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<div> On 24 December the Far East branch of the Russkiy Mir Foundaion received a delegation of young Chinese ice hockey players arriving in Vladivostok on a ten-day visit. The boys of 9 years have been playing ice hockey for two years now. They came to Primorski Krai in order to improve their skills taking classes at the hockey school of the hockey club belonging to the Ice Hockey Continental League <i>Admiral</i>. </div>
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<div> Last Saturday, just after finishing their morning training, the young athletes went to their very first class of the Russian language. Liliana Voronova, head of the Department of Russian as foreign language at the Far Eastern State Technical Fisheries University, a member of the Asia-Pacific Association of Russian Language and Literature Teachers, kindly agreed to perform a mission of a guide to the world of “the great and mighty Russian language”. </div>
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<div> Director of the far East Branch of the Russkiy Mir Foundation Alexander Zubritsky warmly welcomed both the children and their parents. He told them about the activity the Russkiy Mir Foundation carries out, the importance of relations between Russia and China and about the part the Russian language plays in the world. He also said that ice hockey is very popular in Russia and young Chinese athletes’ parents responded to his words nodding their heads enthusiastically. Quite a few of them are very good at Russian and they will definitely help their children to teach themselves saying such complicated and strange words for them as “zdravstvuite” or “Vladivostok” they will learn during the master-classes. </div>
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<div> The class turned to be very lively and interesting. The presentation on Russia was followed by the presentation on Vladivostok, after which the children learned to say basic Russian greeting phrases. The Chinese boys found the Russian ABS scary, then they counted from one to ten and in the end we could say that Chinese ice hockey players speaking Russian were sitting in front of us. At least, all the children managed to say one word with no accent and the word was “hockey”. After the master-class, the boys watched two series of a famous Russian animated film named <i>Masha and the Bear. </i></div>
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<div> In order to continue their Russian language classes themselves, the Chinese children received DVD sets with the classes of reading on them from the Far East Branch of the Russkiy Mir Foundation. </div>
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<div> The experience of cooperation between the Far East Branch of the Russkiy Mir Foundation and the <i>Admiral</i> Club will definitely be developed. For example, in the summer 2016, eighty eight children from the <i>Little Wolf </i>hockey league, Beijing, improved their skills at Admiral ice-hockey club and a children’s ice hockey team from the Republic of Korea will come to have six-month classes in ice hockey at the club in early 2017. The Russian language serves as the major language of communication for clubs belonging to the Ice Hockey Continental League and that is the reason why young ice hockey players living in the countries of the AP region have to learn it. The Far East Branch of the Russkiy Mir Foundation has already started its work in the direction. /div>
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