Last post

Well this will be the last post while in Russia. As I speak riots are breaking out; probably because we're so well loved and they want us to stay. Oh well, they have to deal without us.

I've got to say I found one thing to be true this whole trip. If you've ever heard the "In Mother/Soviet Russia..." jokes you'll know what I'm getting at. With these jokes you take something we do in America, my example will be Waldo. Everybody knows about the "Where's Waldo" books in America. Anyhow the joke goes: "In Mother Russia, you don't find Waldo, Waldo finds you!" That simple joke explains Russia's culture compared to Americas. It is backwards from what we're used to. It's hard to explain without you actually being here. It's irritating like no other. I think that's what has been bugging me the whole time over here. If you bump into someone the appropriate response is to turn and glare at them like it's their fault. There is no sense of politeness in public places, no sense of hygiene, no law against public intoxication, and cigarette ads. That's just to give you a taste of it.

Concerning my teaching. I think this part of my trip could have been better. I had some problem students that could have been removed from the program that weren't. I found out that I can't teach little kids. They are the spawn of the devil. They don't listen. I even had one student tell me that she hated me. It could have been a lot better, but due to a poor performance of our native coordinator it was bad. I still want to be a teacher however. I think the ILP program is fundamentally flawed because it is an after school program. If the kids don't want to learn they will stop paying attention. We tell the parents, they yell at the kid, the kid pays attention for a day or two and goes straight back to disregarding us. It needs to be integrated into their schools so that when they do poorly in class it is on a report card and when they fail it affects their lives in a negative way. Unfortunately that will never happen. Maybe I'm just cynical.

Would I do it again? Maybe. The only way I'd come back here, or go to Ukraine/Mexico (screw China, I could never live there) is if I could convince my friends to come with me. No offense to the people I came over with, they're great, and now they're all good friends in my book. It would get rid of the getting to know you phase of the trip. We'd know what we could say that would offend each other, make each other laugh, make each other curse. I think we found out those things for each other during the long vacation. That was when we were over halfway through our time over here. It would be KILLER to come back as a Head Teacher with all of my friends. It would be a completely different experience.

Well, I'll be back in Utah around 10:30 P.M. on Sunday. I assure you that I will send out a mass text when I touch down in D.C., so you will know that I've reached America and am once again happy. Oh, and on a side note, most of the group is really bitter towards Russia right now. I'm not quite there. I really want to be home, and I'm really sick of being in a place where no one speaks my language, but I don't absolutely hate Russia. I still can't believe that I've been living in Russia for the past 3 1/2 months. It's absolutely surreal to me.

Last post! Tra-laa-la-laa-laaaaaaaaa-la! I'll be home in 3 days! ish

Updates, and a story I found funny.

Past week has been boring. We're all in autopilot mode for the next 6 teaching days. I invented a game called English Uno, and it's just Uno, but when you speak in a language that isn't English you have to draw a card. It's funny because they say something in Russian, draw a card, then curse in Russian and draw another card. Needless to say my Uno skills have never felt this kind of inflation. I read 10 books in 10 days, which is up from my 5 book weeks I was having awhile back. If you travel and like to read an e-reader is a must. I would have died 100 times over if I didn't have my Nook with me.
The funny story is recently I've been having problems with my laptop. Normally I just jump on to Dell's support page, let the people do a scan of my computer, and have them send me a new motherboard, problem solved! Well, unfortunately, I'm in Russia, where Dell doesn't have a way of sending a technician over to fix my computer. This whole thing started because one day I woke up and Chrome wasn't letting me browser the internet. I tried Firefox, it worked, IE, it worked, but not Chrome. I mess around with the settings a bit to no avail. Finally it just stops working all together. I do a diagnostic check and it comes up with an error. Today I got it up and running again, though I don't know how, and I decide it's time to ask the experts on the Dell chat. I get on, ask about the internet, they say they can't help. So I ask about the aforementioned error. Working at a chat center must be painful. I know Corky told me some stories about when he helped people with computers the first thing he'd ask is if their monitor was on. I think it's surprising when I use acronyms like HDD for them. I ask about the error, and it tells me the agent is typing for awhile until he finally asks "What prompted you to run diagnostics?" It clicked that I wasn't his average costumer, and knew a few things about computers. When he asked that I couldn't help but let out a cackle. It amused me greatly. So I'm getting a new harddrive for Christmas, as well as a new keyboard, plastic casing, and if I can talk them into it, another new motherboard and wireless card. My warranty is awesome!

