A little of this and a little of that

Food:

To start off, I just need to say how thankfull I am that I was chosen to come to the school I did. I say this because we really do have it better off than the other schools her in Moscow!! Here are the reasons why: The food (besides the first day) has been great! Breakfast is always the same, three little pankcake like things, fruit, and cream of wheat (with the alteration of it sometimes being rice instead). Lunch and dinner are usually the same and consist of the three main dishes, potatos, noodles, or rice with some kind of meat and sauce pored on top. They come up with a lot of different things to do with those few things though! Also served is bread and a little bowl of some kind of beet, vegetable, or cabbage salad. I’m not going to lie, it has already gotten a little tiring eating just one of those three main dishes every day, but I really am gratefull it is as good as it is because I’ve already heard some stories from the other schools of being feed interesting meals!!! OH, and also everyday they have this wonderful little thing called tea time where they served extremely yummy pastries!! Unforchanlty, it is at three thirty everyday and I’m already gone so me and Rauni can only go on Fridays when we teach in the morning instead. It’s ok though, probably a good thing seeing I could eat them all day everyday without caring about how much weight I would gain from them!! No joke, they are soooo good!!!

Living/Teaching:

Next I’ll tell a little more about where I live and the school I teach in. I have to say, I was quite surprised when I arrived because I live in a completely gated community. It is a very well off area and the schools are all private schools within the neighborhood. I live and eat in the middle/high school. It is a very huge building that consists of 5 or 6 floors, has a complete gym, pool, library, basketball court, cafeteria and more! It is extremely nice and the kids all dress up everyday for school. Oh, and just as a funny note that’s  worth sharing, the kids here are always running!! Between classes, to lunch, everywhere! It’s so weird, but so funny! We also have guards everywhere as well. There are guards at the main (and only unlocked) door, and guards at different entry points at the outer neighborhood gate! When we first arrived here, we asked, why don’t you have locks on the doors and the reply was,  “we don’t need locks, we have man power!!!”  And that they do! The guards are all very nice though and we have become good friends with them! They switch off every three weeks so we will be meeting some new ones here soon!

Because we teach the Pre-K and Kindergarteners, we have to walk about ten minutes to those two different schools. We have to leave our little gated area, but are still within another gated area that is part of the neighborhood as well. However, we have what is called a supply closet where we keep all our school supplies and stuff we need to teach, and that is in the…neighborhood complex I guess you could call it. It is this huge, four-five story building that has gyms, pools, racquetball courts, bowling, Dance halls, lesson rooms, you name it, it’s got it! It’s amazing! It is also where we go swimming! Thursday is our day we are allowed to use the facilities, and we love it!! We really are spoiled here!!!!!! There are these water slides that you have to go up eight flights of stairs to get to the top of to go down! They are super fast, and super fun! I feel like I’m at a water park when I go down them! After sliding and swimming in the lap pool, we then go chill in the sauna for a little while before we go back to the locker room to get showers before we go home. 

Fun facts:

So the sun doesn’t rise here till around ten or so! It is so weird! Thankfully it’s at least starting to get light our when we get up for breakfast though because when we first got here, it was still dark at nine which made it so hard to get up!

Probably one of the funniest things here that I get to experience every day is the HUGE picture so conveniently placed in the entryway to the cafateria of…the mating Zebras. Yes, that is correct, there is a huge picture of mating zebras that I get to look at every day 6-8 times a day! It ceases to amaze me! I will post pictures soon, and don’t you worry, I’ll defiantly post a picture of it for you.

I can basically sum up the weather here for you in one word…FREEZING!!  But I’m actually getting use to it. I am sooooo thankful though that two years ago my mother had me buy this huge down coat from Calvin Klein because it was such a good sale and that I never wore it till now because it has saved me here! It is so warm and just what I needed! I love it! Also similar to that, I’m sooo grateful I decided to buy my Uggs a year ago when I found them on sale, and once again never wore them till now, because they too have saved me and have helped keep me warm! There are days though that it is windy, and when those day come, the cold is almost unbearable! Last weekend for instance was like this! We got into town, did a few things and then were going to take a bus to go somewhere, but we waited for twenty minutes for the bus to come and that day just so happened to be the coldest day that eastern Europe has seen in years and we were dying!!!!!! I kid you not, we were frozen all over!!! When the bus did come however, there wasn’t enough room for us all so we turned are frozen little bodies around and went back inside the “mall”. We later found out that thirty two people had died that day around eastern Europe from how cold it was!

Language Barrier:

I knew the language barrier would be hard, but I can honestly say, I didn’t realize just how hard it would truly be. When I had lived in Switzerland I was able to pick apart things sometimes and recognize words at least because they used our same alphabet, but here they don’t and it’s all so confusing! They use the Cyrillic alphabet and the letters are really confusing and detailed! Not to mention the sounds they stand for are hard to pick up on as well, especially since a few of them will look like our letters, but make the sound of another letter. For instance, we all know how P sounds like in English, well here they have a Cyrillic letter that looks like an P, but makes an R sound. There are about three or four of those and it’s just really confusing! So talking to the locals in next to impossible! I have picked up on a few basic words though such as how to say thank you, hello, good morning, good night, delicious, shower, and a few others, but basically my life has turned into a non ending game of charade! 

Shopping:

So we haven’t really done much shopping yet besides at the food market. I have however bought a pair of wool socks that are amazing!!!! I will post a picture of them sometime because they are just that cool! They are so big on me and go past my knees, but they are so warm! Besides the socks, I’ve been buying chocolate! It is so good here, along with their pastries. We all have become a little worried about our bank accounts with both being so good!

I can’t wait till we do go shopping though because I’m starting to get an idea of a few things I do want to buy and bring home from here! I'll fill you in more then.