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?