Jews aren't really big on Satan. Actually, since nobody is really big on Satan, let me rephrase that. Satan does not loom large in the Jewish consciousness. In the Hebrew Bible (what Christians call the Old Testament), Satan is actually called HaSatan (rhymes with Anne) and is usually seen as something akin to a district attorney who lays out the charges against you before God, not as the horned man with a pitchfork of later Christian imagination. Many Jews, myself included, really don't believe in Satan at all, seeing him largely as an allegorical figure.
I tend to be pretty staunch in that theological position except at times like today when my computer suddenly goes on the fritz. Then I feel compelled to believe it must be the work of demonic spirits or even of Ole Lucifer himself. How else can I explain my computer's propensity to encounter these problems at such amazingly bad times?
Or is it amazingly good times? I'm returning to America in two days, after all, which means I won't need to repeat the scene I described in a December post (see: http://fareastsideminyan.blogspot.com/2008/12/remont-strating.html). As luck has it, I'll be staying at the home of a couple of very close friends, one of whom, I suspect, would run her own computer repair shop if God had not called on her to run a non-profit assisting the Jews of Uganda (yes, Virginia, there are Jews in Uganda). I can probably get her to take a look at it and at least tell me what is wrong.
On the other hand, since I turned in my company-provided cell phone a couple days ago, and the phone in our flat is not working, I am temporarily completely incommunicado. If anyone needs to reach me over the next couple of days, do send an e-mail: I will be checking my e-mail at my school starting Monday. Until then, there's nothing I can really do.
More to the point, as readers of my December post will recall, this is not the first computer-related drama I've had in Russia. I've bought a total of not one, not two, but FOUR power cords since I've been here. Two of them spontaneously died--one after it fried the insides of my machine. The third worked fine but had a socket attachment that eventually started to wobble and wiggle and generally refuse to stay in place. After that, I was forced to go back to the incompetent computer chain that sold me the first two, wrong power cords and buy my fourth one, which I suspect has something to do with this latest computer "issue".
All of this started last night, when my computer started rebooting itself for no apparent reason. At first I thought I had hit something somewhere, but after the second or third time it happened I got messages telling me to run some kind of automatic screening system before loading Windows. Then today, it wouldn't come on properly at all--similar to what happened when my processor got fried the last time.
Dealing with computer repairs--or car repairs, or any other kind of repair--tends to make most people feel incompetent and helpless even when they're in their own country and can communicate about repairs in their own language. Doing it abroad tends to triple or quadruple the chances of being fleeced, flim-flammed, or being just-plain-wrong advice. I'm glad I'm not going to have to go through this one more time.
It's sort of fitting that this is happening to me just as I'm gearing up to go home and am starting to think of various things--necessities and otherwise--I intend to purchase once I'm back. Close to the top of my list is Designing Women, which is finally being released in DVD season-sets after years of apparently ugly wrangling over music rights. In one memorable episode, I recall the Sugarbaker gals deciding, after seeing the sweatshop where their curtains are sewn by women paid by the piece, to strike a blow for all women everywhere by picketing the garage where Mary Jo Shively's car is being held hostage by price-gouging mechanics. As the lights fade out and the ending credits appear onscreen, we hear the women screaming, "Free the Shively Volvo! Free the Shively Volvo!"
Will someone please free my Volvo?
20 June 2009
16 June 2009
We Shall Overcome
Two days ago, I had my last class ever at my school. This was with the group I usually refer to as "My Tajik Ladies"--a group of twentysomething and thirtysomething women from Tajikistan I had been teaching since January. It was a sweeter occasion than I had expected. All of these women professed that they would miss me and said it was "very bad" that they were to have another teacher when they liked me so much.
This is quite a change from the situation I had with these ladies after our first class together. My Tajik ladies are a somewhat unusual group in that they straddle a fence that exists in the way my school (and most other language schools) handle instruction. Our school usually divides teachers and students into two groups: school-based and in-company. School-based classes usually consist of students who pay for their own lessons and attend them in a classroom at the language school. In-company groups, on the other hand, usually consist of students whose lessons are paid for by their employer and take place at their worksite. My Tajik ladies were unusual because, though they were classified as an "in-company" group, their lessons took place at our school's central branch.
