Benny Ussyshkin: English Teacher in Seville, Spain
Create Community in Quarantine with Benny Ussyshkin
Benny Ussyshkin is an English teacher living in Seville, Spain. Outside of work, he can be found writing for his blog One Lobotomy Please, finding new ways to improve himself, talking with good friends, meditating, listening to podcasts, playing music, or exploring one of his many varied hobbies.
Benny chats with Marsha about maintaining community as an expat during COVID-19.
βCommunity is one of the most important things to me. Itβs big part of my identity. I don't base my view of myself entirely on how I am as a person. I think the company you keep is really important.β
-Benny Ussyshkin
Listen to the episode:
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(Tune in at the 14:27 mark for Benny)
Connect with Benny:
A huge thank you to Origins Media Haus for producing this podcast. You can find them at:
Website | Linkedin | Instagram | Twitter
Connect with Marsha:
LinkedIn | Instagram | Twitter | Website
Transcript:
Marsha Druker 14:27
Hi, Benny, thank you so much for joining me today on the Create Community podcast. You have a super interesting story. I'm going to let you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about who you are and where you are right now in the world.
Benny Ussyshkin 14:39
For sure. So I grew up in Canada, specifically in the GTA. If you have listeners outside of Ontario, the GTA the Greater Toronto Area, specifically in Vaughan, Thornhill. I currently live in Spain in the outskirts in a smaller city not too far away from Seville. Easily accessible. And I'm an English teacher here. I've been living in Spain for some amount of time now, I guess I'd consider myself to be somewhat of an expat. But I still am very much connected and have a lot of my roots back home in Canada.
Marsha Druker 15:13
What did your sense of community look like before COVID-19 and before these times of social distancing, what kind of communities were you part of in Spain?
Benny Ussyshkin 15:22
In one word, thriving. I was part of many communities and I was developing one myself. I was part of a weekly Ultimate Frisbee group where we had a lot of familiar faces every single week. I was part of a Latin dancing group. I took lessons twice a week. I was part of a trivia group that has subsequently moved to to video. I also tried to run some sort of Dungeons and Dragons type meetup, which wasn't the most successful in person. We actually tried doing it online as well. And a Sevillanas dancing community as well, which was preparation for the annual fair over here in Seville.
Benny Ussyshkin 15:54
Community is one of the most important things to me, actually. I make frequent moves. I have lived, I don't want to say all over Spain, but I started in Madrid then I moved to the North to two different cities. And now I'm all the way in the south in Seville. And with each subsequent move comes the complete evaporation and destruction of my existing relationships and networks. And so nothing becomes more important to me than finding solid friendships, people that I can rely on in case of emergencies. And I'd say it's actually also a big part of my identity. I don't base my view of myself entirely on how I am as a person. I think the company you keep is really important. Community is super important.
Marsha Druker 16:39
So I know that you live on your own in Seville. How are you staying connected during these times of social distancing? How are you maintaining your sense of community? Is there anything new that you started doing?
Benny Ussyshkin 16:49
Technology. I've been able to move some of the previous communities that I have been part of online, some of them not unfortunately. So the frisbee and the dancing had to go. You can't really do anything about that. I created a shared spreadsheet where my friends and I keep track of any small win or productive thing that we're able to accomplish on a daily basis. Just so I can look back after this quarantine is finished and realize that it didn't all go to waste. I started doing something called the Pomodoro Technique with a good friend of mine every single evening at a fixed time. I usually study Spanish, he usually either practices the guitar, meditates or codes. And trivia as I told you before, has been able to be moved online works super well, by the way. And just the other day, I ran a successful Dungeons and Dragons session for the nerds out there on the internet. And it also works well.
Marsha Druker 17:38
That's awesome. How can somebody join in on that if they wanted to?
Benny Ussyshkin 17:41
Normally, you have to find an existing group. It's played with usually like a small circle of people anywhere between like three to seven people. Ideally, you'd want to start playing this game, not online, but in person because there is a massive element to actually being able to express yourself with body language and everything. It's Like an improvisation type role playing game before we move on the internet, but I'm sure there's a lot of online existing groups. If you just search through Reddit or Google some, I'm sure some stuff will come up.
Marsha Druker 18:10
And in terms of teaching, have you been able to bring some of your classes online or connect with students virtually?
Benny Ussyshkin 18:16
Definitely. So I'm actually an online English teacher. So before the whole quarantine thing started, I had some existing students, one of them in Germany and two of them in a completely different city from the one that I'm currently living in. Business as usual with those students, I didn't really have to adjust or do anything differently. With my existing students that I taught in person over here, some adjustment was necessary, of course. I played around with technology a lot, using my webcam, and being able to share my screen at the same time, kind of like how Twitch streamers look like. I was able to record some stuff successfully. Obviously, I can send links to worksheets and other PDFs, but I'm trying to experiment a little bit more with using my webcam integrated with what is visible on my screen.
Marsha Druker 18:59
I'm sure Those students are still learning a lot through that.
Marsha Druker 19:05
What are you grateful for now?
Benny Ussyshkin 19:06
I'm super grateful for the basic things all the way at the bottom of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Anything that provides me food, shelter, water, a roof over my head, in terms of quarantine now even more. The essentials really do matter. And I'm also thankful for the internet and my existing relationships through the combination of technology. So mostly video chats, WhatsApp, social media, and all that other stuff. I've been able to leverage my existing relationships and to try to keep myself relatively sane in a time where everyone is deprived of social and physical human contact. It's really nice to be able to call people from different time zones all over the world and catch up over superficial nonsense or even have a profound reunion after not speaking for a while.
Marsha Druker 19:55
That's something that I can definitely relate to as well. Just being able to connect with friends that I haven't chatted with in a while. Now is really the perfect time and to be able to do so with people from all over the world is really something that we can't take for granted.
Benny Ussyshkin 20:07
Definitely.
Marsha Druker 20:09
Awesome. Thanks so much for joining me, Benny. Looking forward to staying in touch.
Benny showed that physical distancing does not have to mean social isolation! Stay safe. Wash your hands. Donβt hoard toilet paper. And keep creating your community.
Check out interviews with other guests at createcommunitypod.com/quarantine
