Updates

Things I've done since last posting here:

• sleeping under a bearskin
• watching the Victory Day tank parade from a tree off the Arbat
• attending a concert by a Russian singer who alternated between traditional and Lady Gaga covers – and who insisted on giving us his coat to sit on at intermission because the cold cement floor 'might kill you'
• drinking in a sketchy bar with a kickboxer who had a detachable front tooth that he removed for kickboxing purposes. Said boxer had made up his mind to act like an American, and so refused to speak Russian or respond even when the plate-chucking tracksuited Mafia type at the next table threatened to kick his filthy American face in…. long story, long night.
• Visiting Tchaikovsky's house on his birthday, the one day a year that his personal piano is dusted off and played…

Now it seems that I'm going to be spending the month of June in a children's camp (like the Pioneer camps of Soviet times) somewhere outside Moscow. I was informed of this yesterday, via email. No mention of when, what to pack, how I'll get there, only 'Monday to Friday, with the possibility to get out at weekends.' Starting in two weeks.
I asked another teacher, who spent last summer in such a camp. What did he think? A man of few words, he mused awhile, and then said, laconically, I taught from 9 to 2. I played a lot of basketball. And usually I took a nap in the afternoon.
Further interrogation revealed that the camp is located in a swamp. The Language Link website prefaces its section about camp employment with this note:
"Anyone who is familiar with Russia understands that this is a country that lived through seventy years of infrastructure neglect…"
It also suggests that I bring hackysacks, hair beads, and 'soft rubber footballs' to bribe the children, because "Remember, the key to being accepted is popularity and anything that will make you a magnet for kids will help to make you popular."
Machiavelli would have something to say about that, but I digress...
The summer English textbook that I'll apparently be teaching from ('English…the language of international adventure!') revolves around the adventures of a cartoon character called Bobby J, 'a young man haunted by the past,' as he struggles to save ancient ruins from tomb robbers and UFOs.
The problem is that Bobby J is a real person. He is, in fact, Language Link's elusive, 'Nam vet, on-the-run-from-his-family-for-30-years, founder and godfather. And he wrote the textbook.
To hell with King Tut's tomb. Teaching should be more than enough adventure.

At the end of June, after I escape the camp one way or another, I'll be flying home to get my things together before my next job starts in August. This a completely different gig, an Americorps/CCC position as a backcountry ranger in Maine, patrolling the wilderness around Mt. Katahdin, at the head of the Appalachian Trail. So I'll be living in a cabin without electricity or running water, hiking, conducting patrols, leading nature programs for children, and things of that sort....

Well, my one demand of life is that it never get boring, and so far it hasn't let me down…