unpleasant speed-walking while tipsy.

All in all, we had a great time. Chisinau went up several notches in my estimation...but it’s still not as awesome as Odessa.

2. I have a sinus infection.

I hate being sick in foreign countries because there’s this whole incomprehensible culture of sickness everywhere you go. In the U.S., when you are somewhat sick (allergies, cold, etc.), you are usually expected to tough it out and show up for work/school/whatever. You can expect some sympathy, but not much. Basically, you haul around Kleenexes for a week and make the best of it.

In Moldova, when you are sick, there’s a whole other set of rules. You are actually allowed, even expected, to stay home when you are sick. You should not show visible signs of sickness in public. This disturbs people and will prompt them to insist that you go home. Being sick in public will also elicit great amounts of advice on various home remedies. The most popular remedies for colds: lemons and honey. Also, you are not allowed to eat things from the refrigerator if you are sick.

There is a nice side of people fretting over you constantly, however. Anna, the girl who works in the American Center, insisted on going with me to the pharmacy to find some medicine. Although the medicine I purchased was of dubious value, having someone accompany me to the pharmacy made me feel loved. :) Thanks to a large supply of American Mucinex, my sinus infection seems to be manageable right now, although my treatment of it is being hindered by the problem below.

3. Our water is scary.

The water in our city has been turned off since Monday. Apparently, there was some filtering/sanitation procedure that had to be done, which meant no water.

I am always confused about what to do when there is no water. Each family has secret stores of bottles of water that they save up for these occasions, but I never seem to know where they are. Also: can you drink the water in these bottles? If I use it to brush my teeth, will I die of giardia? If I wash my face with it, will I be considered a “bottled-water-hog”? Very perplexing. My solution so far is to use limited quantities of the bottled water and then buy some of my own for brushing my teeth. I think the people I live with don’t understand how bizarre this is for me. I’m not sure if they appreciate that this NEVER happens in America.

Yesterday, the water returned! Unfortunately, it is extremely, extremely chlorinated. Our bathtub is full of this water right now, and it is aqua-colored and has some chemical floating at the top. I’m afraid to do anything with this water but wash my hands and flush the toilet, but this is a big improvement over yesterday. I am hoping normal water will return soon.

Days since Erin has taken a shower: 4. Let’s hope this number doesn’t get too much higher.

Communal Apartment

According to a Russian broadcast of "Vesti" (Вести = news) that I just watched, about 200,000 families in Moscow still live in communal apartments. (I think the region was Moscow...my comprehension isn't always that amazing.) Talk about crazy! I though those had been consigned to the dustbin of history, considering how much people universally revile them.

There seems to be a government push to get people out of these communal apartments. However, they interviewed some people who lived in communal apartments, and they didn't seem entirely keen to leave. Some people complained about feeling like they lived "in a train station." An old lady said she never actually bathed in the apartment, but preferred to go to communal baths instead. Still, a young woman explained that she doesn't want to leave the apartment because it is in a good location in the city. She'd rather live in a communal apartment in the center than a private apartment in the boonies. Given the sprawling size of Moscow, this is understandable.

My fellow Fulbright colleague here said she had seen such apartments in Poland. I myself have never actually seen one. Interesting issue! The more things change, the more they stay the same...

For a compelling depiction of the, ahem, romantic possibilities of living in a communal apartment, see the excellent film East-West.

This picture is from a site (http://kommunalka.colgate.edu/) that has virtual tours of communal apartments.

Happy Teacher's Day!

It seems that every profession has a holiday here in Moldova, and professors are no exception. Today we celebrated День педагога, or Teacher’s Day.

I was at first somewhat underwhelmed by Teacher’s Day, as it required that I pay 15 lei ($1.40) last week for the celebrations. I argued that if it was my day, they should be paying me, but to no avail.

Today, I was happy to discover that one of my classes gave me some pretty white flowers in honor of the holiday, which was quite touching. They are my literary analysis class, definitely one of my favorite groups to work with. The whole department also got cake and champagne from one of the groups, which I very much appreciated.

Then we went home and changed and then returned to the university for a concert and presentation. Several of the students sang and the rector gave a speech. Teachers nominated by their departments also got awards. After the concert, we had a fourchette, which is basically a banquet with lots of different small dishes for snacks. This being Gagauzia, we celebrated with champagne and homemade wine. After many toasts, the dancing began.

