The Crazy End to the Month of February!

 

February 23^rd, 2012

Souvenir Market

We had a day off today!!  Got to love these days! Well today we went to the Souvenir Market! It looks like a mini Disneyland, no joke! It’s so great! It’s so big and so many vendors with lots of fun things! It’s so hard not to want to buy just about everything!! However, some of the vendors, male to be more specific, can be really annoying and pushy! I was just walking by this guy who was selling these huge fur hats and he totally just started talking it up with us, asking us where we were from saying, oh I love American girls and started putting these hats on our head! Next thing I know he’s picking me up, twirling me around and kissing my cheek! It was so funny, I was laughing so hard, but so disgusting at the same time!  Thankfully we had our friend Jake, with us who served his mission in Ukraine and knows Russian, ther to save me and help get me away from him!! It was quite the experience! The rest of the day was really great though! We ate lunch at this little café, that was a little sketchy with the wild cats just walking around are feet while we ate! Then we went outside and took all of these great picks and just had a ton of fun in the snow! I also used my great bargaining skills to buy a matrushka doll that is so beautiful, and some Russian fairytale books! It was a great day!

Doesn't it look like a Russian Disneyland?!

Creepy Russian Salesman!

My very own Russian Matrushka Doll!!!!

Victory Park

Me and Ruani weren’t feeling very great by this time of the day, so we only got to see a little bit of this park before we went home, but at the entrance they have this wonderfully huge blow up of a Matrushka doll! It was so funny! However, from what I hear the rest of the park is amazing as it is a dedication to the Russian veterans of World War 11 and the victoms as more people died in Russia then anywhere else as Lenin and Stalin (but mostly Stalin) killed 20 million!!
P.S These Russian woman are crazy!!! Check out the shoes on this lady at Victory Park!

February - 24^th 2012

Maslenitsa: The Arrival of Spring Celebration 

Equivalent to our groundhogs days, every year, 7 weeks before the Russian Orthodox Easter, one of the biggest celebrations happens called Maslenitsa. It suppose to celebrate the arrival of Spring, but if you ask me, it’s about two months premature!!! There is still tons of snow on the ground, it’s freezing and it doesn’t start actually warming up enough for the snow to melt and flowers to start popping out of the ground till mid April!! Nonetheless, it’s a great party!!! Everyone dresses up in these great traditional cloths and it’s tradition to make pancakes that symbolize the sun and eat yummy food, dance, and best of all…burn a woman scarecrow to symbolize saying goodbye to winter and hello spring!! In the past they use to actually sacrifice a real person, but now they just stick to the scarecrow, which in my opinion is a lot better!!

 
 


February 25^th, 2012

Armory:

The Armory is located on Red Square inside the Kremlin and is massive! It is where they keep all the historic artifacts and belongings of the czars and czarinas. I have never been in a place that was worth so much money! It’s basically all I could think of the whole time! Everything was either made of Pure gold, covered in rare jewels, the finest wood, the most detailed craftsmanship, I mean, the list goes on and on! It still blows my mind thinking of it! It was really cool to see everything though! They had rooms for the different for carriages, dinner settings, outfits, historical church and old Egyptian artifacts and belongings of each of the different czars! It went on forever. Honestly by the end I was ready to leave. There was so much, it was a little overwhelming.

Cathedral of Christ:

This cathedral is beautiful and so big! Full of pictures of Saints and other special artifacts! What’s really cool about the cathedrals here though, that I’ve never seen anywhere else (that I can remember) is how they worship. Everyone has their saints picture that they pray to and after, they go up and kiss both sides of the picture. To me it seems a little weird, and I’m not going to lie all I can think of when I see it is, uh..so many germs! But it really is sign of devotion for them. Also, they where having a service when we were there so we got to listen to the choir sing which is always an amazing experience and one of my favorites!!

