This afternoon, as we were all sitting in the Teachers Office, working on various lesson plans and whatnot, Galya came into the office and asked if any of us were from the Southern United States, and if so, would we be willing to give an interview to a television news crew about Hurricane Katrina. Britt and I are the only ones from the South (he is from South Carolina) and he was uninterested. I said sure, why not. The news crew wanted to know if they could come over right away. Again: sure, why not. Apparently any time there is some sort of big news event in the United States, the local news crews like to get the opinions of actual Americans, and the AH is a reliable place to find them. Not that I am from New Orleans, or that I am in any way an expert on Hurricane Katrina, but Florida got hit first by Katrina, so apparently that made me prime interviewing material.
The whole experience was rather surreal. I mean, for starters, back on September 1st, I asked all of you to send me as much news as you had on Katrina, simply so I would be informed. (Thank you to all who did email me about Katrina, because I at least had something to say other than what I read/saw in/on the news.) Anyhow, first this crew show up, and films me several times walking up and down the street trying really hard to pretend they were not there staring at and filming me. It was really, really hard not to laugh, especially since the first time we did it they had forgotten to put film in their camera. So there I am, trying to walk down the street looking natural while fighting off a fit of the giggles as I prepare to discuss the biggest natural disaster to hit my country in my lifetime. I was worried I would look like a jackass.
Then we went inside for the interview. They wanted to know a little about me (the usual why are you in Russia? kind of thing), and then we turned to Katrina. First the woman asked me to tell her about the recent tornado in my country. Um, hurricane? Oh right, yes. Hurricane. So I told her essentially what I knew: that Katrina had hit Florida, and killed 11 people, before gathering strength and hitting near New Orleans. At first everyone was relieved that the city did not get a direct hit, but then the walls protecting the city from flooding broke, and the city flooded. She asked me if I had any friends or family members in New Orleans. I told her about my friend who had evacuated, and how her university had canceled classes indefinitely. I also told her that a natural disaster of this magnitude has not happened in the US in my lifetime, and that it was simply unbelievable. She asked how I had heard the news about Katrina (from emails, reading the news online, and from the news here in Russia), and then she wanted to know if what I had seen on the Russian news about Katrina was the same as what I had heard from friends and family. I said that I have a hard time understanding Russian, and that from what I can tell the facts presented by the Russian media are the same as what I have been hearing from my friends and family back home. Then they decided that since I received most of the hurricane related news via the internet, we needed to go upstairs so that they could get some footage of me on the computer. (At this point, several other AH teachers made their TV debuts as well: M, L, Y and J were all in the office, so they were filmed, albeit silently, as part of the ambiance) I got to pull up nytimes.com and cnn.com and gesture emphatically to the screen while pretending to talk to the reporter about what I saw. Then we went outside and filmed several minutes of me pretending to have a conversation with the reporter, in case they needed an image or two to go behind their speech. Surreal.
After returning home from work, I explained to Nina M, and we had a rather frantic search for the correct channel. I had been interviewed by TV6, and I had rather assumed that TV6 would be channel 6. Of course, it turned out that TV6 was on channel 14, and we only discovered this just in time to witness my Russian television debut. As I gave the interview in English, I was of course dubbed in Russian that was mostly correct. And some of the shots of me chatting with my fellow teachers and reading the news on the internet were silent, with the reporter talking about things I had said. It was interesting, although possibly just to me.
I have never been on the news in the United States, or in any other country for that matter. I find it strange that the first time I was on TV was in Russia. It is also strange that I was there essentially as the token American, and that I was talking about a disaster that I really have no knowledge of other than what everyone else in the world knows. But there you have it. I do not know what else to say...
The whole experience was rather surreal. I mean, for starters, back on September 1st, I asked all of you to send me as much news as you had on Katrina, simply so I would be informed. (Thank you to all who did email me about Katrina, because I at least had something to say other than what I read/saw in/on the news.) Anyhow, first this crew show up, and films me several times walking up and down the street trying really hard to pretend they were not there staring at and filming me. It was really, really hard not to laugh, especially since the first time we did it they had forgotten to put film in their camera. So there I am, trying to walk down the street looking natural while fighting off a fit of the giggles as I prepare to discuss the biggest natural disaster to hit my country in my lifetime. I was worried I would look like a jackass.
Then we went inside for the interview. They wanted to know a little about me (the usual why are you in Russia? kind of thing), and then we turned to Katrina. First the woman asked me to tell her about the recent tornado in my country. Um, hurricane? Oh right, yes. Hurricane. So I told her essentially what I knew: that Katrina had hit Florida, and killed 11 people, before gathering strength and hitting near New Orleans. At first everyone was relieved that the city did not get a direct hit, but then the walls protecting the city from flooding broke, and the city flooded. She asked me if I had any friends or family members in New Orleans. I told her about my friend who had evacuated, and how her university had canceled classes indefinitely. I also told her that a natural disaster of this magnitude has not happened in the US in my lifetime, and that it was simply unbelievable. She asked how I had heard the news about Katrina (from emails, reading the news online, and from the news here in Russia), and then she wanted to know if what I had seen on the Russian news about Katrina was the same as what I had heard from friends and family. I said that I have a hard time understanding Russian, and that from what I can tell the facts presented by the Russian media are the same as what I have been hearing from my friends and family back home. Then they decided that since I received most of the hurricane related news via the internet, we needed to go upstairs so that they could get some footage of me on the computer. (At this point, several other AH teachers made their TV debuts as well: M, L, Y and J were all in the office, so they were filmed, albeit silently, as part of the ambiance) I got to pull up nytimes.com and cnn.com and gesture emphatically to the screen while pretending to talk to the reporter about what I saw. Then we went outside and filmed several minutes of me pretending to have a conversation with the reporter, in case they needed an image or two to go behind their speech. Surreal.
After returning home from work, I explained to Nina M, and we had a rather frantic search for the correct channel. I had been interviewed by TV6, and I had rather assumed that TV6 would be channel 6. Of course, it turned out that TV6 was on channel 14, and we only discovered this just in time to witness my Russian television debut. As I gave the interview in English, I was of course dubbed in Russian that was mostly correct. And some of the shots of me chatting with my fellow teachers and reading the news on the internet were silent, with the reporter talking about things I had said. It was interesting, although possibly just to me.
I have never been on the news in the United States, or in any other country for that matter. I find it strange that the first time I was on TV was in Russia. It is also strange that I was there essentially as the token American, and that I was talking about a disaster that I really have no knowledge of other than what everyone else in the world knows. But there you have it. I do not know what else to say...
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