{"id":457,"date":"2008-02-15T19:40:00","date_gmt":"2008-02-15T19:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.communicationcoach.ca\/blog\/?p=457"},"modified":"2015-05-04T10:36:12","modified_gmt":"2015-05-04T14:36:12","slug":"the-russian-people-are-great","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.communicationcoach.ca\/blog\/the-russian-people-are-great\/","title":{"rendered":"The Russian people are great!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Say what you will about the Russian gov’t, the military and some parts of history, but the Russian people are quite okay in my books.<\/span><\/p>\n

Thursday I was invited over to a student’s house with her hubby and a few others to eat and drink. I FINALLY had Russian vodka. Predictably, the girls drank cocktails (I introduced them to cape cods: vodka, cranberry juice and lime<\/em>) and the guys drank straight vodka in shots. The rules were simple. No one drinks alone. A toast or 2 comes before the drink, and after the shot you can chase it with juice or eat a pickle, tomato or fish and onions. (Similar to mackerel??).<\/em> I held my own (naturally….)<\/em> and we exchanged language, jokes and legends of hockey. Yes sir – they still remember 1972.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Afterwards one of the guys who is also a student of the English training for managers program insisted on accompanying me home via taxi to ensure I did not get ‘kidnapped’. Before leaving we stopped by his (and his wife’s<\/em>) flat a few floors below, and when they opened the door I was stunned. What was hanging on the coat rack? A Toronto Maple Leafs cap! WOW! He smiled and told me he also has a jersey to match. This I have to capture on film. So he invited me to come by sometime for Cuban cigars and cognac and we can take some pictures. He also gave me a Cuban for the road.<\/p>\n

He and his wife took me home and even insisted on paying for my cab! Amazing generosity. All I can do is thank them, be a good teacher and try to repay them when given a chance – which will hopefully be soon. Russians and Canadians mix well – like ice and hockey I suppose.<\/p>\n

Tomorrow I am going to do some more site-seeing and picture-taking. I’ll be in touch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Say what you will about the Russian gov’t, the military and some parts of history, but the Russian people are quite okay in my books. Thursday I was invited over to a student’s house with her hubby and a few others to eat and drink. I FINALLY had Russian vodka. Predictably, the girls drank cocktails […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[535,533],"tags":[788,614,599,553],"class_list":["post-457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-esl-cultural-communications","category-interpersonal-communications","tag-friendly","tag-hockey","tag-intercultural-communications","tag-russia"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.communicationcoach.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.communicationcoach.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.communicationcoach.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.communicationcoach.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.communicationcoach.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=457"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.communicationcoach.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1146,"href":"https:\/\/www.communicationcoach.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/457\/revisions\/1146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.communicationcoach.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.communicationcoach.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.communicationcoach.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}