Lock Bridges

After we went to the Cathedral of Christ, we went to the lock bridges. When I first heard about the lock bridges, I was so excited to go!! The tradition is that when you get married, you and your new husband bring a lock and together lock it onto the bridge, or metal trees they have, symbolizing their union and that their hearts are now locked shut with the love they have for only each other!! How cute is that!!!! It’s such a cool place! There are thousands of locks of all different shapes, sizes, colors, etc. Some are newer and some are so old and rusty!!!! We even got to witness a couple lock their lock while we where there! There was confetti flying everywhere! It was so cute and so fun!

Old Lock Tree! So cool!

  February 26^th, 2012 

Hockey Game!!

 Well, today we went to a Russian hockey game!! It was Russia against Poland. It was a lot of fun, but i'm not going ot lie, after as a kid experienced the Flyers  who play dirty, along with their teammate, Daniel Brashear who in one punch managed to bust another dudes helmet an head, my expectations where higher than this game was boring in comparison. It was so clean! Just some baby shoves here and there and that was it! I could of pushed harder!! Nevertheless it was fun to experience an Russian hockey game!! 

February 27th

New School 

Well, Rauni and I opened up a new school!  However…it’s nothing like what you are probably thinking it would be like! It was nothing like what Rauni and I were thinking either! The first day we go, we get picked up by a driver, an employee of the school. Just as a quick side note, this was the first time we had been in a normal car since we left home and we were rather excited! Well twenty min. later we pulled up into a mall called Dream House in the most expansive shopping complex of the area complete with Prada, Loui Vuitton, Gucci, Dolce & Gabbana, Giorgio Armani, Juicy Couture, etc. Upon arrival, we were completely confused, but were reassured that we were at the right place. As we walked through the mall, making our way to the third floor, we felt so out of place!! Everything was so nice and everyone so dressed up and here we are in the slacks and tops we brought that we didn’t really care for or care if got trashed from working with little kids! When we got to where we would be teaching though, that was thrown out the window as now all we could thing was what the heck, we teach in a mini children’s club!!. And let me specify here that when I use the word club, I am literally referring to it in the context of as a place adults go to party, dance, drink, and have a good time! Granted it was all children’s style, but it was a club complete with awesome toys, video games, funky mirrors, cool flooring that change colors and move around as you walk, nooks in the wall that you could climb around in…oh and did I mention there was music playing, strobe lights going along with a disco ball and oh of course I can’t forget the’ children’s  Bar??!!! Yup that’s right, they had children’s bar complete with an awesome sitting area for the kids to sit back, sip their drink, and oh I don’t know, maybe read one of the magazines provide such as Cosmopolitan or Vogue!! I was horrified beyond words! Well because we only ever had one student of three come, it was shut down after only four weeks. 

 

Other Fun events that took place in February :

What a busy month it was!!!!

Russian Circus: 

So much fun! If you ever have the chance GO, GO, GO!!!

Children’s Dance Festival: 

This was a fun experience, and I really liked seeing all the different costumes, they were pretty cool, but if you ever go, SIT SOMEWHERE YOU CAN LEAVE INCONSPICUOSLY WHEN YOU’VE HAD ENOUGH! This recital literally lasted three hours!!!! It was the longest thing of my life and we were sitting dead center up front so there was no chance of us walking out in the middle! 

 

My Russian Children

 

Kids:

When I last wrote, I told you I would be introducing you to the kids I teach. So here It goes…I don’t have pictures off all of them yet so I may just introduce most of them to you..

Meet Artiom,

Artiom is a super sweet little boy who was super shy and quit in the beginning, but has opened up a lot since and loves to repeat what you say! He is one of our younger students, but it a lot of fun..and also can be a little of a handful sometimes, but we love him non the less!

Meet Anya:

Anya is a sweetheart and sooo cute!! However, because she is the youngest child we have, she is super babied by the Russian teachers and often does her own thing!! She can speak a little English, but can only  really repeat a word or two at a time that you say. It’s so funny when she does though cause she puts on this cute little face and says every word the same way!

Meet Alosha:

 

Alosha is hardly ever participates in our classes, and I’m not really sure if he is apart of the program, but the teachers will have him sit in on the classes every once in a while. However, the Russian teachers have to stay with him otherwise he cries. He is super cute though!

