Chisinau!

Yesterday was quite the adventure. I gave my last December final as quickly as possible, calculated grades at the speed of light, and then hightailed out of the university in order to catch a minibus to Chisinau. It had been snowing for four straight days, so I decided time was of the essence. There was no way I was going to let myself get snowed in and miss my flight.

The bus station was abuzz with people trying to figure out when buses were going to leave, as all the routes were on limited schedules. Me and my big red suitcase got rejected from one minibus, only to be accepted on board about five minutes later as they realized they needed more passengers. I like to think my dour, helpless expression helped to get me on the bus. Our two-hour ride over the snowy roads to Chisinau was surprisingly uneventful. The drivers here know how to manage without snow tires, apparently. On the way, I spent about 45 minutes talking with a friendly Bulgarian lady from Taraclia. She told me many entertaining stories, like how there were so many people at her son's wedding that they had to put chairs and tables on the stage of the House of Culture they were holding it in. Moldova is such a friendly country!

I lugged my suitcase (weighed down by approximately 6 liters of wine from my host family) on to another minibus from the South Bus Station into the center of Chisinau, where Amy, my lovely hostess for this weekend, found me and took me to her apartment. Her nice "Euro-remont" (European-remodelled) apartment is a good waystation between Comrat and America. We made a delicious meat spaghetti sauce with ingredients from the western-style grocery store downstairs from her apartment. Robin, a Peace Corps Volunteer who lives in the same building, joined us for dinner. We shared homestay horror stories; it was highly entertaining.

Today I went on a shopping extravaganza (read: I spent $50). It was nice and sunny, which made the snow glisten quite prettily. I bought a hairdryer (apparently the word diffuser is the same in Russian—score!), some Russian cartoons on DVD, more DDT music, and The Reader in Russian. I'm quite looking forward to reading The Reader on the plane. It was written in German originally, so I figure reading it in Russian is no more weird than reading it in English.

I also confirmed with the staff at an Air Moldova office that my flight to Frankfurt is indeed scheduled to leave tomorrow. This is good. About 12 hours until I have to leave for the airport. Yay!

White Christmas

I woke up this morning around six, wondering why it was so cold. When I actually got up at nine, I saw that Comrat had turned into a snowy winter wonderland! I, of course, cranked up the Christmas music (Stephen Colbert's "Another Christmas Song," of course) and enjoyed a relaxing morning.

Everyone at work was excited about the snow, which was fun! I, however, tend to have problems with falling down... My Arizona upbringing did not prepare me for this.

It's finals month here (yes, they have a finals month), which means lots of work for us teachers and lots of stress for the students. I have to give two finals tomorrow for my Culture and Civilization class, which I'm not exactly looking forward to. Unfortunately, test time means cheating time! I have a lot of issues with the pervasive post-Soviet culture of copying, which kind of makes writing tests pointless. Even when I do two different versions, people magically have all the same answers! You can map seating arrangements by looking at who has the same mistakes. The tiny classrooms definitely exacerbate this...as well as the fact that everyone seems to wink at it! Ah, well.

I'm looking forward to heading home on December 20th. It'll give me a good chance to recharge my educational batteries, stock up on books, eat Mexican food, and drink good beer. Most of all, I can't wait to see my Arizona people!

Another sign that I might be going crazy...

We watched a fairly lame educational dramatization of Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" in my literary text analysis class today. I felt that the class was rather bored, which gave me an impetus to get theatrical. So, we were reviewing the plot of the story, and at the climactic moment, I exclaimed, fists raised to the sky,

"It was the beating of his hideous heart!"

I had not realized until this year how entertaining it is to be eccentric in front of a captive audience.

On tap for tomorrow: an analysis of a Tim O'Brien short story and a song by Ani DiFranco. It's nice to be the professor. I can make them read whatever I want!