25 and counting

11/24/2010

I suppose I owe you people a better post from last time. Stuff did happen; I was just too lazy to write about it. First of all we had our visit from one of the ILP head dudes. They claim this visit “wasn’t an evaluation of the teachers.” I call B.S. They just don’t want us to be nervous with them in the room. That went as well as it could have gone, as it was on Thursday, and that’s the day when I have the two girls that don’t want to be there and show their disdain for the program by breaking doors and spitting water at other students. Got to love teenage girls!

The other big thing is that I’ve been living alone for the past two weeks. Yup, it’s for real, just me in an apartment in the butt of Moscow, and as I found out, the drug-addict part of Moscow as well. I feel so secure walking home at night now! I’m not really worried though, I figure if something didn’t happen back when it was warm people won’t try anything in the freezing cold. Living alone has been pretty sweet though. I get to choose what I eat, which has been cold cereal for breakfast, and bacon and eggs for dinner. Just bacon and eggs, with the occasional loaf of bread (yes, I eat the whole loaf, and yes, that’s all I’ve had for dinner during the past two weeks). I only got a little sick during the first week, and I think that’s something I picked up from the students.

It’s been raining. A lot. While you guys are nice and snug with a snowstorm we’re stuck in the dreary rain. There are a few reasons I want it to be freezing. The main one being is that the ground will freeze, so instead of mud we have a permafrost-esque path to walk along, instead of jumping over/through puddles. My wish is granted this Sunday, as it’s supposed to drop to 7. Huzzah!

I’m ready for home. 25 days. One girl gets to leave early due to a friend having a wedding. So if any of you feel like getting married, you should plan to do so around Dec. 15 or so. What was fun about Russia at the beginning is now an annoyance. I’m tired of getting a puff of peoples secondhand as I walk down the street. I’m tired of almost getting killed every time I cross a road. I’m tired of the metro. I’m tired of their lack of a sense for personal hygiene. I miss Utah, and this is the only time you’ll ever hear me say that.

The Nothing.

17/11/2010

Nothing exciting happened this week.

Super awesome fun time vacation!

This will be a long one, that’s right, the blog entry from my ten day vacation! We went from Moscow to St. Petersburg (30 minute wait), then a 5 hour bus to Helsinki, a short wait there, cruise to Stockholm, a day there, cruise back to Helsinki and stayed most of the day there, a ferry/cruise to Tallinn, a night there with the group, Long bus to Riga, a short day there, not with the group, long bus to Vilnius, not with the big group, then back to Riga, 8 hours there, and the 14 hour bus ride from Riga to Moscow. Holy… I’ve been having the time of my life!

The train to St. Petersburg sucked. There was a lady there and it sounded like she had diarrhea of the mouth. Seriously, her snoring kept me up ALL NIGHT LONG. I was pretty ornery the next day. The bus wasn’t much better; I slept until we got to the border. We stopped there for a bit, mostly to grab some breakfast. It was pretty good. The next stop was the Rock church, closed and not that impressive. The first day in Helsinki wasn’t all that impressive. It was dark and kind of dreary, but had the happy feel of St. Petersburg to it. We only spent about an hour there, and then headed to the ship to get to Stockholm!

A short bit on the cruise. The rooms weren’t bad, and it was a pretty nice ship. We wandered around, getting the feel of it, and something funny happened. I won’t say what, it wasn’t bad or anything, but it was funny. Anyhow, later that night was Karaoke. It was mostly older people there, Sarah and I did Walk, by Pantera, something that was not expected. We, you could say, slaughtered it. I’m really funny, but only if you get that reference. Oh, and another funny thing happened. It was nuts. Completely unexpected.

I’ve always wanted to go to Sweden. It’s been my dream forever! Right when we got off the boat I was impressed. It was clean, something I wasn’t used to at the time. Basically I love Stockholm. I want to live there as soon as possible. The people are nice! They all speak English and are willing to help the stupid tourists! I’m still in shock from how friendly everyone is, compared to Moscow. The group I went with started heading to find a used clothes or retro store, and that didn’t sound to appealing to me, so I headed back for the museum groups.

The only downside to Stockholm is that it is incredibly expensive! The museums were 20 bucks! So I dropped away from the big group and latched on to another one that was headed to a museum that was for free, supposedly. It was BEAUTIFUL in Stockholm! The trees were changing and everything was perfect! Thinking about being in Stockholm makes me happy! We walked past two monuments that told us the air quality, the water being purified and pumped back into the channel, and tons of other stuff. We got to the other museum and it was 20 bucks too, totally not fair. Whitney had a brochure for a free medieval museum, so we went to find that.

