Body Language

OK, so I'm way behind on posting. I've included nothing from my recent trip to Russia, partially because it was followed by a visit to Vermont by two professors and five students from the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, Russia. I finally put the Russians on the plane yesterday after ten fun but exhausting days. We're just getting into finals weeks here at Champlain so I don't have a lot of time to do anything, but I'll try and post some material from both Russian trips. In the meantime, I thought I'd post this picture for a couple reasons. One, it's actually a fairly good picture of me, which is unbelievable because I'm the least photogenic person in the world. More importantly, however, it displays one of those subtle little body language clues that you pick up while travelling. The picture was taken on a tour of the Magic Hat Brewery here in Burlington. I was talking to the Russians and, to make them laugh, was using my fingers to gently flick the side of my throat - which apparently in Russia is a not too secret way to bring up the topic of drinking. So, if I wanted to ask someone out for a drink, and I didn't want the crowd to know about it for some reason, I may say, "Hey, want to go play chess?" while flicking the side of my jaw/throat - which would actually mean, "hey, let's go get something to drink". Or, I might say, "Yes, so-and-so decided to leave the company" while gently flicking the side of my jaw/throat - which actually would mean "so-and-so was a complete drunk and they fired him." In the US I guess we would just use our hands to make the sign of a mug of beer and pretend to drink it - the Russians are much more subtle.