Pickle on a Stick!

Yesterday, the staff of the Russian language and English (ESL) villages bused over to Bemidji, MN, about 3 hours to the east of Moorhead through relatively rural terrain, which, in some places where there were birch trees, looked kind of like the Russian countryside. Bemidji is home to a concentration of language camps (not to mention that it's also purportedly the home of Paul Bunyon) and yesterday was Concordia Language Villages International Day. It was pretty interesting to see all the kids in the various language villages in one place, singing and acting out skits, and dancing in the German village square to a variety of international pop songs. We arrived at the Norwegian village and our staffs (Russian and English) made up the caboose of a long train of kids and staff that marched through the woods into the German village. It was quite a site!

Our Russian staff took a side tour around the lake (Turtle Lake) to the new, permanent site for Lesnoe Ozero (which will open next summer). It was really beautiful-- large wooden, very unintenionally Russian-looking cabins overlooking the lake... I don't know if I'll ever be back as a Russian village staffer, but I wouldn't mind a few weeks in a setting like that (the cabins are apparently $1800 a week)!

One of the highlights from yesterday's International Day was a young lady (16-/17-ish) who approached me (I was wearing my hideous, handmade "Peace" t-shirt) and asked me in slow, deliberate Russian if I spoke the language. She turned out to be not a villager, but a Finn visiting the family of another young lady in the Finnish village. It was such a pleasure to speak with her for a bit-- that sort of thing was going on all over in different languages yesterday. The theme was fostering peace among different cultures-- what a GREAT experience yesterday was for those young villagers!!

Today we leave for our Russian village site in Vergas, MN, about an hour and a half from Concordia College... I'm psyched, but don't really know what to expect, exactly. But I'm ready for the adventure!

More here soon, hopefully, as the camp gets started (and, if possible, I'll try to get up a picture or two, as well)...

Poka!

P.S. One of the cultural culinary offerings yesterday, which struck me as somewhat amusing, was the "Pickle on a Stick." (I'm not sure which culture is responsible for this, but it smacks of something American, doesn't it?) And, even MORE trivially, there is a huge paper clip you can sit on in the Swedish village (the paper clip is, they tell me, a Swedish invention).

"Home of the Cobbers"

Maybe that should be "...the Fightin' Cobbers." I'm not sure, and it's difficult to tell from the mascot pictured on the Concordia College athletics site (though he looks husky enough, he sure doesn't appear to be mean-- in fact, there's an "Aw, shucks..." look about him-- but I'll bet that if you called him yellow, he could give you quite an earful!). When we first got here, there were bottles of "Cobber Water" available. Naturally, I had to inquire within as to just WHAT, exactly, a Cobber is. Well, I guess every city and town across this great land of ours is home to something, so why not the (Fightin'?) Cobbers of Moorhead, MN?

Now, I suppose, I need to find out what Fargo's known for (besides that movie).

Slow blog day.

Last night I walked to North Dakota...

...from Minnesota (really!). Okay, so it was only across the "Red River of the North" from Moorhead, Minnesota, to Fargo, North Dakota, and it only took 15 minutes, but now I have bragging rights among those who live below the "Red River of the South" in Texas.

I am presently staying on the campus of Concordia College (a small-- I mean small, my high school campus in Texas is as big as this one-- ELCA Lutheran liberal arts school) in a dorm room. It's beautiful here, save the small bird-sized mosquitos-- cool, crisp air in the morning (it was about 58 degrees this morning when I went out for a paper around 7). There's a small cadre of Russian Village staff here; we're going through "in-service" for the remainder of this week and will be heading off to Camp Trowbridge in Vergas, MN, on Saturday morning. While I'm here, I have adopted the name Nikolai and go by the diminutive (a Russian thing), Kolya. In fact, I'm wearing a hand-made wood-and-string nametag that identifies me as such right now. The vast majority of business is conducted in Russian, so it's great practice for me. Almost everyone here has either been here before or knows someone who has been here before, so I'm really the new guy on the block (not to mention the oldest-- most everyone else is of college age)!

The trip here was long, but simple enough. A 2-hour flight from Dallas to Minneapolis, then a 3-hour wait for a 4-hour bus ride to Moorhead. So, so far, so good...

I have access to the campus library computer for this week, so I'll try to touch this blog once a day; unfortunately, I can't attach pictures yet. I think I may be able to do that from the Village site.

Poka!

Once Hensbane, now Eloquium.

After a few month's respite from trying to keep up with my Hensbane (climacteric musings) blog, I've decided to again wander aimlessly through my own personal Blog World, which bears a close resemblance to my Real World...

In fact, the background of my Real World is about to change (drastically?). On July 5th I'll be on my way to Minnesota to embark upon a 5-week teaching job at a Russian "language village" for high schoolers. This will be a (pardon the pun) departure from my normal high school teaching experiences here in Texas, as a) the students and staff will be working in a near-immersion environment, b) I will be participating in the tradition of adopting and doing business under a russonym (Russian pseudonym-- upon my arrival, I shall be known as Nikolai Nikolaevich), and c) I have been all over the world, but never to Minnesota.

I hope to be able to add regular updates to this blog while villaging to the north; however, I just don't know how much-- if any-- Internet access will be available.

Stay tuned for any installments as time and available technology allow...

"E.B. Goes to Camp" coming soon to a browser near you!