Week 2 of Teaching

I taught gym again this past week, and while things improved slightly, I still definitely have a lot to learn. One reason I realized that I am not meant to ever teach elementary school is that I seriously lack creativity when it comes figuring out new and exciting games to play with, say, a bouncy ball. For instance, this past Friday, I thought I’d teach the “Action in Progress” objective (ie “I am jumping.” “He is throwing.”) by having the kids kick a bouncy ball. The part of it I thought was just super genius was to have them “kick it” off different body parts, since that would not only put a twist on things, but also help them learn words like foot, head, elbow, knee, etc. To me, that sounded pretty darn entertaining (although my ultimate idea of entertaining is running for an hour straight, ha). Needless to say, after about 3 minutes of this lesson with my group of 4 year olds, it was obvious that they were bored out of their minds: I had Neeka rolling around on the carpet, Igor (I love this little guy's name) staring at the ceiling singing in Russian, Sabina throwing her tokens at "Girl Sasha," who in turn was crying her eyes out… There was certainly no English-language development going on. Finally, when another little girl jumped out of her chair and hid behind one of the beds (I have to teach 3 classes on Fridays in one of the school's bedrooms: the kids have way nice bunk beds for their nap-time), I decided to give up on my kickin' lesson (:)) and just go with the flow. So, I started a game of hide and seek. Within seconds, the kids were enthralled with this totally unplanned game, and I couldn’t believe how easy it was to work in the English and get them talking. While I was glad they got into things, I was a little discouraged at how badly the lesson I'd actually spent time planning had failed. Hopefully I get better at knowing what kids think is entertaining soon.

Photo Shoot!

The first week of classes, some photographers came to the school and had us participate in a little photo shoot, from which we got pictures to post on a wall for the parents to see. It was pretty fun! Here are a couple pictures of the pictures that were taken on the playground:

Me with Liza and Aylia


Nastia and her "machina" she cruises around every single day.


Fish heads and Russian kisses

While living in the Russian forest is nice, it also gets kind of boring. So one evening, one of my roommates and I decided to leave the confines of our giant, green, metal wall and run to the grocery store a couple miles away to buy some ice cream. Walking into the high-class Russian grocery store in our sweaty work-out clothes and talking to one another in English definitely earned us a lot of strange looks (I am getting quite used to those now--we seem to get them a lot). After buying our ice cream, we decided to go explore what the other little shops around had to offer, and eventually found ourselves in another grocery store—except this one was underground, much smaller, had no other customers in sight, and had for sale an uncomfortably large amount of prehistoric-looking fish heads (animal heads seem to be a big dinnertime favorite here... chicken, pig, we've seen them all). Anyway, being the only ones in the store, the 10 or 12 workers there all pretty much pounced on us the second we stepped in. Quite literally every five steps we’d take in this cramped basement store brought someone new going off in Russian while excitedly pointing at or waving a food product, trying to get us to make a purchase. It was hilarious—unlike anything I’d ever seen. We finally gave in and bought a big thing of round bread that they’d apparently made in a Tandoori Oven looking thing (the lady showed us) for only 50 rubles, and headed out. Before we’d left, though, one of the workers started yelling something, and when we turned around he started blowing kisses at us like his very life depended on it, while another 5 or 6 of them stood by him laughing hysterically. The 10-minute ordeal managed to be overwhelming, entertaining and very strange all at once.

"The People's Palaces"

On the weekends, we are constantly using the metros which, once you get the hang of them, are definitely the all-around best way to get around. Here are a few quick facts about Moscow's Metro:

2nd most heavily used metro transit system in the world (only behind Tokyo)

187.2 miles worth of route lengths

7-8 million passengers/day on weekdays

Soviet leaders decided to make the metro stations what they called “the People’s Palaces,” and fill them with sculptures and paintings whose beauty was basically intended to cause the people to buy into the idea that socialism was awesome. The remains of soviet propaganda are still everywhere in Moscow, but particularly in the metro stations. This station, called “Ploshchad Revolyutsii” (“Revolution Square”) is one of the most famous, and is full of statues of tough Russians working happily (and very very hard, of course) for their country.



Put on your head scarves!

The first thing we did on Saturday was visit the Monastery of the Epiphany, which is the oldest Russian Orthodox “male monastery” (which makes the fact that it is almost entirely pink kind of funny) in Moscow. The current building was consecrated in 1692, and is one of the few in Moscow that still holds regular services. We definitely got there at the perfect time: from the outside, we could hear Gregorian-chant-like singing coming from inside, so we all threw scarves on our heads (women are supposed to have their heads covered inside the cathedrals) and went inside. It definitely was not what I thought it would be. Here were some of the more interesting things we noticed:

-No pews. Just an open wood floor where you stand and listen to the priest. Two babushkas were in there when we got there, and would cross themselves and bow during certain parts of the service.

-The priest: He was wearing this beautiful and ornate, gold and white robe, and would sing for a while (he had such a nice voice), go inside a door at the back for a minute or two, and then come back out and sing some more. About 6 or 7 head-scarved women were singing the entire time off to the side.

-The décor: The main decor was definitely icons: they absolutely covered the walls. Any open space not covered by an icon, though, was painted the same light pink and green that were on the outside, (which for some reason reminded me of the “It’s a Small World” ride at Disneyworld… hmmm).



