Выступление и наказание, часть 2–я

So I get to the conference and the woman in charge greets Seth and introduces herself to me.
"You'll be presenting in English, right?" she asks.
"Yes," I say.
"Ok," she replies, and turns to Seth. "And you - you'll be presenting in Russian, I hope?"

Now, she clearly has no reason to assume that I don't speak Russian, especially since she knows Seth does and we both have the same position. (Potential reason(?): I look like I'm twelve. This is an ongoing theme in my life. I forgot to mention that when Amara and I went to the Chekhov museum, they tried to sell me a high school student ticket.) But since this is what I wanted, I don't complain. In fact, I do a little inner cartwheel that things turned out so well on the English-presenting front and take my seat.

BUT, I should know better than to ever think anything is going well until it's over and all danger of anything going wrong is completely past. (This is kind of a Russian attitude - I mean, we're talking a culture where you aren't supposed to celebrate anyone's birthday even one day in advance, in case they die before their real birthday.) I get up to the podium and this woman introduces me... and then says that she'll be translating for me.

GRR! If she had said that when I walked in, I would have told her I'd do it in Russian and brought my Russian notes up to the podium. But she didn't, so I didn't. I got through it fine, and in fact it was way better than my last translating experience, but I've learned my lesson: from this day forward, I will always ask what the working language of the conference is before I write my whole presentation in English.

------

Today it's a dark, rainy, gray day, the kind we've been having for about two weeks straight now. It's perfect for setting that nice gloomy autumnal mood, but I'm getting a little tired of it. Maybe that's partly because the radiator in my apartment doesn't really seem to work unless I drain all the smelly brown radiator-water (and accumulated air - does it accumulate air because they turn our water off every night at midnight?) out of it every day. AWESOME.

Also, yesterday's class: one student. Today's class: one student. English club: three students (two of whom were the students from yesterday's and today's classes). Tomorrow's class: being Saturday, one student *if* I'm lucky. I don't mind one-on-one work, but sometimes, especially on gloomy days like today, I wonder just who I'm here for.

Anyway, it's balalaika lesson time, which is bound to cheer me up even though I have to walk through the rain to get there! (I know, I shouldn't say that until all chance that my balalaika lesson will somehow kill me has passed.)

------

Edited, 8pm, for content and to add that the balalaika lesson did cheer me up. In fact, it was a great lesson. Take that, gloomy day!