It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas...

     Well, looks like I need to play catch-up again. But that is not such an unpleasant thought to an English major stretched out on the floor in her fuzzy flannel pajamas, with the colorful Christmas lights blinking in her window and the ground covered in a blanket of snow outside. We had our first real snow the other day - the other ones were all just "pretend" snows, because here it takes a lot of snow to actually cover the ground. Because the temperatures stay below freezing, the snow isn't wet and doesn't stick to the top of the grass; it sifts down between the blades like sand, and it has to accumulate like sand before it gets high enough to hide the grass. It is nice to have everything so beautiful and white again; this past week we had a thaw and all the snow melted and all of Moscow turned into one huge muddy mess. Every time I went walking anywhere I had to come home and wash my pant legs in the bathtub - I'd have mud splatters all the way up to the backs of my knees!

yes, those are people walking on the pond!

     The week before that, though, was quite snowy, and it was odd to be preparing my belated Thanksgiving feast when it was snowing outside. Speaking of which, I must pause here to state my appreciation for mothers everywhere who make Thanksgiving dinner for their families each year - it is HARD! I like cooking, so I enjoyed it, but I was literally in the kitchen all day. The great endeavour began the night before, when I came home from work and made up my list of all the food I would need to buy at the grocery store. Then I sat down with my dictionary and looked up the Russian names for all the random foods they don't teach you the names of in college - ginger, cloves, cranberries, etc. That being done, I mustered up my energy and marched over to the grocery store. It was 9:00 at night, and I was tired, but I was determined to buy everything I would need so that I could spend the whole of the next day purely cooking. However, despite my good intentions and an hour and a half spent in the grocery store (at least half an hour of which was spent staring at the spice shelves and trying to will powdered ginger and thyme into existence - it didn't work, and I ended up buying "Hmeli-sumeli" instead...which I'm pretty sure translates as "hmeli-sumeli"...and sticking a piece of ginger root into my cart at the last minute) my mission was doomed to fail. When I was checking out, the grumpy lady at the cash register (I can't blame her; it was 10:30 at night) sent me dashing back to the vegetables section because I had forgotten to get a weight sticker put on the onions, and I'm pretty sure that while I was gone she stole my piece of ginger, because when I got home it was definitely not in my bags. For a few moments I entertained the wild notion of trying to jump-start my sleepy brain to tell my legs to march back to the shop and buy the ginger then and there, but my brain just rolled over and started snoring again. So I reluctantly surrendered and made a second trip in the morning. Then it was time to dry the ginger in the oven, and then to cook the turkey and simultaneously chop onions for the stuffing...and then chop more onions for the stuffing...and then chop more onions for the stuffing...and then get lost in a fog of onion-created tears, feel blindly for the window, and crank it wide open so that the snowflakes could drift gently in and make little puddles on the floor while I finally finished the blasted onions and started on the celery...then make the pumpkin pie...then realize that my mom was right when she said the filling was enough for two pies and make more pumpkin pie... then make mashed potatoes...which turned into pureed potatoes because I was really excited that I actually had a mixer which my friend had lent me and got a little carried away...then chop more onions (*%$^*) for the sauteed squash. It was quite a masterly maneuver if I do say so myself, especially considering I only had one oven pan for almost everything, so baking times had to be strategically planned. But I finished, and I finished everything on time, and everyone came, and they all ate everything, and nothing was burnt and nothing was raw, and besides some jokes about the soupiness of the potatoes, the food part seemed to turn out all right. And the conversation flowed pretty well, and a couple of people brought champagne and wine, and overall I think it turned out well for my first real hostess endeavour (in my whole life, a fact which I was pondering right before people started to arrive: "This is my first time trying to cook a dinner for a whole group of people...my first real event as a hostess...why did I have to decide to start with a Thanksgiving dinner of all things?!?" But the heavens smiled down on me and there weren't any major disasters!
     I can't say I did much of anything else that weekend except sleep to recuperate from the cooking marathon, and my next week was not marked out by too much of anything special save for the fact that a number of my students were absent. It's sort of the reverse from NC with sickness and snow here. If you're sick in NC, you might miss a couple of days of school, but then you get on some antibiotics or some other medicine and you're back in class. But if a single snowflake falls from the sky, all the schools and even some businesses immediately shut down. Here, as one of my students put it, "The snow doesn't stop anybody...I like driving in the winter actually. Everyone drives until the stupid people have accidents, and then they stop driving and leave the roads clear for us." (I didn't ask him how he defines "stupid people"!) But if someone gets sick, then the turnaround time is a lot longer. One of my students came down with the measles of all things, and he developed complications and an infection and ended up being in the hospital and missed three weeks of classes. He's alright now, thank goodness, but it was so weird because kids just don't really have that same sort of thing happen in the U.S. - heck, I'm pretty sure nobody even gets measles anymore.
     The other remarkable thing that week was that suddenly Christmas decorations started showing up in all the stores. Except they are not for Christmas...they are for New Year's. The Russians don't celebrate Christmas like we do, I think in part because of being communist for so long and also in part because the Russian Orthodox Christmas isn't until January 6th, I think. So instead of "Christmas trees" they have "New Year's trees." Regardless, seeing all the lights and decorations was really making me feel the lack in our flat, and it was creating a wild urge in me to dive into the first store I saw and buy loads of ornaments, lights, and even a plastic tree. However, common sense took hold and I decided to look around our flat first before I made any major purchases...and I'm really glad I did... I found an entire Christmas tree in a box out on our balcony, and glass balls in the closet, and even a strand of lights! It wasn't a little tree either; it's as tall as I am!

I dusted off all the balls, but I decided to nix the lights...they were from 1991, and some of the bulbs shone just a bit too brightly for my taste. So I splurged at the store and bought three strands of colored lights, and now they are twinkling merrily all around the flat. I'm not completely done decorating yet, so I think I will wait to post pictures until it's all done. The other thing I splurged on was Advent candles. I had been keeping an eye out for them ever since Advent started, but the only colors I could find were silver, gold, and blue - they don't seem to have the pink and purple tradition here. Finally I bought some silver candles and painted them...I think they turned out really well! Of course, it's a bit silly because I haven't even burned them yet, but at this point I think I'm going to save them for Christmas Eve night.

