Bear Surprise!

August 20

So we hang out in this place Cafe Kafka because it has free wireless but it keeps cutting out.  Thus, I apologize to anyone who’s been trying to iChat with me.

Anyway today we started our teacher training.  Our mantra is “Engage, study, activate!”  It’s very helpful, which has to be hard for them to accomplish since we’re all going to different schools that will expect different things of us.  But what we have in common is a background of language learning and not teaching.  The teacher began today by teaching us how to say “Hi, how are you?  I’m fine, thanks.  My name is ---.  What’s your name?  I am from ---.  Where are you from?” in TURKISH!  It was really just an exercise in teaching language to beginners, and it was very effective!  We also had a lesson on American perceptions of Russians (gloomy, solemn) and Russian perceptions of Americans (naive, insincerely peppy).  I thought it was a big generalization but sure enough, a housekeeper asked where I come from because she noticed I am so cheerful.  Ain’t that a kick in the pants?  By Friday we all have to teach lessons on American culture.  Mine will be about rock ‘n roll and the British invasion.  Back in the USSR baby!

After class, we went to a flea market around St Andrew’s Rise.  The market sold mostly Russian/Ukrainian tchochkees, the likes of which you can find anywhere, or else that was my rationale for not yet buying souvenirs.  I did however buy a pin featuring the “Preved Medved,” a cartoon by John Lurie, one of my favorite contemporary artists, that is inexplicably huge in Russia.  So I’m wearing it with esoteric pride.  Russians and Ukrainians think this drawing is funny, but I know his whole career is brilliant!  If you don’t know John Lurie, I strongly recommend his tv show “Fishing with John,” and the Jim Jarmusch films in which he appears, “Stranger than Paradise” (about Cleveland!) and “Down by Law.”  We also took silly pictures with a statue of Mikhail Bulgakov, begging the question, who’s the master and where’s the margarita?

Thoroughly satisfied by the kitschy market, we checked out St Andrews.  It is an incredibly beautiful cathedral which my camera failed to capture in all its glory.  I almost felt bad snapping pictures in there, especially when I interrupted a young priest’s prayers.  But then I remembered that they would hate me, not for taking photos, but for being Jewish.  So that alleviated my guilt.  Remember, Jewish guilt and Christian guilt are very different things.  For dinner we got shwarma and my favorite orange Fanta.  The shwarma wasn’t the best and someone told me that Fanta is, like Volkswagon, a product of the Third Reich.  But what can I say?  You gotta eat.

Now the day is over so I’ll go back to the hotel and relax with a movie.  I’m thinking John Wayne in “True Grit,” because being abroad makes me feel, if not patriotic, at least proud to be an Americanka.  Until next time, remember the wise words of John Lurie, “Of course, animals have souls.”