Canada day in Russia

This post should be Part 2 of my trip to Eastern Siberia but i had to interrupt that process to describe my Canada day.

This was my third Canada day I spent living in a different country and it was setting up to be the worst one since the last two were spent with other Canadians living abroad or, at least, with friends. The majority of this one was spent traveling in helicopters and planes from vankor oilfield to Krasnoyarsk. There wasn't any real chance even for some solo celebration.

I did get satisfaction but in a unique way. I was in the airport of the vankor oilfield and wasting a lot of time waiting on my ride out of there. There were two coworkers with me with different levels of English skills. As we chatted in english I could see confused looks coming from other passengers directed at me. It was not for a while after we had been speaking in english when I decided to stand up and stretch. There was a quick break in conversation and the other passengers piped up and started questioning the Russian person I was traveling with. My Russian is poor but I know when people are talking about me so I turned to my coworker and asked what they had said. She told me they were asking where I was from, what I was doing here, etc. I asked her if she had answered them. She said she hadn't and told me they were waiting for my answer.

So here I am, now standing in front of a crowd of 20 Russians, all staring at me and waiting for me to speak. As it was Canada day I took my chance to say, loud and proud,

'I Am Canadian!'

felt good. Then the post-statement russian conversation turned to questions of why I was
there, how much I was getting paid and other curiosities as they we're amazed that someone from another country would actually choose to be in this part of Russia. A few people wanted to come up and meet me and shake my hand. It was like being a celebrity just for being Canadian...the way it should be.