I certainly hadn’t danced that much since the Person-Rennell wedding! It took me back to the old days of dancing on Armenian buses. All of the professors got out on the floor and showed off their dance moves. My dance moves are a motley combination of Armenian, disco, polka, and hip-hop, with some skanking thrown in during songs with horn sections. I consider it my patriotic duty to dance the night away in order to represent America well. It’s also in the Hutchinson genes...we don’t let a dance floor stay empty for very long. At any rate, my colleagues all seemed to think I was sad any time I wasn’t dancing, so I didn’t have much of a choice. Natalia, Oxana, and Lyudmila were quite the troopers. Their dancing stamina was very impressive.

I think we danced for three hours! It was pretty hardcore. The only familiar songs were “The Macarena” (I remembered the dance in its entirety) and a weird Russian remix of “Mama Mia” by ABBA. I also had to give a toast in Russian and totally screwed up my prepositions. I’m blaming the champagne. I danced with the rector, which caused me to crack up somewhat embarassingly. (For those unfamiliar with the terminology, this was like dancing with Comrat’s Michael Crow.) I also danced with Maxim, a professor of European law. It was very junior high! Except for in junior high I wasn’t required to make small talk in Russian. Quite amusing.

We arrived home at 8:45 PM, a full 6 hours after we left the house. For $1.40, I think it wasn’t too bad!

Calling Music Buffs!

Since I got so many great suggestions last time, I was thinking I'd send out another all-call for help designing another lesson.

This time, I'd like to demonstrate how an author can create tone and setting. I'd like to use songs again because they are nice and bite-sized for students. Additionally, I think that songs tend to use more conversational language which is more useful for students than the sort of language used in most literature.

For tone, I am thinking that a great example would be "Brick" by Ben Folds Five. Although the subject matter of abortion is controversial (not to mention depressing), I think it will probably translate pretty well to my class. Plus, Ben Folds handles it is a very subtle and non-controversial way, so I think it will be okay. Ben Folds' word and imagery choice is very apt in this song and I think it's fairly easy to understand if you first (a) explain what it is about--I think most people who hear this song initially misinterpret it--and (b) translate some of the more conversational phrases. Still, I'm open to suggestions if anyone thinks they can top "Brick"!

I am also trying to think of a song that conveys a sense of setting. It's harder to find pop songs that are about a place, although a couple come to mind. Unfortunately, they tend to make a lot of allusions that my students won't be at all familiar with. "Why You'd Want to Live Here" by Death Cab does a great job of conveying setting...but it also only makes sense if you are familiar with Los Angeles. I think something like the old standard "New York, New York" might work.

Thoughts?

I was also looking for a song that could convey setting, but it's pretty

Looking for Course Materials...

So, I thought it would be a good idea to use a song to demonstrate types of characterization to my Literary Analysis class. I thought it would be fairly easy to find such a song, but in fact it is quite difficult! It seems that very few songwriters these days actually write songs about people! Here are some potential choices and why they got shot down...

"Kate" by Ben Folds Five: While this song is awesome, there are just too many confusing references (Bhagavad Gita?). Also, I'm not sure if the class will understand why the narrator loves a girl who smokes pot and wears the same clothes every day...

"Cath..." by Death Cab for Cutie: Just too depressing. I don't really want to have an in-depth discussion about Cath settling for an unsatisfying marriage at 8:00 AM.

"Lua" by Bright Eyes: See above. While this song is brilliant, I feel like the bulimia and drug issues might be a bit much to explain.

"Heroin Girl," "Amphetamine" by Everclear: I'm seeing that drug themes are a definite problem for basically every song I can find. I don't know how much I want to rock Comrat's world here. Plus, am I allowed to drop the f-bomb in a college classroom? Even if no one knows what it means?

"Jeremy," "Off He Goes," "Better Man," "Elderly Woman Behind the Counter In a Small Town" by Pearl Jam: Once again, too depressing! Teenage murder is another topic I don't want to discuss in-depth. "Off He Goes" seems too subtle, although I actually think it would be awesome in a native English speaker class. "Better Man" is basically a proto-version of "Cath..." so I'm going to nix that one. Plus, Eddie Vedder just doesn't enunciate enough. "Elderly Woman" actually is a really cool song and I think people would relate to it, but I think it doesn't actually give enough examples of characterization to use in the class.

