00:00Today I'm going to tell you about my first encounter with real foreigners.
00:05My hometown, Nizhny Novgorod, formerly Gorky, was close to foreigners for a long time because of all the military factories.
00:14None of my friends had ever been abroad.
00:17And for us, the outside world existed only on TV, in books and in the magazine around the world.
00:25I never even dreamed of visiting other countries.
00:28It just seemed impossible.
00:36The first time I ever saw foreigners was on a tram.
00:40They were two young Indian men.
00:42As I later learned, our local medical school had started accepting Indian students to make some extra profit.
00:50Medical education abroad was very prestigious in India.
00:53But not everyone could afford to send their kids to the UK or America.
00:58So post-Soviet Russia became an option.
01:02I can't even describe how people stared at those Indian students.
01:08If Gorbachev himself had walked into that tram, he wouldn't have gotten as much attention.
01:18In the early 1990s, a wave of American preachers flooded into our city.
01:24They knew nothing about Russia, but they were eager to save us, poor souls tormented by communism.
01:30We looked at them with a mix of extreme curiosity and bewilderment.
01:36They clearly had no idea how to navigate our harsh world and didn't realize they were getting attention not for
01:44what they were preaching.
01:46We didn't understand a thing, even when they spoke for a translator.
01:51Read it the Bible?
01:53Why?
01:53We didn't have any inherited reference for it, so to us it was just a boring book of old stories
02:00that had nothing to do with modern life.
02:03Eventually, the missionaries did convert some people and even built a few churches, but American-style Christianity never really took
02:11root in Russia.
02:13After four generations of living without religion, we just didn't need it.
02:19Now, things are changing as times got tougher and former communists get older, but they are turning into the traditional
02:27Russian Orthodox Church.
02:29Though, that's another story.
02:36I vividly remember my first encounter with a real American.
02:41When the missionaries came to our city, it was such a big deal that local journalists interviewed them.
02:47The missionaries wanted to talk about God, but the journalists were much more interested in jeans, chewing gum, and Madonna.
02:55You know, the important stuff.
02:57My dad saw a toothy young woman named Melissa on TV and decided that I absolutely had to meet her
03:06to practice my English.
03:08Naturally, I was horrified, but as always, my dad knew how to push my buttons.
03:14What's the matter?
03:15Are you scared to talk to some American girl?
03:18And you call yourself a fan of Margaret Thatcher?
03:21By the way, he was the one who was really her fan, and he was the one who gave me
03:27the book on Thatcher to teach me how to be a great woman.
03:31I had no comeback.
03:32If I wanted to be great, I had to grab my friend Olya, go to the Volna Hotel and, dying
03:38of embarrassment, ask the receptionist where the American was staying.
03:42I swear, I can't remember what we said to Melissa, it's a complete blank, like after a car crash, but
03:50somehow it ended with us taking her home.
03:53I didn't dare invite her to my place.
03:55My floors weren't washed, so we called Olya's grandma from a nearby payphone and told her we were bringing a
04:04foreigner over.
04:05Melissa was welcomed like a true celebrity.
04:08No one understood a word she was saying, but that didn't matter.
04:11The mood was like it was during the Olympic Games.
04:15Everyone just wanted to hug, bond, and show off the famous Russian hospitality.
04:21Olya's grandma got generous and pulled sausages out of the freezer, saved for New Year's Eve.
04:29Those sausages were a rare delicacy, brought all the way from Moscow.
04:34We offered Melissa the best of the best.
04:37And this preacher, bless her heart, said she was a vegetarian.
04:43So her precious New Year's sausages ended up going to the cat.
04:48After that, we stopped bringing the foreigners home.
04:56My name is Elvira Becker.
04:58I am an author.
04:59And if today's story made you smile, please give this video a thumbs up.
05:03Since I don't support the war in Ukraine, I can no longer publish my books in Russia.
05:08And I am rebuilding my audience from scratch right here on YouTube.
05:13Books only sell when readers know the offer and believe they are worth their time and attention.
05:19If you would like to help me rise from the ashes, please support this video with your likes, comments, and
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