Ramblers being silly

Before we take off for Ecuador, I wanted to give you all some highlights of our amazing week in Colombia.

BUCARAMANGA

We began our journey in Bucaramanga, where we were met by our effervescent cultural co-ordinater from Bi-National Center, Juliana. We hit the ground running with a workshop at the Escuela Normal Superior with two big classes of enthusiastic (and energetic!) students. We worked off some of that energy by having them jump, walk, run, swim, drive, & ride around the verbs of motion in Old Joe Clark, & then learned some interesting noises for animals in both Colombia & the United States during Old MacDonald. I especially liked learning about the Chiguiro! Also, I’m always excited for the opportunity to showcase my super-realistic chicken sound, cultivated over many afternoons of serious practice as a child. In between the classes, we were offered a refreshing carbonated beverage called Malta that looked for all the world like cola, but tasted like a dead ringer for the milk in your bowl post-Lucky Charms. Brendan, Matt, Jordan, I were reminded of our time in Russia at the end of the class when all the kids rushed us for autographs & facebook contact info.

Jordan strikes a teacherly pose...

We were delighted to discover that the venue for our first public concert was the stunning Casa del Libro Total Museum & were well-received by the audience there. Our program ranged from rousing songs about Union scabbers (“Casey Jones”), to ballads about the hardships of growing up in poverty in the Appalachian Mountains (Ola Bella Reed’s “I’ve Endured” & Gillian Welch’s “Red Clay Halo”), to songs about the railroad (“John Henry”) and the range (“Home on the Range”) and heartache (“East Virginia”), to silly children’s songs (“The Fox”), and examples of “contemporary American folk music” when Brendan, Jordan, & I each take a turn playing original compositions. I also like to throw in a traditional Irish song called “The Blackbird,” which provides a good opportunity to introduce the idea of The United States as a nation of immigrants & talk about the relationship between some of the traditional music in America & that of the British Isles.

sound check at the museum

One of the main ideas behind this project is that, in addition to being a fun way for ESL students to learn through music, we feel that traditional American folk music is a terrific way to share another side of American culture that is perhaps not very well represented by our most pervasive cultural exports (Hollywood films, pop music, MTV, etc). The United States is a vast & complex nation filled with many different people with rich & varied heritage. The stories told in Folk songs are stories about real people, ordinary people, about hardship & joy & suffering & history, & we are as excited about sharing these narratives of American culture with other parts of the world as we are about learning more about the lives & history of our hosts & the students & teachers we encounter.

Matt & Gillian ramble through the streets of Bucaramanga

One of the ways that we like to explore new cultures is through food! Brendan in particular has made it his mission to taste every local specialty cuisine he encounters, which is how we came to sit around a small plastic table, contemplating a bag of fried ants. The ants were much larger than any I’d ever seen – each abdomen section about the size of a small pea – and (I can personally report) are crunchy, salty, & not altogether unpleasant save for the disturbingly tangible legs, which got stuck between my teeth.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dvFXwcT4uo&w=425&h=349]

After two wonderful, busy days that ended too soon, we packed our bags once again & caught a flight back to Bogota & then to Pereira (interesting fact: we will pass through the Bogota airport three times on this trip without ever actually seeing the capital city itself! Guess that means we’ll have to come back soon for a proper visit). Next update: Pereira!

revisiting a favorite Russian card game

The goal of the project was not only to assist young Russians in their study of the English language in a fun way, but also to introduce them to sides of American culture that are perhaps not very well represented by Hollywood and other popular mass media. Because the cities we visited were not located in traditionally touristic regions of the country, we were often the first Americans these kids had ever met, and we spent lots of time entertaining questions about life in the United States. Twenty years after the end of the Cold War, our two countries continue to have a complex political relationship, as highlighted by the recent espionage scandal. In light of these events, the opportunity to have positive interactions on a person-to-person basis felt especially satisfying.

I was ridiculously excited when Brendan invited me to join the Ramblers for this adventure, and we traveled countless miles to crisscross Russia and present our program at five summer camps. The following is a post I wrote for the group’s blog about our experience at the Gubkin camp. There are many more stories, pictures, videos, songs, bios, teaching materials, etc available online at www.eslfolk.com. Enjoy!

WHERE’S GUBKIN?

