I'm obviously not in the photo because I'm taking the picture. However, there's one more person who should be in the picture but isn't. Her name is Oksana and, although I taught the class in Russian, things would have been a whole lot worse without her help. Here's just a few of the things she did:
-She went through my notes (which had been translated by someone else previously and contained mistakes due to the fact that I didn't have any live contact with that person during the translation process) and made extremely thorough revisions.
-She translated 2 new sets of lecture notes that I hadn't finished for the previous semester's class.
-She sat through the whole class and, whenever I didn't know a word/phrase or sufficiently slaughtered a word/phrase, she informed me of what I really should be saying.
-She helped me grade the assignments that were written Ukrainian, a language which is still way out of my reach.
So, as you can see, my pedagogical success (if you want to call it that — my students probably don't), is due in large part to Oksana's able and effective service.
Well, last Monday was her birthday and, in typical KTS fashion, she made a cake and brought it to the office. When the available seminary personnel gathered around to sing and congratulate her, we all partook of the goodies. Present at the shindig was Sergei Tarasenko, KTS librarian, TST-KE student and budding photographer. He graciously offered to give me the pictures that he took of me at the occasion and, in a rare moment of blogging forethought, I asked him for a number of other pictures so that I could post a tribute to Oksana for her wonderful work in my class. So, I present to you a few photos of Oksana and her office party, courtesy of Sergei.
Oksana, the marvelous translator
The food
Eric messin' up Sergei's shot
Eric doing some serious eating
Igor and Sergei (no, not photographer Sergei) doing some serious eating
Thanks again for all the help, Oksana, and happy birthday!
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