All the new buddies!

We've almost been here for two months now! Crazy! But awesome! I have to say, one of my favorite parts about being here is the kids. They are amazing. Sometimes I can be having a bad day and these kids just cheer me right up...however the opposite is also true. But we take the good with the bad sometimes! So without further ado, here are a few of my favorite students!

Gregory!

Gregory is one of my favorite students here. He is in my elementary class. He's crazy smart and hands down the smartest student in the class. But he's a little...quirky. Therefore the other students tend to pick on him a little bit. That doesn't stop me from loving him though! And yes, that is a sucker in his mouth.

Gera!

This is the best picture I could manage to get of Gera. He's a little camera shy. Actually, he just likes to do the opposite of what you want him to do. Love/hate relationship with this kid. Gera is really smart and a great speaker but he loves to disobey with his cousin Andrey. Which brings us to...

Andrey!

Man, this kid. Again, really smart but he loves to push buttons. His mom works at the school though which is an excellent thing to hang over his head when he gets out of hand. He can focus really well other times and he is pretty entertaining.

Polina!

Polina slightly reminds me of myself as an Elementary school student. I can't quite put my finger on it though. I'll think about it. She's not quite as advanced as those boys but she tries hard. She is always asking me if we can play tic tac toe. Which was funny the first day. Now it is not funny. I'll talk about the other two Elementary kids later. But for now it's on to...

The Girls!

We really do just call them "the girls." It's a group of girls that we tend to try and keep together because they work pretty well all together. From left to right it's Catia, Natasha (covered by Catia's arm), Nastia, Liza (up top), Alisa, and Alena. They're all relatively good and smart girls (except Nastia who spends all of class watching herself in any mirror available and singing Russian pop songs)

The other girls!

I really like a lot of the girls in this group! They're (left to right again) Leera, Alisa, Liza, Veronika, and Varia. Veronika is one of my favorite students! She's adorable and she's obedient and I just like her! But please take notice of Varia sobbing in the corner. She cried all day that day because she didn't get to wear the butterfly wings in the first part of English class. Tragic and hilarious all at once.

Vanya (and Yegor creeping in the back)!

Vanya has been our favorite this week. We tend to choose a new favorite every week and he's been it! Doesn't he just remind you of a puppy? His favorite phrase? "I want a chokyen bag!" (aka "I want a token bag")

Bogdon!

Love this kid! Hands down, my absolute favorite! The first day I met him I had been having a not so great day but his day seemed to be even worse. He had just been sick and was still not feeling well so he sat with me during all twenty minutes of opening and then wouldn't let me go. It was adorable! And he's liked me ever since! This was the next day when he was trying to tickle me.

Andrey and Meera!

Confession. For the first few weeks we called her Meera only to find out that her name is Leera. But Meera sounds cuter so we just switch back and forth. Andrey is a cute kid but get's ridiculously wild in class. And Meera is just ridiculously cute! They're a precious little couple though.

And there are a few of my students. You better like this post because it took me forever to do it. Plus, there are some ridiculously cute kids here. How could you not enjoy it?

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

Believe it or not, I have read one full book since I left for Russia. Actually, I started this book the very day I left for Russia. And now I have finally finished it! I'm not going to lie, I didn't think I would have much time to read here so the fact that I was able to even read one book is quite the accomplishment in my mind. On to the review!

The book this time around was The Road by Cormac McCarthy. I'd heard of it quite a few times and it was a pretty good price at B&N before I left so I thought it would be a good read. And it was actually the sort of book that's right up my alley! Post-Apocalypse look at the pitiful state of the world and the downfall of human triumph. Dreary. Depressing. Thought provoking. Yes, definitely my kind of book!

Hands down my favorite part of this book is the writing style. I first opened it up and flipped through it only to find that there are no apostrophes or quotation marks. Most excellent. I love it when writers are daring enough to step away from the conventions of punctuation (thus the allure of ee cummings). There's something about the lack of punctuation that just gives it a different flow. It's as if the conversation is happening at that exact moment and there isn't time to add quotes around what is said. It becomes real time, the apocalypse is now and you are in it.

