As I recall

My boyfriend is out of the hospital! Now he's back at work again.

And on the subject of relationships, I often find xkcd to be true-to-life, but this is just creepy.

Here is a word of advice: if you're going to watch the "Borat" movie (I wouldn't bother), the way to do this is to watch it in a language you don't understand (so you could either take my previous comment with a grain of salt or recognize that the movie sucks that much) with a rather conservative translator.
movie: [something in Russian that I can't understand]
boyfriend: [hysterical laughter]
me: What did he say?
bofriend, still laughing: Oh, I can't translate that. It's too dirty.
Repeat this process for two hours.

I will admit that I was kind of interested to see the movie responsible for the breakup of the Anderson-Rock marriage. I was really expecting those two to make it.* Actually, she really wasn't in the movie very much at all, and she gets points for apparently having a sense of humor about the whole sex tape (hi, googleteers! No porn here!) business, unlike, reportedly, Mr. Rock.** In her place, I suppose I would have run it by him first, but then in her place I wouldn't have married Kid Rock. Or Tommy Lee, for that matter.

Today I found myself pointing out, not by any means for the first time, that "we both liked 'Casablanca'" does not count as having something in common any more than do the shared beliefs that sunsets are nice, butterflies are pretty, and Moscow is cold.

Later it occurred to me that, if my boyfriend saw "Casablanca," he'd probably be the one person in the world not to like it. It sounds crazy, but it actually works out because I'm the only person in the world who doesn't like "Roman Holiday."*** That might count as having something in common. Moreso than it would if we both liked "Casablanca," certainly.

I'm going to test my boyfriend-Casablanca theory for the simple reason that I want to see it again. I will report the results. First order of business: find a copy.



* I ALWAYS expect couples like this to make it on the grounds that it's so crazy that they must know what they're doing. Usually just the first part is true. In fact, if TomKat don't make it, I might have to revise my theory. But I'm sure they will.
** Perhaps he didn't know about the tape.
*** There are a few reasons for this, but most of it boils down to: What's the point of having divine right if you don't use it to impale people who drug you and marry cute foreigners?

Time to go back to my mansion and eat my lobster

If you had to tell me which Simpsons character I was most like, Lisa would be the obvious, and boring, choice. But I've also been compared to Rev. Lovejoy (my mother's contribution, so ask her why), Moe (my mother again), The Comic Book Guy (trivia brain!), Mrs. Krabappel (give me a few years), and Mr. Burns (it's the selfishness, expensive taste, physical weakness, anti-sun vendetta, and, oh yeah, the fact that I say "excellent" all the time). Nobody ever compares me to Homer.

And, while I appreciate that, I do occasionally have Homer Simpson days. Last Monday was such a day.

I have a lesson at 9:15. I forget that everybody else has to be at work by 9 (which is Russian for 9:20) and therefore there will be traffic and I should probably leave a little earlier than I do for my non-rush-hour classes. So, 9:15 comes and goes and I am still sitting in a taxi which is sitting in a traffic jam. I call my school in a panic and ask them to call my company and tell them I'm going to be late. After I hang up, the taxi pulls into the company parking lot (good timing, me).

When I get to the security desk, they have no record of me. They keep looking for my document, but they cannot find it, which of course is taking more and more time. I am a bit panicked by this point. Finally, they call my contact down to the lobby:
contact: Hi, how are you?
me: SorrypleaseIknowthatIamveryverylate.Thereweremanycarsonthestreet.
contact: So, you know that you will have four lessons a week this year. They're at...
me: YesyesIknow.TodayIamverylate.
contact: But you are starting on the 10th.
me: Ye...what? The 10th?
contact: Yes. Next week.
me: Oh...huh.

So I wasn't 30 minutes late so much as I was 167.5 hours early. Unfortunately, I have the feeling that it won't happen twice, so I should probably wake up early tomorrow.

Which shouldn't be that hard, actually, as it promises to be rainy. That means that I'll happily wake up and leave the house without wasting time on sunscreen and covering my head but everyone else will be slow and late because they don't want to go outside.

Guess I'm a little bit shy

Tomorrow I start teaching. Today I am visiting the hospital, doing some work for Moscow, planning my lessons for the week, doing laundry, and, apparently, updating my blog.

I had to write a profile for our company's website. This is apparently the best I could do. And the little flourishes that make me sound like I have a personality (specifically, "hi," "green city," "friendly," and "look forward to") were edited in by one of the bosses.

One of the school officials uses the term "personality teacher" to describe the teachers who depend more on their charisma than on their teaching skills to keep students. It's not that personality teachers are necessarily bad teachers (often they're excellent), but that their students wouldn't care if they were bad. Because it's about the person, not about the teaching. On the one hand, personality teachers are a scheduling nightmare because their students often refuse to have lessons with any other teacher. On the other hand, you can send them to almost any group and be sure that the students will be happy with them.

