Judging and a Photo Op

While Jesse was gone on his hunting trip I had a chance to be a guest judge at the "English Olympics" hosted here. This is the panel of judges (including some teachers):

It is where English classes from different schools get together and compete. Erin (Privyet) and I left early in the morning and stayed there all day listening to the different groups do presentations, essays, cartoons, and reading letters all in English. Here are some of the groups (check out the girls' hair - that's normal around here):


Then we would score each group on how they did. It was very interesting to listen to the different levels of English. Some of them had a lot of vocabulary but didn't speak well and others spoke with almost no accent but hardly spoke at all. All in all, I was very impressed with what I heard.

Before the award ceremony, they asked Erin and I to say a few words (let me say here I am not a public speaker). After Erin said a brief statement I got up thinking "Oh good. I only have to say a few sentences to encourage the students and then I can sit down."

Nope. After I said my 4 sentences, they asked if any of the students had questions (that I would have to answer). Well, the questions came. Thankfully they were pretty simple like "Where are you from?", "What are you doing here?", "Do you have any children?", and "What do you like to do?" Unfortunately for them, when I get nervous I talk (A LOT). One of the students even said "OK, you can sit down now". Yet, one of the groups asked me "Do you have a T name?". I didn't. So, they decided to give me one. I didn't understand it so they said it meant "Beautiful Girl" (Charash Kys/Чараш Кыс).

I guess they thought they could suck up to me in order to get some extra points. It worked! ;-) Here is the group:

During one of the long breaks in the morning, Erin and I decided to go do a photo op since we had both dressed up. Here are some of the pictures (which let's face it, this is the real reason I wanted to post :)