     I have to figure out what I'm doing on Christmas, because both of my flatmates are leaving so I will be alone in the flat. I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing, but I need to think of ways to make Christmas special for myself since I won't be with my family and it would really stink to spend Christmas moping around because I'm not at home. Right now I'm thinking I will go to midnight mass, and probably on Christmas day I will make some hot chocolate, light the Advent candles, say a couple of rosaries, and skype with my family later in the day when Christmas morning arrives for them. The way I see it, the two things that make Christmas really special are 1) duh - the birth of Christ and 2) time with family, and since I can't have the second as much this year I'm going to make the most out of the first. I don't know what it says for me in terms of intelligence, but little things really make a difference for me, and having a Christmas tree with beautiful ornaments and lights and having lights in the windows does so much to brighten my mood that I think if I make sure I've prepared enough for Christmas it will still feel like a really joyful special day even if I can't celebrate it at home.
     This past Friday was charged with frenetic excitement because I found out that Evgenia Obraztsova was coming to perform La Sylphide at a theatre in Moscow in January, and I was planning to buy tickets. Unfortunately, after trekking all the way into the centre and wandering about through the snow until I found the theatre box office, the tickets in my price range were already sold out. But I will see Obraztsova dance live someday!! Speaking of which, I am attaching a clip from her Romeo and Juliet here - in my opinion she is one of the best Juliets of our time, and if you haven't happened to see her dance before please watch this clip and just disregard the bits where people are talking - the most important part is seeing her telling this story with such passion and vibrance! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKd5xgcFk0o&feature=related

So anyways, I was disappointed not to get tickets, but it was a good wake-up call - I need to get in gear if I'm going to see ballets here! I had no idea tickets sold out so far in advance, so I'm glad I know now!
    Friday night I got to hang out with some friends and see my co-worker's flat for the first time - it is definitely a cut above ours! But I really like our flat just the way it is, and any thoughts of jealousy were wiped from my mind as soon as one of Teya's flatmates opened her door and a putrid cloud of cigarette smoke drifted throughout the house - I just don't understand how some people can enjoy that smell! I stuck it out for an hour, but then I begged off due to the lateness of the hour and the fact that I had work the next day - it was almost midnight, so it was pretty late - and bounded gratefully out into the freezing air, taking deep gulps to try to cleanse my lungs.
    Saturday night was fun in a quieter way - I invited my neighbor's two kids over to help me make ornaments and decorate the Christmas tree. I don't know if I mentioned Lilya in any earlier posts, but she is a really sweet fourteen-year-old who lives next door and who is really eager to learn English. She and her younger brother Timour came over, and I pulled out the glitter and markers and stiff paper and made banana bread and tea, and we supplemented the rather meagre array of glass balls with some beautiful paper ornaments. I was really glad they could come - it wouldn't have been any fun to decorate by myself, and besides, for me Christmas is linked with kids having fun, so it was cool that they could come over to help. Again, I will post pictures of the tree soon; for now here are some of the ornaments we made.Well, I was going to post pictures, but at this point my internet is being really flaky so I think I'll just have to wait til next time.

    Today I went out to Mass and then went to watch a rehearsal of the dance group I am GOING TO JOIN!!! I made my decision and I'm really excited to start with them this week - I think it will be a good place to dance and that it will be a lot of fun. I can't WAIT to do character dance again! Which is probably a good thing - not being able to wait will stir me to do some classes on my own in the flat this week so I don't make a complete fool of myself on Friday. If you want to see pictures and stuff of the group, the link is here: http://www.sokolovteatr.ru/youth

    And that's about all I have to report for now...Only two weeks until vacation and I'm SO excited. I'm going to start putting together a sightseeing list to make up for my appalling lack of activity in that area thus far, but I'm also going to spend at least two days doing absolutely nothing but SLEEPING, reading, and possibly having a cup of hot chocolate IF I'm motivated enough to get out of bed. :) However, there are still two weeks of teaching, and oh, yeah, Christmas cookies! Which thankfully won't mean chopping onions, but I do see whole ginger and cloves looming menacingly in my future....well, I say BRING IT ON!!!

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

     Or С днем благодарения!!! ... whichever you prefer. Although Russia doesn't celebrate Thanksgiving in any form or fashion (duh). In fact, their knowledge of our good old pilgrim tradition is startlingly inaccurate. I gave two of my adult students a Thanksgiving quiz for fun at the start of class, and they determined that the pilgrims celebrated their first day of thanks in 1830 after landing on their ship the Santa Maria. Not even joking. Of course, I don't know how well I would score on a quiz about a Russian holiday, but anyway after that class I immediately set about remedying the problem of Russian ignorance of Thanksgiving in the younger generations: my eight-year-old learned how to say "turkey," "Happy Thanksgiving," and how to make a hand-turkey during her lesson yesterday!
     But anyway...on to what I'm thankful for. Because yep, you guessed it, this is going to be one of those blog posts in list format. But it will also tell you what's been going on recently, so if you can stand overuse of the word "thankful" and a dose of determined optimism, then grit your teeth and read on! Otherwise, I would just stop here.

     Ok, for starters, I'm thankful that freezing temperatures don't feel as cold as I feared they would. I have yet to experience -25 Celsius, but these past two weeks Celsius has danced around from about 3 below to 12 below, and it hasn't felt that bad. If anything, I think the temperatures just above freezing feel colder - then the damp really seeps into your bones, whereas below freezing temps are much drier and not so pervasive.

     I'm also thankful that even though I have to walk to work  in the freezing cold at 9:00 in the morning, I get to watch the sun rise. Yes, the sun rises at 9:30. It's really hard to drag yourself out of bed when it's 7:45 or even 8 and it's still pitch-black outside, but it's nice to watch the sun rise without having to get up at 5 or 6 in the morning. Also, the sunrises and sunsets last a lot longer here, almost an hour each, since the sun stays close to the horizon for longer before it actually rises or sets. I can't wait until we have some real snow on the ground - we've just had a little so far, and because the temps are below freezing all the time it gets blown around like really white sand, so right now it looks more like grassy beaches around here than snowy fields. The pond in the park has almost completely frozen over - I saw a man walking on the water the other day and totally did a double take. Even the Volga is freezing over. I know for a Russian this sounds really dumb - like one of my students said the other day, "Snow - it's not a big thing for us. We have it every year." - but for a newcomer from Nawth Carolaina, it's all exciting.

