Day 4 - July 10 - Death of the Internet

This time around, I had a plan. I thought ahead of time of some subjects to do with each group of kids, and did a pretty good job sticking to it. It’s kind of problematic that I do not have a printer or the internet (more on this later). Furthermore, copying is an ordeal that requires getting to school early. Getting to school early is dubious at best, given the way our host families basically require us to be escorted at all time (by a parent or a child) and given how hectic that gets. Anyways I can only imagine what it’s like teaching in a less-developed country where the problem isn’t copying worksheets, but finding paper and pencils for the kids to use.

We learned fruits today, and played a little game where everyone sits in a circle, and one person in the middle is without a chair. Each person is assigned a fruit, and the person in the middle can say a fruit and then all the people of that fruit (and the person in the middle) have to change seats. Or they can say “FRUIT SALAD!” and everyone has to change seats. I think you can guess how and why the game ended.

School lunch review was a definite C-. Some kind of white dill-heavy soup served with dumplings that had cottage cheese inside. To top it all off, the drink was Russian iced tea, which is really gross.

With the older kids, the topic of the day was professions. We talked about all the vocabulary, then talked a little about professions in the United States. When the subject of doctors came up, an interesting discussion ensued. In Russia, apparently, if you are sick, you call the office, the doctor makes an appointment and comes out to see you. I noted that in America, so long as you are physically able to walk or drive to the doctor’s office, you do so, and if you can’t, you call an ambulance. The students were absolutely incredulous. One of the really good students asked “But… what if you’re sick??”

Anyways, at school I tried to use their internet. No dice. The previous day we tried to use the internet at the post office. But like everything in this city, it’s under “remont,” or repair. After school, one of the teachers offered to let me use the internet at her apartment. We tried there, and for some reason it didn’t work either. At this point I was pretty pissed off at not being able to write people emails saying I got here safely.

In the evening (after trying to make the internet work for about two hours), we had palov for dinner. Palov is essentially salty rice with meat mixed in. It was fantastic. So fantastic that I ate as much as I could, and then conveniently couldn’t try any of the weird-looking “salad” that accompanied the palov. Oh, and there’s no such thing as salad in Russia. It’s “salat,” and it’s always a mixture of vegetables and maybe some meat, covered in mayonnaise. It’s like an infinite number of variations on cole slaw, except without any vinegar taste to it.

In the evening we took a walk around the old city. It wasn’t too impressive because Biysk was actually founded around the same time Durham was (around 1708). Either way, it was worth seeing. Before leaving to go home, we stopped at a café and had ice cream. The restaurant was outdoors, looking over the river Biya. Behind us, a table full of shady-looking Russian men were drinking like champs, going through three bottles of vodka just while we sat there.

On the walk home, Ilya was shivering cold, which was weird because a) he’s lived his whole life in Siberia, and b) it was no less than 65 degrees. We got home, and talked a little about the job situations in Russia and in America. It was kind of awkward to discuss how much money people made, and what my family is able to buy compared to what the Andreevs can afford. Interestingly enough, though, I learned that the grandmother is not merely a worker at the boiler factory, but an engineer of some kind. After that whole conversation, we ate a little bit, then went to bed. I dreamed of the internet.