Nursery

I won’t lie to you Bryn, I was pretty pleased when I found out I was going to be working in a nursery part time. It’s not that I particularly want to work with children, or that I crave new experiences in the field of work (praying that my future employers aren’t reading this) – it’s just gold dust for the blog. Picture it: an inept and awkward Theo being mobbed by screaming three-year-olds. It’s the sort of stuff you can’t make up.

What I hadn’t fully thought through was the actual experience of an inept and awkward Theo being mobbed by screaming three-year-olds. That was less fun. And, just in case the whole thing was to prove too easy for me, I was also not allowed to communicate with the children in Russian: I could only speak in English.

We’re trying out a learning method called Eureka. There’s this theory that interacting with foreigners from an early age makes you braver when it comes to learning a second language, and more willing to practise it with native speakers. A nursery on the right bank of the Yenisei got in touch with Interra and suggested that we put that theory to the test by dropping me into a class of twenty-four three-year-olds twice a week. I’m only allowed to speak to them in English. So every Tuesday morning and every Thursday afternoon, I make the trip across the river and spend half a day with Sunshine Class. I eat lunch with them, colour in with them, play games with them, and read them fairy tales (in English, of course).

This morning, we’re playing a game called ‘how’s your mood?’. We’re sitting in a circle on very low chairs (I mean they’re so low we may as well be sitting on the floor really, it would be quite a lot more comfortable) and passing a blue ball around. When you have the ball, you need to answer the question ‘how’s your mood today?’. Normally, games like this have very limited success in Sunshine Class. When we played ‘what do I look like in the mirror?’, the first boy to receive the mirror replied with an admirably unimaginative ‘good’, and every other child after him followed suit. Except for one girl, who reckoned she looked ‘green’. ‘How’s your mood’ is going surprisingly well, though, in comparison. We’ve had ‘good’, but we’ve also had ‘great’ and ‘happy’. One boy clearly wasn’t in the mood to announce his mood to the class, and just gave the teacher a venomous look and, still making eye-contact, threw the ball contemptuously down into the lap of the girl next to him without saying a word. On the whole, though, it’s a roaring success. The girl on my left answers with a sweet but bland ‘good’ and passes the ball on. ‘I’m feeling tired!’ I enthuse in English, beaming energetically, confident that the kids will have no idea what I’m on about. Sure enough, they just laugh at the funny sounds I’m making. I pass the ball on to the boy next to me. He’s wearing a black t-shirt with the words ‘THE BOSS’ printed across the chest in big white letters, and an orthodox double cross on a gold chain around his neck. ‘And how’s your mood?’ asks the teacher in a smiling voice. The boy stares grimly at the floor. ‘Black.’

Meals are the best part of the day, of course. I’m meant to spend the entire four hours joining in the same activities that the kids are doing, and that includes eating lunch and dinner. So when the teachers are laying the shin-high tables, they always make sure to put down a knife and fork for me too. There are eight little square tables in the classroom, and each has up to four kids around it. We all sit in silence with our hands on our knees until the teachers have brought everyone their food. Then one of the teachers will tell us what we’re having for lunch/dinner and say ‘bon appétit’, and the feast begins. I’m quite conspicuous at meal times, for a number of reasons. Firstly, I couldn’t possibly fit my legs under the table. So while the kids sit with their lunches right under their noses, and are able to poke at their food suspiciously without any trouble, I have to eat with my body at a right angle from the table, my neck twisting painfully to the right and my left arm stretching across my body to try and skewer a bit of meat. The other reason that I stand out is that I actually eat. In my defence, the nursery food is amazing. They have big rustic wedges of rye bread to soak up soup, and we always have a side of seaweed and boiled egg with the main meal. This is obviously meant to help boost the kids’ iron and protein intake, but it’s also surprisingly tasty. The drink is either sweetened tea (I’m not a big fan), or kissel. Kissel is a warm fruit drink thickened with starch. The consistency is halfway between juice and jelly. It probably sounds awful, but it’s much better than I expected. I have never not finished my entire meal. Most of the kids, in contrast, have never finished an entire meal. Even when the teacher offers them a chocolate reward for eating everything on their plate, they’ll normally just finish the potatoes and then run off and play.

This afternoon, the kids are particularly well behaved, because we’ve promised to let them run around outside later if they’re good. It’s only minus eight degrees out today, so they’re allowed a playtime before they go home. When we go back to the carpet and sit down in a big circle, it’s clear that they’re doing their very best to pay attention and be quiet. ‘Hello everyone!’ I say. They all know what this means by now, and they wave at me and go ‘HELLO’. ‘I saw your lovely Sunshine Class banner as we came upstairs today. It helped me find your classroom!’

At this point it’s clear that I’ve lost them, because most of them are laughing at my funny voice, and one of them is hitting the other one on the head with a little truck toy.

‘But there’s something missing! Your sun doesn’t have rays! Shall we paint rays on with our hand prints?’

They look at me askance, clearly unsure whether I’m telling them off for not eating their seaweed or offering to watch some cartoons. One of them takes the initiative and yells ‘I DON’T UNDERSTAND YOU!’ in my face.

The teacher steps in quickly. ‘That’s ok, let’s try to work out what Theo’s saying.’

‘I understand him perfectly.’ Says one girl, her face a picture of smugness.

The teacher scrutinises her, trying to figure out whether she really does understand what I’m saying. ‘Really? Could you tell us what he’s suggesting?’

‘Meh, it’s hard to translate. You wouldn’t understand.’

Later on, when the kids are playing with their toys, the same girl tries to get into a conversation with me. ‘Do you have a mum?’ she asks in Russian.

‘Yes.’ I say, nodding.

‘And is she at home?’

‘Yes, but not at my home in Krasnoyarsk. She’s at my home in England, a veeery long way away.’

The girl frowns at me. I’d said something that wasn’t yes, no, or hello. That posed quite a logical challenge for her. After letting her ponder for a few moments, I decide to give her a hint, and mime ‘a long way’ by holding my hands far apart from each other. She gets the idea.

‘Oh! You have to go home to see your mum in an aeroplane?’

‘Yes, well done!’

‘Where do you live?’

‘England.’

The girl bursts out laughing. ‘Haha! That’s not a place!’ she says, certainly.

‘Yes it is! I’ll show you.’

I take her over to the map on the wall. I show her where we are now, deep in the belly of Russia. I point at the spot just west of Lake Baikal and say ‘Krasnoyarsk’. Then I point at her. Next, I point to the tiny little island off Europe with a cartoon Stonehenge on it. ‘England.’ I point at myself. Then I do the ‘long way’ gesture again and say ‘it’s a long way!’ She agrees with me. We’ve attracted the attention of a few other kids who were playing around us. I show them where England is on the map too. The teacher comes over and says ‘well Anya, can you show the other kids where Theo lives on the map?’ She nods eagerly and then looks at the map, puzzled. The other kids join in trying to find my home. One decides I’m from Congo, and jabs his finger at the cartoon of a snake in the middle of Africa. Anya eventually places her finger uncertainly on Turkey. This seems to be the consensus among the kids, because chubby little fingers rain down on the cartoon Blue Mosque with emphatic little thuds.

I try to put as much smile and enthusiasm as I can into the words ‘Nope. Not even close.’