Upper St. Clair graduate ready to say hello to Russia
OK, let’s give this word a try: “Zdravstvuyte.”
If you think you can wrap your tongue around that, congratulations! You’ve learned how to say hello in Russian.
So say zdravstvuyte to Jonah Auslander, who should return later this summer fairly fluent in Russian after studying the language in a place where everyone speaks it.
The member of the Upper St. Clair High School Class of 2018 has been awarded a National Security Language Initiative for Youth scholarship to spend six weeks in Moscow. He embarks June 27, heading to Washington, D.C., for orientation before flying nearly 5,000 miles to the east.
Once in Russia’s capital, he’ll stay with a host family and attend classes Monday through Friday mornings at the National Research University Higher School of Economics, one of the nation’s leading academic institutions.
“I’m pretty sure I take the Moscow subway every day to get to school,” he said. “It will be interesting, to say the least.”
Signs on the subway and throughout the city, of course, feature the Cyrillic script of the Russian alphabet, which contains 33 letters. Some of them – A, B, C and E, for example – are familiar to users of the Latin alphabet, but others look as if they’ve been written backwards or scribbled randomly.
Jonah is up to the challenge, as he listed Russia as his destination of choice in applying for the scholarship.
“You have tourism all over Western Europe, but I feel like not many people really ever go to Russia as a tourist spot,” he said. “People think of it as a place of mystery.”
That pretty much has been the case throughout modern history, from the reigns of the czars to the Soviet Union and the Cold War, right up through today’s headlines.
“It’s just a really complex relationship,” Jonah said about the United States and the country he’s visiting, “and that always interested me.”
His mother, Karen, is a librarian in Mt. Lebanon School District and always has encouraged him to read, including newspapers. She also has helped him look for summer programs to further his education, including a course last year on intelligence and national security at American University.
Their 2018 search revealed the National Security Language Initiative for Youth program, administered by American Cultural Exchange Service and sponsored by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.
“I looked at it thinking, I’m not really going to get into this. But it’s worth a try,” Jonah said. “So when I got in, it was a big surprise.”
Perhaps he shouldn’t have been, as the selection committee had a lot of relevant experience to see on his résumé. For example, he has completed the World Affairs Council of Pittsburgh’s Global Leadership Certificate Program and the Upper St. Clair High School Global Fluency Certificate Program, along with an apprenticeship in international relations through the Allegheny Intermediate Unit.
After returning from Russia, Jonah will attend the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University in Bloomington and hopes to apply his international experiences to his studies and perhaps a career choice.
For more information about the National Security Language Initiative for Youth, visit www.nsliforyouth.org.