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.

Pictures!

I'm leaving tomorrow. I did manage to upload the pictures from New York before I left: Pictures!

So what happened was I got sick and still had to work and completely neglected the blog, which is unfortunate, because a lot has happened in the past month or so.

To start with, I'm home! The journey home was not easy. Czech Air said that I didn't need a paper ticket to get onto my flight, just the reservation prinout and my ID. This would be true if not for the fact that they codeshare with Aeroflot and Aeroflot:
- is stuck in the 20th century and hasn't figured out how e-tickets work
- has rude, incompetent staff

So, while they acknowledged that I had reservations and that my passport was, in fact, valid, they still would not let me onto the plane. I had to drag my Russian-speaking coworker to the Czech Air office (in central Moscow rather than in the airport, because Czech Air, too, is disorganized and incompetent) and try and get a reservation for the next day. Which I did, thanks to one really helpful employee. "She has restored my faith in Russian customer service," I said. "She's not Russian. She was speaking Russian with an accent," said my friend. Oh, well.

The flight, when I actually managed to get onto it, was really pleasant.

I missed the graduation by a couple hours.

After that, we spent a couple days in New York being tourists. I really liked the museums, but the city itself seemed really, really loud and very hard for me to adjust to. People in New York seem to feel the need to speak at the top of their lungs, but part of the problem was that I'm in the habit of listening to all the English I hear. Where I live, if I hear English, it's usually directed at me and I can tune everything else out. In New York, I was surrounded by really loud conversations in English and didn't know where to listen. So I found New York overwhelming in this way. But I liked the museums and the public library, and Central Park is pretty. There is also a 3-story Ann Taylor on 5th Avenue. Anyway, I can provide pictures later. There are some funny pictures.

Now I'm in California, trying to plan the second part of my journey and talking myself out of buying shoes and clothes (both of which are cheaper here than in Moscow) because I will have to carry everything I buy all the way across Siberia.

One thing I cannot get over is how friendly people in San Francisco are. When I went to the Chinese Embassy to apply for my visa, I had a nice conversation about travel plans with the people around me, which involved minimal complaining about how long the line was (it was out the door, but moved fairly quickly). On my way back, a woman stopped me on the street to compliment my outfit, which made my day. And then I went to the shopping centre, where all the store clerks except the ones at Bloomingdale's (it's like they can sense poverty) did the same.

So that's what I've been up to. I'll be better about updating.

Eurovision!

I promise a dissertation on Eurovision before the week is out. In summary, while it's officially the Eurovision Song Contest, songwriting is just about the last consideration. Contestants are evaluated on the basis of:
- staging
- looks
- catchiness
- kitschiness
- how favorably their country is viewed by people voting in other countries
- musical talent
- looks
- lyrics

This was only my third Eurovision, but I will admit to being a bit obsessed with it when it comes around.

Anyway, how it works is, each country chooses somebody to send to represent their country in the song contest. This year, 42 countries participated. There are always 24 countries in the final round: Britain, France, Germany, Spain (because these four countries are the biggest sponsors), the top 10 from the previous years, and the top 10 from the semifinal, which airs earlier in the week (and which I've never seen).

There are 24 performances, most of which are delightfully over-the-top and in terrible English (this year's winner was the first winning song since 1998 to contain no English lyrics). The winner is determined by phone voting. You can't vote for the country you're in, which is reasonable. Each country announces its top 10, with 12 points going to first, 10 to second, 8 to third and 7-1 to the 4th-10th.

People always complain about the voting because it seems to be about culture or politics, rather than about the music. Germany ranked Turkey highly because there are a lot of Turkish immigrants in Germany. Russia gives points to Georgia, but not vice-versa, for the same reason. Malta always gives the UK 12 points. The former Yugoslav republics have each others' backs (to some extent). Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine vote for each other. Israel votes for Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. Cyprus votes for Greece. Turkey gives points to Armenia, but not vice-versa. The Scandinavian countries vote for each other, but it's slightly less blatant, and I think it's actually in response to the other blocs. This, for me, is just part of what makes Eurovision Eurovision, but some people are actually upset about it and there is talk of the western countries, which get screwed over due to their stable borders and low emigration rates, withdrawing in protest.

Actually, this is almost a dissertation. So I promise a dissertation on this last Eurovision in particular (which was my favorite of the three, despite the lack of Croatia, Dima Bilan, or the Eurovision drinking game) sometime soon.


I also bought a hat today, because I have decided that I no longer go outside without covering my head and I was getting bored of scarves. If I could afford it (not even close: gloves are very expensive!), I'd start wearing gloves everywhere. Nobody would notice, or care, because when you're a foreigner living in Russia you can wear pretty much whatever you want. This is partly because Russians are very flashy and just flat-out ignore traditional rules of dress. If you decide to wear a leopard-print vinyl miniskirt, you're still the most conservatively dressed person in the room. If you feel like wearing three slightly-but-observably different flower prints, you're still one of the most coordinated. And it's partly because they have low expectations for foreigners (especially Americans). If you decide to wear unironed jeans and tennis shoes everywhere, well, that's just what Americans wear.