This museum was really cool. All sorts of Viking stuff and the really creepy dolls were really interesting. I got a cool shirt with the Stockholm seal on it. Stockholm at night was even more beautiful, there’s a really cool picture up that I took off a bridge. It got dark at 4 P.M. though, which was kind of sad, and that we went to hotel around 6, which was sad too. We were all pretty wiped out though, so only a little bit of a downer.

The next day I wandered around Stockholm with Ardo and Maddi for about five hours. It sounds lame, but it was really fun. We got to check out a bunch of really cool stores, and I got to buy a Swedish Death Metal album (Reroute to Remain by In Flames) From a Swedish metal store! I’m still so happy about it! One bad thing happened here. We were at a bookstore (I always go in them) and I looked into the back room and they were unpacking Towers of Midnight. There were CASES of them! And I couldn’t get one. It was a slap to the face. Everyone had to put up with me complaining about missing the midnight release. I almost felt bad for them.

After that passed we went back to the ship for more boring until that night. I was coerced into singing Hot’n’Cold by Katy Perry. I pretty much rocked it, and there’s a video of it if any of you are interested. After that most people headed back to bed. A few of us went and watched a guy sing and play guitar for a bit, then headed back to bed. This is where another interesting thing happened. A few of you know what it was, but most of you don’t. Maybe I’ll tell everyone someday. But it was fun.

Helsinki was interesting. Dani, Ardo, Sarah and I walked around it for a good time. It was fun. This was the part where the people not going to the Baltic’s had to head back, so we said good bye to Dani and started wandering again. I have successfully wandered in the two coolest cities ever. I’m proud. That day was particularly funny, because of inside jokes and whatnot. We were burned out and headed back to the ferry station to wait for our way across to Tallinn.

This boat ride was uneventful.

We made it to Tallinn around midnight, and had to walk to our hostel. It was in Old Town, which is a really cool place, but I’ll get to that later. We wandered aimlessly until I heard a drunken couple speaking in English and asked them where to go. Our hostel was called The Dancing Eesti, and if you ever need a hostel in Tallinn I highly recommend this place. I really like hostels. There’s a certain intimate feel to them, everyone is sociable and nice and there to have a good time. We got there safely and crashed.

The next day the owner of the hostel took us on a walking tour. Old town was awesome! I have a bunch of pictures with some good stories behind them; I’ll get to work uploading them and posting them ASAP. Denis was awesome, and from Australia, which was weird, but cool. Anyway Ardo, Sarah, Rosy and I wandered around taking strange photos for a competition we were having with some other girls. I climbed a wall, we found a pastry shop, it was great fun! Unfortunately this is where the groups split up. Every other person but those in our group left for Riga around 3, while we went to a medieval tower museum. I had excess energy so I ran up it twice. Then our bus came, and it was AWESOME! It had Wi-Fi and power outlets! I was sooo happy!

We got to Riga really late, and just went to our hostel, Friendly Fun Franks, which wasn’t really friendly or fun, and crashed. The next day we just wandered around Riga looking for magnets to buy. We don’t know why, but it’s two USD to one Lat, and that threw some people off. It wasn’t really all that exciting, nothing really overly awesome happened, so we ended up going back to the hostel and waiting for out time to leave on the bus. This bus sucked. No Wi-Fi, or power outlets. We got to Vilnius alright, and headed down to Jimmy Jump’s House. The directions were funny; they told us to wave the prostitutes that may be at one corner. They weren’t there, so we didn’t get to wave to them. This place is run by a really chill Canadian. It’s a really nice hostel, once again I recommend staying here if you are ever in Vilnius. All we did that day was go to the KGB museum, which was depressing and sad, and to the top of a hill overlooking Vilnius. After that we just went back to the hostel and watched movies and talked with the other vacationers.

The bus to Riga was nice. We had an 8 hour wait for our next bus, and had nothing to do. Everything was closed and boring. The highlight was me climbing on a horses face. I’ll get that video up sometime as well. We went to TGI Fridays, and then we ended up hanging out in McDonald’s for 3 hours. The bus ride back was 14 hours long! I’m still dying from it. It was like driving on a dirt road. I almost lost my glasses, but the guy in front of me had them.

That’s my vacation! If I think of anything else I’ll post it up in the next blog. Pictures http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=95855&id=1367655137&saved

Mind Grenades!

