Intern in Russia, part 5: Great February Capitalistic Revolution

As I have managed to learn, in Russia you can't rely on any rules and customs which for you go without saying. The environment is very dynamic and in case of unclear situations there is the universal answer to everything - this is Russia.

My task is: give English lessons to children, the young and adults from about eight to fifty years. To make it clear whom, where and when to teach, I have the timetable. On Wednesday I was awarded a  break perfectly suited for lunch in the cafeteria on the ground floor, or possibly for a quick drop-by at home. The pancake on the table is two bites shorter and all of a sudden I get a call from our 'administrator': Tomas, where are you? 'Don't you dare to ask for anything during my only free time today', stormed through my mind, but before this thought got to my speech apparatus, my tone has become kinder. 'n th' c'f't'ria' - the food in my mouth is preventing me from pronouncing vowels. Your student has arrived, Nastya announces. I am speechless; I am quite sure that according to my timetable I do not have a lesson at the moment, three large question marks are flashing above my head. Nastya takes advantage of this pause and with uttering the words 'lift yourself' she hangs up the phone. I run up two floors, there is a total stranger sitting in my classroom. I improvize 53 minutes of English lesson, cock my gun and walk along the corridor aiming to have a few words with the administration. Nastya says, that students are allowed to come to their lessons whenever they feel like even outside the timetable if necessary and that's why she called me back from in front of my plate to the workplace. I swallow the whole alphabet soup in cyrilic including several exclamation marks and eventually I simply ask: and what if I had already gone home? The answer is almost stupidly clear: HE WOULD WAIT.

Our school resides in 'business centre' Trest (in Slovak - 'punishment')

What is the difference between teacher's room and jail? In jail there is plenty of place to sit.

In order to follow the law of conservation of positive energy I have forgotten about this situation. A week passed, it's Wednesday again and the same scenario occurs. Moreover, during the day I was informed that at 7 PM I'll be having a new student, of course, outside the timetable. I already have a plan, I replied, not out of spite but actually providing true information, even though with a disgruntled face. The lack of patience accompanies my throughout the whole working week. On Friday our administration lady calls me and inquires about the current location of my Chinese roommate and colleague Penny. 'How should I know? Probably kitchen' - I refuse to serve as Penny's secretary. She has to come to school immediately, for her student has arrived to lesson - 45 minutes earlier. Penny is shaking with anger and we it's quite obvious we are thinking the same thing even without words. However, my frustration has erupted and soon Nastya gets my thorough report about the way they treat us from my perspective, the crux of my argumentation is comparing the language school to a pizza delivery. In less than ten minutes I get 7-10 texts from the boss herself. She says that we are a private school, the students can come to the lessons according to their needs and we have to be available all the time. I realized that I and my employers live in vastly different universes. However, the mood of the conversation was mostly set towards mutual consent and so I left the cruiser Aurora* docked in the harbour for now. 

(Aurora was the name of the cruiser which took part in the Bolshevik coup in 1917, it fired a glorious ONE shell at the Winter palace in St. Petersburg, killing no one). 

Being the only man on the board, I am sometimes given tasks such as take out the redundant Christmas tree, because February is late even for the Orthodox Christmas. 

I was told to make an improvised vase from a water cooler. As I have experienced many times in Russia, the thing you need the most is usually at the reach of your hand, no matter if it's marshrutka behing the corner if you're late for work, or a carpenter's room in the basement of your workplace.

During our the lecture on her personal worldview the owner stressed one particular point - the working hours are from 9 AM to 7 PM and during this period we are considered to be at work, even if we don't have any lessons, and we are supposed to be present at the workplace. This demand has bounced off me the same way as a rubber ball bounces off concrete - I saw it as a mere residual leftover of a heated discussion and assumed no one would take it seriously. And so during a three-hour break I went home. After some time I was granted a phone call from Nastya, whose tone was apparently ready to wage war, and asked where I was. I answered with even a provocatively calm voice that I was home, even though I couldn't count on winning that battle. I come to her office and decide to commence a constructive conversation. Nastya's repertoaire of emotions is comparable to that of a calculator and every now and again I have to remind myself, that she is the same human being made of flesh as me. I put it simply: Anastasia, do you find it normal that the teachers have to stand guard as a garrison in Tower of London for 10 hours just in case someone feels like having an English lesson here and right now? Why then bother using timetables, when we can just simply be at work from dusk till dawn and if someone shows up, we will give them English lesson and if they don't, we will play Black Jack in pairs? Then the lady administrator draws an invincible ace from her sleeve - the ace of spades that will not only make your fullhouse complete, but one you can use to clog up the barrel of a machine gun - THIS IS RUSSIA. That's the way it is and for the second time I can order the revolutionary brigades to retreat. 