And the winner is..."Candle in the Wind" by Elton John!

While this song is actually very depressing and also has drug themes, I think the fact that it is (1) famous and (2) about Marilyn Monroe will be interesting for the class.

If anyone has any suggestions for songs that display characterization in its many forms (direct, indirect, etc.) I would gladly consider them! Remember that songs have to be fairly comprehensible for people who don't speak colloquial English.

PS: This is rather unrelated, but did anyone know that Simon and Garfunkle did a take on "Richard Cory"? Would definitely be interesting to use in an American literature class.

Adventures in Feminism

September 27th, 2009

Things have cooled down a bit here, which is pleasant. I have turned in the final versions of two scholarship applications, so I have been relaxing and enjoying Tolstoy and lesson-planning. My chili turned out pretty well, by the way. I didn't have any cumin and the grass-fed meat had a different taste, but it tasted fairly authentic. I found spicy chilis at the market (although not Homer's special chilis, unfortunately), so all was well.

When not working or cooking or reading, I have had some run-ins with women’s issues so far and I thought I would share.

Part I: The World of Women

The main problem in rural Moldova is that you just can’t make a living. A very good salary here is $500 a month, and a teacher’s salary is much less than that. Food is very cheap, but utilities, rent, and clothes are not. Even if you have two incomes coming in, it’s hard to buy more than the basics with your paycheck, especially if you have kids. So, in a phenomenon you can observe throughout the rural periphery of the former USSR, many of the men who should be living here are working somewhere in Russia. The result is a sort of feminized countryside. (I should note that some women do work abroad, particularly in care-taking professions, but they are not the norm.) At the university, all of my colleagues are women. There are a few men who work at the university, but they are few and far between. We have a couple of guys in our classes, but what’s the point of learning English if you’re going to be working on a construction site in Russia in five years? So, most of the people I come into contact with on a daily basis are women.

I’ve yet to make any solid determinations on the impact of this migration on the role of women, but logically it would seem that women here are forced to be more self-sufficient and independent than many women elsewhere.

Part II: Patriarchy?

Russian morning television is pretty entertaining, as a rule. When I have the time, I like to watch this pseudo-Today Show that has both serious and light news programs. Last week there was a program on--gasp!--women paying for dates! This is still a pretty up-in-the-air issue in the United States for a lot of people, but I thought it was funny that there was actually a news story on this. I guess it must be breaking news? There was supposed to be some kind of discussion after the news story, but it seemed fairly one-sided. This lady kept saying that feminism had killed humor. I was like, um, what does that have to do with the topic of paying for dinner? Like, maybe this would be relevant if women were refusing to go on dates to comedy clubs because of feminism.

In a related note, Sofia, my host mom, told me her story of trying to buck the system and keep her own name when she got married. Her husband’s side of the family got too upset, so she caved. I explained to her that in U.S. people tend to freak out about this as well, as I’m sure Nicole and Chris Person-Rennell can attest to!

Part III: Women’s Organizations

I had the happy opportunity to meet up with Christine, a Peace Corps Volunteer here in Comrat. She is currently working with two organizations, a youth volunteer league and a women’s rights organization, to help them build capacity and apply for grants. They are currently working on getting a grant from UNIFEM to strengthen the inadequate enforcement of women’s rights laws currently on the books in Moldova. They would like to start up a business center and microloan program to empower women entrepreneurs in the south of Moldova with the UNIFEM money. I hope they get the grant, because it sounds like a very worthy program.

They do a lot of active, hands-on trainings to teach people about domestic violence issues and human trafficking. Human trafficking is especially a big problem in Transnistria, so they train people to recognize behaviors that could make a woman an easy target for traffickers. They did a small summer camp for kids to teach them about equality in the home and techniques for conflict resolution in relationships. It even got a positive write-up in the local paper!

