I'm in Russia!!!

I'm sooo sorry it's taken me so long to blog everyone!! The first couple of weeks here have been crazy!! I can't believe I've almost been here for three weeks!!! It's blowing my mind how fast time is flying by here with everything going on!  The trip over here was so long and tiring, and because of my fathers schedule, he had to drop me off way early at the airport so in all, because I didn’t sleep more than an hour the whole trip, I had been up for three days before I got to sleep! The time difference is eleven hours between here and Utah and is/has been very hard to get use to. The first night I fell asleep at 7pm and woke up at 2am-sadly for good. I was so tired all day and wanted to stay up a little later so I wouldn’t wake up so early, but I couldn’t keep my eyes open! So instead, I took 30ml of NyQuil and was out like a light at eight thirty. I was awakened however at 5:30am by my roommates and was still tired, but couldn’t fall back asleep because of the noise so I got up. The Nyquil was sill in me though so after they all left for church I fell right back asleep. I feel bad for not going to church, but the extra sleep was much needed, as well as the relaxing day. Ever since we have gotten here we have been run around raged being taken here and there and everywhere to be shown where to go for this and that and  how to get everywhere! It’s been so hard because first, we’re all still completely dead from the journey here, Second, haven’t gotten to the time difference, so are hardly sleeping so are feet are dragging as it is! Third, we are all dehydrated!  Fourth, IT’S FREEZING outside so after being outside half the day in the cold, your body just aches. Fifth, the means of transportation here for us is buses and metro’s and those are just tiring! Sixth, the food the first day was horrible so I didn’t eat and hardly had any food in me, thankfully it has gotten a lot better, but we aren’t given big portions, so your burn through it pretty fast leaving you still hungry all day. Seventh, all the information being given to us in important, so  we’re trying to retain it all, but with everything else it’s kind of going through one ear and out the other! Eighth, all the walking is killing me right now! Ninth...i'll just say being a woman can be hard at times... . Tenth,  I’M IN RUSSIA!!!!!! And the language barrier has been hard.  So there is a pretty good summary of my first couple of days in Russia. However, I don’t want it to sound all negative. Between all the hardships of everything so far, I have already created some really fun memories that will last me a lifetime! First day here, a young lady by the name of Kasusha (of course that’s nowhere near how to spell her name, but how to pronounce it in English) picked us up from the airport. She spoke a little English and it was fun to figure out what she was saying. She helped me hall my bags out of the airport cause my bags where so big, they kept falling off my trolley! It was so funny, and she just kept laughing at me for having so much stuff! However, I would like to take this moment to defend myself in saying, although my bags where huge, I really didn’t bring that much stuff! The school supplies I brought just took up a lot of my space and weight and going home will be a different story, unless I buy a lot of stuff here! So now that I have defended my reasoning, I will now go back to my stories. The drive to our school was crazy. The traffic was so bad that day and we soon realized that Russian drivers are CRAZY!! Well, the story I really want to get to here is halfway there Kasusha decides she is so hungry she can’t wait till we get to the school who has lunch waiting for us! So we stop at this little place that is LITERALLY right on the side of the highway, no getting off an exit, just pulled over onto the shoulder, which is half the size of the shoulders we have on our roads in the U.S. and park. No need to worry about the cars whizzing by not even an inch away! Well, needless to say, the food she bought us was interesting!! It was called Shwarma I think…. something weird like that. And again, for future reference, my spelling will always be just the English pronunciation of the word. Next funny experience that I will never forget is my quest for toilet paper! So, we get here, and the first couple of days where just interesting!! It honestly kind of felt like they weren’t expecting us here, even though they new we were coming. The reason I say this is because we get here and for two days we don’t have any toilet paper!! They never bothered to give us toilet paper! So finally I am just like, ok, If they aren’t going to give us any, I’m going to go find another bathroom and steel some!! Well, my roommate Reagan decides she will come with me! So we head out into the dark abyss of the hallway( for some reason, the lights are always off here and because the sun doesn’t even start rising till ten, its still dark in the morning) and get down two flights of stairs when we hear someone coming up them and they sound loud and fast! Well poor Reagan gets so scared she turns around and runs back up the stairs! I stand there like, well, they already know I’m here because I had a headlamp on so, I didn’t move, although I will admit, with her running back up, kind of freaked me out! Well, thankfully it just ended up being a cleaning lady! So we walked with her for a min. trying to talk and ask her for toilet paper, which wasn’t working out so well, so I did what I had to do and whipped out my awesome charade skills and squatted like I was on a toilet and said toilet paper while pretending to wipe my bun…not the most classy way to ask, but hey, it worked and we got our very much so needed toilet paper. And best of all we had a good story to back upstairs with that gave us all a pretty good laugh!!

 Well, I've also made it through the first couple of weeks teaching! We started a week after we got here. And good thing too cause it took me that whole week to get use to the time difference! The first two weeks where very hard, a lot to get use to! Really, it’s been interesting to say the least. Me and Rauni have been assigned to teach the little preschool kids (2-4 year olds) and honestly, atleast so far, there hasn’t been a ton of teaching going on because they are so rowdy and crazy! They are all over the place!! The girls are great, it’s just the little boys are literally what the teacher before us called them in her letter to us, “little hellions”!! They are super cute, and I love them, but they are just running, climbing and jumping everywhere making things impossible! However, this past week

the kids have finally been getting use to us as authoritative figures and I'm starting to really get down the method of teaching we use and incorporate all the different things that are used to help try and get better behavior. However, I don't know if the kids will ever be as good as I would like them to be. Also,  at first I was really concerned about having the little two year olds in the class thinking they were way to young, but the last couple of days they have really opened up and have been speaking a lot which makes me so happy! I will put up pictures of all the kids soon and tell a little about each!