Before my first lesson with them, I was told that these women were the wives of executives at some sort of investment company. I was told that the class would be Elementary (usually the first level of EFL instruction, though some schools offer Beginner or Starter courses for those rare students who come in without a knowledge of the English alphabet or phonemic symbols) but that I should give them our standard written and speaking tests anyhow, because some might be what are known in our trade as "false beginners" (students who claim not to know any English but have in fact studied a little bit of it at some point and forgotten it).
Standard procedure with new classes is to start with a shorter "test lesson" where students have a short conversation with the teacher, followed by the written and speaking tests. A typical lesson is usually 90 minutes to 2 hours and 15 minutes long. Test lessons are under an hour. With higher-level groups, this can be explained fairly simply, but as my Tajik ladies proved, with only one exception, to be near-total beginners, I was unable to get them to understand why the lesson was shorter. Apparently, they afterward went and complained, demanding a new teacher. My administrative director must have done some pretty fancy footwork to get them to accept me as their teacher, but somehow she did. But she also warned me to tread carefully with them.
Somehow, despite this rocky start, I managed to win over these ladies. While I never felt I was especially great and teaching Elementary level English, I did get to have some fun with them, and in the process even learn a little bit about Tajikistan.
And also, a little about myself and about the teaching of English.
Our final lesson was a case in point. The central grammar point of this lesson was the going to future for plans and intentions, and the theme was vacation. Our textbook built this lesson around a fake reality TV program in which two couples each choose a vacation but are then forced to go on the vacation chosen by the other couple. By way of leading into the topic, I asked my students to interview each other about their last vacations.
Most of the students who take English lessons with our school are quite privileged. I've gotten used to students telling me about exotic vacation in the Bahamas and the Swiss Alps, and I expected the same from these ladies. Instead, one student told me that she had never taken a vacation. Two others described vacations a couple of years back to visit relations in Tajikistan. On these vacations, the women had stayed not in five-star accomodations but with relatives who, it was clear, didn't have much room to accomodate them: in a previous lesson, when I asked these ladies to draw their family trees, I was told in all earnestness that this would be very difficult, because they all came from families with more than ten siblings, had parents with more than ten siblings, and had brothers and sisters whose own families were shaping up to be of similar size. I doubt that any of these women's relatives have a spare room for out-of-town guests.
I am amazed at what these women seem to have overcome to be where they are today. Tajikistan, I gather, is still a very conservative country. Except in the capital, women are generally expected to wear hijab (traditional Muslim head coverings for women). More than one of these women said they had come to Moscow at least in part because they did not want to abide by this custom. All seem to have escaped the traditional women's lot of being constantly pregnant; some of these women had no children at all, and the others had only one or two.
There are two things, I've found, that can lead an EFL teacher to doubt the value of what he does. The first is the sense that, since his students are generally pretty wealthy people, he is just in the business of helping rich people get even richer. The second is the nagging worry that he is an agent of cultural imperialism and globalization. When a teacher, such as your roving reporter, has eaten at McDonalds on three continents and seen signs in English directing him to the toilets of three continents' airports, it's hard for him not to wonder if he isn't a small water drop in the seemingly unstoppable tsunami of American cultural dominance.
My Tajik ladies have turned that idea on its head. English isn't making them less Tajik. It's opening up the world for them--literally. I know that eventually, all of these ladies will use English, whether in business or on their travels, to speak to people from all over the world. That point was reinforced for me at the end of my lesson, when I had my students work in pairs to plan their dream vacations. Two of my students decided to plan a pilgrimage to Mecca. I can easily see these women, dressed in the plain white clothing required of hajji (pilgrims to Mecca), conversing with fellow believers from every corner of the globe--in English they learned from me.