10/27/2010

Halfway! I’m ready for a break holy crap. This week has been OUT OF CONTROL! I’m ready for America as well, but hey, maybe this vacation will help me like Russia more. I’m to the point where I’m pretty sick of it. Oh, and I got to talk to someone about the changes from the Soviet Union.

I’m soooo excited to get to Finland and Sweden! Top countries rated to live in; I’m interested to see how it differs from America. I hope that somewhere in Stockholm they’re doing a satellite view of the Rally to Restore Sanity. I’ve heard that tons of countries are doing this, time for Google! Don’t expect a post next week, unless I find Wi-Fi and type it up on my Zune or Nook. On the Nook, the new one is not impressive at all. It’s just a glorified tablet, not nearly as awesome as the Kindle or regular Nook. But there’s an update coming, more speed yay!

They told us we would get sick of Russia, and its hit. I’m tired of almost everything, except the girls, those I’ll always like. I miss fresh air, air that you can breathe without gagging because of second hand smoke, exhaust, or B.O. It sounds great, I know. I can’t wait to step out of the plane and breathe in the fresh, extremely polluted air, of Utah. I miss dryers. My clothes are always crusty, it’s no bueno. My students broke a door off the hinges, I wanted to swear loudly.

I’m still having problems rapping my mind what Almer told me. I spoke with him for an hour about the Soviet Union and what it was like. The first thing he said was that there was no advertising. Imagine that, driving and seeing no billboards (except only a few could drive). It’s hard to imagine not being constantly assaulted to buy this or that. The next thing was about how everything was state controlled. They had a store close to their home that sold vinegar, salt, and two more things. Just that, nothing else, and you had to wait for hours in line. You had to wait in line for hours for meat. There was a 10-15 year wait for a car! You could trade flats, but you couldn’t get a new one. He said that Ray Bradbury wrote it almost how it was in Fahrenheit 451. Not Animal Farm, or 1984, but a book we mostly attribute to learning about the evils of banning books. The coolest thing he showed me was four books by Jack London. They were made in the Soviet times, and in order to get one book you had to bring FIFTY FIVE POUNDS of waste paper! I couldn’t believe it! I still can’t! The thing he said that made my jaw drop was, “Europe, America, they do not know what Socialism is.” Not word for word, but that’s the point he was getting across. Talking with him about it was a mindgrenade!

Well, now I’m going to get back to wishing I was stateside for the Rally, and watch the Colbert Report. Until next post!

20102010

20/10/2010

It’s 20102010!!!!!!!! I just realized this as I wrote down the date for this. I feel awesome because it can’t be 20102010 in the States! I’ve had a fairly eventful week; we went to St. Petersburg, which was great!

St. Petersburg was formerly known as Leningrad, so I listened to Leningrad by Billy Joel about 50 times in a three day period. It’s one of those rare occasions you get to do something like that. I’ve listened to Moskau by Rammstein about 100 times now. I’ve got to rent Room 429 and listen to Room 429 by Strapping Young Lad at least 42 times to keep being so unbelievably cool! Anyway I like St. Petersburg more than Moscow, I think. It was more orderly. People weren’t parking everywhere, the driving wasn’t as insane, the people were nicer, and it was overall an awesome city.

We went to two Museums while there, one was the Hermitage, the other was Peterhof. The Hermitage was unbelievably cool. Unfortunately my camera was dead, but I’ll steal some pictures from the other people. I saw paintings by Renault, Picasso, Da Vinci, and many more. One of the cooler parts was the armor room. They had armor from all over Europe on display and it was wicked! The part on India was surprising, mostly because of the weapons. They had long blades attached to gauntlets, katanas, and a bunch of other crazy stuff. My favorite section by far was the Ancient Greek and Roman busts. Seeing the depictions of Dionysus, Pericles, Perseus, and all of the Greek and Roman gods was so unbelievable. The biggest letdown was that the bust of Socrates was gone. That was a slap to the face.

Peterhof was something else all together. We walked around outside first, and in the back there’s a huge fountain with statues of all of the gods. It was easily the coolest fountain I’ve seen. Unfortunately they had it turned off for the year. The statues alone were worth seeing. We walked to the end of it where a dock is. You can see the coast of Finland from there. I felt so close to Logan! We stopped to feed some squirrels, one jumped on Jordan’s backpack and he freaked out. Nothing I haven’t done before though. The inside is nuts. So much gold! My favorite room was the library, of course. Some of the books they have in there (assuming they’re not replicas) must be hundreds of years old, and worth some money.

