Oh look at that. It's April. I have not written anything here since the end of February. Don't worry you didn't miss much, so I'll catch you up quickly.
Starting in February, I basically steeled in to a routine. I had classes all day. I prepared for them in the evenings and, on weekends I tried to do something interesting.
I guess I am a good english teacher (though it didn't feel like it to me) because I was pretty popular. But I don't have much to say about it. Most of the learning depended more on the motivation of the students as far as I was concerned. I liked almost all my students and the classes I dreaded most were when the students were not motivated, but they were still nice people.
Almost all my classes were corporate clients. I would travel to their offices and give them lessons at either the start or end of their work day or, in one lucky case, on their lunch hour. This meant a lot of awkward downtime and I ended up using up a lot of my day waiting. For a few weeks I was spending an hour and a half each tuesday in a train station waiting room because it was too much travel time to go home and it was warm there and they had cheap soup in the vending machines.
I discovered that I am best in one on one situations because I can react to exactly what a student needs work on and skip the stuff they already understand. I hate the situation where students need different things and I have a whole class so I have to choose between boring the more advanced students or leaving the slowest behind.
Two of my clients were a woman who works for Baltika beer company (now owned by Carlsberg, in case anyone cares) and a man who works for Philip Morris (although it turns out that Philip Morris Europe has almost nothing to do with PM USA anymore). So basically I am contributing the alcohol and cigarettes distribution in Russia. Most annoyingly, seeing as how I don't smoke, it was only Phillip Morris that offered me free samples.
Out side of work, only a few interesting things happened, and I suspect that they were more interesting to me in the moment than they will be to you in retrospect so i'll try to make the details short and use pictures.
I went snowboarding again
I went to a professional Hockey playoff game (that was actually quite fun):
I bought a car. Of course I had to buy a used car, and they are quite expensive here so this was the best I could get:
Sadly, a few days later it was stolen before I ever got to drive it. I just came outside one morning and it was gone...
Following a tip on the internet, I had the best doughnuts ever:
So far, I have managed not to go back, but my willpower is weakening.
I went to an outdoor celebration of "spring" with my multicultural group. Notice how warm we all look. Later we went to Lyuba and Roman's house(they are the couple on the right) for lots of pancakes (the best part of how they celebrate spring here)
I had a party at my apartment to celebrate 3 birthdays: mine and also Dennis from Cuba (far left in picture above) and Cristina from Spain (middle - in orange hat so we don't loose her in a crowd)
A month later, spring finally came. Well, what passes for spring in Russia. Now I can wear my "light" jacket, rarely need a hat and the river is almost melted.
Actually, 2 days before I took this picture, people were walking their dogs on the completely frozen over river. I was stunned at how fast it melted and broke up, but then someone told me that they drive an ice breaker through as soon as the thaw begins so people will not walk on thin ice. I wish I had been home to see that happen.
Oh, and I met my cousin, Marina, who lives here in St. Petersburg. My maternal grandmother's family is from here and some faint contact has been maintained, so armed with an old address and phone number and the help of english speaking russian friends, I tracked her down and we met. She doesn't speak english, so I needed a translator, but it was fun. We are 3rd cousins. That means we share a great-great grandmother, or, to put it another way, each of our grandmother's shared a grandmother. Here we are together:
(I got a haircut as soon as possible after I saw this picture)
So, you are caught up. My visa expires in May so things are coming to a close here. They like me where I teach and have invited to help me get a new visa and return. I loved the people, hate the cold. I will think about it. In May I go to moscow for a couple days with a friend and from there I will fly to Germany for a visit with some friends. I also may travel to italy and switzerland to see other frinds. I'll try to keep this blog updated. I will back in the USA on May 30th. And wither then, I cannot say. (bonus points if you know where that line comes from ... sadly, only nerd bonus points).
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