The Olympics

The Olympics happened/are happening!

I watched the Opening Ceremonies in Real Time on my Russian TV and listened to the announcers speak in English, French, and Russian and was proud to understand a lot of all three. I've been watching a lot of the Games, and as always, the sports and athleticism are amazing and addicting. I must've watched about 4 hours of curling the other day. Curling! I'm sure the only time I've ever watched curling is during the Olympics, but every 4 years I kind of love it.

I've also watched/read a lot of Western criticism and jokes about Russia, which has been kind of surreal. Firstly, it's weird because I've been living here 5 1/2 months, and Russia's been majorly on my radar during this time and also before. It's weird that all of a sudden other people care about Russia. While taking on media scruple is something any country hosting the Olympics should expect, I can't help but get defensive of my home for the last 5 months even (especially) when the criticism comes from my home for a lot longer. And here's the reason: as far as I can tell (I'm still an American living in Moscow, and not a Russian or an expert on Russia), a lot of the criticism about Russia is based on facts, but it also kind of falls into the "walk a mile in someone shoes" camp. Yes, Russia has a lot of problems. And yes, Sochi 2014 has a lot of problems. It was a huge undertaking, since they were trying to make Winter happen in one of the most Southern places in Russia. I think the reason for this is partially because of the tourist-friendly nature of this resort-city, but also because of a long-seated Russian determination to conquer Nature and the weather (see: Peter the Great and the founding of St. Petersburg on a swamp, and pretty much any great Russian novel during the winter). The bottom line is that the surprise that it's warm at the Winter Olympics is not shared by the Russians. And, when asked what they thought about the Games, I think one of my students summed it up nicely, "They're expensive." Part of this expense is monetarily, which is of course made worse by corruption, but part of it too is in PR. 

It is true that there is a law in Russia that prohibits the promotion of "non-traditional sexual orientations" to minors, though I believe this has recently been changed to extend to all promotion of sex to minors. In practice this means the tacit authorization against violence and/or discrimination against gays. Perhaps even more detrimental, it prevents the education of youth of including anything other than this idea that "homosexuality is abnormal". I will not try to defend this or any other promotion of discrimination by Russia or any other country. Even if I personally was against homosexuality, I have always had a hard time trying to understand why anyone has the right to decide how other people should be living their lives, when that life path really won't affect them. That being said, there are few countries more guilty of telling others how to live their lives than the United States. Because of the spotlight on the Olympics, it's easy to point the finger at Russia. After all, we've been name-calling those Soviet Commies for over a hundred years, what should make the fact that they haven't been Soviet or Commies for 20 years change our name-calling.

The bottom line is that Americans are experts at criticizing everyone else in the world before they look in the mirror. Today many states have laws on the books that are virtually the same as Russia's.
(http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/us-hypocrisy-over-russias-anti-gay-laws/2014/01/31/3df0baf0-8548-11e3-9dd4-e7278db80d86_story.html).

I hate Russia's discrimination, but I also hate America's insistence on pointing out and mocking the faults of all other countries, rather than leading by example by looking at its own problems and fixing them. I'm falling in love with this crazy country, with its sordid past, its crazy language, and its resistance to fall into any of the categories with which we sort the rest of the world.

On a somewhat more positive note, I live next to a pre-school, and this morning when I looked out my window I saw all of the students gather onto Olympic rings that were painted on the snow, hold onto balloons of the colors of the rings, and then let them go. I say "somewhat more positive" because on the one hand it was really cute and a great show of Russian pride, and on the other hand, pollution.

Working, Dinos, and Upsidedown Houses

Hello people who still haven't given up that I'll post another blog entry,

Once again, I need to apologize that it's been almost a month since my last entry. The end of January/ beginning of February has been very busy, mostly with a lot of working, which I won't bore you with, except to say that I recently inherited a class of 3 year olds, which is...an adventure. While their ability to mock the sounds they hear is actually pretty cool, their ability to have an attention span is non-existent. Coupled with that is the fact that my experience with children of this age group consists of the one or two times I babysat for the girl down the street when I was 13. Admittedly I've been teaching a class of 5 year olds since October and they could tell you colors, parts of the face, some action verbs and some animals, but anyone who argues that 5 year olds and 3 year olds are the same hasn't been alone in a classroom with both of them. 5 year olds can use scissors. They can follow simple instructions. They can even play games, sometimes even with a winner and a loser (though there were recently some tears over a close game of tic-tac-toe, but really, being a sore loser is not a quality that is unique to five year olds, sadly). Anyways, I currently teach children under the age of 6 Monday-Thursday. I never saw myself as a pre-K/K teacher, but I guess I kind of am? It's challenging, but I get to sing a lot of songs, play some games, and do crafts, so I don't hate it.

Anyways, I started this entry by saying I wouldn't bore you with details of working and then I wrote a whole long paragraph about it. In my free time, I've managed to get out and do a few fun things. The cold weather I mentioned in the last post extended for a while (but so did the sun, so I won't complain about that) I experienced -20 F weather, which was a first! I think we've gone beyond that though, and we're starting to get into the awkward period of pre-Spring, where everything is still cold (relatively, it's currently 37 F), but it's also very gray and wet. I'm not naive enough to think that winter in Moscow is really ending in mid-February, but it has been warmer recently.

So, a couple of weeks ago, I decided to go to a museum after a morning of professional development in the city center. Through the powers of Google, I ended up at the museum of Paleontology. I didn't understand a lot of what was written on the plaques (because my knowledge of both Russian and Geology/Paleontology is limited and combined it's almost non-existent), but I did get to see a lot of dinosaurs. Here are a few:

On a separate excursion, I went with some friends to an Upside-Down House:

Disclaimer: Minor Photoshop was used in this photo, but you can't tell, can you?

The other thing that has happened recently is the Olympics, which I started writing about, but I realized I have a lot of feelings about that, so I'm going to post about that separately. From here, here's to lots of crafts with little kids and weird museums!