Same sky: Your favourite amusement park ride

I love teaching a multicultural class, and right now my Advanced General English class has seven really different nationalities. So when we started talking about amusement parks, there were the students who don't even have any in their countries, right down to those who live on top of Tokyo Disneyland.

The highlight was discussing roller coasters. I had to draw a picture, first, but then they knew what I was on about. I was reminded that the Japanese word sounds like "jet coaster" (theirs obviously go faster), and that the German word sounds like "8-train" when translated, because it could be looping figure 8s.

The Brazilians then told us that the Portuguese word they use for roller coaster translates to "Russian mountain". Everybody's attention turned to our Russian student: Andrey, what do they call roller coasters in Russia then? The answer: American mountains.

Speaking of Russian amusement parks: this is a map from Gorky Park. I rode the ferris wheel here but didn't try any mountains.