The biggest difference I noticed there was when we smiled at the girls, they smiled back. Maybe that’s why I like it better, who knows? I’ve got my huge trip coming up, and I’m psyched for that. I’m almost through The West Wing. I found that my Zune can hav .avi’s on it now, great success! Once I’m through with that I don’t know what I’ll do. Well, this is the end, da svidenya!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=93499&id=1367655137 pictures

Boring post.

13/12/10

They warned us that about halfway through we’d get kind of sick of the country we’re in. I’m getting to that phase, but not entirely yet. I just miss a lot of things I took for granted back home. Like a house, a car, people with a sense of personal hygiene, and an actual bed. Bah, enough complaining. Some stuff happened, not exciting stuff, but stuff.

I bought a coat. A Russian coat is super hot. It’s one of those poofy coats, but I really like it. It got cold today. Unfortunately I won’t be here for the -40 degree stuff. I was looking forward to it too. We got actual snow today too. It was just small flakes fluttering in the wind. I was still excited.

Teaching is boring. We all have it down to a system. I filled out 4 lesson plans on Sunday; I don’t do anything on Sundays, just sit at the apartment and watch The West Wing. Two of my students have dropped, it has made class easier. I have one girl that’s not willing to do anything. She always speaks in Russian, which is against the rules. She’s the typical rebellious teenage girl. She pisses me off.

I’m going to St. Petersburg on Friday. That should be fun. I’ll be listening to Leningrad while I’m there to feel awesome. Boring update, but I feel obligated to post at least once a week.

Kiev and Back

10/06/2010

This last week has been insane. I guess I’ll just start with my trip to Kiev. For anyone who thinks train is the way to go, you’re wrong. Maybe it’s because we got the cheap seats, but still holy crap I hated it. Twelve hours in a cramp smelly cart with smelly Russians is no good. It was set up so there were four beds on the left side, vertical with the wall of the train, and two horizontal on the right side. On the way there I was on the lower left bed, and across from us was a much too friendly Russian. If you’ve seen Eurotrip he was kind of like the guy who kept bugging them in that, just less hands-on. He kept calling us his “America friends,” and told us not to sleep. Well he decided to leave and was trying to ask us to watch his stuff. He said watch my luggage, then pointed to his coat. We said it was a jacket, and he said “Nonono, soopere jzhacket!” That’s how super jacket sounds with a think Russian accent. That got us all laughing for a bit, and then we decided to go to bed.

Ardo was up later when he came back and said that he was looking lovingly down at me. It’s the hair, I know. The bad thing about traveling by train is that you have to cross the border. So they wake you up 2-3 times throughout the night and it sucks. I felt like I had no sleep the next day. Oh and some dip was trying to sell really loud toys and woke us all up about two hours away from Kiev. Eventually we got there, and the Ukrainian money is worth more than the Ruble so it was a bummer to exchange it. We met the ILP native coordinator outside the train station and she took us to our apartment.

So the day we got there was Friday, and for that day we did most of the tourist stuff. The thing that is super boring now is seeing all the churches/monasteries/cathedrals. Saturday. Two of the girls got lost as well. One of them lost their wallet, she thought she may have left it back at the temple, so her and another girl stayed behind. Well the whole group didn’t wait for them, and our cell phones don’t work out there, so we had no idea where they were. Ardo and I stayed at the apartment instead of going to the temple and we met up with the rest of the group outside of the statue to the Motherland, or something like that. Then we went to a a place called Lavra that had mummified monks. We were thinking it would be like Indian Jones style caves and the mummified monks sitting on stone blocks. Nope. They were in glass cases covered with cloth and you couldn’t take pictures. At least it was free. That was what we did during the day on Saturday.

Saturday nights in Kiev they shut down the main road for a concert/party thing. A few of us didn’t want to be lame so we went out to see Friendship Bridge. Friendship Bridge was given to Kiev after the USSR was disbanded. They call it the Bridge of Oppression for obvious reasons. Ardo, Jennifer, and I were at the bridge and we heard a louder concert. So we decided to go to it. We had to walk through a really dark forest path that was kind of intimidating looking back at it, but we were in the moment and didn’t care. We got to the bottom, crossed the bridge to a cool island thing, and right as we got to the concert it was over. Oh, it was on a beach, so I’ve been on a beach in Ukraine.