But EFL teachers provide their students with so much more than the opportunity to make chit-chat on holidays abroad. I realized this last night, as I sat watching a documentary on my computer. Through the magic of the Internet, I've managed to find Eyes on the Prize, a landmark PBS documentary about the Civil Rights Movement. I've been working my way through the long (14 hours) series, and last night I got to the final hour, which deals with the lasting legacy of the movement. At one point, footage is shown of Chinese protesters in Tianamen Square, holding up makeshift banners with words that once echoed from every mound and molehill of Mississippi:
We shall overcome.
And, I realized, those words didn't get on that banner by magic. No. Some intrepid adventurer went off to China to teach English, and taught those words to whoever made that banner. And in the process, he taught them so much more.
This is quite a change from the situation I had with these ladies after our first class together. My Tajik ladies are a somewhat unusual group in that they straddle a fence that exists in the way my school (and most other language schools) handle instruction. Our school usually divides teachers and students into two groups: school-based and in-company. School-based classes usually consist of students who pay for their own lessons and attend them in a classroom at the language school. In-company groups, on the other hand, usually consist of students whose lessons are paid for by their employer and take place at their worksite. My Tajik ladies were unusual because, though they were classified as an "in-company" group, their lessons took place at our school's central branch.
Before my first lesson with them, I was told that these women were the wives of executives at some sort of investment company. I was told that the class would be Elementary (usually the first level of EFL instruction, though some schools offer Beginner or Starter courses for those rare students who come in without a knowledge of the English alphabet or phonemic symbols) but that I should give them our standard written and speaking tests anyhow, because some might be what are known in our trade as "false beginners" (students who claim not to know any English but have in fact studied a little bit of it at some point and forgotten it).
Standard procedure with new classes is to start with a shorter "test lesson" where students have a short conversation with the teacher, followed by the written and speaking tests. A typical lesson is usually 90 minutes to 2 hours and 15 minutes long. Test lessons are under an hour. With higher-level groups, this can be explained fairly simply, but as my Tajik ladies proved, with only one exception, to be near-total beginners, I was unable to get them to understand why the lesson was shorter. Apparently, they afterward went and complained, demanding a new teacher. My administrative director must have done some pretty fancy footwork to get them to accept me as their teacher, but somehow she did. But she also warned me to tread carefully with them.
Somehow, despite this rocky start, I managed to win over these ladies. While I never felt I was especially great and teaching Elementary level English, I did get to have some fun with them, and in the process even learn a little bit about Tajikistan.
And also, a little about myself and about the teaching of English.
Our final lesson was a case in point. The central grammar point of this lesson was the going to future for plans and intentions, and the theme was vacation. Our textbook built this lesson around a fake reality TV program in which two couples each choose a vacation but are then forced to go on the vacation chosen by the other couple. By way of leading into the topic, I asked my students to interview each other about their last vacations.
Most of the students who take English lessons with our school are quite privileged. I've gotten used to students telling me about exotic vacation in the Bahamas and the Swiss Alps, and I expected the same from these ladies. Instead, one student told me that she had never taken a vacation. Two others described vacations a couple of years back to visit relations in Tajikistan. On these vacations, the women had stayed not in five-star accomodations but with relatives who, it was clear, didn't have much room to accomodate them: in a previous lesson, when I asked these ladies to draw their family trees, I was told in all earnestness that this would be very difficult, because they all came from families with more than ten siblings, had parents with more than ten siblings, and had brothers and sisters whose own families were shaping up to be of similar size. I doubt that any of these women's relatives have a spare room for out-of-town guests.
I am amazed at what these women seem to have overcome to be where they are today. Tajikistan, I gather, is still a very conservative country. Except in the capital, women are generally expected to wear hijab (traditional Muslim head coverings for women). More than one of these women said they had come to Moscow at least in part because they did not want to abide by this custom. All seem to have escaped the traditional women's lot of being constantly pregnant; some of these women had no children at all, and the others had only one or two.
