BULLETIN FROM THE KOTLAS CONNECTION CHAIRS

Issue #35 April 2011

OUR NEXT TRIP TO KOTLAS

The mayor of Kotlas and the members of the Waterville Committee in Kotlas have invited us to attend the 95^th anniversary celebration of the founding of the city. While it is still too early to know specifics for 2012, we expect the trip will take place in mid-June, as it did for their 90^th annivesary in 2007.

Everyone will stay with host families. Although there is no guarantee that each host family speaks English, there is always a friend or relative willing to translate. Based on the experience of the committee member who attended the 90^th anniversary, there will be a big parade, a variety show in the town square, a gala dinner, music and fireworks. You will also be taking side trips to local places of interest, either with your host family or with the whole group.

Our delegation will probably fly in and out of St. Petersburg. If there is a sufficient number of participants, the trip will include a guided tour to areas of interest in that city.

Future chairs’ bulletins will provide more specific information regarding dates and estimated costs. In the meantime, please put this on your calendar if you are interested in going.

AMERICAN SAMPLER IN KOTLAS

Inna Tushina informs us that the annual American Sampler Day was a great success. It began at 10 a.m. and ended at 1:30 p.m. Altogether 120 participants were present at the event. The opening session began with American and Russian hymns. Then Eduard Avilkin, the assistant mayor of Kotlas who came to Waterville in June 2010, took the floor and talked about the 20th anniversary of the Kotlas-Waterville sister-city relationship and about his visit to the U.S.A. Then Inna and Evgenia Palkhanova, the student who was chosen to come for Russian Sampler 2011, shared their impressions of Russian Sampler and showed photos.

There were the following 30-minute sessions: Country Music (Inna Tushina); Jack London and His Books (town library); Abroad with English (Yulia Sorokina); Christmas Decorations (Tatyana Pyatina); American Food (Yulia Burtseva); Maine’s Nature (Valentina Sukhanovskaya); Twister (two students from the Teachers College); Cup-stacking (two schoolgirls).

Then came lunch and the final session where the students shared their impressions. Those who had conducted the classes were thanked and handed honourable diplomas. Irina Reznicheko, Lyuba Zinovkina, Larisa Trubina, and Yelena Chirkova did all the paperwork, took a lot of pictures, and were the main organizers of the day.

We note that almost all of the presenters cited have been to Waterville at the invitation of the Kotlas Connection, and that cup-stacking was first demonstrated to the Kotlas students by the four Erskine Academy students who participated in American Sampler in 2009.

RUSSIAN SAMPLER 2011

On March 21, the Kotlas Connection and Colby College presented our 18^th Russian Sampler. Two hundred and fifty-one junior- and senior-high-school students spent the day immersed in a diverse selection of classes that encompassed Russian language, history, culture, every-day life and arts. And we are very grateful to all the volunteers who made the day such a success, and especially to the primary organizers—Elena Monastireva-Ansdell and Sheila McCarthy. This year we were fortunate to also have five friends from Kotlas and one from far-eastern Russia who participated. The Russian students had very lively sessions, being bombarded with questions from the Americans about their schools and activities. At the closing assembly, Zhenya Palkhanova had a rapt audience for her folk dance performed in the beautiful costume of the Snow Princess.

Inna Tushina Evgenia Palkhanova Stepan Lystsev

Alexey Minin Tatyana Shelygina Vyacheslav Selin

Inna Tushina is a retired English teacher who now tutors private pupils. This is her second visit to Waterville. At Russian Sampler, she gave two seminars on Kotlas schools, and conducted the closing session with a slide show of Kotlas, an animated cartoon featuring a Russian song, and led the assembly in singing.

Her hostess, Marilyn Hall, said that Inna expressed great appreciation to all the committee members who helped entertain her, and she was glad to be able to meet again with her old friends, Jan and Michael Whitcomb, Sylvie Charron, and Peter and Jean Ann Garrett.

This was Evgenia (Zhenya) Palkhanova’s first trip to America, and she said she was so happy that her first experience in the U.S. was in the Waterville area. She thinks the hospitality of the people was just unbelievable—lots of fun, a lot of smiles, and parties. She was able to learn more about life in America, about its people and teenagers. She visited several schools: Erskine Academy, George Mitchell School, schools in Winslow, and Messalonskee High School. She thinks the lighthouse in Portland is very beautiful. And she will always remember the meeting with Governor LePage as the highlight of her Augusta tour.

Nevertheless, she considers Russian Sampler the best part of her trip. It is a great opportunity for Russian and American people to know each other better, and she was so proud to be a part of it.