     I'm thankful that I like all of my students and don't dread any of my classes. All of my students seem to want to learn...well, at least most of the time. The other day, my six-year-old, Yeva, decided about fifteen minutes before the end of the lesson that it was time for me to leave. She kept asking, "Goodbye Hannah? Homework?" in such hopeful tones that it was really hard to let her down and tell her that we still had to play some more English games before I could leave! And I might kill my FCE student (a sixteen-year-old boy) because he didn't do his homework this past week...but otherwise, everyone seems to be making a conscious effort and I think they are all making progress, which is a relief (I actually CAN teach, at least a little! Phew!).
     I'm grateful that there is a wealth of books in my room that the landlady left behind. I'm currently working on "The Old Man and the Sea," with interspersed breaks of The Lord of the Rings in English when my brain gets all Russianed out. I've even dragged my Russian grammar exercise book out of its place of concealment and have been reviewing my cases. Not that it seems to make much difference when I'm speaking; the cases come out every which way anyway, but at least I feel like I'm making an effort. And I must be improving a little - I convinced one of the ticket ladies at the Tretyakov Gallery today that I was Russian. Ha!

 definitely thankful for the Tretyakov Gallery - beautiful artwork!

Although I'm pretty sure it had more to do with my accent and less to do with any complicated grammatical construction. Yeva's mom told me the other day that I should get a Russian boyfriend, "because then you can talk to him about everything! The weather, how you're feeling, the price of groceries..." But at the moment I think I'll just stick with my Чистая Грамматика (Pure Grammar) and Старик и море (The Old Man and the Sea), thank you very much!
     I'm also thankful that I get to go and see a dance performance on Sunday night. It's by an amateur folk and modern dance ensemble that I'm considering joining, and I'm really hoping that it will be the right fit for me, because at the moment I'm not dancing at all and I'm really missing it ("really missing it" as in I sometimes dance around the flat after midnight because I can't sleep for missing it). However, I'm also grateful for this time of not dancing, because it's proved to me that I'm stronger than I thought I was - I always assumed that I wouldn't be able to exist if I wasn't dancing. But I can exist - I can go to work and cook and buy groceries and read and sleep and do everything else normally without suddenly self-combusting out of dance-deprivation-induced frustration. However, it's not a comfortable situation - I feel like one of the most alive parts of me has gone to sleep when I'm not dancing, so I really hope that this company will be the right fit for me to at least start back with...and maybe it will lead to something more full-time later on.
     I'm also thankful that I have such a wonderful, strong family...they've really been through it lately. Dad lost his job this past week, and Mom came down with a mild case of pneumonia and had to go the ER with a kidney stone, so it's a pretty stressful time right now. Mom is ok - she has a lithotripsy scheduled on Monday to break up the kidney stone, and pneumonia-wise she's doing better now. I'm really proud of my dad because he's really being optimistic about looking for a new job, and in a way I'm grateful that he's out of his old job because he was working for a perfect WITCH (and I would use stronger language but this is a G-rated blog) who decided arbitrarily that she wanted to fire him, and hopefully he will find a much better job now than the one he had before. So it's been a hard time for them, and it's been hard for me too - not nearly as hard, since I haven't been on the front lines of the events, but at the same time it is infuriating to be an entire ocean away when the thing you want most in the world is to hug your mom and dad. But again, I'm grateful for being so far away, because it's really made me realize how little I am in control, and how much I just have to trust God to take care of my family. That's not an easy realization for me - it involved/still involves lots of angry glances skyward and grumbling and muttering occasionally - thank goodness God is all-merciful because otherwise I'm pretty sure I would have grumbled and muttered myself into a nice warm spot in Hell by now!
     And I'm grateful for my friends, here and back home. I've met some really wonderful people here, and I've had some really wonderful emails, messages, and skype calls with people back home that have really helped me (especially an email suggesting a Pollyanna outlook on life's problems that gave me the idea to write this blog).  I'm so grateful that I have the opportunity to live in an entirely different place in the world - I think it is teaching me a lot about other people and something about myself, too.

 And I'm grateful for all the beautiful art, music, dance, and every other beautiful thing like snowflakes and the black etching of tree branches against the sky at dawn and the fact that a random garbage collector was singing for me yesterday on the way through the park and the excitement on my six-year-old student's face when she comes to meet me at the door dresse up in her mom's dress with a fan and her red heeled shoes on. All of that makes life good. 
So Happy Thanksgiving! I hope everyone else has as many good things to be thankful for as I have.

    
    

It's the Little Things in Life...

     Little things like books, and snowflakes, and figuring out how to fold out your futon bed. This hasn't been the best of weeks, but little things like those make it better. I had a lovely weekend last week - one of my classes on Saturday cancelled, so I had an almost three-day weekend, since I only had one class on Saturday. Teya (one of the other teachers at the Mitino school) and I went on a search for an English-language bookstore. She has a great sense of humor and we get along really well, so even though it took the usual hour on the metro to get to the center it didn't feel like an hour at all. We got off the metro and headed for the "Moskva" bookstore. She appreciates literature as much as I do, though, so we both had to pause at Pushkin Square to get a picture with the Russian Shakespeare.

     Since Teya hadn't eaten lunch yet, we both decided to stop in at the Pushkin Cafe before we headed to the bookstore. Talk about posh! I knew it was expensive before going in, but it was ridiculous! I paid five dollars for a chocolate ice-cream, and instead of trying to describe it I'm just going to post a picture so you can compare the size of the spoon to the size of the scoop...and I promise it's not a giant spoon - it's just normal-sized. So it was a rip-off, but it was so tastefully done and we sort of knew what we were doing going in to eat there that we could just laugh at it. Besides, it was a neat experience to try just once.