There are two things, I've found, that can lead an EFL teacher to doubt the value of what he does. The first is the sense that, since his students are generally pretty wealthy people, he is just in the business of helping rich people get even richer. The second is the nagging worry that he is an agent of cultural imperialism and globalization. When a teacher, such as your roving reporter, has eaten at McDonalds on three continents and seen signs in English directing him to the toilets of three continents' airports, it's hard for him not to wonder if he isn't a small water drop in the seemingly unstoppable tsunami of American cultural dominance.
My Tajik ladies have turned that idea on its head. English isn't making them less Tajik. It's opening up the world for them--literally. I know that eventually, all of these ladies will use English, whether in business or on their travels, to speak to people from all over the world. That point was reinforced for me at the end of my lesson, when I had my students work in pairs to plan their dream vacations. Two of my students decided to plan a pilgrimage to Mecca. I can easily see these women, dressed in the plain white clothing required of hajji (pilgrims to Mecca), conversing with fellow believers from every corner of the globe--in English they learned from me.
But EFL teachers provide their students with so much more than the opportunity to make chit-chat on holidays abroad. I realized this last night, as I sat watching a documentary on my computer. Through the magic of the Internet, I've managed to find Eyes on the Prize, a landmark PBS documentary about the Civil Rights Movement. I've been working my way through the long (14 hours) series, and last night I got to the final hour, which deals with the lasting legacy of the movement. At one point, footage is shown of Chinese protesters in Tianamen Square, holding up makeshift banners with words that once echoed from every mound and molehill of Mississippi:
We shall overcome.
And, I realized, those words didn't get on that banner by magic. No. Some intrepid adventurer went off to China to teach English, and taught those words to whoever made that banner. And in the process, he taught them so much more.
10 June 2009
Your Steady Boy Says Ship Ahoy
Okay, maybe it's a tad premature for that title, though I'm unable to think of a better one. With less than two weeks until I leave, I suppose this is the point at which I am supposed to start summing up my time in Moscow and delve into the great insights I now have into Russia her people after having lived here for over a year.
I suppose the greatest insight I can offer is how much the Russians seem just like us. I recall, about a year ago, noting that Russians shared with Americans a haziness about geography, a fascination with Paris (the one with the sex tape, not the one on the Seine), and political apathy (ah, how quickly some observations date). At the time, this was a joke. But after a year here, I have seen that Russian people are like us in other, more meaningful ways. They want good government--even if they don't know how to get it. They want to build wealth and acquire real estate, even if there is as yet no "Russian Dream" to correspond to the American Dream. And they share our concern as the world's economy continues to crumble.
In other ways, being here has made me appreciate how good Americans have it--in many ways. Having to live without an American-style washer, capable of handling a week's worth of whites, colors, or delicates at a go, may have been my first inkling of this. But I came to realize it in more profound ways as well. We Americans are fortunate to have a government we can trust most of the time--and, when we can't, can work to change. Our economy may need an overhaul, but our nation's prosperity does not rest solely on the price of a single asset, however much some people may bitch and moan about what they pay at the pump.
Most of all, we still have a banking system we can rely on. This fact really came home to me the other night, when I was watching a 60 Minutes segment online about the FDIC's takeover of a small bank that had finally failed. It turns out that, these days, FDIC bank takeovers are a surgical operation. The FDIC never comes in during regular bank hours, when apprehensive customers might start a bank run. Instead, they come after the bank has closed and the customers have gone home. When the bank reopens under FDIC management, of course, bank customers have the option of removing their money from the bank (subject to the $250,000 ceiling of FDIC protection). Almost none do, because they are given quick--and accurate--assurances that their money is safe.
Spending a year in a country that has had so much economic upheaval not just in the past year, but for the past twenty years, has made my own country's problems seem minor. I really have no more patience for the people on Wall Street and the "fears of inflation" that seem to be wreaking havoc on the stock market at present--the fear being that inflation may go from almost nothing to almost nothing plus three percent. Not once in living memory has the United States had to devalue its currency, let alone issue a completely new one. Russia has done both, more than once, since the fall of Communism.
Gratitude for what America has--that's what Russia has given me. Now let's see how long I can keep it.
