This past week I didn't study in my school, but rather in another school in my city. That is because at the school I studied at there was like an international festival, and all the foreign students in the area went to school there that week. It was cool to experience another school, and also fun to hang out with other foreign students.
We each had to do a presentation of our country, a national holiday, and then do a song/dance that is representative of our country. Each foreign student was paired with a class of russian students and we prepared the presentation together. I did one on thanksgiving day. I wanted to do halloween, but with classic russian honesty, I was told that 'no that is a bad idea, do thanksgiving day'.
Theres no candy or costumes, but I think it did in the end wind up being a cool presentation because no one knew about thanksgiving beforehand. For our musical number I was clueless as to what to do. I asked the people in my class for an opinion and they said they wanted to do a dance.
Just a question: faced with 25 Russian teenagers asking you to show them an american folk dance what would you do?
I will post the video of our dance, and preface it with nothing more than this: If you ever find yourself in Nizhny Novgorod, and everyone thinks that all americans are cowboys, its probably my fault.
Even if our presentation was minorly stereotypical, I think the school enjoyed it. Also, it is not as if there was no work done to break stereotypes, because going to school with these people and dancing with them for a week, they got to know me, a real american, so they get a picture of the real, and the presentational United States.
Also, all the foreign students for the finale did a Russian folk dance to a song called Katyousha. Its about a girl named Katya looking out at a lake waiting for a bird to bring her a message from the person she loves. Russia if nothing else is unique.
I'd love to also post the complete video of that dance, however the 8 year old I told to film didn't know how to work my camera (and I didn't do a fabulous job of explaining in Russian), and therefore I'll show you about 10 seconds of it.
Also I'm planning on doing a question and answer blog post, so if you have any questions about Russian, Russians, or Russia please email them to me in the next week or so: lindsaysaligman@gmail.com
We each had to do a presentation of our country, a national holiday, and then do a song/dance that is representative of our country. Each foreign student was paired with a class of russian students and we prepared the presentation together. I did one on thanksgiving day. I wanted to do halloween, but with classic russian honesty, I was told that 'no that is a bad idea, do thanksgiving day'.
Theres no candy or costumes, but I think it did in the end wind up being a cool presentation because no one knew about thanksgiving beforehand. For our musical number I was clueless as to what to do. I asked the people in my class for an opinion and they said they wanted to do a dance.
Just a question: faced with 25 Russian teenagers asking you to show them an american folk dance what would you do?
I will post the video of our dance, and preface it with nothing more than this: If you ever find yourself in Nizhny Novgorod, and everyone thinks that all americans are cowboys, its probably my fault.
Even if our presentation was minorly stereotypical, I think the school enjoyed it. Also, it is not as if there was no work done to break stereotypes, because going to school with these people and dancing with them for a week, they got to know me, a real american, so they get a picture of the real, and the presentational United States.
Also, all the foreign students for the finale did a Russian folk dance to a song called Katyousha. Its about a girl named Katya looking out at a lake waiting for a bird to bring her a message from the person she loves. Russia if nothing else is unique.
I'd love to also post the complete video of that dance, however the 8 year old I told to film didn't know how to work my camera (and I didn't do a fabulous job of explaining in Russian), and therefore I'll show you about 10 seconds of it.
Also I'm planning on doing a question and answer blog post, so if you have any questions about Russian, Russians, or Russia please email them to me in the next week or so: lindsaysaligman@gmail.com
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