Monday, June 29, 2009

A Strangely Awesome Day

Are you still humming the telephone song to yourself from the last post? I am. But let's get back to something a little more substantial.

Today I had a rather unsual day. I spent the entire day out of the office working with a summer camp from St. Petersburg. It was me, a young woman from the Public Affairs Office named Vera (she's probably about my age), a slightly younger woman from a local university (Yulia: ~21 years old and looks EXACTLY like my friend, Denise, from Princeton...seriously, it was eerie, and we had a boy on the excursion whose name was Denis, which in Russian is pronounced like Denise, and it was freaking me out when someone would say his name and I'd look up and see this girl) who works for the camp over the summer, and seven kids. Now, that may sound like a good ratio, but seven is a lot of kids. Look, I've always had a lot of respect for schoolteachers and such, and two of the people I respect most in the world are my mother's parents, who had fourteen kids. But I've always sort of been of the opinion that kids are kids, they're easy to amuse, and I've had lots of experience with my younger cousins, so whatever. Well, let's just say that my estimation of people who work with kids on a regular basis has risen another tick.

Today, the "Humanitarian Academy of Global Language and Rest" (a horrible misnomer as none of them spoke anything but Russian, it's really more a summer camp than an "academy", and I feel anything but rested after today) was doing an "America Day", and to get a genuine experience, they requested help from the consulate. Of course, the Public Affairs section was only too happy to offer me up as the sacrifical lamb. I met them in front of the Kazan Cathedral, and we played some silly camp games while we waited for everyone to show up. The kids were of a pretty strange age distibution; I would say that all but two were 8, but then that one boy was 12 and another girl was 13 or 14 (I originally mistook her for a counselor), although for young teenagers, they ended up being remarkably cooperative and seemed to enjoy themselves. Once we were all there, we went to a local culinary institute to cook "real" American food--we'd picked out recipes for sloppy joes, cole slaw, some sort of Pennsylvania Dutch tomatoes that I'd never heard of, and apple Brown Betty (which they kept calling "Dark-Skin Betty" because of a translation that someone from my office did, and my sensibilities were a bit offended, but alas). The head chef was wonderful, he was great with the kids, he was very helpful, and he clearly just grasped cooking quite well, so my relative ignorance of all things culinary did not hinder us. The kids did a good job, although they were often more interested in playing with the knives, which terrified me to a great degree.

Aside: Russians are generally a less-risk averse people than Americans, which is probably why no one saw in big deal in giving kitchen knives to several third graders. It probably also explains why no one seemed worried about letting children put food in a hot oven without any sort of hot mitts. But I digress.

The food actually turned out quite well. The sloppy joes were tasty, the slaw was too runny, but good, the tomatoes were a bit weird (they had bacon, but it didn't make them better, believe it or not), and the brown betty was tasty although it could have used some ice cream. When we finished there, we headed over to a park not far from my apartment. Vera had to leave, putting Yulia and I at an even greater disadvantage, and the American girls who were supposed to come from a local program to help out didn't show, so it was just the two of us. We played around, I showed them the limbo (which the teenage girl was REALLY good at...it was crazy. She beat some of the eight-year-olds), then I had several American trivia questions that I read out for them and awarded Reese's Cups for each correct answer. The kids seemed to enjoy that for a little while. Finally, the main attraction--two guys from the St. Petersburg semi-pro baseball team--showed up. They were nice guys, and I helped them teach the kids (and Yulia) about baseball and how to play it. Probably the best was a little girl who had rolled her eyes a lot when one of the guys explained that girls generally played softball, not baseball. She could really smack the ball, which perhaps came from her experience with tennis. Anyhow, we played catch a fair amount, then we taught them to field and hit and so forth. I had to restrain myself BIG TIME not to tee off on the baseball when the kids insisted that I take my turn hitting. After I took a check swing that launched a ball at a kid and hit him in the stomach, I switched sides of the plate (to audible gasps, which made me laugh). It was a good time.

Finally, the ballplayers had to leave (around 5:15), and then we played a few more American games (Red Rover and Mafia) before it was time to go. I had a pretty good time, and it was quite a test of my Russian skills. I made it through, everyone understood me, and I generally understood everyone, so that was good. I may very well go back to work with them sometime, although when I informed the children that I worked at the consulate for free, they were appalled, so I can't imagine how they'd feel if I kept showing up to work with them without getting paid. At the end of the day, I felt tired, hungry, and pretty happy. The kids were funny, Yulia was good with them and was very friendly and interesting, and all the people who helped make this work were really good with children. It was nice to get out of the office for a change, especially after I had spent part of my weekend writing a speech for the CG that she ended up not needing (don't ask; it's not that interesting, anyway). This weekend was another quiet one, because the weather was lousy again. But I PROMISE that sometime soon, I will get out there and get some pictures for you all. I really wanted to go this weekend, but the weather just did not cooperate. This coming week will probably be really busy, what with the upcoming presidential visit and the 4th of July right around the corner. We've got our own reception, I have to go to one for the American Chamber of Commerce, et cetera. Oh, and while I may not get to see any fireworks this year, I will get to help fire a cannon.

Hells yes.

C

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