Zhenya thanks all the members of the Kotlas Committee and the Waterville Committee for making this opportunity possible. And she gives a big thanks to her hostess, Marilyn Hall.

Stepan Lystsev, a 15-year-old high-school student from Kotlas and the son of electrical engineers, spent 23 days in March as Mark Fisher’s guest. Fluent in English, Stepan spent a week at Messalonskee High School and toured Colby College and Kennebec Valley Technical College. He participated in our Kotlas guests’ group tour of the Maine State Capitol and State Museum, met Governor LePage, visited Portland, and took part in Russian Sampler.

For individual pursuits, he attended Russian Table at Colby, went smelting, skied and tobogganed at the Camden Snow Bowl, climbed Mount Battie, and toured Boston. He also enjoyed breakfast at McDonald’s almost every morning in addition to eating other meals at an extensive list of restaurants.

Back home, Stepan enjoys boxing, cross-country skiing and ice skating.

Alexey Minin is a 16-year-old from Kotlas who has studied English for six years. He arrived at Mark Fisher’s during the big snow storm on April 1.

While in America Alexey has visited Boston and New York City, including Brighton Beach. Ken and Eva Green treated him to a lobster dinner at their home. He has toured Colby College and Thomas College, and participated in Russian Table with Slava Selin. He also audited a bi-weekly acting class at Colby and attended other evening lectures. Mark took him to the ocean and on a tour of the Augusta Capitol complex. For hobbies, Alexey is an expert photographer and he plays soccer and ping pong. His favorite sport is volleyball.

Alexey plans to attend university in St. Petersburg and study law, and perhaps minor in interior design. He hopes to visit Mark again this summer.

Tatyana (Tanya) Shelygina came here through Thomas College’s international teachers program. She taught a course, Introduction to Contemporary Russia, to Thomas students, and she took two master’s degree classes in Education. She found both to be quite an experience, as they required a great deal of preparation. She had to read a lot of scientific articles about the problems of our American educational system for her graduate classes, and to do a lot of research for the class she taught because Russian geography, politics and literature were outside her area of expertise as an English teacher.

Despite her full academic schedule, she did as many other things as she could. She participated in Kotlas Connection committee meetings and in Russian Sampler. She visited a couple of schools and observed classes of experienced teachers and student teachers. She learned a lot about our literacy program for elementary schools and found it really amazing.

Tanya was able to visit New York City with a friend she made at Thomas College. While she was a little intimidated by New York’s size and noise, she enjoyed her whirlwind tour of the Statue of Liberty, Central Park, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Broadway, the Empire State Building, Rockefeller Center and Brighton Beach. Before Tanya departs in early May, she will also have seen Niagara Falls and Washington, D.C.

Tanya extends a huge THANK YOU to all her friends here as it is they who made her stay so pleasant and the long absence from her family less painful. Thank you to: Ken Green for making the trip possible; Herb and Nancy Foster, her American mom and dad, for all their love, help and patience; Sheila McCarthy, for her great help with the class and for the Washington tour; Carl Daiker and Phil Gonyar, for being very helpful and generous and for the Niagara Falls trip; Ellen Corey, REM lunch and ladies’ dinner; Mark Fisher, Orthodox church tour; Mary Coombs, for giving a class about Sergey Preminin and her hospitality; Jack and Pauline Mayhew, for their hospitality and kindness; Marilyn Hall and Martha Patterson, for their hospitality and warm welcome.

This was Tanya’s third visit to Waterville, and we hope she will be back again.

Vyacheslav (Slava) Selin is also 16 years old and is from the far eastern region of Kamchatka—land of hot springs, volcanoes and brown bears. He arrived last July to become an exchange student for the year at Messalonskee High School, and has resided with Mark Fisher. At Messalonskee, Slava has been a high honor student. His favorite subject was Mike Waters’s physics class. He enjoys algebra, and even took an AP calculus course. He was on the high school swim team. His hobbies include computer gaming, watching movies, bowling and billiards. And he loves McDonald’s and Subway.

Slava has toured Boston a few times and New York City once. He was also a frequent visitor to Russian Table with Alexey. When he leaves in May, he will spend a year in the Dominican Republic (where his mother currently lives) and stay with a Dominican family to learn the language. Slava’s long-term plan is to attend a university in the States. We hope he does return because he was an excellent representative for Russia, always cheerful and enthusiastic.

2011 DUES

If there is a return envelope included with your bulletin, the Kotlas Connection

has not yet received your $10 membership dues for 2011.

Thanks to all who continue their support of our sister-city relationship, now in its 21^st year!

Date: 2015-01-11; view: 1138