Lately

Halloween: a nice break from the normal teaching, we got to dress up and play games. I was kind of a gypsy, the shirt is a traditional. Trisha, another teacher, was Spiderman, and one of my students, Liza (she's really cute and sweet) was a gypsy too.

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.