Mid-November Updates

A couple of exciting things have happened recently that I neglected to mention in my last post:

1. Over the past year a lot has changed in my life and what with graduating from college, moving to Russia, etc. I've accomplished some pretty big stuff. Arguably the thing about which I'm most proud, however, is finishing this sweater! I started it in mid January, carried it across country borders, and now it's comfy and warm and just in time for a Moscow winter!

2. Speaking of the Moscow winter, it snowed this morning! It didn't stick, and by mid-afternoon it had turned to rain, but still! It was pretty, it made my day a little bit brighter (despite being cloudy), and gave me an excuse to start listening to Christmas music.

3. I had my first Russian lesson on Wednesday! It was a one-on-one lesson, and although I've been able to speak some Russian day-to-day, it was great to really get a chance to work on it and try to improve it. Also I realize that although I spend every day surrounded by language learning, I miss foreign languages. I'm planning to take a lesson every week, which should seriously help my language level.

4. In my class with 11 year olds today, the subject of Michael Jackson came up and resulted in my students moon-walking across the classroom. Also in this class, I've been telling these kids that I don't speak Russian so that they'll speak to me in English. Today they asked me (in Russian) if I understood Russian and I responded without thinking"no", but clearly I had understood because I could respond. They totally caught on. Oh well.

5. Some of the recipes I've been attempting have needed vanilla. So in a bizarre combination of my travels, I found a packaged vanilla bean from Madagascar at the grocery store. I split it and put it into Russian vodka, and it will soon be Russian-Malagasy vanilla extract. Weird how these things can come together. Truly a small world.

Anyways all for now!

Money, money

In my class tomorrow, we're talking about money, so I thought I'd bring in all the different types of currency I have with me: US dollars, Canadian dollars, euros, and of course roubles. I brought most of them to be prepared throughout my travels, not knowing where I'd be flying through the next time I was leaving. I'm struck by how plain American currency is.

Time flies when you get into a routine

I have no idea how this has happened, but it's come to my attention that it's been almost a month since my last blog entry. I'm quickly falling into a routine of teaching, lesson planning, and hanging out that, quite frankly, isn't very interesting. The teaching is far from easy, especially with the young kids (if anyone has any tips for taming 6 5-year olds who are crazy and don't speak the same language, I am all ears...) but still, it's crazy to think about how nervous I got during our training period before teaching for only 45 minutes to adults. Now, I almost daily teach for twice that long, with no stress.

There's been a few highlights of teaching, especially for Halloween last week. Although Halloween is not traditionally celebrated in Russia, we were encouraged to celebrate it, especially in our kids classes. We did crosswords, pictionary, and the 5-year olds even made masks and trick or treated to out recptionist! The best part was when she tried to give candy to them all and one boy said (in Russian) "my mom doesn't let me have candy" and refused to take it. 

Here's a picture of my classroom on Halloween:

Besides English, I've been learning other things too. For instance, have you ever heard of chess boxing? I hadn't. It is one round chess and one round boxing, alternating. Here's a page from one of my text books:

Finally, in most classes there are the teacher's pets. This can be amusing, however, when the kid's grasp on English is still fuzzy. Here's an example after our lesson today on past irregular verbs: 

So, either I'm dead or I'm now a bad teacher. Either way. At least he used the right verb. 

Hopefully it will not be another month before I post again, but my apologies if it is. I promise I'm still here, I've just found a routine.