How I presented Russia at the WOW Fair.

"Have you ever been in Russia?" This question was the most interesting and surprising for me when I presented my country at the 2011 Windows of the World fair (WOW): believe it or not, but some people didn't expect me to be from Russia because of my appearance.
"In reality, I'm from Russia", I said with a big smile beaming on my swarthy face.
"You don't look like a Russian!"
"It only means that there is ethnic diversity in Russia," I replied.
Another question that puzzled me a little bit came when I showed Russian currency: Why does Russia have so beautiful currency?

Because ... .

It was my answer. To tell the truth, I was pleased to listen to it :-)
Whatever I showed to American people - the photos of Moscow and Saint Petersburg, pictures of my university, Russian national symbols, magazines, newspapers - everything was met with a big interest and curiosity. That was very encouraging. Later I showed them a book containing Russian proverbs and their English equivalents.



Annually held at the Tennessee Tech campus the WOW festival brings together almost all international students of the TTU. Actually, it is observed with presenting different countries, dancing, cooking the food and so on. Foreign students just share their culture and traditions.

The WOW festival was well-organized. All participants of the festival (including me) were given stamps of their home countries. Attendants had something like travel and cultural passports containing the maps of the world. And we had to stamp these passports which meant that people knew about countries a lot .
It was very nice to hear from people that "The Russian symbol is so cool !".



There were a lot of kids at the festival and I showed them some Russian cartoons (the Russian counterpart of "Tom & Jerry" cartoon where a wolf and a rabbit were the main characters instead of a mouse and a cat).

Actually, I tried to focus on cultural similarities between Russia and the United States. Everybody was surprised by the fact that Russia had a lot of cultural similarities with the United States. In addition, some people didn't expect Moscow to have more than 600 different churches, including orthodox, protestant, catholic ones, mosques and Buddhist temples.

So it goes!