the way of the Russki

I have a Russian student this semester. I love him because he's Russian and I've never had a Russian before (Russian speakers from Armenia or Tajikistan, yes, but never a real Russian!). I'm kind of partial to reverse discrimination- I love my minority students more.

On my first day of class, I was slightly terrified of this Russian guy. He's about 5'6", extremely muscular (think a smaller version of the bad guy in Rocky 4...or someone who's obsessed with "building muscular mass," as he puts it.). His hair is short, dark blondish, and perfectly parted. He wears his pants slightly too high for American taste and always tucks his button-up shirt into his slightly high pants. His clothes are perfectly tailored to his muscular frame. He insists upon calling me Mrs. Zirker and always raises his hand when answering a question in class. He is, in short, very intense.

But after a few weeks, I realized that although he is indeed very intense (and very intelligent), he's not really that scary. He's actually really great. His English is much higher than a level 2 (which is the class I have him for), so he understands when I make jokes that the others don't catch or when other students are being remarkably dense (I have a lot of dense students in this class. They're nice, but very thick). And he started smiling, which made him seem less like a military sergeant.

But the best thing about this student is his writing. He is simply incapable of writing something comprehensible to the average American. His love for "fancy" words (as his grammar teacher says) is just too strong. For example, when asking for help with the printer, instead of saying something like "Could you help me with the printer?" he says "Could you render me some assistance with this printing device?" Or if he wants to know about a homework assignment, he sends me an email that says "Let me address to you with question concerning the implementation of our home assignment." Did he get married? No, he "entered into a matrimonial alliance."

And this is how he feels about an athletic competition from his youth: "In the course of our displacement I did not experienced a critical excitement, inasmuch as I possessed sufficient training abilities. On the contrary, the feeling of foretaste overfilled me, which was stimulated by adrenalin."

I love it.