 Like I said...POSH

 

After eating, we ventured back onto the street to find the bookstore. I placed my confidence in Teya since I'm terrible with directions, but it tuns out she's worse than I am - I was the one who figured out we were walking away from the bookstore rather than towards it! But find it we eventually did - there was a strange layout because the store was long but narrow, so you had to dive into these little corners to find each kind of book. The English section was smaller than we'd expected, and once I actually started looking at the books I realized how ridiculous it felt to buy an English book when I'm here trying to improve my Russian. So I browsed through the Russian sections for a while, but I didn't want to buy any classics because our flat came with a bunch of Russian literature in the cabinet in my room. I felt a bit disappointed - I didn't want to have made the trek and not actually have bought anything, but I didn't want to buy something just because I felt obliged to do it, either. But then, just as we were walking out of the store, we stumbled upon the music and ballet books. I found the memoirs of Matilde Kshessinskaya! This was really exciting for me, because I like to collect the memoirs of famous Russian ballerinas - it's so interesting to learn about who they were as people. But it's difficult to find them online, especially if they haven't been translated into English. So that was my special treat for the day - I'm saving it to read once I've gotten a bit better at Russian.

     At the moment I've finished reading the Harry Potter books that were lying around our flat and am working on 451 по фаренгейту - Farenheit 451. This is proving a lot harder than Harry Potter - I think I'm going to need to read it twice through, because I know I'm missing a lot of details! But then, it's a strange enough book to try to read in English, so it might not have been the best choice. Today, though, I'm being blissfully lazy and reading my good old Lord of the Rings. There is so much more savour in reading a book in your native language - you can understand all the nuances of language that you lose when you're reading in a language you're not fluent in.
     I also bought winter clothes this weekend. The temperatures, which had been hovering around freezing, suddenly plummeted to -10 on the weekend. I had been putting off buying boots and a hat and gloves and long underwear...but there is nothing like 20 degrees Farenheit to make you realize that winter in Moscow is going to be COLD! So after church on Sunday I took the metro to Ashan, a huge supermarket at the Strogino stop. And when I say huge, I mean HUGE. Picture a Kroger and a Target put together, with an organizational system in which vandals are allowed to run amok through the store and pick up and drop things wherever they want as they please every morning before the store opens. I managed to find what I wanted - a bargain pair of boots, gloves, hat, and woollen hose. Of course, the boots turned out to a bit more of a bargain than I planned - the metal triangles for the laces were not soldered together, but were simply bent into triangles, so as soon as I tried them on at home and pulled the laces tight the triangles simply pulled apart. So I spent the rest of the day sewing loops to put the laces through instead... I haven't actually tried them outside yet, so I hope nothing else catastrophic happens when I do...
     Anyway, I had a good weekend, but the week proved to be a hard one. Even with the long weekend, I was completely exhausted, both physically and mentally, and I was feeling really stressed for a couple of different reasons. Part of it was that I've been realizing the impossibility of trying to work full-time and dance full-time - physically and mentally I just don't have the strength for it. So I've decided to try to find a place where I can dance part-time - I think I will enjoy that much more than tearing myself apart trying to dance and teach every minute of every day. Also, my family has had some stress at home, and it's hard not being there with them.
     But praying has brought me a lot of peace - isn't it great how God is always there - and like I said, little things have been making life bright. Little things such as...SNOW!!! It finally snowed here for real a couple of days ago! It's all melted now, but it was really beautiful a couple of days ago. I know I looked like a complete idiot walking through the park - I kept craning my neck to look up at the snowflakes, and big slushy flakes kept falling down my neck inside my scarf. I was more excited about it than my six-year-old student - when I pointed out the window and said, "Look, it's snowing!" thinking she would be really excited and we could take that opportunity to learn some winter weather words, she looked and said calmly, "snoooo-wing," then went back to coloring her butterfly. I guess if you've had snowy winters the previous five years of your life it's not such a big deal. Piffle - right now in my naivete I feel as if I'll always be excited by snow! I suppose in the course of this winter we'll see.

 SNOW!!!

     I also figured out how to open my futon bed, which was supremely exciting. I tried the first night I arrived, but I couldn't figure out how to do it, so I've just been sleeping on one side of it. It's not uncomfortable, but it is a bit cramped. So finally last night I decided I was going to find out how to do it. It's too bad I couldn't get it on film, because I'm pretty sure it looked like a Charlie Chaplin episode. First I opened it out by accident - I was really excited - I'd done it! Then I started to wonder if I could close it again, since I wasn't sure how I'd opened it in the first place. So I lifted up one half of it, and then it locked in perpendicular position again, but somehow the sitting part and the back part had flipped, so now instead of a couch facing out into the room it was a couch facing the wall. Then I couldn't get it to flip back again - for a while it was looking as if I'd have to climb over the couch back to get to the seat part so that I could sleep - it was worse than before! Finally, I managed to get it to flip back again so it was facing out, and after about ten more minutes of heaving, huffing, and puffing, I managed to get it to open again. Which was a lot of trouble to go to at 1 in the morning, but it was worth it to be able to flop back luxuriantly and fling my arms and legs out without  a) hitting the couch back or b) falling over the edge and onto the floor. I slept sooo well last night!
     Today, I've done absolutely nothing - well, okay, I did go on a cleaning spree around the flat and I baked banana bread, which turned out deliciously if I do say so myself. But it has been so nice not to have to go anywhere or do anything. However, I'm planning a sight-seeing expedition for Sunday after mass - I haven't decided just where I'm going yet, but maybe the Tretyakov Gallery. For now, I think I'm going to sign off and go make dinner. I hope everyone has a good weekend!

The Sky is...Blue?

