September 28th

This weekend was fabulous. Why? Because WE GOT INTERNET IN OUR FLAT!!! So from now on I will have the means to connect with the world on an everyday basis!

Highlights of the weekend:
· Our friend Jeff stayed with us from Friday evening through Sunday afternoon. Since he is basically laughter personified, this was a lot of fun.
· When the internet came, our building manager Zhenya came and hung out with us for hours. We drank a lot of tea, ate a variety of snacks, and chatted with him in Russian. Thank the Lord Jeff was here, because he was able to keep the conversation flowing. It was pretty fun, and he even gave us a recipe for borscht as well as a map of fun things to do in Mitino.
· I got to Skype chat with: mom and dad, Kess and Nate, Micaella, and Maisha!!!! Each of these conversations was wonderful in its own way.
· On Sunday I spent the later part of the day and night with my bestie-here Sarah. This was good for the soul, although we did have to spend a lot of time working on a paper that was due the next day.

Non-Highlight:
· Sarah has to move away on Saturday. BOOO. It will now take us about three hours to get to each other! I know we will still see each other, but it has been so nice for her to be close (an hour away), and to have sleepovers at least once a week. :(

September 25th

Two weeks have flown by! I only have one more week of training, thank the Lord. I am getting so tired of it!! Tonight was the first time in 2 weeks I have gotten home before 11pm! After training though, we won’t need to commute 3 hours per day anymore. Yesssssssssssssssss.

I have taught 5 lessons so far, each of them with some goods and bads, a lot of nerves and laughs. It is so interesting to teach English, especially through the Communicative approach with no Russian. I really like all the students I’ve had, they are usually super motivated to learn and they are respectful, quick to participate, and quick to learn. They have all been adults. I do hate lesson planning, but I’m sure I will get better and quicker. After next week I will be given my own classes, which is exciting but I know it will be a ton of work!

Last night I went to my friend from class Sarah’s flat. We made a frozen pizza for dinner! It was sooo good, we added peppers, onions, cheese, and spinach to it and it felt like a delicacy. We also made an apple pie, which we ate for breakfast this morning. Mmm. It was SO good!

Today was the first day I felt REALLY cold here. It started out with a gentle rain, like in Seattle. I was loving that, because it felt like a beautiful Seattle fall. BUT, then after training it was all of a sudden biting wet cold! Guess it’s time to start dressing warmer…

This weekend we are supposed to get internet. If that goes well, I will feel much better about my life, or at least more in tune with my other world.

I like my room, so much. I will post pictures when I have internet…

Peace and Pictures

September 12, 2009

Today I slept until the glorious time of 11:30. My roommates shortly arrived home to tell me the story of their nightclub dancing and saga of boys. Since then, they have been asleep and I have been putting pictures up in my room! I am already happier as I look around my room to see pictures of all the people I love and who will be thinking of me while I am gone. What a beautiful day it will be to return to them. Once Carolyn wakes up, we are going to find our way to the gigantic park which we see on the way to the Metro. It’s a peaceful day here in Moscow, and I feel content in my little room, thinking, decorating, and listening to Micaella’s playlist. Life is good.

September 11, 2009

I am about to go to sleep on my fifth night in Russia. Wow, so much has happened this week. Where do I start?

Monday:
My flight arrived in the gigantor Moscow on Monday afternoon. However, once I arrived, I find that they left one of my bags in Chicago! Booo. I file a claim and wait a long time, meanwhile thinking, “What if the man who is supposed to meet me here just leaves?” BUT, Thank the Good Lord the man was still there. He was not friendly, a Russian-speaking man who works for Language Link somehow. So, we drive and drive and he tells me to sleep so I pretend to, but I was actually just in awe that I was arriving into my very own new city. SO WEIRD. This driver got so lost, but we finally make it to my flat! A nice woman was waiting outside to show me in, she works for Language Link too. Let me just mention that Russian flats are generally very ugly. The outside of the building looks horrid, and there is a whole row of them that look exactly the same, I got lost at least three times in the first few days merely because every flat looks the same…
ANYWAYS. My lovely roommate Carolyn was waiting inside my flat, she had been sick that day so unable to go to the first day of training. We chat and she shows me the place. Later I shower and go to the 24 chasa (hour) market down the street to get basics: bread, cheese, milk, cereal, yogurt and tea.
My other roommate Jenny came home later with two guys from our program: Jeff and Chris. They are quite nice right away, and I am not overwhelmed at all. If feels very natural to be here and do this.
I finally went to sleep on my first night in Russia!