One of the best things about this trip has been getting to see towns in parts of Russia that tourists don’t typically visit. At the camps, people are often curious and ask us about the other cities we’re traveling to on the ESL Folk Tour. Whenever we run down the itinerary, there’s always one place that gets the same response: “Wait, Gubkin? Where’s that?!”

with Elena, our trusty camp leader

I was excited to check out this city that so few people seem to have heard of, and waited with no small amount of anticipation by the door of our train compartment with the Ramblers and our gear. We arrived in the middle of the night and our “train mom” had urged us to be prepared to get off quickly since the train would only be stopping for 2 minutes at the Gubkin station before pressing on. We grabbed our bags and instruments and were bundled off the train, and my harp and I fell directly into the arms of Elena, our camp coordinator.

harp sandwich

Elena and her family helped us lug our stuff over to the hotel where we were booked in four single rooms for the first few nights – an unexpected luxury after so much time spent cramped in platzkart bunks and squashed under my harp in the backseats of taxis. We were each handed a key with an ornate swan chain and ascended some sparkling stone diaz-style steps to the chimes of a thousand fire alarm bells set off by sportsmen surreptitiously smoking in their rooms. After some refreshing showers, we collapsed into our fluffed pillows for a few hours sleep.

David Fay, Sarah, and the Ramblers in front of the biggest hole I've ever seen

In the morning, we took a walk to explore this mysterious city. It turns out that Gubkin is a relatively young city, founded just seventy years ago, and built around an enormous iron mine – a vast, gaping crater seven kilometers wide that we visited with some guides from the camp. The town is beautifully laid out, with charming neighborhood apartment complexes each with their own playground and lots of trees. There was a neat park with a mining display and statues celebrating the town’s history and mining practices.

Matt plays with a handicap

We reviewed some new songs, got our materials ready for the next day’s teaching, and then prepared ourselves for the U.S.A. vs. Slovenia world cup match by playing pick-up soccer in the school fields with some of the campers. It was a “no parents, no rules” game that involved all sorts of inventive goal keeping and ball stealing.

The Ramblers practice the Camp Rainbow dance routine

The next morning, we were treated with a visit from David Fay from the English Language Office of the American Embassy in Moscow and his lovely sister Sarah (We’ve been tossing around the idea of re-naming our group the David Fay Tribute Band). They joined us for a rousing set of morning performances by the Rainbow Summer Camp teams. After being serenaded by the four camp groups, who had rehearsed songs for us, we opened up our introduction to American Folk Music with some songs of our own.

Jordan & Brendan getting their teach on

I thought that performing live song examples as we talked about their background was an nice way to break up the opening lecture, especially since listening to a long block of talk can be super exhausting for students who are learning English as a second language. The kids  seemed to especially enjoy an experimental mash-up of jigs in E minor that Brendan and I tried out when we were discussing immigrants from the British Isles and their influence on American culture and music.

the opening lecture/concert

After our presentation/concert, Matt played some samples of traditional folk music from around the world and the students had to try and guess what country each song came from. Brendan had the chance to visit Tuva with some other Fulbrighters this year and brought back some incredible music from that region. It’s always funny when the Tuvan throat-singing track comes on during this game, because none of the kids ever guess that this music is actually from their own country! I think it’s great to bring up Russia’s cultural diversity in these English camps, because it lets us shift the focus off of all the questions we get about life in America and remind the campers about how cool and interesting and vast their own nation is!

with new friends

One of the most remarkable highlights of this trip for me has been getting to experience Russian hospitality. It seems that every camp we visit adopts us Ramblers, and this was especially true at Gubkin. When we asked Elena for a recommendation of a local restaurant to grab some dinner, she responded by inviting us over to her house for some homemade okroshka, a traditional Russian cold soup made from chopped vegetables and hard-boiled egg with a broth of kvass – a beverage made (as I understand it) by straining water through dark rye bread and allowing it to ferment slightly. This is one of our favorite refreshing drinks, but I’d never had it in a soup before!

our family dinner

After a mere two days in the hotel, we were also invited to stay in Elena’s sister-in-law’s parents’ house, which was a welcome respite for both our budgets and souls. Turns out that after living in such close quarters for so long, those single hotel rooms were starting to feel pretty lonely! We were thrilled to do some laundry and cook a wonderful “family” meal, which we ate beneath the approving (I hope) gaze of an impressive collection of Russian icons.

