Tutus

An exhausting but rather wonderful day. We tucked in to the business end of the trip. After another breakfast at the Soviet style breakfast bar – AND a quick check on the news to hear about the vote on the healthcare bill and the surrounding dramatics, we were met by Olga and Gradya(?) and guided through a busy metro line and a bit of a winding walk to the Higher School of Economics.

My first impression is that schools here have wonderful students and miserable facilities. I gather the school is located in a former Soviet military academy – and that maybe one part of it was an old palace with a staircase trodden by Napolean. The building/campus is remarkable for its size – if that is the way to describe this complex of connected buildings with corridors that go up and down and off at right angles without any limits that was able to see.

Katya and Irena – our real hosts – a professor and the Chair of the foreign language faculty at the school – met us at the top of one of those flights. It was a very friendly greeting; they have clearly put a lot of work into our visit.

This morning we saw a series of powerpoint presentations from one class of 2^nd year students introducing (in impeccable English) the school, the studies, the social life, a brief review of the curricula vitae of their Dean (whom we met subsequently). After lunch in the school “cantina”, Jen and I taught a class of second year students who were studying American politics and culture. Our aim is mostly to be here to answer their questions, so we did just enough introduction and presentation to get them talking about America and Russia and spent the hour talking about a variety of questions on everything from time management to gun control. We also did our Champlain thing by asking them to work in groups to answer some questions for us. Very easy, very forthcoming – and they even knew what the electoral college is. The only problem was that class wasn’t long enough. We were pulled out of it to go meet and talk with the Dean.

The Dean is a very important individual here. The school is really a new college organized to train economic and political scholars and leaders, and the Dean is really the director of the entire institution (another teacher, Boris, later on filled me in on how the universities are organized here). He has a long and quite distinguished career in politics and economic policy in the old Soviet Union and today he advises Putin. Also, my impression is that Russia is given to it hierarchies – and so he is treated with a great deal of deference around school. Our college President, let alone our Dean, should have it so good. So, we talked about education and geopolitics and our little Global Modules program for awhile.

Later in the afternoon, Scudder and Betsy made a presentation on the GMs to the language faculty and there was a nice reception.

Too much to write about… I’ll get back to my thoughts about the school and student later. The facilities really are run down; the insides look like a 1950s school that has received almost no upkeep for the last thirty years – grooves in the stairs, cracked linoleum, repaired repairs of fixes on the door handles – but the students seem extremely capable and hard working and friendly, and the faculty is also running at full tilt. An impressive place.

More on that later. Tonight we took a long walk through some spitting snow and a brief metro ride to the ballet to see “Swan Lake”.

This was my first ballet –and I went in a little worried because (1) I had done absolutely nothing to teach myself about what’s up in this (or any) ballet and I had meant to do that before coming here, and (2) I was really quite tired after a long day in unfamiliar places and quite a hike across strange territory and I heard.

It was really great. I honestly did not think I would be engaged in it for the full three hours but it was really fun to watch. The four swan dancers did there thing in the first act, there was that great ballroom scene in the third, the storm in the fourth – quite amazing to watch. I am entirely sold. The theater was beautiful and the dance was excellent (“one thing we are still proud of” Irena remarked).

An equally long and complicated walk back to the right metro stop – and here I am back again, hoping I can catch enough sleep to do it again tomorrow. Jen Vincent and I are teaching a third year class in the morning.

Photo: No new pictures yesterday. I'll bring my camera to school later this week to get some photos. This shot is of one of the folklore statues near the front of the Kremlin.