So Tuesday through Friday I have been in training. We will train for the next 3 weeks to prepare for teaching. Our commute is an hour fifteen to an hour and a half—we walk 10 minutes to a nearby bus stop, ride for 30-50 minutes, and take the Metro (Subway) for 30 minutes.
In training we have been going over tons of grammar and teaching methods. It can be fun, but the material is mostly dry. We have 4 teachers who take turn instructing us, and some are nicer than others…We trained from 11am-6:30-ish every day this week. We have done practice lesson plans and implemented them in front of our class. For the next 3 weeks we will be teaching real classes of English to Russian students—2 to 3 lessons per week. My first is on Tuesday. AHH.

The people: My roommates are Jenny and Carolyn. They are very sweet and welcomed me right away as family. We commute together, debrief the day, and make dinner together in the evenings, sharing some of our food with each other. We are all very social, so 3 out of the 4 nights this week we have had people over to our flat, even though it is VERY far away from anything else. There are 5 women and 5 men in the training, and they are all great. We are a very odd bunch, but we are suffering and learning and experiencing a lot together already. We stick together in class and support one another, joke all the time, and generally make plans together every day. Some of them will move out of Moscow after training, which nobody is happy about.

Since we are immersed in studying English this month, I think it will be pretty hard to learn Russian. My mind and body are fried, I have no time or energy for anything besides the commute, going to class, and doing social things my roommates plan in the evenings. We have met a couple Russian guys through friends, and I’m hoping being around them will help our Russian skills. We also met a few Brits last night, and I believe 13 people total were sleeping in our little flat, as we had them over for dinner and drinks and the bus and Metro stopped running. There were 3 in each bed plus people sleeping all over the floor. Ha. It’s already a very different and funny life. But it’s good.

It’s Friday night and I’m alone in my flat—soon I will go to bed and sleep as long as I want. Tonight my roommates met the Russian guys and a couple others from our program to go to a club. BUT, since I have been up late every night this week and only flew in 4 days ago, I stayed in and organized my life, cleaned, and am getting caught up on updating people!
Tomorrow my goals are to find internet and finally have some real communication—we are hoping to get it in our flat next week, but it is unsure at this point. At school we have a few computers for email only, nothing else. I haven’t talked to anybody yet, tomorrow I will also buy a phone card for my family!

In conclusion, I am doing well and am happy here. I am very afraid to start teaching, but I’m sure I’ll get used to it.
Until I find more time to type away…

Ponderings on the plane

September 6, 2009
Well, here I am in the SEATAC airport….It’s 8:32a.m. and it’s been quite a week. I just popped two Dramamine, hoping that when I sit down onto my luxurious window seat of my plane I can just stick my little iPod headphones in, tune in to the peaceful playlist and conk out.

On Sunday I arrived in Seattle, Washington around 4:20 a.m. Sleep an hour. Wake up, shower, pack, drive to airport. Bags too heavy, add a carry-on duffle. Family prays for me and mom cries a little. We do well. I fly away to Chicago. Talk to many of my lovers on the phone in Chicago, change my voice message to say I will be gone for 10 months. SO WEIRD. Now I’m on a plane from Chicago, Illinois to Moscow, Russia. I chose tomato juice and look down the aisle to find that 5 out of the 6 of my (Russian) neighbors on the plane chose tomato juice too. I guess I already fit in with the Russians! This flight will be another 9 hours long, then I arrive to pick up my luggage, go through passport control, find someone from Language Link who will pick me up, arrive to my flat in the middle of Monday in Moscow, and avoid jet lag so I can begin training the next morning.

(Just now a little toddler boy saying “Da, Da” came wandering over to me in order to put his little grimy hands all over my laptop. I keep repeating “Nyet” to him in sterner tones, until he understood. If he comes back, I will surely tell him “Nilsya” (You shouldn’t do that). )
I am so ready to be done with luggage, packing, goodbyes, and transitions. The time has come to end it all and get this show on the road. I should be bawling, I should feel sheer terror. But instead, I feel a little sleepy and find myself looking forward to a good year ahead of me.
Moscow, here I come!