Next time someone asks me why I live in Russia, I will direct them to this blog entry. It's all about Eurovision and hats.


In other, more important, news: tomorrow is open-toed shoe day!

Today I was explaining to one class that they can't use "fall" in the present perfect continuous ("I have been falling") unless they find themselves in a bottomless pit because it's generally a short action ("I've fallen"). They, and every other Russian I've told this story to since, pointed out that it's okay to say "I've been falling in love," and I had to concede that it was, to which one student said, "so, love changes everything...even the grammar rules!"


I finally bought a dress for summer. I was about to give up for the day when I saw it, decided that I could at least try it on, and was surprised to find that it looked really good (this was confirmed by the friend I was shopping with, so it's not just my rampant narcissism).

The whole thing made me realize that I have an extremely predictable personal style. It involves boring hair, boring makeup, a boring, layered top, a boring, dark-colored or gray skirt, and "what are you wearing on your feet?!?" I know this because my first thought upon buying this dress was "what can I wear over this?" and my second was "now I need some orange shoes!"

I like this predictability, actually, because it will make all future shopping much easier.


In other, more important, news, Eurovision is tomorrow!

I told him that photo would come back to haunt him

I just wanted to post about this because I found it disturbing:
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=2029

When I read the summary, and that she was accused of promoting underage drinking, I assumed that she was underage in the photo. Actually, she's 27 and the photo was taken two years ago.

It actually reminds me of the case in the 1970s that allowed pregnant teachers to keep their jobs. (Which I read about in Glamour, of all places). Basically, teachers used to be pushed out of their jobs as soon as they were visibly pregnant because it was thought that the sight of them would make students uncomfortable. These were married teachers at public schools. More recent cases that you can google involve unmarried or fertility-treatment-using teachers at religious schools, which could be two other blog posts right there.

How does one draw a connection between bringing a new life into this world and drinking whilst wearing a pirate hat? It's the idea that students can't handle the fact that their teachers have lives outside of work. Or the idea that, if that bothers students (or, more likely, their parents), that that is somehow the teacher's responsibility. This is completely unreasonable. As long as they're teaching and not discussing their child-conceiving or drinking habits at school, they have fulfilled their professional responsibility.*

Just for fun, if I ever move back to the US, I'll start holding everybody in every profession to the same standards that teachers are held to. This means, to start with, that I won't be watching TV, listening to music, or watching movies. Shopping in general might be iffy, since it's likely that at least half the store employees have myspace pages, and half of those probably make some mention of some kind of inappropriate behavior. Oh, and no more voting or taxes, either.

I'm not arguing that it was a good idea on her part. What I am saying is that it shouldn't matter. Obviously, it does, and teachers who want to get or keep jobs have to work within that stupid, stupid system. On that note, I also don't understand why the university couldn't have just warned her, which would have been helpful.


* - I say "they" because the TEFL industry in Russia is very (in fact, a little too) far removed from this situation.

And after many glasses of work

I never say that I have an addictive personality. That implies that my personality is so wonderful that people can't get enough of it. And while that is, of course, true, it's not something I need to go around announcing. I don't know the adjective for what I want to say.

This is my way of saying that I bought a pair of shoes. Well, I kind of needed the shoes (they're low-heeled and black and replacing a very old, no longer supportive pair).

It's actually my way of saying that I have a holiday this week and am not sure what to do with myself. I don't have to work again until May 7th. I don't even have to think about work again until May 6th. Given that I've been working 150% of my contract teaching hours, not to mention the other stuff that I do, it's been a long time since I've had this much free time.

And how is it that I was even working that hard in the first place? I left America partly because of the workaholic culture. I felt like I'd have to spend most of my life working just to survive. Russians have (many, many) more holidays and work fewer hours per week than most Americans.

Of all the people I know back home, I assumed I was the least likely to get sucked into this stupid workaholic culture, due to my inherent laziness. But here I am, wondering if the place (which isn't even open for classes) is going to fall apart without me, or if my students are going to forget their English. I know that some of this is my own personality, but I think American culture is at least partly to blame. Why is it that Russians don't seem to have any trouble taking long holidays in the middle of the year?

Though I guess they just have different socially acceptable addictions. Work is better for my liver. Probably.


In other news, this happened back home: http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/30/highway.collapse.ap/index.html
Amazingly, nobody was killed, and even the driver was able to walk away with minor injuries, which means you're allowed to gawk at the pictures.

Here's a question for some mega nerd out there: how long does this section of freeway have to be out, thereby forcing some portion of commuters onto public transport, to create a net drop in air pollution? You have to account for:
1. the giant fireball which started the whole thing
2. the extra public transport being made available
3. the fact that some of the commuters will probably be driving longer distances instead
4. the air pollution created by the repair machines