I wish I had read this book in a swifter movement, just gotten it all done at once. However, because I stretched it out to a month and a half, there were several details that I had trouble piecing together. If I were to read it again I would try to get through it in just a couple of days, which is actually very very possible. It's a quick read and it flows so well. But it's not for the faint of heart. One major idea of this book is the desperation and animal-like behavior that humans resort to in dire situations. So just imagine the kind of things that a literary mind can come up with for characters like that...not pretty. I'm sorry I don't have much more to say about this book now but maybe I did that on purpose to motivate you to read it...not really. I just don't have much to say.

Final rating: a solid B. Not my favorite but I could definitely (and most likely will) read it again to catch everything I missed the first time around.

Women's Day!

Women's Day is probably the greatest holiday ever ever ever invented. No really, it's fantastic. If you so desire, you can read a little more about it here. It's basically a combination of Mother's Day and Valentine's Day. And all the little boys give the little girls presents and say, "Congratulations." Congratulations for what? I do not know. Being born the superior gender. Just kidding, of course of course.

I definitely wasn't expecting Women's Day to be any big thing. Buy some chocolates for grandma, say it casually to my fellow teachers. That's about it. So very wrong! On Saturday (yes, we taught on Saturday because Women's Day was on Tuesday so the Russians worked Monday through Saturday on the previous week and then took Sunday through Tuesday off) when I was teaching my elementary class, Andrey, my not favorite student, gave me 3 tulips and a picture of a cat. He also gave the two girls in the class one tulip each. Okay, that was pretty cute. I now hate him less.

Then the Principal of the school, Ludemilla, gave all of the English teachers these little bells that say Saint Petersburg on them. And our Native Coordinator, Alla, gave each of us three tulips. Woah, super unexpected! We were all caught off guard! But there's more!

On Sunday at church, after sacrament meeting all of the men sang a special song to the women. Then they passed out the most amazing coconut chocolates I have ever had to every female in the ward. On Monday our other Native Coordinator, Sveta, gave us ice cream to celebrate. Then today we went to a cemetery and as we were buying our tickets the lady was so excited to tell us all Happy Women's Day! Oh, and Lauren gave us all Chupa Chups to celebrate.

And to top it all off, we had a huge feast with our host family. Grandma, Grandpa, their two sons Sasha and Costa, and their wives Yulia and Anya, and their kids Mark and Alicia. Plus Grandma gave Sarah and I special presents of chocolate that is shaped all awesome like famous things in St. Pete. I have officially decided that when I go back to America I am going to instigate this holiday. March 8th everyone, put it on your calendar for next year!

Super detailed chocolate!

A Little Post for Erica!!

Well hello everyone, but a special hello to Erica! Now, I know that I told you that I would have a special blog post for you very soon. This is it but also kind of not it. Here's the problem, everytime I was going to take a picture of the things I intended to take pictures of for you, I would realize I didn't have my camera card with me! So this post will just have to do for now.

Have I told you about the Hermitage? It's this giant palace that they used for all of the royalty in Russia until the revolution. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of the inside because you have to pay to take pictures. Bummer. Anyway, it's a really really really big museum now! It's quite lovely inside and outside as well!

Me just chilling in front of the Hermitage

For the past few weeks we have been going to the Hermitage after church every Sunday. We go, find a remote location, and then sit and do our own thing. One girl writes in her journal, one girl sketches pictures, another girl (that's me!) writes poems! I'm working on one in particular that I hope will be good enough sometime to actually post on my blog. Right now, it is not. But when I get writer's block and can't think of anything to write about I just write silly little poems. I thought I'd share a few of them with you right now! A couple of them are about two of my friends here, Allison and Lauren. Here's the first one.

Allison blogs

-click, clack-

Allison draws

-scritch, scratch-

Allison sings

-dee, dum-

Allison sleeps

-when she can-

Just a silly little thing about all the things Allison is always doing. Here's the next one about Lauren. We have a bit of a joke where we say that Lauren is another word for beautiful. But seriously, she's ridiculously pretty. Her host sister's name is Nika and she is 18 years old. Haha, she's pretty much a typical, moody teenager.

Lauren is Lauren

But don't tell her so.

Her quiet, quick thoughts

Rock her mind to and fro.

She rides on the subway

Living her life,

Hoping that Nika

Won't give her strife.

Then I wrote just one more for the day. Here's the deal with this one. I got sick within ten days of getting here and just couldn't ever get over it! Then I got all the other teacher's sick so they started calling me "Typhoid Mary." That's what this poem is about.

