Russian-Chinese Sports Festival at Faculty of Mass Communication, Philology and Political Science

The Faculty of Mass Communication, Philology and Political Science likes New Year and everything connected to it. This is why it starts preparing for the holiday properly and in advance. This time the faculty has started “heating up” the students on the Health Day on November 29, which was held at Gymnasium № 27 stadium. The format was a little different compared to the previous events.

“Traditionally we organize the autumn Health Day for the first-year students. This year we decided to invite the Chinese students, who learn Russian, as well. We were pleasantly surprised to see them easily completing the tasks, which were prepared by our sports organizer Gleb,” says Maria S. Naumova, Assistant Professor of the Department of Germanic Linguistics and Foreign Languages, Vice-Dean for Extracurricular and Educational Work.

The most active students and representatives of faculty administration were ready for action and met the foreign students with tangerines, which were used as rewards for successful completion of sports relay. Students started the sports activities right after the dancing warm-up. That day snow did not only fall from the sky, but also spread in all directions, as the participants were competing in running, accuracy, proficiency and team spirit and there was no chance of standing still and freezing. The students especially liked the final team task to make a snowman in 5 minutes. It seemed as if the weather and the quality of snow did not favour the result, but the snowmen turned out well and the judges headed by the Dean of the faculty Sergey A. Manskov managed to appreciate the extent and arrangement of the sculptures.

After that the students transferred to a cozy café, where they talked with each other over a cup of tea and delicious pancakes. Thus, the foreign students did not know what “condensed milk” is and concerned themselves with the architecture of Moscow and Saint-Petersburg. In return they told Russian students about their native towns, special aspects of Chinese photography and the word “eggplant”, which puts a smile on one’s face if pronounced in Chinese.

Clearly, there are no language and national boundaries that can prevent people from smiling, communicating and having fun. We hope that the foreign students have started to feel more comfortable in Russia and that such sport events will remain as a good New Year tradition.