Week 3 of teaching:

I'm definitely learning a lot when it comes to this teaching stuff, and getting a little bit humbled in the process too... I still have a lot to learn. Having said that, my lessons still went so much better this week! I got to teach drama--which is pretty much very interactive story-time, which was way fun! The best day was reading Sleeping Beauty. When it got to the part about the fairies coming, I pulled out a "magic wand" I made out of a spatula and some pink pipe cleaners, and had them "put spells" on each other with words and phrases we'd been talking about. They thought it was the greatest thing. They all especially liked saying "Miss Aly, go to sleep!" b/c I'd start snoring really loud, and they thought that was funny. Anyway, anytime make-believe is part of the lesson they love it, and start talking up a storm. I love those small moments where you can tell they've really learned something, too. There's nothing better. Anyway, the picture is of me teaching the youngest class, with my current favorite little kid, Robert in front. He's always so caught up in the lessons and trying so hard to talk, I love him. And really, I can't get over how awesome his hair is. His parents have him decked out in little rocker outfits everyday, he's so stinkin cute.



Robert and another kid named Anton are our "star students" for the month of Sept.





Anton is the biggest sweetheart. He goofs off sometimes, but he's one of those kids that you can just look at him with a disappointed face and he'll instantly shape up--unlike some kids that seem to need to have their very lives threatened before they'll behave, ha.

Speaking of such children, this little girl is named Ulyana. I like this picture because she looks so sweet and nice here, which is not generally how she is in class... She'll get better though, I'm sure.



Saturday Excursion

This weekend, we took an 1.5 hr. train from Moscow to the Trinity Lavra of St. Stephens--which is equivalent to the Salt Lake temple for the LDS faith for the Russian Orthodox church. There were definitely a ton of Russian Orthodox believers there. It was founded in 1345. The interiors of the cathedrals are all painted frescoes. I don't think I've ever seen such beautiful and interesting decor in any old church I've been to--it even beat St. Basil's.




As you can see, we had to wear scarves over our heads while we were inside the complex. While we were there, we also got some of the famous holy water they have coming out of a few fountains around there. This is my roommate Kaitlyn filling up her flask she bought to fill up.



Hurray for non-rotten tasting water!

After visiting the monastery, we had about an hour to just walk around the town itself, called Sergiyev Posad. This was really great, because it felt like a real Russian town, as opposed to a huge world-city or a gated, high-security, impersonal community out in the middle of the forest.




I loved how the grass everywhere we walked around was just kind of allowed to grow however. For some reason, I thought that the graffiti written in Russian was kind of cool too.



This whole day was my new most favorite place we've been.

A few other stories:

Buckwheat

Since being here, I've been kind of sick pretty often. I finally made an effort to talk to the cooks at the school again, and I think things are good now: as far as the gluten-free food thing goes (they still don't seem to be big fans of us). So, I am now being fed this for almost every meal:



Mounds of plain buckwheat. I have actually really liked it. Sometimes they give me ketchup to throw on it, and its really good. Hopefully I don't get too sick of eating every day for the next 3 months, though. I wish Mexican food was here in Russia. We did find one Mexican food restaurant the other day, but it was kind of expensive. Might be worth the money though here in a few weeks. I miss my corn tortillas!

Hangin out in the Metros

Since we have met up with the other teachers from Moscow almost every weekend before going out into the city, and since no one has yet figured out how to meet up on time, we are spending a LOT of time waiting in the metro stations. Luckily for us, most stations here are like mini art museums. This is the one we were at on Saturday. I really like this picture.



Sharing My Talents

While I knew, coming here, that I'd have many opportunities to serve when it came to teaching English, I had no idea that I'd end up sharing my mad cooking skills as well. As anyone who has ever had to live with me knows, this is the only thing that ever brings me within 3 ft. of an oven:


Cake-mix cookies.

I learned about these delicious things senior year in Mrs. Bassett's class, and it is one the recipe I have memorized--unless making buttered toast can also be counted. Anyway, this last week, we again made several evening treks to our favorite little underground grocery store by gorki 2. While we usually end up buying something when we go, the people there just kind of seem to love us, and always end up giving us free stuff, too: we've got free bread, free pastry things filled with meat, free apples... the best freebie yet, though, was this past week when they gave us all our very own whole-dried fish.



It tasted like extremely salty fish food. Apparently, its a big thing here to eat them with beer. Probably because the only way I think someone could eat an entire one is if they were at least somewhat intoxicated.

Anyway. Since these people have been so generous to us, we kind of thought we should return the favor and bring them some American food. While people who live with me for a long time get pretty sick of my cake-mix cookies, my roommates have really liked them, so we used a strawberry cake mix and made them some. We're not sure how well they liked them--they all seemed a little bit unsure when they were eating them, haha--but oh well.


"Americans! Ah, Barrack Obama!!"

This, so far, has been my favorite reaction that people have when they realize we're from the states. One thing we don't really know though, yet, is why they always end up laughing really hard after they say "Obama." Hmmm.

Anyway, we know we're in a touristy section of town when we see these:



I've seen more pictures of Obama in Russia than I did in America.

Anyway, Ukraine this weekend, so excited!! 12-hour train ride, sleeping in compartments like they've got in the Hogwarts Express (hopefully we can buy some chocolate frogs...), doing baptisms at the brand-new Kiev Temple, seeing some more very old cathedrals... should be an adventure!