I have the plauge

Spread it on the bus

metro

sidewalk

And all the teachers get it.

We all die and fall where we stand

Piles of bodies in the piles of clean snow

And spring reveals our fatal flaws.

Haha, kind of gross but still kind of funny! No? Alright, just gross I guess. Get the pun at the end? Fatal flaws? Because we got sick and died! Not funny. Right.

I guess to make the mood better I'll show a few pictures of where I live.

This is a view right outside my window. A little kid with his mom. It was precious to watch them from my window...and creepy...

Smoke stacks! So many of these around here but they are beautiful on a bright, sunshiney morning!

This is the view outside our kitchen window. Can you see the big piles of snow?

The Decent People

Okay, let's be honest here. Do you think that Russians have a really good stereotype linked to them? What's that I hear you yelling? No? They're all drunk? And rude too? My, my, aren't we judgmental? No. You are not judgmental. You are rather correct. I have been next to people smelling so strongly of alcohol that it burns your nose more than once. My favorite encounter was on the bus. I was standing next to a guy that ever so discreetly pulled a can of gin tonic out of his jacket, took a sip, and very carefully put it back into a pocket inside his jacket. I can only assume that he had a special pocket made in his jacket just to put his alcoholic drinks in. I was laughing too hard to be disturbed by any of this. And as for the rudeness, I have already posted about the cheeriness of the cashiers. They have zero cheeriness. One time a cashier said hello to me...I was shocked. That's how nice they are.

On to the point now! Yes, many people are drinking (although not necessarily drunk. apparently Russians have special genes that allow them to drink more than anyone else, or so they say). Yes, many people are rude (Oh the stories I have). But I've actually met some really nice, decent people as well. So in the spirit of positive thinking I'm going to tell you about them a bit! One really nice person I've met is Ludemilla. She is the principal of the school I teach at. A few weeks in she told our head teacher, Emily, that I was not dressing warm enough. The next day in our classroom there were a variety of scarves and hats for me to choose from to wear. Thus...the idiot hat!

The idiot hat strikes in front of The Cathedral on Spilled Blood

But she is such a sweet woman and I like her a lot. She even gave us each a gift for International Women's Day!

Another nice person I've met is not actually a person I've met. So everyday I have to take two buses to get to school and then two to get home. They're not always real buses though. Sometimes they're just oversized vans that are called shuttles. I ride shuttles pretty often. The only problem with them is that they don't always stop at the bus stops so you have to tell the driver to stop where you want them to. They recently moved the bus stop in front of our apartment down the street a little bit. Not far at all but it's still an adjustment. So I get on the shuttle one night, around 8 or 8:30 to head home. It's a short little ride, just about two minutes but the walk is 15 minutes and brutal when the freezing wind picks up and it's snowing. I'm in the back of the shuttle, just hanging out, doing my thing. We pass the bus stop and I think "oh dang, I'm way too tired to get up though so we'll just see when someone else tells him to stop." Imagine my surprise when he stops right in front of where the stop used to be and then glances up in the rear view mirror at me as if telling me to get off. I decided that he recognized me (most likely due to the idiot hat) and stopped where he knows I get off. I was rather touched! And it was proof that not all Russians are crusty old meanies!

A final example, rather precious if I do say so myself. I was walking from the store to the head teacher's apartment one day after fulfilling a ridiculous craving for freshly baked bread. The sidewalks here are pretty slick, they have a few inches of ice covered with about an inch of slushy snow. Not pleasant. And there's a big mound of it on the sidewalk by the store. Usually my fellow teachers and I just run over this mound, hoping that we won't fall and die of embarrassment. As I was walking back (la, la, la, so happy to have bread that costs less than 50 cents and is amazingly delicious!) I saw a little old lady stuck at the top of the mound, trying to find the best way to get down. I decided to help her out a bit and gave her my arm to hold while she walked down. She just chatted away with me (I made up my own conversation/translation..."How icy it is today! I just hate ice! Down throw me down Clark!"). When we got to the bottom and I let her go she said, "на здоровья девочка" I was tickled pink about it! When a babushka says, "To your health young lady" it's kind of a big deal! I pretended like she was a good witch and gave me good luck for the rest of the day. It was awesome.

Moral of the story. There are good and bad people everywhere. And I have found a little of each here in Russia.