Lesson Planning and Unintentional Lasagna

     Well, I guess you can get an idea of how intense last week must have been since I'm not writing about it until three days into the next one! I had my first real class last week (and as I write have also had my second, third, and fourth, and will teach my fifth tomorrow), and I really enjoyed it. It is so cool to be able to see people learning and to have a part in helping them to learn. But it's also (and experienced teachers of all sorts here have room to laugh at me) extremely exhausting! I get an adrenaline high that carries me through the class, but about an hour after it is over I have a dramatic crash, and any chance at reasonable thought pretty much flies out the window. Of course, I think this stems in part from the fact that we interns attend our own training classes all day from 11 to 4:30, and then we teach from 7 until 9:20 in the evening. We are not allowed/ do not have time to go home in between, so we are pretty much stuck at the school all day. On days like that, I really have to say that the highlight of my day is the teaching, despite the fact that it is so late at night - it's the one time of day that I feel like I'm doing something real, something that really affects other people. But like I said, after teaching a class until 9:20 and then riding home on the metro for an hour, my brain is totally fried. This can lead to some rather amusing cooking incidents, since I don't usually eat much of a dinner until I get home at night. I know it's not really healthy to eat that late at night, but there is no microwave at the school, and cheese sandwiches and apples will only get you so far! So anyway, I stumbled into the apartment Friday night after a full day of classes and teaching with the firm intention of making veggie stir fry. I hadn't had a dish with a lot of vegetables for a couple of days and my body was feeling the lack. Somehow, I ended up making lasagna instead. I still don't know how this happened. I think I went to open the fridge, and I saw a block of cheese sitting there and thought, "Oh, cheese. I need to use that up before it gets moldy." Which somehow translated to, "I need to use that up right now" which somehow translated to "lasagna." It wasn't until I was sitting at the kitchen table in a daze watching the lasagna cook that I realized that a) That wasn't stir fry that I'd just made and b) by the time the lasagna finished baking it was going to be 11:30 and I really didn't want anything to eat after all. It took me about four days to finish it off, since I still haven't learned how to cook for just one person. But I finally made stir fry the other night, and it turned out really yummy, if I do say so myself!
     Last week was also worth mentioning because we got a new flatmate. At first, Laura and I were upset because we heard we were going to get a guy, and of course we immediately imagined the loudest, biggest, beeriest guy you can imagine, one who would stumble in at all hours of the night and party all the time...you get the picture. However, we seem to have gotten lucky, as our actual flatmate is quiet, friendly, and doesn't seem to be a big partier. He does fill the kitchen with tea leaves (I guess it's a British thing to drink loose tea?), but that's better than filling the kitchen with girls from the pub. So I think I've definitely scored lucky twice in the flatmate lottery - and thank goodness we have no more rooms to fill, so that should be our flatmate limit! (knock wood!)

 

my church - how cool is that?!

     Oh, and he's also Catholic, so it was nice to have company on the hour-long metro ride to church on Sunday. This is my second time to go, and I actually understood a lot more this time - but I really do need to get a book and learn the proper responses in Russian! It is quite beautiful, with lots of singing and a real choir with an organ - very traditional and with very good sermons so far (insofar as I can understand them!).

 garden outside the church

     The weather was quite rainy and cool this past weekend, but Lena and Ilya and I did make it out to the largest ice skating rink in all of Europe (and possibly the world?). It was huge, about the size of a football field, and we had so much fun! Of course, yours truly had not skated in seven years, so I took two tentative glides out onto the ice and fell flat on my rear (graceful ballerina that I am!). But in the course of the next two hours, I only had two more spills and even learned how to skate backwards (slowly, but with steady speed nonetheless). I think this is pretty good for only the third time in my life ice skating (thank you for being so patient Lena!!!). Anyway, we had a blast, and it was nice to do something that had nothing to do with teaching, lesson planning, or being taught. And I've even had time to do some drawing the past couple of weeks, which has been enjoyable. Only one and a half weeks of intern training to go!!!

"Willow Catkins on a Windowsill" :)