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.