     Well, my apologies...I've fallen terribly behind with this blog. To be fair, the last few weeks have been really hectic, though, so I think I have a bit of an excuse. Where to begin, where to begin...
     Winter has set in with a vengeance - it hasn't started snowing yet, so I'm sure the season will become progressively more vengeful as time goes on - but for now the weather hovers just above or at freezing, and the sky is perpetually grey. This is a bit of a mental adjustment for the small-town Southerner from sunny-skied North Carolina, where clouds actually mean rain. Here, the one doesn't necessarily follow the other - it is entirely possible to simply have leaden skies without precipitation for days on end. This gave me cause to question myself in one of my classes the other day, when I was teaching uses of the present simple. To illustrate present simple usage for "something that is always true," I gave them the sentence, "The sky is blue." After that class, I was walking home through the park and looked up at the sky and realized why they seemed confused with my example! It makes you really appreciate the sunny days when they come - even the sunlight is different here, though - the sun never crosses the midpoint of the sky - it performs a low arc on one end of the horizon, so even at midday the light is on a slant and casts shadows.
     Teaching is falling into a routine now, which is both a good and a bad thing. It's good because I'm feeling more confident in my classes, and I'm starting to see my students making progress, which is always reassuring - at least they are learning something when I'm standing up in front of them for two hours! I'm quite enjoying some of my classes - I have an upper intermediate adult class which is almost downright fun - they are really interested in different shades of meaning in words, and I'm having them read Nevil Shute's "A Town Like Alice" and Calvin and Hobbes comics, which for me is one of the coolest parts of teaching - being able to introduce people to new things to read! And I teach a six-year-old girl who is adorable, and I have Sasha whom I mentioned earlier...and I don't have any classes I dislike, either, which is nice.
     The bad side of falling into a routine is that my routine fills almost my whole day. Readers, you have permission to roll your eyes - it's a full time job, so obviously it should take almost my whole day. This will sound like a complaint, but really it is a fact that's been becoming more and more obvious to me the longer I've been here: I didn't come to Russia to spend my whole time teaching English. I like it, but it is not my passion - it's naive, probably, but I want to wake up every morning and be so excited about the things I'm going to do during the day that I just can't wait to start work...and for me, teaching doesn't spark that kind of excitement.
     So, onto things that do spark that kind of excitement...specifically, one thing, namely, dancing. I've actually made some progress in the past couple of weeks towards joining a dance company. The teacher at my dance studio gave me the name of his friend who is the director of a small company here in Moscow. He told me that they do folk dance as well as other types of dance, and that I should go and take a company class to try it out. So last Friday I mustered up my courage, my dance shoes, and my google map directions, and I set out to take a class. The journey was quite comical - I've been trying for almost a year to join a dance company, and never once before had I even come close to the actual "taking a class" stage, so I was convinced that something would happen to prevent me from actually getting to class. When I left the house a few minutes later than I'd planned, I thought, "Oh, so that's what will stop me - I'll be late." When I got off the metro at the station, I tried to figure out which street exit to take and thought, "No, this is what will stop me - I'll take the wrong exit onto the street and get completely turned around and not know where to go." But somehow I came out onto the right street with the first try. I walked down the street looking for the building number, and realized that something was wrong - the building numbers were decreasing rather than increasing. Then I knew, "Of course, I won't be able to find the building - that's what will keep me from taking the class." But I asked for directions and managed to set out in the right direction after wandering up and down for a few minutes. When I found the building - an old, nondescript building used as a Dom Kultury - a house of culture, literally, sort of the equivalent to our YMCAs, the hallways were apparently deserted. "This is what will stop me - I won't be able to find the studio in this building." When I found a lady in the coat check room and asked for the company class, I knew she would forbid me from taking class since I obviously was a newcomer. When I was waiting outside the studio where she told me to sit until the director came, and the minutes were slipping away before the beginning of class, I knew that the director wouldn't come until the last minute and I would be late to go in because I hadn't had time to change. When one of the company members kindly pointed me to the dressing room, I knew that the director would come while I was changing and I wouldn't get a chance to introduce myself and he would summarily refuse to let me take class...Ok, ok, I'll put you out of your suspense...I did actually take the class. I won't say it was a brilliant success, but the director didn't kick me out on my rear, so I didn't stink. And honestly, just taking the class was such a huge step for me - like I said, it's the closest I've come to joining a company after almost a year of trying.
     Of course, the question of whether I want to join this particular company is another issue entirely - it depends a lot on their repertoire. I really believe that dance companies have a moral responsibility towards their audience with the choreography they show. Also, joining any kind of company would entail major changes in my teaching schedule to enable me to take company class and attend rehearsals. Sooo...we'll see. I'm excited that I've come a lot closer than I've ever been before to joining a company, but at the same time I'm acutely aware that I have a loonng waaaayy to goooooo...
     In other news, I got to attend a play at the Moscow Art Theatre a couple of weekends ago - we went to celebrate Tom's birthday. We saw the play "Vassa Zheleznova" by Gorky. It was very interesting - probably not the play I would have chosen if I'd had a number to choose from, but the effects were quite good and I was pleasantly surprised at how much easier it was for me to follow the dialogue than the time before, when I tried to see "The Inspector General" in St. Petersburg - I was so tired and understood so little that I just left in the middle of the play! Plus, it was neat just to go to the Moscow Art Theatre - it is quite historic, and I actually did a paper on it in college, so it was really cool to go and see a play there. 

 inside the theatre

 closeup of the seagull - from Chekhov's play

Sara, Tom, Laura, and me outside the theatre

    I haven't had much time for other things - I did attend a lovely party at another Mitino teacher's house - we had delicious food and played Russian Monopoly (Park Place is the Arbat!), and we did a Halloween party for the kids this past Sunday at the school - but teaching is keeping me pretty busy. However, I'm planning to go see the Bolshoi and the Moiseyev soon, and to visit some art galleries, and churches...I really need to make a list! November's arrival has made me realize how fast time is slipping away...
But anyway, tomorrow is a bank holiday, so most places will be closed, and I don't have work, so I'm planning, for the first time in a couple of weeks, to just laze around and do absolutely NOTHING....aaaaahhh, what bliss!
    Oh, yes, and Happy belated Halloween! There was a derth of pumpkins in Mitino grocery stores, so we got creative at the school party and carved a melon instead - the insides of which, I must say, are a good bit tastier raw than the insides of a pumpkin. Our theme was Harry Potter, and yours truly was Ron Weasley. I should have a good Ron Weasley-ish quote to end this blog, but at the moment my mind is drawing a blank, no doubt in part because of the fact that I'm currently reading the books in Russian so anything I remember from the first time I read them - in English - is getting jumbled up with the Russian version (where Snape is Severus Snegg; Voldemort is Volan de Mort, and Hermione is Germiona) so I'll just fall back on my usual - I hope everyone is doing well, and I hope you all have a good weekend!