Ramblers reacting to some local press

On our last night, we were also invited out to a dacha for some sensationally delicious shashlik (Russian bar-b-q)! We enjoyed the evening sun, homemade pickles, samagon, and – in addition to the scrumptious chicken and pork skewers – some of the best grilled carp I’ve ever tasted; a veritable feast! With Masha, Olya, Nastia, and Elena among the guests, the feeling was of a family reunion cook-out. Brendan wrote an experimental shashlik ballad on a makeshift guitar, and we finished off the night with some more crazy, hybrid ball games.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZN3l6UW8UMg&hl=en&fs=1]
The morning came too soon, and with it the time for us to leave for Ufa. Our goodbyes were heartfelt and teary, but we took with us many memories – and some sweet camp T-shirts the campers signed!

The next time someone asks me where Gubkin is, I’ll just point to my heart.

-Gillian

Group shot!

my kupé berth on the transmanchurian K19

Excerpts from a letter written on May 24th, 2010

Today I bought a small container of sour cream, thinking it was yoghurt, and ate about half of it before deciding it couldn’t just be that Russian yogurt is funky in a way not unlike how Greek-style yogurt is funky. This reminded me of the time I was making dinner for my host Ralf and his five year-old son Raphael in Berlin – a nice gnocchi dish with sautéed bacon and mushrooms in what I’d intended to be a cream sauce, only I’d bought some weird soft German cheese thinking it was crème fraîche and the whole thing curdled in the most disgusting way; it tasted fine but looked awful. Poor Raphael, who is a picky eater to begin with, had a meltdown at the kitchen table and refused to eat the stuff. I couldn’t really blame him and felt bad because he got in trouble for the tantrum when it was really my fault. Oh the joys of buying dairy products abroad.

The train is remarkably empty. Perhaps because we’re just a week or two shy of tourist season or perhaps because we’re on the less popular transmanchurian line (people like seeing Mongolia more). It’s a good thing too, since it turns out my harp simply will not fit in any convenient way in a kupé class cabin. When I had the cabin to myself for the first two days, I left the harp out and played it some, but I got a bunkmate on the third day and had to store it up to the bunk above me. This train seems to travel in ¾ time.

The view out the window could be Wyoming. Plains and hills with brown, gold, and green (almost) grasses, a bit marshy in parts, with cows and sheep and goats occasionally grazing in clusters, and ill-maintained barbed-wire fences, tiny outpost towns now and again, and even the odd Russian cowboy or two. They gave me a bit of trouble at the border for bringing my harp, but not too much. The weird thing was they had to switch out all the wheels on the train when we crossed over from China – apparently the tracks are set wider apart in Russia, something to do with World War II.

Lake Baikal

Even though it is the end of May, winter is only just beginning to ease its grip on the land here; lake Baikal was a cobweb of floating ice. There are field fires everywhere, blackening the white trunks of the birch trees. The kind German/South African man in the berth next to me, who lives half of each year in rural Siberia, told me that the Russians light these fires to clear the dead leaves and grasses, since the seasonal shift between Summer and Winter is too short to allow proper decomposition. Sometimes at night the glow of the brush fires can be spectacular, and also disturbing, like how I imagine land might look during War Time.

My bunkmate is a kind-faced Chinese man. He doesn’t speak English and I hardly know any Chinese, so we can’t really talk, but we share our bags of nuts and dried fruit and can manage some basic friendly communication via gesticulations and context. I wonder what it will be like when I get back to the United States and can understand everything that is being said around me – snippits of conversations in the park or on the street. I wonder if it will be overwhelming. Not long now. I’ll be back July 30th.

Sorry I’ve been so terrible about updating this blog – I’ve been on trains for thousands of miles with little internet access this past month. I promise I’ll post more later, but I just wanted to put up a quick note letting you know what I’m up to for the month of June!

I’m currently traveling with a group of musicians to summer camps in Russia, teaching kids English through American folk music! This is our schedule:

June 5th – 8th: Elista
June 9th -14th: Rostov-na-donu
June 16th -19th: Gubkin
June 20th-23rd: Ufa
June 25th-28th: Samara

I stole this expert map from the eslfolk.com site 8)

I’ll have pretty limited web access, but we’re keeping a group blog up on the project’s website: www.eslfolk.com It’s been a really exciting trip so far – can’t wait to share more pics, vids, news with you next time I’ve got wifi

Much love,
Gillian