Part IV: Avon, the Company for Women

Every time I travel to the former USSR, I always find another surprising example of globalization. This time around, it was Avon ladies. We always have an Avon catalogue floating around our office, which I use as a resource to learn the Russian names for things like nail clippers and conditioner. I randomly got pushed into going to a big Avon meeting yesterday, which ended up being a rather interesting cultural experience.

I have mixed feelings about Avon in general. On the one hand, it empowers women to make money through social networking, which seems like a very positive thing. On the other hand, the company does this through convincing women they need cosmetics that they probably don’t have the money to buy (at least not in Moldova).

The meeting was held in the “House of Culture.” I went with Tatiana, a German professor, and Lyudmila, our secretary. Lyudmila’s five-year-old daughter provided comic relief. We waited a good hour before things actually got underway. Annoyingly (and somewhat illogically), the majority of the presentation was in Moldovan, so I didn’t understand much. But it seemed pretty standard. There were dancers. We all got free “Curlacious” mascara. We watched videos on new products like Patrick Dempsey’s cologne “Unscripted.” (Ugh. What hath Grey’s Anatomy wrought?) Avon representatives who sold over a certain amount of Avon products got flowers. After that, there was a pretty cool concert with a Moldovan folk singer. Overall, I would have to say that it was pretty entertaining, and I won’t look a free mascara gift horse in the mouth. I’m still not sure whether Avon is good or evil, but I think that their marketing department is very smart.

I have killed the most magnificent centipede

There was a gross centipede haunting my room and I have conquered him.

Or rather, Sofia has killed him with a towel.

Thrice, I have fought the dread centipede.

Twice, it evaded me. But not this time.

I have to say it was the most attractive centipede I have ever seen. It was golden-colored, with thin, long, multicolored legs. But still, gross.

Like, Beowulf, we have slayed a monster. Huzzah!

Chili

My goal for tomorrow is to make chili. I am without my beloved crock pot, so I'm going to have to improvise. I have found a fairly simple recipe from the Food Network website, which I am going to snazz up by adding more vegetables to.

I have translated tricky words of ingredients into Russian. Today, I'm going to see if I can buy the dry ingredients at Fourchette, our grocery store.

Tomorrow: the markets. Wish me luck!

Admiring the stack of Russian books on my coffee table

This blog entry may only be interesting to my language-learning friends, but considering how many of them I know, I don’t think it will be a bad thing!

Last night, I told Sofia that I like Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, and she was like, “I have a whole library in the back! I have 20 volumes of Tolstoy!” And then she proceded to bring me every single volume of Tolstoy, as well as two volumes of Dostoevsky, and some Bulgakov to boot. To make a long story short, I now have about seven volumes of Russian classics in my room, and Sofia is expecting me to read them!

I took a crack at War and Peace last night and it turned out better than I expected. The first paragraph is still hilarious. (I remember getting a Quiz Bowl question about famous first lines—I nailed the War and Peace one: “Eh bien, mon prince, Gênes et Lucques ne sont plus que des apanages, de поместья de la famille Buonaparte...”) Having read it twice, I can follow what’s going on without too much difficulty. (The fact that about 20% of the first few chapters is in French helps, too!) I made it through two chapters, right up to the point where Pierre shows up at the party and starts making everyone uncomfortable. Excellent.

One of the main reasons I was excited to come to Moldova was the chance to polish up my Russian. Those of you who studied at the Critical Languages Institute may remember the discussion of the “Terminal 2’s” among Russian language learners. Namely: People who study Russian at the college level seem to all graduate at an intermediate level. They can get along fine in Russophone environments, but they can’t speak Russian at a professional level. So, my language goal here is to boost from intermediate to professional in nine months. Seems doable.

I should also add here a brief note about the linguistic situation in Moldova. Basically, the national language is Moldovan/Romanian (the name of the language is a very political question...must tread lightly here). However, as many people have noted to me, you are better off using Russian if you don’t know the person you are conversing with. You are much more likely to run into a Moldovan citizen who doesn’t speak Moldovan than a Moldovan citizen who doesn’t speak Russian.