On our way back we kept hearing people say “angliski,” which is Russian/Ukrainian for English. We assumed they were talking about us, so instead of going back the way we knew, we went with the crowd to the city. We got lost. We wouldn’t admit it at the time, but we were REALLY lost. We walked for about 2 hours thinking we knew where we were going. We had no idea. We knew we had to go up (the city is sprawling over a small valley) to get to our apartment. The street we went up was spooky. Dark, speeding cars, lots of places for muggers to hide. Yeah it was really stupid. We got to the top and still had no idea, so just kept walking.

We always remember one building, and that building is McDonald’s. We saw one and headed in that direction. When we got closer we realized we had walked all the way back to the train station. I think the total miles we walked was about eight, I’ll get on Google maps and find out for sure. So we, being very tired, hired a cab to take us back.

Sunday came and we were exhausted. We had to vacate the apartment by noon so we left early to stash all of our luggage in the train station lockers. Then we went to the Chernobyl museum, which was unfortunately closed, but we found a Mexican restaurant. So we went back and go the rest of the group and headed back to get some Russian Mexican food. It was pretty good. My teaching group was pretty tired, so we decided to just go back and look around the souvenir place. That got boring fast and we decided to hang out in McDonald’s. We sat in McDonald’s for four hours. They had wireless and we were tired, don’t judge. It was pretty fun thought. After the four hours we went back to the station, met up with the rest of the group, and headed to the train.

They told us that most train stations still had squatters. In case you don’t know what that is I’ll describe it to you. It’s a small platform you squat on to poop. I didn’t know at the time that was all they had, so I had to go. I got a hole in one! I’m soooo proud of myself! The train ride back was less fun, we were all very worn out. The only woke us up two times this ride, so I slept a lot better. 12 hours later we got back to Russia and back to teaching. That’s my trip to Kiev!

28 days later

29/09/10

Well this ends the week four of my escapade in Russia. It’s pretty much a pattern now, wake up at 8, do whatever until about 1:20, take the metro to the school for lunch, do whatever until 3:30 then head back to the school, teach until 7:30, head back the “the butt of Russia,” as one person called the area I live in (Strogino, and he used more colorful language). With Kyrill gone class goes pretty smoothly. Still have room for improvement though, you can always improve.

This time around my distraction is The West Wing. I’ve been through the first season and am almost done with the second. It’s intense and I love it! I’ve read about 7 books while I’ve been here, The Way of Kings, 2-3 Star Wars books, The Desert Spear, The Painted Man, and The Hitchhiker’s guide to the Galaxy. The last one cracked me up, a definite read for anyone who enjoys humor and sci-fi.

This past week I’ve been dead. I’m so tired most of the time, it’s pretty bad. I’ll get over it though, nothing to worry about. It’s my fault, staying up too late playing Minecraft and watching The West Wing. I’ve been trying to keep up on U.S. and Russian politics, and that’s super fun! The mayor of Moscow just got fired, I think it was for giving his wife’s businesses preferences on bids and locations and such.

I’m super jealous of anyone who is going to the Rally to Restore Sanity or the March to keep Fear Alive. I reallllllllllllllly really really want to go. You can’t understand how badly I want to go. This is another short one, I’ve got to get back to Minecraft and The West Wing, so I’ll leave you with that! Oh and I’ll be in Ukraine this weekend, feel free to be jealous.

PS: I'll also be doing a '28 Weeks Later' post to review my re-assimilation into American Society!

Meh

22/09/2010

There are good weeks, and there are bad weeks. This past week is mediocre. For the majority of the week it was nice and sunny, and then it started getting cloudy and rainy. Today I found out there are holes in the bottom of my shoes, or something, and my feet have been wet all day. My water bottle was stolen as well. The good news is that the most ADD kid in my class, Kyrill, dropped out of the program. I feel bad for the kid, but he was the biggest problem in my class. Now it’s smooth sailing.

In Russia when you retire the government gives you a small pension, and every 2-3 years a full paid vacation to a spa or something cool. My babushka is going away for 3 weeks in November, so I’ll have the apartment to myself. They’ll give me money for food, or Gulya and her husband will bring me food. I’m really psyched. It’s nice that she goes away most weekends too. I feel independent!

We learned more Russian superstition today, they really are crazy. If you drop a fork or a spoon a woman is coming to visit you soon, and if you drop a knife it means a man is. I dropped a fork today, so I’m hoping that a pretty lady is coming to visit me soon! The other really crazy one is that the dreams you have on Thursday or Friday are supposed to be premonitions of the future. If so I’ve seen the end of the world a few times, and crazy images of home.

