Grading Exams

I love my students.  I'm really enjoying their perspectives on the world and freely and openly expressing our cultures/values/beliefs in class.  This is an excerpt from one exam:

Question:
What is culture?  Please include at least 7 characteristics of culture as discussed in class.

Answer:
Culture is a mix of one nation/country's coisin, belief, the way of children's upbringing, attitude to guests (hostility), music and literature and also the way of greeting and gestures are important.  All these and many other characteristics make one culture uniq and special.

The best line is about attitude to guests... hospitality and hostility are so close sometimes.... aren't they?

New Christmas Traditions at HTPC

We started a new tradition this year at HTPC - Amy's idea!  We had families bring in a Christmas ornament to decorate the tree in the sanctuary!  Here you can see Jim [left] helping Daniil [center] hang an ornament.  Sergei [right] is hanging an ornament too!

What a cool tradition.  We prayed for families and individuals as they hung ornaments on the tree.

Teachers show

What?  Dancing as a part of a mission work?

 An American Boy...

So, I'm a bit confused that as an associate professor at one of the best universities in Russia... the teachers are expected to perform for the students...  But that's what came to pass...  

So each department at our university is expected to put together a performance for the students... our performance was about "an American boy" [which coincidentally is a really popular 80s song in Russia] (I played the American boy) as he tries to understand the academic traditions of a Russian university.  

He picks up things quickly and learns a traditional Russian dance (with an onstage costume change!) and then dances with the entire department [see below].  It was fun, but pretty unexpected to improve lines in Russian in front of our entire university!