Furthermore, the region of Gagauzia is primarily Russophone. Most of the Gagauz here speak Russian as their language of daily communication, although older generations tend to speak Gagauz more often. (Thanks to my Friday class for explaining this to me!) This tendency is made stronger by the fact that there are many Bulgarians, Russians, and Ukrainians who live here, so they use Russian as a means of communicating with the Gagauz. This is a pretty standard pattern among minority communities in the former USSR. (Case-in-point: Russophone Armenian ethnic communities in Tbilisi, Georgia.)

So, I was overall incredibly lucky to come to a region in the former USSR where I could really develop my Russian skills!

Sofia, the woman I live with, speaks to me almost entirely in Russian. (She is working on her English, but is still in the beginning stages!) She is a German professor at the university, and she also speaks Gagauz. At home, we watch Russian television almost exclusively, which is fun! We have GTV, which is Gagauzian. The broadcast news in Moldovan, Gagauz, and Russian. (They also play Turkish music videos constantly, leading Sofia to jokingly call it “TTV” instead of GTV.) I feel much more connected to what is going on when I can watch news reports of events in Comrat in Russian! We also get “Rossiya,” which is the main Russian state channel. There are also some Moldovan channels that broadcast in Russian. It’s a good mix of shows.

The other professors in the kafedra (I guess this would be translated “department”) speak Russian basically all the time. They like the practice their English with me, but the German teachers generally don’t speak English, so they usually speak in Russian in order to be polite to them. Right now, I can understand what they are saying to me and follow conversations, but I tend to miss a lot of what they are saying to each other. I think quick conversations are one of the hardest things to follow, as a rule. Sometimes it gets depressing, but I am comforted by the fact that Feruz, our Fulbrighter from Uzbekistan at ASU, improved his English immensely while he was living in America. If Feruz can do it, so can I!

I had the chance to interview Olga Kagan, a pretty awesome Russian scholar at UCLA, and she told me the best way to improve my Russian is to get a big fat novel and read every day. I’ve taken her to heart! As far as reading practice goes, I’m still working away at Harry Potter. I finished 1-3 over the last school year, so I’m tackling the challenge of Book 5 right now. Let me tell you, Book 5 is no joke. I think it takes me 4-5 minutes a page. It’s a lot of fun, however, and the entertaining story keeps my attention. I think I’m going to have to split my time between War and Peace and Harry Potter, though. Prince Andrei is about to show up in the book. There’s nothing to keep you plugging through those Russian sentences like Prince Andrei. For those of you who haven’t read War and Peace, I just have to say that you are missing out.

So, my Russian study plan seems to be going fairly well. I’m hoping to start meeting with a Russian tutor. Christine, a Peace Corps volunteer here, told me there was a really good one in Hincesti, which is about 30 minutes away by bus, so it might be worth it.

Any other language acquisition suggestions?

Can We PLEASE Talk About Grendel Now?

September 17, 2009

Today was quite the day. Frankly, by the end of it, I needed a beer.

I had surprising success in my American Folklore and Myth class today. We read a Native American creation myth and discussed it. Well, I guess I can’t really say that we discussed it, but I had a lot of success with getting the students to apply the grammatical structures from the text into everyday, conversational English. Getting most of them to talk is like pulling teeth, but I felt proud that by the end, at least everyone could use the preposition “beside” more or less correctly.

Mariana, one of the girls who attended the conversational club meeting I had yesterday, showed up for the class and sat in on the whole lesson! I took it as a big compliment that she actually wanted to take a class she wasn’t signed up for.

The second class, British Literature, was much more draining. This is one of the classes I have with the Turkish students. We were talking about Beowulf and reading parts of the text (in translation from Old English, of course). The texts were rather hard for the class, and even the best student exclaimed that Beowulf was making her feel stupid. To boot, we kept getting derailed by Turkish nationalism.

The two best English speakers in the class were in a very heated argument (in Turkish) and so I asked them to at least argue in English. So, they were discussing whether Turkey was the best country in the world. Inevitably, I got asked to weigh in. This was awkward. One student was arguing, “Every country thinks they are the best, so you can’t simply say that mine is the best, end of story.” The other student’s perspective was basically, “Well, they can all think that, but Turkey is still the best.”

Thanks a lot, Ataturk. You’re ruining my class.

I tried to be diplomatic, siding with the student who (most rationally) argued that the whole question was relative. This response did not go over well with Ataturk Jr. Sigh. And then the genocide got brought up. AWESOME. That’s what I want to do during my British Literature class...talk about the Armenian genocide.