I usually try to find something funny about Russia for my last little bit. I haven’t found anything too funny this week, so I bid you farewell! Oh, this is the end of week three in Russia.

Russians love their babies, Americans don't

16/09/2010

This marks the two week period. Time has flown by! The biggest update I have is that holy crap the kids I teach are little devils. Ok, that’s not fair, the girls I teach are little angels, and the boys are little devils. The show that is currently distracting me while writing this is Futurama, about halfway through the fourth season at the moment. I have a bunch of free time after class Monday through Thursday, and I can’t really do anything fun since my curfew is 10:00 PM on weekdays.

On Fridays I only have 2 hours of class; it’s a nice break from the tediousness of teaching super hyper children. I teach a group of girls that want to retain English as a language. Teaching means playing Uno for 40 minutes with them. The other group is a bunch of older women who want to learn more English. It’s a much easier class, they know what they want to learn and just ask about that. They asked me to tell them the differences I’ve seen in Russian and American politics/current issues, so I’ve been reading the English Moscow newspaper.

On the note of the differences in politics, there aren’t many. Their president is taking just as much crap as Obama, if not more, and the former president is riding care free. Everyone is speculating that Putin will run again, which wouldn’t be surprising. The past month or so he’s basically been campaigning by doing awesome stuff, like putting out fires and wrestling with bears. At least that’s what the rumors have been saying. There are serious political tensions here; it’s still in developmental mode. One opinion article I read used China as an example of what Russia should be. Its nuts here, I love it!

Three years ago today my world got rocked. Robert Jordan (Oliver Rigney Jr.) died. I’ll always remember where I was when I found out, and how much it hurt, even though I never knew the man. I consider The Wheel of Time to be one of the most influential forces in my life. I’d also like to take the time to thank Brandon Sanderson again. I don’t think I can thank him enough (it’s been about 3 times in person now) for doing an excellent job on the book that he helped with and is currently out. November second baby, I can’t wait!

Now, in America we have our strollers facing away from us, so we have as little viewing time of our baby as possible. In Russia I’ve seen one or two of these, but most of them face towards you, so you can see your precious pooping/barfing machine. Also, we saw a stop sign in English, it was awesome.

Sweet dreams are made of bees

08/09

Well I’ve been here for a week now. It’s crazy, like Brock’s driving crazy (heh). Nah, I’m just kidding, he’s a MUCH better drive than these nutjobs. I don’t think there are any traffic laws here, at least none are apparent. I would NEVER want to drive here, ever in my life. I take the metro every day, and that’s good enough for me.

The kids I teach range from good to crazy. Hayam is a smart a(you can finish this word however you like) who thinks he knows everything therefore he pay attention. Nastya 1 is a cute little girl who knows a lot of English, the same goes for Yana and Dasha. Pavel (pronounced Paul) is another really smart kid who just doesn’t want to be in class. Kyrill (keyrill) is a complete crazy child. He doesn’t pay attention and tries to get away with it. Nastya 2 is quiet but she knows what she’s about most of the time. Mitya is quiet, but very studious, the first class he came in a pinstripe suit. It was pretty awesome

Apart from the driving and the toilets I love it here. The food is great; I’m a big bread and soup fan and that’s what I get every day! The only bad part is the rolls they give us at lunch. They’re usually cold and filled with something gross. Mom, you’ll be proud to know that I eat a vegetable with every meal, usually cucumbers. I don’t like them that much. I do my own dishes but my babushka won’t let me do my own laundry. I tried, and she shooed me away.

When I write these I get really distracted. For anyone who isn’t totally cool reading this, Brandon Sanderson is doing something called The Great Hunt for Towers of Midnight. I’m super bummed that I can’t participate. I also am constantly browsing through reddit in search of cheap laughs. No better site for that! I tend to watch Spin City, although I’m almost done with the last season. It just goes downhill after Michael J. Fox has to leave. Charlie Sheen was a great replacement, but Mr. Fox is just so dang good!

Anyhow I just finished an excellent soup with chunks of beef in it, with three slices of bread with something called kosha (I think). It’s a salsa for bread and it’s INCREDIGOOD! The other great foods here are blini and these time scone-like pancakes. Blini is just a crepe, but better. I don’t know how, but it is. Those scone-pancakes are absolutely delicious with jam or sour cream (it’s better here). Oh, and the women are always nice to look at.

I had a strange dream where there were thousands of bees covering my body with their honeycombs. I woke up and had a sweet taste in my mouth; therefore sweet dreams are made of bees!

I hate Russian toilets.

