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