From Russia With Love

Last weekend there was an explosion at a nightclub in Perm, Russia. Perm is about 900 miles away from Moscow so I’m not really sure why the news is saying Moscow, but it wasn’t here that that happened. This brings up the question of fire safety. My dad asked about fire exits in my apartment and we live in an old Soviet apartment building so there aren’t really fire escapes. I’m not even sure if we have a smoke detector. It’s kind of scary, but I guess we would just run out the door or jump out the window and risk some broken bones…

Anyway, this morning I was teaching my 7th grade class and we are in a unit called “As The Great Furnace Flamed” and basically it’s about fire stories. Weird. So we were in the middle of reading this story about a forest fire in Australia when this man comes over the intercom (this has never happened) and my students stood up and started walking out and I asked them if it was a fire drill and they said yes. So the interesting thing is that in US schools, we just push the kids out the door and then take attendance during a fire drill because the objective is to get out as fast as possible. But not here. The kids change into their outdoor shoes (most of the teachers did, too) and put on their coats and hats and scarves and the teachers make sure they are all zipped up. Then they walk outside and make the children all face the same way. Today was face-numbingly freezing and snowing outside and I didn’t change into my outside shoes so my feet were so cold! It did cross my mind, though, that if this was a real fire (because I wasn’t completely sure it wasn’t—I couldn’t understand the intercom guy) maybe I should grab my passport. And since we were taking so much time to bundle up the kids I went ahead and got it. The thing is, though, that if the school did catch on fire it would be pretty bad. Because it’s in the middle of the city so there are buildings all around and I don’t know that where we were standing outside would really be all that safe. Plus, it’s six stories so I wouldn’t want to be on the top floor.

And speaking of Perm and how it’s far from Moscow…here’s a fun fact: Russia covers 11 time zones! President Medvedev proposed to cut some of the time zones and also to get rid of daylight savings here. But is he allowed to do that? Because it's not like Russia is in charge of time. And there are other places in the world that fall into those time zones also so I don't really know how that would work...plus with the sun rising and setting...I bet that gets tricky...(click here for more on that)
I also found out that the Ural Mountains are the border for Europe/Asia and the TransSiberian Express from Moscow to Beijing takes a minimum of 5 days! Also, it is officially called the Russian Federation. So there’s a little geography for the day.