The 'official' purpose of my visit to Yekaterinburg was to go with Nikita to his English phonetics class to share with the students from an American point of view about life.
Of course, this is always an awesome opportunity for me to share about anything with a group of students.
The basic focus of my talk with them was about moral values, and if we compromise, where do we draw the line.
Nikita's teacher was unlike any I had ever seen before. She talked SO much. She has a hand in everything going on in the world it seems: teaching, her own business, social activism, raising her daughter, etc. And she told us all about it. I was so surprised to see a teacher use the classroom as a soapbox and lecture the students, and beat up their intelligence.
I was, of course, respectful, but I wanted to encourage the students and have a conversation with an impact, instead of talk about how she went to the government to protest and they turned off her microphone.
It was still a wonderful talk, and the students had so many questions about America. It's so interesting how they react when I tell them what America is really like. They don't think there is any poverty, homelessness, job difficulties. They think all Americans have whatever they want, that we all smile - all the time (we do smile a lot though), and that we eat McDonald's for every meal. They also think that the 'f' word is a part of everyone's vocabulary and that it isn't offensive. It's all movies, music videos and music. They know it's not real, but they WANT to believe it.
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