The apartment is small, but comfortable, and the kitty definitely makes me feel at home! :) The tub is HUGE, and I have my own space.
)
My host mom works at a salon and decided to give me a little more than a trim...So here is me before and after the haircut:
Everyone is walking around more bundled up then ever. The beautiful snow that fell last week is, unfortunately, slushy and muddy. The other day all of it froze and created ice everywhere, we were all tiptoeing down the sidewalks. By some miracle I still haven't fallen on it yet! Slipped quite a few times though.
Teaching is getting easier and harder at the same time. I'm used to planning, but it seems like after the week vacation the kids had, no one wants to pay attention. Still haven't put up pics of the kids I teach, sorry about that, forgot I had some :) These aren't all the kids, usually one or two aren't in class, but you'll get an idea of their personalities I think:
Level 5: Axel, Danya, Stacey, Ilya, Liza
Level 3- Peter, Ilya, Zhenya, Mazim, Vova, and Bogdan
Saturday night:
I just found out that I have a new family. They live really far away, on the island with the Peter Paul fortress, which means 40 minutes on the metro plus whatever time it takes to get the bus. But that doesn't really bother me, because I have a home! The part of town that the primary and elementary schools are in (as well as all our apartments) is “newer,” that is, built during the Soviet Union, and honestly, rather ugly. But the part of town I'll be living in now, on Petrogradskiy Island, is one of the first places to be settled when St Petersburg was becoming a city. I'm excited to check out the area I'll be living in! The family has one little boy, Leon, and they have hosted ILP teachers before. Tomorrow morning I'm going to meet them, see their house and everything. Monday morning I'm supposed to move. I'll miss this family, they have been so wonderful, taking care of me when I was sick, helping me with Russian, and feeding me very well. But at the same time, I'm excited to meet new people. Still trying to figure out if it's a good or bad thing that I get to have two families, instead of the one that all the other girls have. Moving is not going to be fun, I still have to pack (which means I get to do that twice) and say goodbyes. The others only have to do that once. And I will definitely be living farther away than anyone else, by a long way! They have agreed to pay for the metro, since I'll have to take it to teach every day now. We'll have to see how things turn out.
Sunday evening:
First, IT SNOWED!!! I woke up today and everything had a thin layer of white on it. The sidewalks were slippery with ice where people had walked. When we were walking from the Metro station to my new apartment there were snow flurries, it was beautiful but freezing. I feel bad for the teachers who are away, they missed the first snow in St. Petersburg. Most of it melted, but there are still patches that will freeze tonight. At least now we have something pretty to show for the cold weather....
My new family is wonderful! They live in a small apartment in the old part of town, on Lenin St actually. Leon, their son, is adorable, I spent some time today playing with him. Alyona, my new mom, is very sweet, she doesn't speak much English (and is really happy that I speak some Russian) but tries very hard and I know she'll take care of me. She is a hairstylist, I might have her trim my hair before I leave :) My dad works in construction, I think more of the architectural side of things, he designed and remade the bathroom and it has a HUGE tub. They also have a kitten, a gray tabby a little bigger than Stalker was, that has tons of energy. She's an indoor cat and has been declawed, so I won't go around looking like I got in a fight with a rose bush. I'm all packed, had my last meals with my Yelena today, she made me borsch because she knows I love it. And I played Uno with her and Igor while drinking our tea after dinner. I just wrote my goodbye note, leaving that and some good Estonian chocolate on the desk after I take my bags away tomorrow evening.
I've learned to not watch how people drive, especially on the mashrutkas, or taxi buses. If you pay attention, you'll be convinced that death is less than a foot away. I think the only way they survive is that everyone drives like a maniac, from honking to announce that you're going to run the red light, to having lines of cars in the middle of an intersection waiting to turn, so you have to pay attention more. My driving instructor would have a heart attack seeing how some of them park, let alone watching the buses driven like they were smart cars. They all drive very close to each other, with people pulling out and switching lanes at random. Not to mention that half the cars are the junky old Ladas, and sometimes one will stop in bad places, like at a bus stop or in the middle of the intersection, in which cases everyone has to drive around them, making everything more perilous. I've noticed that the guys are all amateur mechanics, they have to be to keep the cars (and other badly made equipment) running. I've seen cars being jump-started and dragged and pushed. And the pedestrians aren't much better, walking when they feel like it and stopping in the middle of a two lane road if they can't continue across. It's nuts. And Mutti, remember how I'll always look the wrong direction, or not at all? The other girls in my group have told me to stop quite a few times, but they are also a lot more nervous about the roads, I've kind of gotten used to it. I think if any of them came and drove in America, they'd have their license revoked before they got out of town.
A couple weeks ago we had a picture scavenger hunt around the city, it was tons of fun. We looked for Americans, missionaries, cute guys, people who had hair that matched their coat (we see that a lot, purple and red mostly, but some gold and black) and various other things. Mullets are very popular here, so we looked for the most wacky ones: different colors, or really extreme (like the kid who had a buzz cut except for the 6 inches of hair at the nape of his neck). Recorded me talking to a guy in German, as well as me and Jenna singing “Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again” (from Phantom) in the cloakroom of the Hermitage, with a group of Chinese tourists taking our pictures. Definitely all had to step out of our comfort zones for the game! The metro was really crowded on the way home and I ended up with some bruises and a little more respect for the distance between the train and the platform. Could have been worse, I'm counting my blessings.
IN OTHER NEWS:
I've learned to not watch how people drive, especially on the mashrutkas, or taxi buses. If you pay attention, you'll be convinced that death is less than a foot away. I think the only way they survive is that everyone drives like a maniac, from honking to announce that you're going to run the red light, to having lines of cars in the middle of an intersection waiting to turn, so you have to pay attention more. My driving instructor would have a heart attack seeing how some of them park, let alone watching the buses driven like they were smart cars. They all drive very close to each other, with people pulling out and switching lanes at random. Not to mention that half the cars are the junky old Ladas, and sometimes one will stop in bad places, like at a bus stop or in the middle of the intersection, in which cases everyone has to drive around them, making everything more perilous. I've noticed that the guys are all amateur mechanics, they have to be to keep the cars (and other badly made equipment) running. I've seen cars being jump-started and dragged and pushed. And the pedestrians aren't much better, walking when they feel like it and stopping in the middle of a two lane road if they can't continue across. It's nuts. And Mutti, remember how I'll always look the wrong direction, or not at all? The other girls in my group have told me to stop quite a few times, but they are also a lot more nervous about the roads, I've kind of gotten used to it. I think if any of them came and drove in America, they'd have their license revoked before they got out of town.
The other day we had a picture scavenger hunt around the city, it was tons of fun. We looked for Americans, missionaries, cute guys, people who had hair that matched their coat (we see that a lot, purple and red mostly, but some gold and black) and various other things. Mullets are very popular here, so we looked for the most wacky ones: different colors, or really extreme (like the kid who had a buzz cut except for the 6 inches of hair at the nape of his neck). Recorded me talking to a guy in German, as well as me and Jenna singing “Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again” (from Phantom) in the cloakroom of the Hermitage, with a group of Chinese tourists taking our pictures. Definitely all had to step out of our comfort zones for the game! The metro was really crowded on the way home and I ended up with some bruises and a little more respect for the distance between the train and the platform. Could have been worse, I'm counting my blessings.
