Going Postal

One things that happens when you go into teaching is that you end up hearing a lot of jokes about having summers off. In language schools, this of course does not happen (although I will be the first to admit that our workload is considerably reduced during the summer); reports I have received from people have taught in regular public and private schools indicate that it doesn't either--summer being the time when teachers work at improving their credentials, preparing or revamping lesson plans for the fall, attending educational seminars, or engaging in summer-school teaching or house painting to earn a few extra dollars.

But I will say that vacation time can be plentiful in the TEFL field. Our school has been in vacation mode since the 22nd of December and does not return to its normal schedule until this coming Sunday (yes, you read that right--Sunday...in Russia, Sunday occasionally becomes a make-up day for a weekday holiday, in this case Orthodox Christmas). And so I have had some free time on my hands.

What have I done with it? In one sense, not a lot. The weather having turned to somewhere between frigid and freezing, I have been reluctant to go out. Many days I have simply run out for food, then returned home to use my Internet connection and watch videos all day. Recently, a class of mine got into a discussion about whether people who don't possess a television set, but watch videos online, can really claim to be "living without TV." At the moment, I might be Exhibit 1 in that debate.

But in another sense, I've accomplished some very important things. My New Year's present to myself was to get the clothing pile on my bedroom floor down to zero. And close to zero it has remained. I think that, from now on, if I can manage to do just a couple loads of wash every other day, the Pile will not reconstruct itself.

More importantly, though, I've been a busy little beaver working away on graduate school applications. Two important ones, to education programs at Penn and NYU, are complete. Or will be as soon as the schools have received my transcripts. Making this possible has required my sending a $72 (Seventy-Two Dollars!) DHL package to dear old Alma Mater, because Alma Mater's registrar huffily informed me that it could not release my transcripts to anyone without an original, signed transcript request from me.

Getting this sent out required a bit of a goose chase. A fellow teacher who stayed in Moscow over the holidays took me to a post office where he had managed to send EMS (express mail) packages in the past. When we arrived, however, the granny behind the desk informed us that this police office no longer handled EMS as of the 1st of January, and told me to go to the Central Telegraph Office. Yes, you read that right. In large swatches of Russia, the telegraph is still a viable means of communication. And so off to Central Telegraph I went.

Central Telegraph lies on Tver Street, one of Moscow's main drags. The building itself features a globe above the front door that shows telegraph line radiating out from Moscow. Though I mentioned above that telegraphy is still practiced in Russia, it is no longer the main purpose of the Central Telegraph Building. Where rows of telegraphers once kept the nation's communication lines going, shoppers now hunt for bargains. All that is really left of the old telegraph operations is the city's "main" post office--now indistinguishable from any other post office in the city. It is tucked away in a corner near the entrance, rather like a duchess trying to avoid offending the paying guests who have now taken over her castle.

Into the old duchess went I, documents in hand. Tidy lines had formed at the couple of windows that appeared to be open--one marked "Telegrams" and the other marked, as near as I could guess, "Stamps." I decided to join the "Stamps" line, figuring it nearer reflected my purpose than "Telegrams." In America, it's voice mail trees that never quite correspond to your need; in Russia, it's lines.

I no sooner got to the end of the line and inquired about sending an express when someone informed me, in good English, that no express mail would be going out until the 11th, because of the New Years' and Christmas holidays. This was too late for me; even an "express" to America takes a minimum of 7 days, as I know from prior experience. And given Columbia's general apathy about handling even something as simple as a transcript request promptly, I decided to seek out DHL. On an ordinary day, I could have sent a DHL from the Central Telegraph post office, but the window was closed. I asked when it would be open again. Not until the 11th, I was told. But someone did kindly give me a list of other DHL offices around the city and pointed out the one closest to Central Telegraph. I thanked him profusely and headed out into the cold to find it.

The address for the DHL office turned out to be a Marriott Hotel. The guard at the door did not initially understand what I wanted. I was wearing tatty jeans and the kind of black wool hat that a New Yorker would most identify with muggers, hardly the attire of the Marriott's usual guests. But the guard did at least allow me to go in and speak to a receptionist who spoke English. He told me to go upstairs to the hotel's Business Center.

There, I was at last able to get my documents sent. They will leave Moscow on the 8th, the day after Orthodox Christmas, and arrive in New York the following day. My transcripts will certainly be dispatched to NYU by its deadline on the 1st of February. What an age we live in--to get a transcript from 116th and Broadway down to the Village only takes four days and a lot of running around Moscow.

This adventure aside, however, I am happy to have a real feeling of progress in my life. My graduate applications have gone remarkably smoothly. Through the online systems at Penn and NYU, I can be sure that the people writing recommendations for me have actually submitted them--something I never could have found out in pre-internet times. I can look with real satisfaction at having actually done something to find an appropriate direction for myself in life and to take the steps that will get me there.

My transcript request has gone postal. I, however, no longer am.