04/09/90

So I’ll try to write one of these a week at least. So I taught a group of girls a history lesson to help them keep up on their English. All the material I wrote up lasted about 15 minutes, so I had to BS for another 30 minutes. It was interesting to say the least. If anyone knows any interesting stories about Russian history let me know. It was similar to talking with girls in America. One of them had a valley girl thing going and said “like” about half a million times.

I live further away than the rest of my group. They live within about a mile radius of each other, and I’m about 10 miles away from them. Riding the metro has been pretty sweet. It’s super nice; one of the girls in the other groups told me the Commies built it as kind of a monument to the people. It’s much nicer than most public transport I’ve been on in Utah. It was a lonnnnnnggg ride. After that we walked and walked and walked until we can to the fountain that I took a few pictures of, and then we went for a realllllllllly long boat ride. When we got off we went to the statue of Dostoyevsky in my pictures. One of the girls is in love with him and had a little freak out. It was pretty funny. There was a long parade of the different Universities telling people to go to them. Then we went to the ticket place and bought tickets to the ballet (Sleeping Beauty).

I found it interesting that most of the buildings still had the Communist symbols on them. My vision of Russia had all remnants of the Communists removed. It makes for an awesome view though. Every time I saw the hammer and sickle I laughed a little. I don’t know. Most of the things they said in the packet don’t seem to be true so far. The people don’t seem withdrawn at all; I’ve seen many who are very affectionate in public. Maybe I’m making the few examples bigger than they are.

I’m sort of freaking out about my first lesson day. The language arts was easy, it’s the other sections that I’m struggling with. The language arts section is mostly lined out and I have to make up the math, science, and social studies section. Holy crap I have no idea what I’m going to do! Bah, oh well. It’ll all come along no problem in no time.

Russian toilets suck. They are slanted and lack water so your poop gets stuck on the porcelain and you have to use a brush to scrape the crap off. It's gross.

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/album.php?aid=83244&id=1367655137 Here’s the link to the pictures I’ll be taking. Should be available to everyone, comment if not.

Arrival

01/09/2010

Holy crap. I’m in Moscow. I had a very short flight to Denver, a 3 hour flight to DC Dulles, then a 9 hour flight to Moscow. I slept through both the DC flight and the Moscow flight, making me the envy of the group! I woke up for dinner on the Moscow flight, totally not worth it. Then I woke up about an hour before we landed. Yeah, I’m that good. All my luggage made it there in one piece. My only complaint is a cookie mix got ripped a little. Didn’t get everywhere however, and that’s great. One of my head teacher’s suitcases burst open and a cake mix broke open as well. Big bummer for me is that my host doesn’t have internet, oh well I’ll be able to use the head teacher’s wifi every time I go there. Well we met Golya (ghoulya) at the Airport and then the rest of them got in the bus and I got to ride with her and her husband Jim.

I was the last one to be dropped off, but I think I’m the luckiest. My host is Babushka Rya, Golya’s mother. She loved the gifts I decided she would, the scarf and the angel. I don’t think she would have enjoyed the bag of Reeses and the Barbie, Transformer, or the Zhu-Zhu pet. She really loved the angel, she put it next to her 3 pictures of Mary on a shelf. I’ll be taking a TON of pictures and I’ll post them up on both facebook profiles.

I live in a giant pink apartment building, its ghetto. The actual apartment I live in is pretty nice. I’ve got a TV (yeah be jealous of my ability to not understand anything on it!). I get to sleep on a couch, but don’t worry its verrrrry comfortable. The room is about half the size of Cache’s room at home. The building has wifi, but I can’t set up a payment method because I can’t read Russian. For dinner I had a vegetable soup with potatoes, carrots, and onions, with rolls and mashed potatoes, chicken, and coleslaw. It was very good.

I don’t want to drive here ever. It’s INSANE! No one uses blinkers and holy crap I don’t even know how to describe it. Driving around for a few hours killed me! I decided I need to start up on Rosetta Stone again and learn the language. I’m able to pick up a few words here and there, but that only gives me a vague idea about what’s going on. Oh, and for all my male friends out there, yes it is true that the majority of Russian women are easy on the eyes. That’s one very nice aspect of this trip. They gave me a cell phone to use over here as well. If I had a calling card I could make international calls on it I think. Don’t know for sure. Anyhow that’s all I’m going to write for now. It’s a 10 hour difference between Utah and Moscow so I feel like taking a nap. PEACE!

PS: the date here is set up DD/MM/YYYY, hopefully that messed with you a little.