I restrained myself from making any comment, although I couldn’t stop myself from raising a skeptical eyebrow when he made the claim that no American had been an eyewitness to the events in 1915. Yeah, no. The American ambassador, Henry Morgenthau, was alerted to the events in eastern Anatolia when he received several American missionaries who broke down in tears in his office trying to explain what had happened. He wrote a BOOK (Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story) about it, for crying out loud. So, yeah. My eyebrow went up.

At any rate, I realized my facial expressions were throwing gasoline on the fire and brought things back to Beowulf rather ungracefully. And the rest of the class went fine, although I’m going to have to figure out a better way to present difficult material to the class. I’m just trying to teach without alienating any of the students. Sigh. I am only slightly comforted by the fact that there are certainly many American students who would have a hard time accepting the fact that not everyone in the world loves their country as much as they do. Actually, Ataturk Jr. told me later that I should join the Turkish students sometime at the disco here (after Ramadan). So perhaps things will be okay. Although this better not be some sort of effort to bait me into another Armenian genocide discussion!

After that stressful class, we had a departmental meeting, much of which went over my head. There was all this heated debate going on about student attendance, much of which I couldn’t quite catch. Then came time for class hours and paycheck amounts to become official, which resulted in more than a few raised voices. More stress!!! Ah! I really would have appreciated some alcoholic refreshment, but I felt drinking alone was too depressing. Actually, I went home and watched a local program about chess and ate some soup, which was pretty soothing.

I got in touch with one of the Peace Corps volunteers this evening, which was nice. Hopefully, we will be able to meet and share experiences soon. In the meantime, I am relaxing by listening to new Regina Spektor and some Armenian Navy Band...

Prepping for Classes!

This weekend, Stephanie, the other English Teaching Assistant in Moldova, and I went on a crazy adventure involving motorcycles, famish marches through the Moldovan countryside, and some extremely cramped minibuses. But! That will have to wait for a time when I have the energy to tell the whole saga. For now, I'm just going to make a few notes about classes.

Today, I had some small but significant victories. The white board in my room was completely covered in marker and thus unusable. Writing on it was more like etching. This was a source of major frustration for me. How can you have a language class without a board! After some Google searching, I discovered that you can use either alcohol or baby wipes to clean white boards. I did some price comparisons at Fourchette (the big, nice grocery store here) and discovered that baby wipes cost about half the price of the cheapest bottle of vodka, so I went with the baby wipes for a cool $2. Lo and behold, Google was right. I now have a functioning white board! Hurrah!

I feel the white board situation shows the importance of having appropriate technology. Both the American Center and the British Center at the university have white boards instead of chalk boards. Big surprise, nobody knows how to really clean the white boards so they become unusable. Meanwhile, the good old chalkboards are completely functional. Lesson learned here: if you're going to donate something, donate something that can be maintained!

My second victory was my triumph over the television and DVD player. Lying out on the shelves in the American Center was a broken DVD/karaoke machine (?) and a video player. But when I looked in the drawers, I found another DVD player which actually works! Pretty awesome. I can now show movies in class without students having to peer at my tiny little laptop screen. It does, however, lack a remote, so at this point I can only push play and let the thing run. (In my rummaging through the drawers, I also discovered a great book on phrasal verbs. Language nerd heaven!)

On top of my two victories, I had the added fun of designing lessons. I'm crossing my fingers that everything goes well tomorrow. I am teaching U.S. demographics in my Culture and Civilization class this week. We are going to watch "Island of Hope, Island of Tears," which is a documentary about Ellis Island. Should be cool. I spent this evening preparing for my British literature class. Who'da thunk that it would be in Moldova that I'd get reacquainted with Beowulf?

Today I was watching the news and I discovered that Vladimir Putin actually has a very pleasant voice when he speaks Russian. He sounds very calm. I would have expected him to be more strident.

On the utilities front, the water and gas have finally both come online. Unfortunately, we discovered today that the water heater doesn't actually heat water (it just makes the room hot), so I'm still bathing Little House on the Prairie style. We boil a bucket of water on the stove and then mix that with regular water. It's actually not too bad!