Introduction: Russian Language in its Native Habitat

(or, Five Weeks, With Balloons)

Spring semester of 1994 found me facing my challenges with the wind at my back. It was my second full year of teaching English at THMS, and despite a few burrs under the saddle (e.g. a classroom with exactly one electrical outlet, by the door; the school library closed due to building renovation), I was at full gallop, wind in my mane. And let’s rein in that metaphor right now.

The gleam in my eye came from the news that my wish had been granted: come fall, my teaching schedule would include a Russian Language class, unique in the district, and one of five foreign languages offered at the Magnet. I would be putting to full use the other half of my teaching accreditation; I would have a classroom full of students who were there by choice and not just by graduation requirement; I would empower the next generation with communication skills for a post-Cold War world. I had dreams big enough to require two, even three electrical outlets.

I had already prepared a flyer to give out at preregistration time. Selling a class on paper is a gamble, and I gave it my best shot. I recently found one of those two-sided flyers. Apparently graphics were beyond the scope of our school’s Mac OS 7 computers, but I seemed to think that using Enterprise font in the title would attract attention:

One day I got a call at home from Dr. Del Phillips, one of my professors in the Russian department at the University of Arizona. He asked if I was teaching Russian yet, and when I told him that I’d be starting that fall, he said he had some very good news for me. He had arranged for some scholarship funding for the UA Study Abroad program, specifically funding to send Russian teachers to a summer program in Moscow for language study. And I was the first person he thought of.

Wow. Twelve years earlier, I had finished my degree in Russian studies, followed by three semesters of graduate work (with a teaching assistantship), but I had not yet made it over to Mother Russia. Now I could go, sharpen my language skills, amass pictures, books, artifacts and stories, all in time to begin my new class in the fall. The stipend would cover five weeks of classes for graduate credit, room and board, and airfare from New York. Again, wow. I accepted immediately. Del apologized for the lateness of the offer, considering that I had a fair amount of applications to file, passport and visa to obtain, and of course transportation to arrange between Tucson and New York, all with rapidly approaching deadlines leading up to the program starting at the end of June.

[I pause here to once again express my love and gratitude to my wife Kathy, whose enthusiasm for the prospect almost matched my own. Whatever doubts or concerns she had about being a single parent of three-year-old for a good chunk of the summer she kept mostly to herself. To this day I am amazed and thankful.]

For several years before, and many afterward, I had supplemented my income by teaching summer school. Question: would I be able to fit it in this year? The answer was yes, although it meant a tighter schedule than was probably wise. Summer classes began as usual in late May, shortly after completion of the regular school year. They ended in late June. I persuaded the program administrator to allow me to conclude my class one day early (Thank you, Mary Wilging!), because on that last day I would board a plane for New York by way of Las Vegas–more about that in another post.

My suitcases were packed with clothes, cameras, dictionary and other books, writing materials, my trusty Lands’ End bag for ambling about… I also acquired a Walkman-type player with radio and recording ability. And as a bit of whimsy I brought along a couple bags of toy balloons. Why? Maybe I wanted to have something nice to give to any kids I met. Maybe it was my way of bringing a little color to a city I’d always heard described as gray on top of more gray. Maybe my inner child was showing his delight at the biggest adventure of my life.

By way of long introduction, this begins the story of a summer that has affected my life’s introspection and outlook for nearly a quarter of a century. I brought back a lot of books, artifacts, and stories, as I’d hoped I would. I took many pictures; looking back now, I wish I’d taken more. But these were the pre-digital camera days (at least for me), and film and processing were an expense. Also, to be fair, any time spent behind a viewfinder meant less time in the activity itself, and that’s a balance that’s not easy to maintain. All in all, I think I did remarkably well. I recently had the slides I took converted to digital (Yay, Costco!), and intend to share a good many of them as I continue posting to this category.

Allow me to begin with a portrait of me, in my casual attire and photochromic glasses, standing proudly at Tolstoy’s country home. The Count was not available to greet me, having died some eight decades earlier.

Note: from time to time I will append this and other postings in this category with little bits I call Дополнении (“Addenda”), anecdotes or memories from the experience. As I prepare to chronicle this amazing brief chapter of my life, I find that long-neglected memories are returning to mind, often as I revisit photos or other remaining treasures from that summer long ago. As time passes, the addenda to my postings will continue to grow (I hope), and I encourage the reader to check back now and then for new stories of something old.

•Дополнении•

• Since I was going to be away from home (and Kathy and three-year-old Sasha) for over a month, I was concerned about keeping in touch. Postal mail was unreliable and slow. Email? At that time, we didn’t have a home computer, let alone an internet connection. Shortly after arriving in Moscow, I made my way to the main post office, where I could send an international fax to the preschool where Kathy worked. I let her know I was OK, and gave her the phone number of my hotel room. A day or two later, I received a very staticky call in my room. It was Kathy, and she was giving me the local access number for Sprint, our long-distance service. I had been a Sprint subscriber since 1982, and it turned out that my circumstances made for a pretty good deal with them. On international calls, they gave a generous discount (about 20%, I think), for calls either originated or received at our home phone, and a similar discount for “Sprint-to-Sprint” calls. The result was that we qualified for both discounts. I called Kathy at least twice a week, and while I don’t remember the total charges, I do recall figuring that the discounts saved us about $300.

Unlike that initial phoning, the calls I made to Kathy were largely static-free; yay, late-20th-Century telecommunications! The difference in time zones took some getting used to. What worked best were calls I would place at 8 a.m. in Moscow, which she would receive at 10 p.m. (the previous date) in Tucson.

• I recently found a poster I had made for my Russian class to be displayed during enrollment for the second (or possibly third) year that my class was offered. I offer it here now in all its garish green glory. Apparently I had access to only a dot-matrix printer this time around. As for the snarky/crypto-elitist/proto-hipster tone: well, let’s just say that its a good thing I didn’t quit my steady job to try my hand at the exciting world of advertising.