Toto, I'm pretty sure we're not in NC anymore...

     So, it snowed this week. I still can't get over it. I mean, it wasn't REAL snow, in that it didn't stay on the ground, and it was only a few flakes, but STILL. This is the middle of October. In NC, we don't get snow til January, if then. I must have looked like a total dork walking through the park...I kept gawking up at the sky. But I literally couldn't believe my eyes - those little white floaty things in the air just couldn't be snow! But apparently they can...although even some of the Russians I've spoken with say it's a bit early for snow - just "a bit" early - can you imagine?!?
     OK, weather rant over now. Although I get the feeling it won't be the last... This was a really busy week. ...Oh, wow, my radiator just made a sound like a rocket taking off...that's a new one to add to the list of apartment sound effects. OK. Hope it doesn't blow up.
     Anyway, as I was saying, this was a really busy week. I didn't get any new classes assigned, but all this extra stuff seemed to appear to fill up my spare time. Not that that's a bad thing...most of the extra stuff was a lot of fun. On Sunday, I had my thirteen-year-old neighbor Lilya over for tea. She's this really sweet girl who really wants to learn English - and she speaks it surprisingly well for her age - so we had a nice chat in English and Russian for several hours. It was fun - and it was also fun to play hostess - she was my first guest!
    On Tuesday - which will no longer be my day off; now I will have Fridays off instead, hooray! (because Tuesday is just a weird day to have off) - I went walking in the forest park again, the one I posted pictures of several blogs ago. The weather was yet again wet, but instead of being cool this time it was downright cold. It was still beautiful, though - all the trees have turned to gold, and the birch grove was absolutely beautiful. The wind was blowing, and the sound of the rain pattering and the breeze shooshing through the branches and feeling the cold wind against my face and seeing the branches waving so gracefully - it was a wonderful peaceful moment. I might seem to be waxing ridiculously poetical in saying it, but birch trees are beautiful in the wind - maybe because they have such straight, striking white trunks but such gracefully drooping branches...anyway, I took a video of it, and even though it didn't turn out great the link is here so you can sort of get an idea if you want. I also had the idea of taking parallel pictures in all the different seasons of the same birch grove - it will be interesting to see how it changes.

I also had dance class on Tuesday and Friday night. Tuesday was hard - I'm only just starting to get back into shape now, and I have some corrections to work on...since I've been giving myself class all summer, there are some things I've let slip since there was no one to see and correct them, so now I have some catching up to do. It's all good, though. And Friday night was great - class was really enjoyable, and even better, I got to make friends with one of the ladies from the class. I wasn't sure if it would be possible to get to know anyone from the class very easily, because I was pretty sure they were all convinced I didn't speak Russian at all, since they know I'm a foreigner, and I'm not very confident about starting conversations in Russian yet. But Polina started a conversation with me in English, and it was so nice to get to know someone from the class! Now that I know one person, maybe it will be easier to get to know everyone else, too.
     Last night was interesting because I went to a contact improv class with Lena. I had never heard of contact improv before coming here, but apparently it actually started in the States. It's a kind of dance that is all about the contact, both mental and physical, between two people as they improvise to music. Last night's class was focused on martial arts and tumbling techniques that can be used in contact improv, and Lena and I ended up being the only two people there - so we basically got a three-hour private! It was very interesting, but I'm not sure if it's my kind of dance. I'm so used to the idea of dance as being all about giving something of yourself to your audience - making them feel some sort of emotion and taking them out of the everyday world for a little while. But contact improv is not about your audience at all - it's all about the connection between you and your partner. It's a very unusual idea for me.
    Today was eventful in that it is the day before Tom's birthday, so Laura, Sara, and I were all conspiring on how to get presents and such for him without him noticing. I volunteered to make a cake while the three of them went to a hockey game this afternoon, a mission which involved several deep dives into my Russian-English dictionary to figure out how to translate cake terms for an expedition to the grocery store - "baking soda" and "baking powder" were particularly crucial terms. Well, baking soda proved easy to find, but baking powder presented more of a challenge. I found two words for baking powder - "пекарский порошок" (peKARskii poROSHok) and разрыхлитель (razruiHLEETyel') (both of which I'm probably misspelling but I'm too tired from baking all day to look up). Anyway, the bottom line is that I found these two complicated words, AND remembered them, AND pronounced them correctly enough when I asked for baking powder in the store (after staring for fifteen minutes at the baking shelves without it suddenly appearing) that the lady understood me and was able to tell me that they didn't carry baking powder. So I loaded up on everything else, including three bags of powdered sugar, and marched home to look up a recipe for a cake that didn't require baking powder. Thankfully, my search was a success, and after a whispered consultation with my mom the cake queen via skype to check that the recipe sounded like a good one (whispered since Tom was in the next room), I waited until they had left for the hockey game, set out my ingredients, and started to bake.
     Thankfully, the cake came out successfully, even sans baking powder, and I set out to make the chocolate frosting. I was using my mom's killer-good recipe: condensed milk, butter, chocolate chips, and powdered sugar. After I melted the first three on the stove, I opened up a bag of powdered sugar to pour in. But it looked weird in the bag...a bit grey rather than the bright white color I'm used to. So I stuck my finger in and put a bit on my tongue...and it definitely WASN'T powdered sugar. Apparently there is a third term for baking powder - кукурузный крахмал (kukuRUzni KRAHmal) - which is absolutely ridiculous - who needs three different ways to say "baking powder"?!? So there I was, with my chocolate all melted on the stove and no powdered sugar... did you know that you can make really good icing with half a tub of Nesquick powder, a tub of cream cheese, and some melted butter, chocolate, and condensed milk? I found that out today. So the cake is iced and decorated, and I even took a picture because I must admit I'm rather proud of my culinary creation, even though it didn't all go exactly as I'd planned. Now I just hope Tom likes it...and I hope I can find some use for the THREE BAGS of baking powder (not small bags, either!) that are currently sitting in my cupboard...

    Well, that's all I have to report for now. Hope everyone has a good week!