I suppose the greatest insight I can offer is how much the Russians seem just like us. I recall, about a year ago, noting that Russians shared with Americans a haziness about geography, a fascination with Paris (the one with the sex tape, not the one on the Seine), and political apathy (ah, how quickly some observations date). At the time, this was a joke. But after a year here, I have seen that Russian people are like us in other, more meaningful ways. They want good government--even if they don't know how to get it. They want to build wealth and acquire real estate, even if there is as yet no "Russian Dream" to correspond to the American Dream. And they share our concern as the world's economy continues to crumble.
In other ways, being here has made me appreciate how good Americans have it--in many ways. Having to live without an American-style washer, capable of handling a week's worth of whites, colors, or delicates at a go, may have been my first inkling of this. But I came to realize it in more profound ways as well. We Americans are fortunate to have a government we can trust most of the time--and, when we can't, can work to change. Our economy may need an overhaul, but our nation's prosperity does not rest solely on the price of a single asset, however much some people may bitch and moan about what they pay at the pump.
Most of all, we still have a banking system we can rely on. This fact really came home to me the other night, when I was watching a 60 Minutes segment online about the FDIC's takeover of a small bank that had finally failed. It turns out that, these days, FDIC bank takeovers are a surgical operation. The FDIC never comes in during regular bank hours, when apprehensive customers might start a bank run. Instead, they come after the bank has closed and the customers have gone home. When the bank reopens under FDIC management, of course, bank customers have the option of removing their money from the bank (subject to the $250,000 ceiling of FDIC protection). Almost none do, because they are given quick--and accurate--assurances that their money is safe.
Spending a year in a country that has had so much economic upheaval not just in the past year, but for the past twenty years, has made my own country's problems seem minor. I really have no more patience for the people on Wall Street and the "fears of inflation" that seem to be wreaking havoc on the stock market at present--the fear being that inflation may go from almost nothing to almost nothing plus three percent. Not once in living memory has the United States had to devalue its currency, let alone issue a completely new one. Russia has done both, more than once, since the fall of Communism.
Gratitude for what America has--that's what Russia has given me. Now let's see how long I can keep it.
03 June 2009
Carrie Bradshaw in Paris
For the moment, things are quiet here in Moscow. No, scratch that. Things have been quiet for quite a while for me. But with only twenty days to go until I board an airplane for New York, I am definitely in wind-down mode.
A couple of weeks ago, I had to say goodbye--or rather, didn't get a chance to say goodbye--to Gulia, my banker student. I had known for some time that she would be going on maternity leave and thus ending her lessons, but her actual cancellation of them was rather abrupt. At our last meeting, she brought me up to her office, then proceeded to leave me there while she went off to attend the birthday party of someone I gathered was a bigwig in her bank. Forty-five minutes into what would have been an hour-and-a-half lesson, I figured she wasn't likely to return and that, even if she did, there wasn't much I could teach her in so little time. So I left her a polite note saying that I was going home.
The day of what would have been our next lesson, I got a text message from my school's office that she had cancelled her remaining lessons with me, because of her maternity leave. I really can't blame her for doing so--I'm sure a bank executive must have a million things to do in the week before she goes on a maternity leave--but I do wish I'd had a real chance to say goodbye. It may sound bitter to say so, but after having worked with her for over four months, I felt I deserved at least that much.
The whole episode has made me realize something about my inillustrious (unillustrious?) career to date. And that is, namely, how typical this is of what I've done--or more aptly, not done--again and again in my working life. If I had to compare the situation to anything I've read or seen in films or on television, the closest thing I could compare it to is the finale of the show I love to hate.
Yes, I would be forced to compare myself to Carrie Bradshaw. There, I said it. And now, having said it, I can go vomit into my toilet at the thought that I am anything like this woman.
