Funny story for you:
Back in the old days of 2002-2003, I went to the ass-end of the planet to teach English as a second language.
I don’t think I’m exaggerating too much here, either – I went to Achinsk, Siberia in the Russian Federation to teach ESL at the Yukos Petrochemical refinery, and also at a military boarding school in Achinsk whose name escapes me now but probably was named after Lenin or something. Achinsk, if you look on a globe on the world, is almost but not quite exactly on the opposite side of the planet.
In the end, those few months very nearly killed me – literally. I lost like, forty pounds because there was no real food, and the environment was so polluted the snow was black. The reason I nearly died was that the city and surrounding areas dumped their garbage all over the place, and it contaminated the water table and surrounding rivers. I came down with a bacterial infection that gradually destroyed my hearing, and I was pretty much deaf for over a year. I had surgery later on that restored about 50% of the hearing in my right ear, but my left is 90-95% gone.
Actually, that’s not the funny story I was referring to:
One night, one of my students was driving me home. His name was Dmitri, and worked as a lawyer for Yukos – a big, giant guy. Very friendly, but kind of rough. His English was limited but we got along and made ourselves understood to another.
So we were there, in the Arctic dark, on a narrow road in the snowy woods, with nobody around for miles and miles and miles. We came on a railroad crossing with a freight train rolling through, and an ancient Ford Aerostar waiting to cross. The train was just completing its passing when we pulled up.
Almost as we pulled up behind it, the van started rolling forward. As it did, the sliding side door popped open and a man fell out. His hands were tied behind his back and his ankles were tied too, and he had a hood over his head. The van was still rolling and it ran over his ankles. There was deep snow though so I don’t think he was badly hurt so much as his legs were compressed into the snowpack. He squirmed as it happened though, so I don’t know how fun it was. Almost as soon as it happened three men got out of their crappy old Aerostar and started kicking the man on the ground.
So, naturally, at this point I’m freaking the fuck out.
This is a long post, so part 2 coming in a day or two. C’mon, I got you interested, right?