Stating the Obvious

 We foreigners may be dumb, but we're not THAT dumb...

"Swimming [in the bushes???] is forbidden [and also impossible]"

     I got the idea for my blog title from the second of these pictures; it's a sign I walk past every day on my way to work. There's a lake nearby, but there really is no water to swim in where that sign is posted. It makes me laugh every time I see it.

    Well, I have been working for two weeks now, and I even got my first paycheck on Friday. That should have been a moment of euphoria - for the first time in my life, I was getting a REAL paycheck for a REAL job (not counting summer jobs and such). However, I was only getting paid for one week's work, and that shimmering bubble of happiness rather abruptly burst when I signed up for some dance classes at a studio later that night and found that the cost was exactly equal to the wage I had just received...not a ruble more or less! So I'm back to being a poor teacher with no money again...

     BUT it's totally worth it - I'm very excited about the studio where I am taking classes. The teacher is really cool; he is also a teacher at the Bolshoi Ballet School (which is a big deal, take my word for it if you don't know already) AND he seems to really love teaching AND he offered to help me out in my search for character dance companies. As you can imagine, I'm most excited about the last bit; I've been working and praying and trying so hard for such a long time to join a character dance company, but once I got to Moscow I was rather at loose ends as to where to start. Of course, it might be that it still won't work out, but it is so encouraging even for someone to just offer to help. So I'm hopeful, and still praying, and we'll see. 

     In other news, the teaching is going well - I'm still getting to know my students, and since I'm teaching ages from 8 up to somewhere around 40, there's a lot to get used to. I have a very bright eight-year-old, Sasha, who comes into the classroom and starts telling me this detailed story about a shark eating a sailor out at sea on a little boat, and I'm standing there thinking, "I'm supposed to teach this kid names of household furniture today and he's telling a story using vocab I had no idea he knew..." And then there is the couple I teach every day. For the past few classes I've been struggling to find conversation topics that would interest them - even when I think I've found something interesting it tends to fall flat in the classroom. But then the other day one of my five-minute word-association games somehow expanded to fill the entire forty-five-minute-class because we started discussing the differences between the Catholic and Orthodox churches...go figure. And I have an upper-intermediate adult class that I'm pretty sure I'm going to love - they actually ASKED me for homework the other day. And I'm still really enjoying the walk to work - the autumn colors are so beautiful, although the predominant fall weather for Moscow seems to be rain, wind, and temperatures around 4 degrees Celsius (which I think is about 39 degrees Fahrenheit). But it was really pretty in the park a couple of days ago, which seemed a good excuse to take more pictures...

     This past weekend was great fun because we did a company boat cruise down the Volga to celebrate Language Link's seventeenth birthday. There was music, dancing, a really lame karaoke bar, and wonderful opportunities to take pictures, and I got to see some of the interns I haven't seen in a while because they are teaching in other places, so I really enjoyed it. There was also quite a lot of free alcohol, but by the time I got to the point where I had eaten and might have enjoyed a glass of champagne, there was nothing left but beer, so I didn't actually end up drinking anything. The nice part is that my flatmate Laura is not much of a drinking partier either, so I had company home on the metro ride when I opted to leave after the boat party rather than going clubbing with most of the interns. Of course, Laura DID insist on carrying a huge bunch of blue Language Link balloons on the ride home on the metro, so we got some funny looks, but it was still good to have company, albeit weird company (just kidding, Laura!).

 I think this is the Novodevichy Convent, but I might be mistaken...

 MGU???

 Cathedral of Christ the Redeemer

 Duh... :)

Well, I need to get ready for work, so I'd better finish up for now. I realize that this is a rather picture-heavy blog, but I'm just trying to make up for my long-windedness last time. I hope everyone has a great week!

One Hundred Different Ways to Get Lost

     Извините, пожалуйста, вы знаете где...?
This is one of the most useful phrases you can learn if you want to come to Russia. It means, "Excuse me, please, do you know where ...?" (eezveenEEtye, pozhAlzta, vui znAIyetye gdye...) I have been finding out how useful it is this past week, which I have devoted to exploring all the wonderful and interesting ways there are to get lost in Moscow...getting lost on the street, getting lost in a market, getting lost in a park, getting lost in the supermarket while looking for bread... (OK, that last one didn't happen, not quite, but the others all did). And I, master at getting lost that I am, don't only get turned around once. Oh, no. While trying to figure out how to walk to my building from the Mitino school, even though it only involved two roads, I managed to go the wrong way four times. Yep. You would think that where the first road intersected the other road I would manage to only go the wrong way three times, but then once I got on the second road (named Generala Belaborodova, try sticking THAT into the handy "do you know where" phrase and not completely messing up somewhere) I tried to be smart and take a detour through a park, despite the fact that invariably when I try to be smart in geographical matters I get more lost. Anyway, it was a good way to practice my Russian.
     My second experience with getting lost happened the very next day, when Tom and I decided to ride out to Izmailovskoye to check out a honey festival and an old kremlin. The teaching schedule I was so excited about in my last post turned out to be completely incorrect, as it all depended on getting a contract with a school which ended up falling through. So I was actually given an entirely different schedule, the upside to which was that I had almost the whole week off and didn't start teaching until Saturday. So, as I said, Tom and I headed out to Izmailovskoye. It was a REALLY LOOOOONNNGG ride on the metro, about an hour and a half, so once we got there, we were really excited to start exploring this amazing trans-Russia honey festival and the kremlin with the beautiful church we'd seen in our guidebooks.
     You can imagine our surprise, then, when we emerged from the metro station to see a conglomeration of buildings that didn't at all resemble the pictures in our guidebooks. Yes, it was a kremlin...but saying it was a kremlin is like saying the Disney World Palace is an authentic castle.