There is a thin line between sushi delivery service and delivery of teachers into the classes.

As a memento of vanity of life I have placed this chair into my classroom.

An attentive reader has surely asked himself a question: why would they call ME, if there was a problem with my roommate Penny? I'll answer with a little quiz: how many employees of the language school's administration can speak a foreign language? Bonus question: how many members of the administration have any experience with teaching or with working in field of education? If your answer to both questions was none - congratulations, you win a free month English course, you can come to your lessons whenever you want. I basically work as a communication hub for contacting Penny. Nastya calls me and asks where Penny is, she asks me why she isn't at school, occasionally there are some sort of extraordinary problems. She calls me during the day, at 9 PM and even during my classes, even though I warned her, that due to obvious reasons I won't pick up the phone while having a lesson. Seven missed calls tend to change your mind and you again facilitate the communication channel between the management and the Chinese intern, even though you are in the middle of the class and your pupil is staring at you as if you have just landed on the moon. I put some faith to the announced new director, which was supposed to replace the temporarily absent owner of the school. However, it turned out that the HR department hires new staff in the very same potential labour force segment. Our first contact went like this: I come into the office. Nastya is gone, but there is a brand new face sitting at the boss' table. I say hello and routinely hang down the key from my classroom. 'And who are you?' I introduce myself. 'Oh, I see.' Silence. It feels awkward to fill the gaps in etiquette of a fortyish woman, but I have no choice. 'And you are...?' Elena Alekseevna. That's all about the company ethic code. I come back a few minutes later, Elena hands me a note from Nastya - I have new lessons on Sunday morning, depriving me of the very little freedom I had during holidays. I do not make too much effort to keep a poker face, I drop a comment almost beyond the line of politeness, Elena bulges her eyes and starts to laugh - and I almost start to like her. 

You have guessed right - the terrifying column on the right is my Sunday's timetable.

If I were to write this blog according to the technological standards of our language school, I would have to write it using pen and paper. The majority of information about students is being kept and archived exclusively in physical form. My timetable is represented by a printed table, which Nastya then populates with my lessons - regular students are written down by pen and extra lessons with the help of a pencil. If there is a change in the timetable, there are two ways how I can find out about it: Nastya sends me a photo on WhatsApp, but due to her being overwhelmed by paperwork I usually have to come to the office myself and peek into the folder. However, four out of six working days I spend teaching in a secondary school in the old town and I don't show up in the language school itself. I am usually informed about the timetable for that particular day during that particular day. Once the timetable disappeared, I asked Nastya for a backup copy, but it turned out it was the only one. Another time someone put the timetable someplace unknown and it was nowhere to be found; I had no clue what kind of classes I was going to have. As I basically have two workplaces, I keep two folders with students journals, which happen to be at the opposite sides of the town. According to instructions I am supposed to start a new journal page for every student that even had a single lesson with me; as a result there is a pile of papers with plenty of information about students, which need to be carried there and back. Even I do not keep complete track of all the necessary information about my students and I can barely imagine how Nastya manages with estimated number of students reaching 400. Yet this could be resolved with a single laptop in the teacher's room witch an Excel table uploaded to google disc, where everybody would keep records of their students, their attendance and content of the lessons, and which everybody would be able to access anytime anyplace via their computer or smartphone; instead we have a museum of 80's and bureaucracy model adopted from tzar Russia. In order to improve the conditions of the working proletariat I proposed these solutions, but there is nobody to actually implement them. I read this quote in a book: In Russia, everything can change in 5 years-time, but in 200 years-time nothing can change at all. My capitalistic revolution failed, instead of Victorious February the history will remember an Inglorious one. I got my salary in cash in three parts, while one of the payoffs was given to me in such little banknotes, that I could barely fit them into my wallet. All quiet on the Eastern Front. 

PS: I am already quite familiar with the logistics in my secondary workplace in the public school and so I asked the doorkeeper whether he could recommend me a toilet in the building with the highest possibility of encountering a toilet paper. 'No chance', he says, he adds the magic jinx THIS IS RUSSIA and offers me the newest issue of 'Volgodonskaya Pravda' (Volgodonsk Truth, a local newspaper).

Volgodonsk Truth. Everybody has its own.