17 March 2009

I turned down the job offer. Last night I met with Gary…just Gary. None of his students showed up for the second class. he told me that he's never received as much as a class roster, and he has been working without a curriculum, without a text, without a syllabus, and completely making all of his lessons from scratch. He has a rotating list of students, and they almost never do their homework. He said he’s paid $10 an hour, and they often forget to pay him. He also told me that we are taxed 25%, which is ridiculous. As students, we are not technically allowed to work, so any “tax” is either going into someone’s pocket, or they are just paying us less and claiming taxes to make the offer sound better.
Today I had my meeting with Natalia Fyodorvna, the woman who would have been my boss. She started off explaining to me in Russian, then switched to English, and told me that she was about to go on sabbatical, and that her replacement was only going to be in the office once a week. The woman came in, and they showed me a syllabus and curriculum with a list of texts the students had. I told them that Gary told me he had no such information, and they said that it was just his “style” and that I must have misunderstood him. Natalia didn’t speak English very well, and repeatedly asked the other woman, Elena, how to say words and phrases. I told her three times that I spoke and understood Russian, and each time she would say “oh, ok!” and then return to broken English. It was very condescending. She told me that I would receive 300 rubles per hour, for four hours a week. That comes to about 8$ and change. I asked her ‘after tax?’ and she said before. So that means that I would be paid around 6$ an hour to teach a graduate level course. If you consider that I would likely need as much preparation time as my actual lecture time, I’m making around 3$ an hour. That is not a serious offer.
I grew tired of her refusing to speak with me in Russian, so I decided that if she wanted to talk business with her prospective American employee in English, I would stop speaking with her in simple slow English, like I use when I speak with people who I know don’t speak the language fluently. I started speaking formally and quickly, and she just kind of stared at me blankly. I know I speak fast, and I know from working with friends in the ELI that when I speak normally, it is hard for non-native speakers to understand me. She told me that they let me say that I’m teaching lectures instead of smaller lessons, because then I would be paid better, and that that was their way of helping out the foreigners who received such high taxes. My response was “In America, I could make more money washing cars.” She said that that in Russia, that is what I would receive. I told her “well, I’m an American, so when I think about a paycheck, I think in dollars.” And she told me that it wasn’t about the money, and that I should consider the great experience it would be and the great letter of recommendation I would receive. I told her that I wasn’t interested in the experience, as I am already teaching and tutoring, and I didn’t even acknowledge her offer of a glowing recommendation from someone who was looking to make some kind of teaching sweatshop. I told her thank you, but I wasn’t interested.
After that, I went and signed my new contract for my studies, so pending a signature from the dean, I am now covered (I also paid) until July 4th (I don’t have to pay for the extra days, but I needed to be covered for my visa). When I was walking out of the office, I ran into Nona. She asked me how the meeting went, and I told her that I wouldn’t be teaching. She asked why, and I didn’t feel like getting into it so I told her simply that I didn’t want any more English in my week. I said it would be a lot of work, and that if I was in America I would certainly be happy to do it, but here I don’t want to put that many hours of English work in. She said that’s fine, and she would see me tomorrow. Later I got an email from Gary that said “what happened with your meeting? I got a storm of angry text messages from Nona tonight!” He told me that he’s had problems with her for a while. Hopefully I won’t, because I really enjoy her class and feel that it is very useful. If she says anything tomorrow, I will just tell her the truth. I think I can deal with her not liking me if I will still be able to learn from her. I haven’t known her that long, but she really doesn’t seem like the kind of person to be petty.
After all that, I went to the gym to work out. On my way out, I tried calling Jordan again (he emailed me his room number this morning and I wrote down the hotel phone #). I finally got him, and I walked up to his hotel, which was a few blocks away from the gym. I took him to get a phone card (he still had been unable to find one, and the woman that worked in his hotel told him that she didn’t know where they sold them, even though they are in pretty much every single store). After that, he told me I should go with him for a drink, and we went to this bar to meet with some of his classmates. It was an Irish-American pub, and almost everyone there was American. I told him that that definitely meant it would be very expensive, and he said he didn’t think it would be that bad. He said he wanted to buy me a drink, and ordered himself a Guinness. I didn’t want a beer, so I ordered a Квас, which they didn’t have…(I didn’t know bars in Russia existed that didn’t sell Квас) so I ordered морс instead. He gave me about a third of a liter of juice (and most of the glass was ice), and it cost about $8. Unbelievable.
After dropping Jordan off at his hotel, I stopped off at a Теремок on my way home for a quick bite to eat (I didn’t think to suggest it when I was with Jordan, but I was hungry). I was still craving Квас which I’ve really developed a taste for, and had some with my блин.
I hope I don’t have any awkward confrontations with Nona tomorrow…