Our students

My other teammates may disagree, but I really believe that Cat and I have the best students ever. I simply adore them all. Every night we come home and compare stories about classes that day and talk, once again, about how freaking amazing they are. And they really seem to enjoy our classes, too (yay!!!!!). The first lesson, I taught them ways to greet and say goodbye to people beyond simply “hello,” “hi,” “goodbye,” and “bye”. And now every time they see me, whether in school or not, they call out “yo” or “what’s up” and then start laughing... it’s fabulous.

On Saturday we met a group of students to go downtown to the new Ramstore (a great, though very expensive store/mall that sells a lot of American brands you can’t find anywhere else). Once we got there we split up into groups, and about five of them went with me. I felt like I had an entourage! They just followed me around the store. Even when I told them that I was done shopping and just wanted to walk around with them while they shopped, they kept taking cues from me. One girl wanted to go into a store to buy makeup (it was very Sephora-like... makeup, perfumes, etc.) but we ended up walking the store trying to find lotion for me because I’d mentioned earlier that I wanted some. As soon as we walked in the door they swooped down on a saleswoman en masse, told her what I was looking for, and then led me all over the store, telling me which brands were better, cheaper, smelled good, etc. It was like having a whole team of personal shoppers! It was amazing.

They are so considerate and helpful. It’s a cultural thing, I think. They will do just about anything to help you out and be friendly. If you invite someone to something, they will go. It doesn’t matter if it’s not something they are particularly interested in or not. They will go. If you need help with something, they will bend over backwards. It’s unbelievable.

When we left the store we went to a cafe nearby for dinner. Cat dropped one of her bags and a huge bottle of hot sauce she had bought broke in the bag. Some spilled on the floor, and I got some napkins to clean it up. Apparently that was not okay! Dias, a friend of one our students, yelled “No!” at me. He wasn’t being mean or trying to startle me, but he was just apparently horrified by the thought of me cleaning it up myself. So I just let it go and chalked it up to a cultural discovery. All in all, it was pretty humorous. We were still chuckling about it ten minutes into the meal.

The group got smaller as the afternoon progressed, until finally it was just me, Cat, Asem (Asyem), Julia, and Dias on the marshrutka home. And the two drunk German guys hitting on Cat. If we had been alone, it would have been pretty awkward, but Julia and Asem were running interference via language, and Dias was there just as a male presence. We invited the three of them up to our apartment for coffee. We mutually amused each other (Cat’s dancing, Julia and Cat singing Shakira songs, me asking them how to say things in Russian and then trying to write them down using the Cyrillic alphabet, Cat and I trying to communicate with Dias using our extremely limited Russian, his slightly better English, and our handy Russian-English dictionary, etc), and they finally left around 9pm. All in all, it was a great day.

And tonight after my 4 o’clock class, they all swarmed me, asking what words I knew in Russian. It was so funny. I counted to 100 for them, and then started recounting random phrases and food names that I knew. They just thought that was the funniest thing ever. Then they started teaching me new words and telling me how to spell them in Russian. I’m not sure why it is so funny to them when I try to write things in Russian, but it seems to be pretty universal.

Have I mentioned that I love our students?

(Written Tuesday, September 19)

PS. Thank you to everyone at First Baptist! I just recieved four CD's of the August services in the mail today (Friday). I almost cried. I loved every bit of it... the sermon, the children recieving their Bibles, hearing our beautiful choir. I loved just hearing the familiar voices. Thank you to everyone, both the people who took part in the service and the people responsible for recording and sending it to me. It was only the second sermon I've heard in English since I've been here! Thank you!