By Vika Abramova
Russian language Intern.
On Tuesday, February 24, 2015 we had Russian Club First Meeting. Thank you everyone for coming!
The Russian club meetings haven’t been held at Colgate for several years. The REST program is excited at the revival of the Russian Club. The first meeting was really important. The club leaders Jacob Ellison and Jacqueline Singer did a wonderful job with everything! They set the tone and direction for the group meetings. They set the scene with a very brief introduction of what the club is about. That group participants felt welcome through introductions.
Jacob and Singer served us Russian traditional Russian dishes – blini and pelmeni and many other delicious things. The first meeting was a lot of fun! It all went so well.
In conlucion, we watched Russian romantic comedy, Piter FM (Питер FM, 2006) with subtitles. The club participants learned about contemporary Russian youth culture while acquiring Russian grammar. This is a lyrical story about two young people who have to decide what is really important to each of them. Masha is a DJ at one of the most popular St. Petersburg radio stations. Maxim is a very promising young architect. Masha is preparing for her wedding with her former Kostya, and Maxim gets an invitation to work in Germany. But both of them aren’t sure that they want their lives to be like that. Maxim doesn’t want to leave because of the girl who left him, and Masha isn’t sure that Kostya is the right thing for her. Who knows what would become of their lives, were it not for the happenstance: Masha loses her mobile phone, and Maxim finds it. He wants to return it, but each time they try to meet, something happens to waylay their plans... The film is full of interesting cultural details that demonstrate the rapid changes in contemporary Russian culture and provide teaching moments for a type of culture that is not usually addressed in language textbooks. Piter FM was nominated for 6 different awards at the MTV Russia Movie Awards, 2007.
This semester, the club has planned club movie nights and meetings with professors from the Russian Department for discussing important issues facing Russian society.
You can learn more about the Russian Club by contacting Jacob Ellison jellison@colgate.edu or Jacqueline Singer jsinger@colgate.edu
We will keep it up.
