Kotlas Connection Hosts Two Guests
 Nadya Perepyolkina kneels on the pebble beach at Pemaquid. |
By Gregor Smith
The Kotlas Connection was pleased to welcome two visitors from Russia in March. Darya Shestakova and Nadezhda Perepyolkina arrived early on the morning of Tuesday, March 20. A high school piano student and a college English teacher, respectively, the two young women were here for ten days.
During their American sojourn, "Dasha" and "Nadya" visited area schools, toured Waterville and Augusta, took day trips to Boston and the Maine coast, enjoyed an out-of-season Thanksgiving dinner, and met interested members of the community in a reception in the REM Forum. In addition, Dasha spent a Sunday snowboarding at Sugarloaf, while Nadya learned about maple sugaring at Fort Western in Augusta.
The centerpiece of the visit, however, was our Russian Sampler on Monday, March 26. Held annually since 1993 on the fourth Monday in March, Russian Sampler is a day of workshops, classes, and presentations about Russia for middle school students from schools throughout Central Maine and beyond. This year, 115 students from eight schools attended.
 Nadya and Dasha prepare to teach a Russian folk dance at the close of Russian Sampler. |
Whenever possible, the Kotlas Connection arranges for guests to come from Kotlas for Russian Sampler. We previously hosted March delegations of one to four people in 2002, 2003, and 2006. This year our guests taught two sessions. In one, they presented a PowerPoint slide show on Russian schools. In the other, they showed the students how to make traditional Russian rag dolls.
At the end of the day, Dasha, Nadya, and Colby's Russian Language assistant, Ksenia Kobak of St. Petersburg, held a song and dance class for all Sampler attendees. Ksenia played and sang a Russian rock song on a guitar, with raucous assistance from the audience on the refrain, and then Dasha and Nadya sang two beautiful Russian folk songs in close harmony. The duo then taught a Russian folk dance to two groups of 30 to 40 students. While the Maine students did not become skilled dancers, they certainly enjoyed themselves.
 Nadya Malkova (her maiden name) and Jessica Garrett (right) in April 1989 in Kotlas. Photo courtesy of Jessica Garrett. |
Nadya, 32, is a longtime friend of our sister-city connection. When she was 14, her family hosted Jessica Garrett, when Jessica, her father Peter, and the late Natalia Kempers made the historic first visit to Kotlas in 1989. She has since become a pen pal to Kotlas Connection member Mary Ellen Miner, who was her hostess here. Although Nadya now lives in Archangel, capital of the Russian province that contains Kotlas, she is still involved with Kotlas sister city projects. Nadya is married and has a 6-year-old daughter.
Nadya teaches English at Archangel Medical College. While she was here, she was pleased to visit the nursing program at Kennebec Valley Community College in Fairfield, where she met the director, toured the facility, and got a demonstration of high tech patient mannequins that can talk, mimic symptoms of various maladies, and even die!
Our younger visitor is a 16-year-old student in the tenth grade at School #18 in Kotlas, where she earns excellent grades. She also studies music at Gamma, a city-founded school that offers after school classes in art, music, and dance to around 1,000 Kotlas pupils from ages 4 to 15. Dasha loves crafts, especially making pictures from straw. She studied the technique for four years at the House of Children's Creativity, the Kotlas analog to the Waterville's Alfond Youth Center.
 Nadya Perepyolkina and Jessica Garrett at Harvard in Cambridge, Mass. in March 2007. Click the photo to enlarge it. |
Dasha also loves to travel and has backpacked in the mountains. Her parents would like her to follow in their path into medicine — her mother is a doctor and her father is a dentist — but right now she is leaning toward a profession "connecting with foreign languages." She is already quite good in English. She has one more year of school in Kotlas, after which she hopes to attend university in St. Petersburg.
For both Dasha and Nadya, the highlight of their visit was seeing the Atlantic Ocean. Neither had seen an ocean before. "[It] was so exciting," Dasha said, "I can't even describe my feelings."
On their return to Russia, both took part in American Sampler on April 15. Now in its third year, American Sampler is a program on American culture for Kotlas school children. It is based upon our own Russian Sampler and is organized by the Waterville Committee, the Kotlas Connection's counterpart in Kotlas.
The Kotlas Connection is grateful to all who helped make the visit of Nadya and Dasha so memorable for them. We especially thank their host families: Mary Ellen and Neill Miner of Augusta and Joe and Mary Ann Couture of Sidney and their children.
