Week 3: A Birthday, Schoolchildren, and Environmentalists

Outside of my dorm

This week began with my twenty-first birthday on Monday. It was low-key and quiet—but compared to the chaos that was last week, I was content with having a calm birthday. My roommate gave me a card in the morning and bought me a cake that we shared after dinner. The Belgians sang “Happy Birthday” to me in Dutch and Polish (they also take Polish as a part of their Slavonic Studies program). On Tuesday, my roommate and I made “breakfast for dinner.” We made banana-chocolate chip pancakes, hash-browns, bacon, and eggs for everyone in our dinner-swap. (We take turns cooking dinner for each other in pairs, Monday through Thursday). My friends Martijn and Koen were ecstatic, and kept going on and on about American breakfast food.

Wednesday was the most eventful day of this week--leaving me very tired today as I write this. Some of the international students were asked to travel to Angarsk (about an hour away) to help the university with an “international day” program. The gist of the visit was to expose students to the variety of disciplines and languages that they can study at IGLU. I went with three of my friends (English and Belgian) to lead sessions in our various languages (French, English, German) with highschoolers.

We arrived and were immediately treated like rock stars (some more than others, might I add). We were given coffee and sweets to eat before being introduced in their auditorium. After the opening information session, we went to a classroom to talk about ourselves in Russian. My friend Ashley, from Manchester, was the most popular with the students. They had so many questions about England and his perceptions of Russia. After speaking with students in Russian, we each parted ways to lead our individual language sessions. I had a lovely group of students for English. They were attentive and sweet, and one of them even told me when she walked into the room she didn’t know I was an American—she thought I was Russian. I really enjoyed speaking with them, and I told the teacher that I would gladly return to have another conversation hour. We had lunch in their cafeteria and then returned to the auditorium to hand out prizes to the three best speakers in each language group. After the ceremony was over, the boys I came with were bombarded for pictures and to exchange email addresses. We were each interviewed for their school’s TV station about why we decided to study Russian in Irkutsk before leaving. It was a great experience, and I have included some pictures of the school below.

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Koen being interviewed___ My English Classroom

Once we arrived back at our university, I went straight to my internship. There, I helped with internet-based advertising for the organization and then looked at the new website. I will be helping translate and design the website, in addition to teaching a beginners’ English class. I am in love with Great Baikal Trail and the people there. I have been meaning to describe them in an entry, and it seems the time is now.

When I first went the GBT office, I ended up going into the right building, thinking there was no way that it could possibly be correct, and went into the adjacent building instead. The adjacent building—though much nicer—was unfortunately a dentist’s office. I asked about GBT, and they told me to go next door—back to where I had started. So I walked across the snowy sidewalk to the adjacent building and pushed open the swinging door. The building smelled musty and looked deserted. I poked around on the bottom floor, and then saw a staircase. I climbed the staircase and stood outside 4 closed iron doors. The one marked “GBT” was locked, so I called my coordinator to say I had arrived. She unlocked and opened the iron door to invite me in. The office is a tiny space, the two connected rooms no bigger than a two room double in Hewitt at Wesleyan. There is a table with several benches and chairs in the first room and a few computers and a couch in the second. The first day, I went to meet my coordinator. I was immediately soothed by her presence and down-to-earth attitude. Her name is Natasha—she wears Lisa Loeb glasses and listens to Bob Marley.

After our first meeting, I agreed to come back in the evening to listen to an English class. I didn’t speak any English, but instead, I listened to their level. The office was packed with bodies, probably about 15 people. Some of the students spoke beautiful English, while others had never studied before and couldn’t say anything. My favorite part is that I got to silently people-watch for about an hour and a half. Remember how I described the Russian high style of fur coats, hats, and high-heeled leather boots? Not here. The people who volunteer for GBT are straight out of Wesleyan. There’s even a girl with dreds! Everyone was dressed casually and one boy looks like he regularly surfs around San Francisco. I was ecstatic—I had found my people, my Wesleyanite-look-a-likes, in the middle of Siberia.

After staying at the office for a few hours on Wednesday, I went home to eat dinner, say goodbye to two friends, and ended up staying up late with a friend who needed some support. I have absolutely no regrets about my four hours of sleep, but I'm starting to feel it. I have a meeting for GBT tonight, and I will try to take some pictures for next time.

In the meantime, enjoy the new photos! (I have a video to upload, but I can't get it to work..I'll be sure to post it as an in-between-blogs treat).