Needless to say, I am not a personality teacher. In fact, I am a lack-of-personality teacher. Students ask me to talk about myself and I tell them that my English doesn't need practice, or that I'll discuss my personal life when Cambridge adds a section about it to their tests (they totally should). They know that I love conditionals. They suspect that I'm a workaholic. They probably know that I went to Siberia this summer because I couldn't shut up about it. But, beyond that, there's nothing interesting. Certain students love this because it makes them feel like they're learning, but for the most part I lack the appeal of a personality teacher.

This used to bother me a lot because I wanted to be popular. In my second year, I gave up on wanting to be liked so much, and I'm a better teacher for that. In my third year, I got promoted, and that's when I got into a stupid habit: I started throwing my title around. Not too much, but enough that people would know that I had responsibilities beyond being a regular teacher. This was intended to make me sound more impressive.

If you know anything about Russia, you know that it worked. As a matter of fact, it worked too well, and now I suspect that my English lessons have become something of a status item in certain sectors. As in, "No ordinary teacher can teach me! I must work with your assistant director of studies!"

It's not that I'm not a good teacher. It's just that I don't think that this is the result of a sudden interest in conditionals, which is unfortunate. (Nor is it due to any sudden interest in me, which is good). What happened was that I tried to impress students with my title, and now students are trying to impress other people with my title. The result is that now I get sent to important clients, some of whom don't take their lessons very seriously at all, giving me more stress but fewer papers to mark.


And while we're on the subject of status items: After reading the last post, you might wonder why I was on the Hermes website. It's because my super awesome, irreplaceable purse is going to fall apart in a month or two and one of the Hermes bags is the only bag I have seen that even comes close to what I want.* It turns out that said purse not only costs $6000 or more, but is not even sold on their website for fear that people like me will buy it, so it's back to the drawing board for me. Or to the crocodile farm and a sewing machine store.

Hermes always reminds me of one time when I was teaching a lesson about shopping (the textbook made me do it. Really!)
student: I only like shopping for ties. I have 30 ties.
me: Wow.
student: Do you know shop "Gurmiz"?** It is the only place I buy ties.
me [assuming this is some local Russian shop]: No. I don't buy many ties.
student: You must know. Gurmiz. It is French.
me: No, sorry. I just don't know.
Frustrated, student writes down the name of the shop, which is Hermes. I then pronounce it correctly and place it at the very top right corner of the price/quality chart*** I had drawn, all the while realizing that this student's collection of ties (which, unlike, say, shoes, are completely unnecessary) is worth more than I make in a year. Russians really like their status symbols.


* Big enough to carry a book, smaller than me, secure, trapezoidal, with long handles and/or a shoulder strap and feet. Also, no ugly hardware. Why is that too much to ask?!?

** The story makes more sense if you know (as I did) that "h" in other languages is often transliterated to "g" in Russian, even, apparently, when the "h" isn't pronounced.

*** This is a way of presenting vocabulary like cheap, bargain, good/bad value, ripoff, etc. The horizontal axis represents quality, and the vertical represents price, since price is at least a little bit dependent on quality.

Yeah, well, you're interferon with our good time

I have a number of excuses for not having updated. To start with, I was in Siberia. I got back to Moscow two days before starting work, so I've been busy (the start of the year is busy for me).

Now I am preoccupied because my boyfriend is in the hospital with pneumonia. They caught it really really early (they can't even hear it), so he will be fine. He has to stay in the hospital for at least a week because it's Russia. The hospital is clean and they're treating him well, so hopefully he won't still be there in a month (this happened to a friend of mine who went in for appendicitis, was neglected by hospital staff, almost died, changed hospitals, and needed a bunch more surgeries). He doesn't like the food, but there's a little cafe on the first floor and plenty of people to bring him food. The hospital itself is close to one of the companies I teach at, which would be great if the visiting hours were longer (remember, this is Russia). As it is, though, it's pretty easy to get to.

I don't have much to say about the trip right now other than that it was super awesome and I want to go back to Siberia. I think I will find the time to blog more about it. I took a ton of photos that will also need to be posted.

It is also worth noting that my birthday is coming up in less than two months (somebody older and wiser advised me to enjoy these months because it's all downhill from there), and I have decided that this is certainly the perfect gift for me. Because I like to travel, I worry excessively about security, and I am la бегемотка, which is very bastardized Russian for "little hippopotamus."* And because I've always wanted a luggage lock that costs 3-5x as much as any item of luggage I own.


* In Russian, this isn't insulting. Cartoon hippopotami are funny and friendly, so that's what it means. I like it because they're depicted as friendly creatures but are actually quite deadly. I also enjoy having a nickname that requires a footnote.