For those of you who have not (yet) suffered through six seasons of Sarah Jessica Parker and the schnoz that ate Staten Island, what happens in the finale of Sex and the City is this:
Having fallen in love with a Russian artist (played by Mikhail Baryshnikov, of all people), Carrie Bradshaw decides to accept his offer to go and live with him in Paris. Not surprisingly, Little Miss Charge Card expects her life there to be a perfect fairy tale. Instead, it becomes a perfect nightmare at her "perfect" boyfriend turns into a perfect heel, leaving her alone in hotel rooms while he goes out and hobnobs with his art crowd and, in one instance, takes her with him to some kind of gala opening only to deposit her on a sofa near the entrance and promptly forget about her.
Again and again in six years of what has passed for my professional life, I have found myself in just this kind of situation, and I've never known what to do about it. In both of my stints as a legal assistant, I worked for people who couldn't quite figure out what to do with me and so just left me to dangle. I've had more than my share of prospective employers who did the same thing, post-interview. And then here in Russia there have been the business client students here in Russia who, almost without exception, have done the same thing at one time or another. Even the ones I've liked, and who seemed to like me, have at times left me alone for half an hour or more while they attended to early-morning phone calls and e-mails, walked out of class early because of an urgent incoming text message, or interrupted our lesson to talk to their wife.
Whatever else comes of this program at the University of Pennsylvania, I at least hope it will get me off of that sofa and into the gala of life.
A couple of weeks ago, I had to say goodbye--or rather, didn't get a chance to say goodbye--to Gulia, my banker student. I had known for some time that she would be going on maternity leave and thus ending her lessons, but her actual cancellation of them was rather abrupt. At our last meeting, she brought me up to her office, then proceeded to leave me there while she went off to attend the birthday party of someone I gathered was a bigwig in her bank. Forty-five minutes into what would have been an hour-and-a-half lesson, I figured she wasn't likely to return and that, even if she did, there wasn't much I could teach her in so little time. So I left her a polite note saying that I was going home.
The day of what would have been our next lesson, I got a text message from my school's office that she had cancelled her remaining lessons with me, because of her maternity leave. I really can't blame her for doing so--I'm sure a bank executive must have a million things to do in the week before she goes on a maternity leave--but I do wish I'd had a real chance to say goodbye. It may sound bitter to say so, but after having worked with her for over four months, I felt I deserved at least that much.
The whole episode has made me realize something about my inillustrious (unillustrious?) career to date. And that is, namely, how typical this is of what I've done--or more aptly, not done--again and again in my working life. If I had to compare the situation to anything I've read or seen in films or on television, the closest thing I could compare it to is the finale of the show I love to hate.
Yes, I would be forced to compare myself to Carrie Bradshaw. There, I said it. And now, having said it, I can go vomit into my toilet at the thought that I am anything like this woman.
For those of you who have not (yet) suffered through six seasons of Sarah Jessica Parker and the schnoz that ate Staten Island, what happens in the finale of Sex and the City is this:
Having fallen in love with a Russian artist (played by Mikhail Baryshnikov, of all people), Carrie Bradshaw decides to accept his offer to go and live with him in Paris. Not surprisingly, Little Miss Charge Card expects her life there to be a perfect fairy tale. Instead, it becomes a perfect nightmare at her "perfect" boyfriend turns into a perfect heel, leaving her alone in hotel rooms while he goes out and hobnobs with his art crowd and, in one instance, takes her with him to some kind of gala opening only to deposit her on a sofa near the entrance and promptly forget about her.
Again and again in six years of what has passed for my professional life, I have found myself in just this kind of situation, and I've never known what to do about it. In both of my stints as a legal assistant, I worked for people who couldn't quite figure out what to do with me and so just left me to dangle. I've had more than my share of prospective employers who did the same thing, post-interview. And then here in Russia there have been the business client students here in Russia who, almost without exception, have done the same thing at one time or another. Even the ones I've liked, and who seemed to like me, have at times left me alone for half an hour or more while they attended to early-morning phone calls and e-mails, walked out of class early because of an urgent incoming text message, or interrupted our lesson to talk to their wife.
Whatever else comes of this program at the University of Pennsylvania, I at least hope it will get me off of that sofa and into the gala of life.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