St. Basil’s

After the monastery, we finally got to go inside the landmark I have been most excited to check out: St. Basil’s! While the outside of it looks like its made of candy, the stone-walled, dimly lit interior definitely gave it that old, borderline-spooky feel that ancient cathedrals often seem to have. The inside was a big maze of teeny passageways that led to tiny rooms that were again stuffed full of icons. Both the artistic detail in and overall quantity of icons in St. Basil’s was astounding. I loved looking at them all. Here are a few pictures from the inside:

One of the hundreds of icons inside. Most of them had similar depictions of Mary and the baby Jesus, who always seems to have been painted to look like a very small adult.


Walls not covered in icons were very blinged-out.


A pretty low-quality video I took of Red Square:



The Ballet

Another highlight of the day was seeing a Russian ballet inside the Kremlin, which happened to be Sleeping Beauty. While I admittedly fell asleep for about 45 minutes of it (the thing was 3 hours long), the show was fantastic. I think that having at least attempted some of the more basic moves the ballerinas and cavaliers performed (yes, “cavalier” is apparently the correct term for a male ballerina) back in my high school dance days helped me appreciate, to an extent, the incredible skill and practice it all must have demanded. The best part of the performance, though, began when the orchestra started warming up. I love that sound! The orchestra was AMAZING—it was fun going over to see into the pit during intermission.

A picture the ballet's website had of Sleeping Beauty and the prince.


Fan Club!



While this picture isn't so great, the story behind it kind of is. Around noon, we went inside the Gum, got ourselves some lunch and sat down on some steps outside to eat. Well, this huge group of tourist Asians thought it was the greatest thing they'd ever seen, and literally spent 15 minutes to come up one-at-a-time behind us, hold up peace signs, smile big and have their pictures taken as we sat there with our food, very confused. While I really had no idea how to feel about this sort of thing, one can't help but be at least somewhat flattered when you eating stir-fry from a plastic container on some concrete steps is, at least for a few minutes, more photo-worthy than the Kremlin just across from you. Funny stuff. (I caught a picture of them as they left, so only a few of the crazy tourists are in it.)


Getting the feel of Moscow

It seems to me that you don’t really get the “feel” of a city until you get to just walk around it at the end of the day: no rushing to get into a cathedral before it closes, no stressing about which metro you are going to have to get on, just strolling along, watching the people and the lights and everything else. Moscow’s main street is an awesome mix of old and new: gorgeous 100-year old buildings next to ritzy, brand-new hotels and banks… Some people probably hate that sort of thing, but here, it really worked. This will sound pretty cheesy, but as we walked around and just took everything in, Moscow kind of seemed to become less of a tourist attraction to me and more sort of “mine,” I guess. I am falling in love with this place! The last thing we saw before we decided to head back was an awesome sunset reflecting off the all the buildings—perfect ending to a great day.

Some quick things worth mentioning:

This is a picture I took of a side-street in the morning... I'm kind of proud of it.


While not the most attractive shoes ever thought up, these things have been the absolute greatest for walking endlessly around Moscow... so great that they deserved a picture.


Skipping church

Well, I suppose if you've made it this far, you've earned the right to read this next story. As many people know, my eyelids have the very unfortunate and rather disturbing habit of swelling up 8x their normal size whenever stuff they disapprove of gets into my eyes. While my face has blown up in front of people several times in my life, I can tell you that this type of thing is much more awful to endure when you don't have the language skills to explain "Oh, this? Yeah, I'm allergic to practically everything... Wierd I know..." to people. Anyway, while I mentioned before that we’ve all gotten some pretty strange looks from people the last few weeks, none of the looks have been quite so astonished or horror-struck as the ones I got today as I sat alone for an hour on bus 121. Apparently, my eyelids were in complete objection to something in the air on the bus ride to church, because, by the time we got off, I could barely see out of them. So. After dry-swallowing as many Benadryl as I'd allow myself (oh how I wish this country had water fountains!) I said farewell to my half-concerned, half-amused roommates, forced my eyelids open with my fingers and stumbled my way back to the bus-stop (yes I know, its a pretty amusing picture). While I did my best to sort of nonchalantly cover my still-expanding eyes as we waited 20 minutes for the driver to get back, and then throughout the painfully long 30-minute ride home, the poor souls who did get a look at me seemed slightly traumatized--funny to me now, but not so fun at the time. -Sigh-. Anyway, I'm pretty sure that my freaky swollen face was the topic of several dinnertime “Oh my heck, you’ll never guess what I saw today…” conversations around Moscow this evening. Hahaha, oh gosh, I’m so glad that’s over.

Sunday night serenade

While my face didn't allow me to attend church today, we were at least given the opportunity, around 7 pm this evening, to enjoy some live music coming from the street below us. After hearing something coming from outside, we all ran over to the hall window to find three middle-aged, very chummy and very drunk Russian men in a circle with their arms around eachother's shoulders, happily belting what seemed to be a horribly out of tune drinking song. It was pretty comical. Turns out I'm not the only wierdy in this town, ha. :)

Itinerary

Here’s the big stuff we have coming up:

Sept. 30th - Train to Kyev —3 of us will be taking a 12-hour long night train and staying with the babushka our head teacher lived with last spring. We’re excited to see the new temple and have her (our head teacher) show us the sites.

Oct. 22nd - Train to St. Petersburg — another night train, excited to see the Hermitage Museum, Winter Palace, the Church of our Savior on Blood, and several other places we’ve been told are must-see.

Oct. 29th - Our 8-day “cruise,” which will include St. Petersburg again, Helsinki Finland, Tallinn Estonia and Riga Latvia.