However, we saw some stalls set up, so believing we must be at the entrance to the honey festival, we forged ahead. But the great honey festival, with honey from all the regions of Russia, was obviously missing some regions, as there were only about 8 stalls total. Also, the day was rainy and cold, with overcast skies, which didn't make for very enthusiastic buyers or sellers. We figured that couldn't be the sum total of the festival, so we continued on into the huge, funny, kremlin-looking building. Inside, we found all manner of stalls selling traditional Russian tourist stuff...matrioshkas, hair clips, shawls, etc. Apparently we had stumbled on the famous market at Izmailovskoye. However, we clearly had not come on one of the peak days of the season: most of the stalls after the first few were empty, and in our efforts to find the park, Tom and I wandered out the back of the fair into a maze of empty stalls, muddy alleys, and sketchy-looking buildings. The whole atmosphere was strikingly similar to the NC State Fair when you arrive too early or stay too late, and everyone takes off his show face and everything takes on an eerie, dirty, unmagical sort of feel to it. Needless to say, we didn't buy anything, but we did manage to get lost trying to find our way back out. More practice with asking for directions!
     However, by sheer force of will, after going the wrong way once more and crossing a street the likes of which I swear I'm never crossing again while in Russia because it was so busy and there was no pedestrian crossing at the light and it was absolutely terrifying, we finally found the right park. And it was totally worth it. The church was beautiful, and so was everything else.

Because of the weather, there was hardly anyone there, so Tom and I had it almost to ourselves. It's a park where Peter the Great spent time as a child, hence the huge statue of him at the entrance to the park - I think it would have been more effective in this case to have a statue of him as a child, but he always seems to be portrayed as huge and domineering - and the kremlin was built in 1683, I think by Catherine the Great. At any rate, it was quiet and peaceful, and we had a nice wander round.

 view from the park

view from the park as it must have looked when it was a tsarist hunting lodge

different parts of the Kremlin

     We also went into the city center and found the oldest Catholic church in Moscow (built in 1830) (and the only other one besides the one I usually attend). We actually didn't get lost in the process, and it was neat to see it and to go inside for a few minutes. We walked past Lublanka on the way to the metro station - it was my first time to see it. It's strange, because it doesn't really look like anything other than an ordinary, even rather pretty old building - it's hard to believe so many terrible things happened there.
     The next day, I decided to explore the park out behind my apartment. There was a cool little wooden church there, again with a very beautiful interior - dim, with the altar wall completely covered with paintings of different saints, and lots of little old icons with flickering candles in front of them tucked away in the corners.

The park itself was huge, open and full of delightfully winding trails. The beauty of it is somewhat disrupted by the fact that some of those huge metal power-line towers run right through the center of it - you can hear them buzzing as you walk underneath - but you can always just ignore them. Fall has definitely arrived in Moscow - the weather was quite chilly and rainy on my walk through the park, but it is even nicer in beautiful weather. All of my pictures are from the first day, though, so you will have to imagine crisp blue skies and clear, cool air like I had on my walk home from the school today. That's maybe one of the neatest things - the Mitino school is just across the park from where I live - about a 20-minute walk if you walk briskly. Of course, I probably will not appreciate the distance when it gets cold and snowy, but hey, that's what marshrutkas are for, right? (Oh, and marshrutkas are like little buses - sort of a cross between a bus and taxi but cheap.) That first day in the park, though, I didn't have to go in to the school, so I just meandered...and ended up getting lost again. Of course, this time I wasn't aware I was lost until I happened to run into one of the other Mitino teachers on her way to the school. She asked me where I was going, and I told her I was headed home and confidently pointed in a direction that was about 50 degrees to the right of the direction I actually needed to be heading in. At this point Teya kindly pointed out that I was going in the wrong direction and that I should head back toward the lake, clearly visible through the trees. I responded that I had thought it was a different lake. But, in my defense, I then walked with her to the school and managed to find my back again without any further need to ask directions. This is probably a good thing, because it would have been rather embarrassing to explain that yes, I was trying to get out of the park, and no, I hadn't the slightest idea where I was going.

 the entrance to the park - the building where I work is the one closest to the more distant of the two electrical towers

     Whew, this is turning into a long blog, so I will try to finish up. I had my first two lessons on Saturday, both with kids. I really like my first student, a bright eight-year-old who seems to wholeheartedly enjoy learning English. But I have to come up with something for my second lesson - I'm teaching two brothers, an eight-year-old and a ten-year-old who come straight from school and are completely exhausted and don't speak all that much English. It doesn't help that the ten-year-old immediately translates everything I say into Russian for the eight-year-old, or that they were half and hour late for a forty-five minute lesson. Anyway, I need to come up with something to help them out - maybe an easy start to the lesson to give their poor brains a break, or something - any suggestions would be welcome! I had another class today with a husband and wife. They both seem very nice, but I didn't strike the right balance with their lesson - too much grammar and not enough conversation, I think. I hope they will be patient with me while I figure out how to get the mixture right - oh, lovely, someone is shooting off firecrackers out their window again - I think I failed to mention that in the last blog about things that go thump in the night - and because the echoes bounce around all the buildings, it's more like things that rumble like thunder and gunshots in the night...
   Anyway, the teaching is not going too badly, and everyone at the school seems really nice. I'm so thankful, because from what I've seen so much of what makes a good or bad teaching experience depends on the other people in your school - not surprising really, but I'm just glad all of my colleagues seem to be friendly and motivated about teaching. I'm also extremely excited because I'M GOING TO START DANCING AGAIN THIS WEEK - maybe even tomorrow! I've found a studio that's about an hour away and pretty expensive, but I think it's probably worth it because their teacher also teaches at the Bolshoi Ballet School, so I think he'd be a pretty valuable connection to make. Of course, now I have to take the metro down and attempt to sign up for classes...this should make for some more fun Russian practice - but hey, I bought a cell phone a couple of days ago and it was a fairly complicated transaction and I didn't even make any grammatical errors! (At least - none that I was aware of.) I have rather a funny problem, as one of my friends pointed out to me - I speak Russian with barely a trace of an accent, and a lot of the time I can fool native speakers if they go by accent alone. But my grammar is still sadly lacking, which can lead to some funny situations - as my friend put it, "They think you're a stupid Russian instead of a stupid foreigner," therefore, they don't have much patience with me. Oh, well - good incentive to work on my grammar.
     Well, I'll put an end to this blog now, because it is rather torturously long - a phenomenon I'm sure my mom and any professors reading this blog will be familiar with - I don't know how to write anything short. So, my apologies, and good night/good afternoon/ good morning to everyone in all those different time zones!