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!
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.
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.
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