Meet Garde:

 

Garde is one of our trouble makers.. he is a super cute little boy, but is a crazy little thing. It is hard to get him to listen sometimes….ok, a lot of the time, and he gets easily distracted. He really is getting better at English though when he does listen!

Meet Kirill:

Kirril loves making silly faces and made this face the first time I met him! He is so funny!!! But he too is a trouble maker!!  He is always bringing a toy to class and always wants to show you along with the rest of the class! He loves to run around and be crazy! His English is pretty good though!

Meet Nikitta:

 

Oh Nikitta….where to start….This is our top trouble maker…or the devils child as we call him sometimes. He is so hard to deal with. He  distracts all the other kids, and likes to cause havoc. He is a big boy, so he often bullies the other children or the little girls. His English really is amazing though for his age. He is surprisingly one of our top English speakers! If only we could get him to focus more!

Meet Polina:

 

Polina is a super cute little girl! And I just love this picture of her!! She is super sweet, and usually one of the first to comfort the other children that ever get hurt. However, I am pretty sure pretty sure she has a crush on a little boy names Velizar (who I will introduce next) and because of this I think, she likes to follow the boys lead sometimes and run around. She likes to participate in class, but often end up singing or talking to herself and we have to keep telling her to only speak English.

Meet Velizar:

This is Velizar. He is one of our best male students. Although, like any boy, he likes to run around, he is most often the one best fallowing the rules and ignoring the craziness around him and still focusing on the lesson. He knows Polina has a crush on him, I’m sure of it, and for the most part he seems to be very nice to her back, but it’s always funny to watch as Polina tries petting his head and he slowly moves away and pushes her hand away! Love him!

Meet Misha:

Misha is just the cutest little thing ever! You just can’t get mad, or stay mad at this little boy ever, even when he does something worthy of frustration! I don’t know exactly what it is about him, but even when he is mad and starves at me with a grumpy face, I just can’t help but think, he is so cute! The best is when he will give me a mean grumpy face to show he’s mad at me, and I’ll just give him one right back. He will just get so annoyed that his mean face isn’t working on me and try to punch me with his little hands, which is just all the more cute!

 

Meet Dahsa:

This cute little girl is Dasha. She hasn’t been in the program for long, and hardly ever comes, but we love it when she does because her English is wonderful and she often helps explain things to some of the younger kids and help them to do stuff, and follow the lesson more. She is super sweet, and super helpful.

Meet Sava:

Sava is a funny one. He likes to participate in the lessons, but also like to constantly show you every thing he does or has or whatever, and will constantly say, Teacher looook, looook teacher, loooook and I’m not going to lie, it gets really tiring and interrupts the rest of the class Nonetheless, he is super cute, and sweet.

Meet Liza:

Ok, I know I shouldn’t have favorites…..but I have to say, Liza is my favorite! She is a model student. Likes to be in class, always participating, is speaking good English and picking up what we teach her very fast! I’m not going to lie, I sometimes wish I could just be personally tutoring her because she would excel so far, so fast if I could! She is a delight to have in class, and is always willing to help me out!

 

Meet Anya:

Anya has only been to class probably three times or so in the last two months, so I honestly don’t have much to say. She is super cute, and because she has only come a few times, she has always been very shy and quite each of those times. Maybe we’ll see more of her in my last two months here.

Meet Liza:

Liza is super cute and sweet, but also doesn’t attend on a regular basis. Because of this she to is very quite and shy when she comes because she hasn’t been around enough to feel comfortable in the class yet I believe. I love having her though when she is with us!

Meet Sonya:

Sonya is one of our older students in the class and she is wonderful. She likes to participate, and most of all, likes to help out teacher!!! More or less, she very much so likes to be teachers pet! But I’m totally fine with it! She likes to help hold what we call our Star charts used for behavior and will often remind the other kids to be quite or they will get a star erased as she motions with her hands over the board as if wiping away a star as she has seen us do so many times! However, she can be a bit of an handful at times, trying to demand her way, as she seems to be use to always getting her way at home. Her English is one of the best in the class though, and I really do love having her in the class!