In the Trenches

I've been having a pretty crazy week as the result of insane amounts of class, but I thought I'd bullet point some highlights while I have a spare moment:

• Amazing breakfast on Monday at Melek's house (my Turkish teacher). Also, a fun Turkish lesson.
• Trying to explain the agony of ASU's loss of the Territorial Cup to a student.
• Teaching students about the concept of "hair of the dog."
• Great lesson on Shakespeare's Sonnet #130 on Monday.
• Listening to Jimmy Eat World's "Work" on the way to work.
• Somehow, one of my students knew about the Arizona Wildcats when I said I was from Arizona. This is actually sort of a lowlight (still sensitive after our crushing defeat...) but I thought it merited a mention.
• Very awesome lecture from Thomas Santos, the Regional English Language Officer. What a pro. All the teachers loved him and he returned our love.
• Getting a flatscreen TV, DVD player, and home theater system for the American Center! Thanks, U.S. Embassy! (Lowlight: The overall floundering about by the university administration on actually installing the generous gift.)
• Invitation to smoke hookah next week. Калянь!
• My oh-so-entertaining colleagues making fun of me and my quest for дополнительные пары (extra lessons so I can meet the requirements for the semester).
• My student's not-so-smooth attempt to change the subject of the conversation to Lost when we were discussing Tom Sawyer.
• Talking to Debbie on her birthday!
• Watching Meet the Parents in class today (on VHS!) instead of discussing "The Gift of the Magi." Hey, it was totally justified! This semester has been hell for everyone, including students. O. Henry can wait.
• My overall unsuccessful quest to stop speaking "foreigner English" before I get back to America. (I am slowly losing my ability to consistently use correct prepositions.)
• Purchasing Christmas garland today in order to begin the decoration of the American Center.

Overall, it has been a really hectic week, but I'm starting to feel like this might actually end at some point! It sucks because the day of reckoning (aka final exams) are coming up and students (not to mention professors) are starting to freak out. I just keep trying to remind myself that I only have 6 days left (7 if you count the fact that I'm working on Saturday, but I don't because that's too depressing to even think about).

Countdown to America: 17 days!

A Bag of Fish

Today didn’t start well, as I woke up 45 minutes earlier than my alarm and couldn’t get back to sleep. I kept thinking about all the work (particularly paperwork) that has to get done in the next few weeks. I’m really worried that the faculty head is going to catch all the “mistakes” I have made with my course documents and rake me over the coals. I’m not sure how bad it will be, considering that I do have a few cards in my hands. Quite a few Fulbright program rules have been disregarded (intentionally or unintentionally, I don’t know) by my university, so I always have that to fire back at them if I am confronted. Eh. I suppose it’s not a big deal, but it’s still stressing me out.

The thing that is frustrating is that at the end of the day, my performance won’t be judged by anything I do in the classroom, but how well I prepare my documents. Disheartening. (My mother assures me that this is the reality of teaching everywhere.)

Once my alarm actually went off, I got ready to go to the university for a marathon class session. Because of all the class cancellations and the fact that my students left the university for a month and a half to student-teach, I will be teaching basically double my normal class schedule until school ends in two weeks. So, we’re cramming in classes on Saturdays. I taught my Culture and Civilization group from 9:30 to 3:00 today. I was having flashbacks of AP European History Saturday test prep sessions!

I thought this was going to be awful, but it ended up being okay. Nobody really wants to work on Saturdays, so we had a twenty-minute breakfast break right in the middle of class. I was taken out of class by the department head in a rather official fashion, only to find out that the reason she wanted me to go to the faculty lounge was to drink tea and eat some leftovers from yesterday’s party.

Today my students were surprisingly active (and not too whiny) considering they were sacrificing their weekend to sit in class for nearly six hours! That is the one thing that makes all the ridiculous paperwork worthwhile: my students are entertaining. It’s fun to watch how all the girls interact (almost all of my local students are girls) and to see all of their personality quirks. They’re all very nice girls and it’s energizing to have such interesting students.

We did a crash course in American history from the Civil War to the present. It turned out pretty well, but it’s always hard to remember that people here don’t really learn much about our history, so you really have to start from nothing. I think the biggest hit was when I showed a clip from Glory. Too bad I had no reasonable excuse to watch the whole movie...I could have used a nap.

A bright part of my day was giving one of my students a burned copy of The College Dropout. Just doing my part to spread Kanye to Gagauzia.

As I was about to walk out of the room, I noticed a bag sitting on one of the desks. I decided that I might as well check it out in case it was something important. Imagine my surprise when I saw a large number of fish staring up at me with their dead eyes!