Russian Teacher Finds Our Classes "Relaxed"
 Nadezhda "Nadya" Perepoylkina poses with Readfield fifth graders who hold items she brought from Russia. Nadya met teacher Mary Ellen Miner four years ago on Miner's trip to Russia as part of the Waterville/Kotlas Sister City exchange. Miner said seeing and tasting the Atlantic Ocean was Nadya's biggest thrill during her 11 day visit, as she had never before seen an ocean. Click the photo to enlarge it. |
By Mary Ellen Miner
In March, Manchester, Readfield and Wayne elementary students enjoyed a visit from Nadezhda Perepoylkina, who teaches English at Arkhangelsk Medical College in Russia. Nadya was in the U.S. for 11 days under the Waterville, Maine/Kotlas, Russia sister city exchange program. Nadya spoke and sang to our students, shared Russian art and home items, and taught students to make Russian rag dolls.
Nadya said teachers and students in Union 42 are friendly, kind people who are always ready to explain and help. She found our classes small, relaxed and comfortable, without the strict discipline and stress common in Russian schools. She especially admired the numerous art exhibits in our halls, the brightly decorated classrooms and the wide variety of materials and equipment available to teachers.
This article and photograph originally appeared in the April 2007 edition of Chalkboard, the newsletter of the Maranacook Area School System. They are used here by permission of the author, who is a part-time teacher of gifted and talented students in grades K-5 in Manchester, Readfield, and Wayne, Me., and was Nadya's host during her visit.
An Essay by Dasha
In the past, we have held essay contests to select the student to visit for the Russian Sampler. This year, we asked the sister city committee in Kotlas to choose for us. Our only stipulation was that the student be a musician or dancer. The Waterville Committee asked applicants to write in English about themselves and their reasons for wanting to go to the United States. Here is Dasha's essay. Although we have shortened it a bit, no words have been changed.
 Darya Shestakova |
Dear Waterville committee members,
Let me introduce myself to you. My name is Darya Shestakova and I would like to apply for the Sister-Cities Connection Programme. Recently I read an article about this programme and began to write a letter to you at once.
There are several reasons why I want to take part in it. Firstly, I'm very interested in the USA, its people, unique culture and in English language of course. My special dream is to learn to speak English fluently. Nowadays knowing English is absolutely necessary for every educated person. Besides I'm going to connect my future profession with English. I'm absolutely sure that if I were given a chance to go to Waterville my English would become much better and I would be closer to make my dream come true.
I expect you would like to know some facts about me and my life. So let me begin.
I'm 16 years old. I finished 9 classes at school number 82 and I have a certificate with excellent marks for all the subjects except for Physical Education. Now I'm a pupil of the 10th form [grade] at school number 18. I'm quite sociable person and I have already made friends with my new classmates. I like to study. I think that studying is my work now, so I'm trying to do it well. I have an aim to enter university, although I haven't decided exactly what university to choose. My parents want me to be a doctor. I think it's because of their own profession (my mother is a doctor of clinical laboratory diagnostics and my father is a dentist), but as I have mentioned I'm prefer a profession connecting with foreign languages.
I have wonderful parents. I can always share my joys and sorrows with them. They are always trying to make my life interesting, so we had a special family rest [vacation] in Turkey in 2003.
I suppose one's hobby can tell about a person more than the person himself that's why I would be glad to tell you about my hobbies.
One of them is making pictures from the straw. I attend The House of Children's Creative Work for 4 years and I'm interested in my hobby very much. My teacher there is Saldina Vera Petrovna. She knows her trade perfectly and furthermore her attitude towards children is always benevolent. I'm already an apprentice and this year I'm going to become a Master. Let me show one of my works. It seems to do it rather easy but it's difficult indeed. Besides, making such pictures requires much patience and laborious work.
My second hobby is listening to the music. I like rock music the best. The main advantage of rock music of all others is lyrics. Rock singers write music and texts themselves; their lyrics reflect their feelings, that's why I like it so much. My favorite rock band is "Placebo". Their texts are always philosophical and I like to translate them from English into Russian. I always go to every rock festival which is held in our town. At those concerts I always meet all my close friends whom I haven't seen for a long time. What a wonderful hours we have together!!!
I finished music school with red diploma and I can play piano well. I was lucky to study at new music school "Gamma", which is much better than the old one. I can judge it because I had the possibility to study at both schools. The teacher who taught me piano was Muzalevskaya Natalia Petrovna. What a wonderful teacher she is! She taught me to love music. So then I have lyrical mood I like to play the piano or try to play modern music by ear. It always makes me happier. It's my third hobby.
As I have mentioned I'm very interested in American culture. Last academic year I took part in American Sampler Day and I liked it very much. On that day I learned a lot of new things about the rich history of America, traditional food and meet people who had been in the USA. I'm sure it's a good tradition to carry out Days of American culture in Russia and would be happy to visit Russian Sampler Day in America. If I went to Waterville I would tell about my native town, about Russian culture to help American people to understand what our nation is really like. In my opinion, such days help to support friendly relations between our countries and make the world a little safer.
In conclusion, when I went to Waterville I would bring a lot of impressions here and would be glad to share them with people who interested in America like me. I would try to promote a better understanding of the cultures and involve both grown-ups and children to be interested in American people and their life.
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