1/28/2005

Couple Items

1) Hillary Clinton and John McCain nominated Viktor Yushenko and Mikhail Saakashvili for the Nobel Peace Price. Guess we'll have to wait a bit before we see if they win.

2) Last night I was talking with my Russian tutor. She's actually an English tutor by profession, and teaches me Russian as a favor. She has apparently been approached to possibly teach "nasha" Julia Tymoshenko English. She's very excited about this prospect. This also amuses me, as one of her teaching methods involves having her students memorize poetry. So I'm having these visions of Julia reading Emily Dickinsn (one of my tutor's favorites) while someone from the Regions Party is blabbering away about something or another in the Rada.

3) Another story my tutor told me last night that I had to share: Back in 1995 then-President Clinton came to visit Kiev. During this visit my tutor was hired by CNN as a local translator/assistant for star reporter Wolf Blitzer. Wolf sent my tutor out on an assignment with a camera crew to get a story and local reactions to how Kievans were preparing for Clinton's arrival. Problem was, no one in the city seemed to know or care that Clinton was coming. So my tutor goes back to Wolf and says "We can't find anyone who is preparing to welcome Clinton, but I am a Kievan...so do you want me to put things together for your cameramen?" Wolf says "absolutely." So my tutor goes over to a friend's apartment by the opera house here, and she makes a banner that says "Kiev welcomes Clinton!" and hangs it from her friend's balcony. The CNN camera crew dutifly films it. She then calls up a principal she knows of a school on L'vivska brama. She asks him "do you know Clinton is coming?" The Principal says "No." My tutor then asks him, "Well, since you know now, can we come over and film some of your students singing to welcome Clinton?" The principal says "sure." So my tutor goes over with the camera crew and films a fifth grade class singing a song, ostensibly in practice for when Clinton arrives. Both shots made it into Wolf's report.

THIS...is CNN.