Just call me Emu.

This last Saturday, a bunch of the other teachers and I went to and Institute conference in Moscow. We had pre-registered ahead of time, so our name tags were already made up for us when we got there. Here's a picture of mine.

It looks like it says 'Emu' because it's written in a type of Cyrillic cursive. If you read it in Russian, it actually says 'Emy,' which is funny for a number of reasons. Reason #1 being that a Y in Russian sounds like 00, so if it looked like Emy with a backwards E in English, it would sound like emu in Russian. Why does it read Emy and not Amy? Because the A sound at the beginning of my name in English doesn't exist in Russian, so they go with the closest sound that they have when writing and saying my name. Which also means that I spent a semester of listening for the name Emy during role-call and having to explain to my classmates that my name is Amy, not Emy, when I had a class with a Russian professor. So there you have it. In Russia, I am an Emy, not an Amy, that looks like an emu. Anyone else confused yet?

Here's a picture from the conference. The three girls in the back-left are some of the teachers I live with. The guy in kneeling in front of them is our hilarious Canadian friend and fellow ILP-er, Jeff, who accidently confuses his students by saying 'drehgon' instead of 'dragon.' Not much you can do aboot an accent, eh? The rest of the people in the picture are Russians.

After the main part of the conference, there was a dinner and dance. The ILP teachers taught our Russian peers how to line dance, so don't be shocked if you're ever in Moscow and the locals start cutting up the rug with the Cotton-eyed Joe. Oh, try to guess one of the items we had at the dinner. If cabbage or potatoes was your guess, you were right.

Since we had Men's Day off last Wednesday, we visited a cool old convent and cathedral and then went to a pro-hockey game.

Yes, I realize I am posting this after 10.30 pm. Most of the writing happened before 10.33, though, so I am posting it anyways.