I called down the hall to the last one of my students who luckily hadn’t left yet. I showed her the bag of fish and she made some phone calls and scared up the owner of the fish.

Thank God I decided to look in that bag--the stench on Monday would have made a cat drop dead.

I came home and crashed. I’m currently reading A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L’Engle, which is way weirder than I remembered.

I had a strange moment while watching a Russian soap opera tonight. The main character was driving around in a fancy car, and I thought, “How wonderful it would be to own a car!”

Then I realized I do own a car. That was kind of weird.

I’m just trying to get through these next two weeks without going nuts. The problem is that after teaching for nearly 6 hours, I feel like I’ve had a frontal lobotomy. Unfortunately, there’s still many a lesson plan to write and many a test question to think up! At least I’m seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

We are thankful for...

After my sorry performance at Halloween (party cancelled thanks to swine flu), I decided to think of something interesting to do for Thanksgiving. I put up some DIY decorations in the American Center for starters. I realized there was no way to really do a party considering food logistics, so I decided to go to the good old standby: What are you thankful for?

I bought poster board for each class in festive fall colors and at the beginning of my classes I asked everyone to think of what they were thankful for. (This is more challenging to explain than it seems, because Russian really doesn’t have an equivalent expression. You can be thankful to someone, but not really for something.) I wrote “We are thankful for...” in big letters and then I passed around the poster and invited people to write on it. Some of the responses:

“My family”

“My friends”

“My sister twin”

“My baby” (yep, some of my students are moms)

“Having a true American teacher to teach us” (I got a few of this one. I think they are suck-ups, but I secretly enjoy it!)

“The cosmetics of Avon”

“My God”

“Being healthy”

“Bob Marley” (personal favorite)

“My parents”

“My love” (a popular choice with the female students)

“My family and my friends and my boyfriend”

“Leaving Adem forever” (Adem is one of the students in the class...the students kept joking that they would be happy never to see each other again after they graduate this year. This was the class that refused to take anything seriously. They cracked me up.)

“My life”

“My teachers”

“Being born in Turkiye” (A typical sentiment from the Turkish students! I guess the spirit of Kemal Ataturk will live on in my Thanksgiving posters.)

“Form monitor” (I have no idea what the students were trying to write, but this is the translation from the Oxford Russian-English dictionary. I think it’s like a homeroom teacher.)

“Having interesting students to teach” (That was mine!)

There was also one about a Turkish soccer victory that everyone seemed to be very excited about. I was confused, but then figured it had to be some kind of ASU-UA rivalry, the Territorial Cup of Turkey, if you will.

I labelled each one according to group (class groups have a very strong identity here because they have every single class together) and hung the posters up in the back of the classroom. It took a while because I had to scrounge for basic supplies, as usual. Finally, I just went out and bought packing tape. They look pretty cool (pictures will be forthcoming), and I hope having them hanging will encourage students to read them. I liked the project very much because it practiced particular English structures while still capturing the basic idea of the holiday. I also liked the interactive aspect of students reading what other groups wrote. Plus, I just like the idea of hanging up something the students have actually made instead of another doofy America poster.

So I didn’t get any turkey this Thanksgiving (I had meat dumplings and sour cream), but I did get to talk to all the main family members on Skype and commiserated with Derek about being in a foreign country for Thanksgiving. It wasn’t as awesome as seeing friends and family again, but I am thankful for being here nonetheless.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

A Recommendation to the ASU Russian Department

I would like to propose the introduction of a special topics class for the ASU Russian major:

RUS 394: Writing Useless Official Documents

It seems that if you travel to a former Soviet country, the only writing you will ever be expected to do is in the form of pointless “declarations” to various and sundry officials. Regardless of the fact that such declarations signify precisely null, you will be expected to compose them perfectly. Despite the fact that these documents will simply collect dust in a drawer, grammar mistakes are not allowed!

If you ask for assistance, you have a fifty-fifty chance of receiving it. If you actually receive help, there is a 33% chance of it being given snootily, as if anyone with a third grade education should be able to write useless official declarations.

Thus, I suggest a special topics class in the Russian department to solve this problem for young Russian majors venturing into the wild world of post-Soviet bureaucracy.