Let it snow!

Oh the weather outside is freezing
Everyone's catching colds and sneezing
The boilers are on the blink, oh no!
Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow!

It doesn't show signs of stopping,
And we've bought zephyr for scoffing,
The electricity's threatening to go,
Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow!

When we finally get it right,
The heating and lights are all on!
And if we're really lucky tonight,
All night long we'll be warm.

The wind outside is howling,
And our stomachs are loudly growling,
But the gale continues to blow,
Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow!



Apologies for any bad-scanning and awful rhyming, I never claimed to be a poet or lyricist.

I'm currently nibbling on a bun filled with home-made tvorog and looking out occasionally at the thick blanket of white and the snowflakes whirling though the air. I've now got a sore throat too, so I'm sure it won't be long before I join the other half of the village in their community cold.

The cows here give so much milk they've made signs to advertise its sale at 200 roubles per 3 litres (or 75p a pint). On top of that there's enough to make a big saucepan of cocoa each day, and to produce home-made sour cream and curd cheese (tvorog) too, all of which are very tasty.

I have learned very quickly to fear the word снежок! It means snowball, and no sooner does one hear it and duck than see a lump of snow land somewhere close to one's head. These kids are really accurate, and we're scared to take them on in a snowball fight because we know they'll win!

It's doesn't feel much like Halloween, but then we can't celebrate it here because apparently it's evil and scary. The lights and boilers being totally off in the morning was scary enough for me! I do wish I could watch The Nightmare Before Christmas though, as it's so weather- and date-appropriate.

Until next time (provided I don't freeze to death or perish in a snowball fight),
Bye!

Oh the Weather Outside is Freezing
Everyone's catching colds and sneezing
The boilers are on the blink, oh no!
Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow!

It doesn't show signs of stopping,
And we've bought zephyr for scoffing,
The electricity's threatening to go,
Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow!

When we finally get it right,
The heating and lights are all on!
And if we're really lucky tonight,
All night long we'll be warm.

The wind outside is howling,
And our stomachs are loudly growling,
But the gale continues to blow,
Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow!

Спасибо Sundays #toomany

This was supposed to get written yesterday, but yesterday was really 'meh' and so cheering ourselves up by watching the Inbetweeners film was more important. That film's really funny in the same way as the Inbetweeners series was, so if you don't like dick jokes then it's not for you.

With a month to go both of us keep mentioning/thinking about/counting down the days until we get home. Luckily my parents called last night and a chat with them reminded me that I can only function by having something to look forward to, and a big part of my feeling demoralised was that I didn't have anything concrete to look forward to here, so I was defaulting to the next good thing: going home.

Now I feel a bit better though, because I have stuff to look forward to here:
- A community game (sounds like a sort of live action role play game) on Saturday where Vicky and I might get to play baddies that the kids have to 'defeat'
- Potentially going to Kitezh (going to ask Katya about that happening)
- Game club, which has its first edition today - I really hope it works! The idea is to have a solid organised weekly session of Game of Thrones, Twister, Mafia and other such board and parlour games. Idea is to have a choice of games to play instead of having just Game of Thrones out and then a maximum of 6 players being able to play and others being left out.
- Half-term, when Vicky and I get a break from teaching (though teaching is one of the things I like doing most here, when it's going well)
- Starting new modules in the textbooks we teach - feels like it's about time to do some different topics.

Gratitude! That's what this weekly column's supposed to be about. Thanks this week go out to:
- Sergey for taking us to Moscow, being really patient while we took ages picking souvenirs, and being an all-round decent tour guide
- Vicky for being hilarious and for taking the One Direction jokes way too far. I can't believe we actually have a shrine now. For a band we don't even really like or know a lot of songs of.
- Bacon crisps, for existing
- Na Zdorove cereal, for the same reason
- Those ladies who came and gave the soap masterclass
- Jessie J for telling me it's okay not to be okay. (Yes, sometimes I listen to pop music, and what of it?)
- My friends and family for telling me to keep my chin up

Nobody likes Mondays anyway.
x

Odgar & Hare

Today has been as changeable as the weather: it's rained, snowed, hailed, been incredibly windy and been bright and sunny.

Both Vicky and I woke up in bad moods, partially due to the rain. At breakfast I felt unseasonably homesick and gloomy, despite a very encouraging conversation yesterday to the effect of 'keep your chin up, you'll be home and with your friends in a month'. Part of what keeps me going is knowing that quitting would mean binning my entire degree, and that is not appealing in the slightest seeing as I've worked so hard to get here.

Things didn't improve when Galya had a go at Vicky for not mopping and sweeping the kitchen last night - the bane of our lives isn't aware that as volunteers who don't know how to do all of the kitchen duties, when we're on evening duty we only do the washing up (which takes an hour). We're always paired with another adult who does the sweeping and mopping and putting away the food, which is really nice as it's lonely and creepy in the kitchen at night. Vicky left after doing the washing up, fairly assuming the guy on duty with her would be along later to finish off. Turned out he hadn't showed up, and Vicky got blamed for the results. Because I am a coward, I conveyed this last sentence loudly in Russian to nobody in particular in order to put Galya to right. She heard, and then claimed she hadn't been telling Vicky off, while still moaning about it all. Yeah right. She slammed the door in our faces while we were discussing Shakespeare, then she told us to shut up while cleaning the tables because Vicky and I were having an amusing conversation, which made me want to cut off her remaining fingers and feed them to her, disguised in a disgusting cabbage-filled pilaf.

We had to set 6th form an end-of-module test today, which felt mean but is mainly to help us - we need to know what to go over and where the gaps in their knowledge lie. Shockingly enough, it seems they didn't know the present tense of the verb 'to be' before we arrived! 5th form also had a test, but we did it as whole class rather than a sit-down-be-quiet thing as we know that's asking a but much of 4 rowdy 11-year-olds. Also worryingly, they didn't know how to spell 'one' :S.

After lunch we peeled potatoes (Galya told us she'd do it herself, but we insisted as Arina had asked us to. Don't want to give G any more fuel to her fire, as we can imagine her calling us lazy and unhelpful if we'd accepted her offer). Once we were done with potato mountain we had a spontaneous dance party to Call Me Maybe which was playing on the kitchen radio (because we can
, and because everyone already thinks we're crazy), then we cleaned Sergey's house, which is always alright because we get to listen to the awesome rock radio station. It was even more pleasant this time as Han, another volunteer (think he's from Vietnam) had made us special delicious sweet instant cappuccino stuff. He's really nice - we totally owe him for spontaneously doing our breakfast washing up duty the other day while we were at a lesson. He nearly did the same today but the dreaded G prevented him from doing us such a generous and pleasant favour.


*******

On balance though, the past few days have been great:
- we've had decent lessons, although I still get nervous when I realise I'm just a student and have only a 140-hour TEFL certificate and no previous classroom experience before Orion.
- we got to make soap on Wednesday! Seriously, soap-making is really great fun - we made a 'friendship soap' by everyone mixing up colours and glitter with soap and chucking it all in one container (me and Vicky muffed it and added smell when we shouldn't have, so the whole batch stinks of peach and biscuits). Then we made our own individual soaps - I made a 'coffee cake' by mixing cappuccino and biscuit scents in a brown, bronze and gold-glittery soap, and a beautiful fruity rose with layers of red strawberry, yellow peach and green watermelon. Afterwards there was gold glitter everywhere!
- On Wednesday night we had another two-person-party for being here 8 weeks out of our 12 and a bit. Today it is officially a month until we come home on the 26th, which should also warrant partying but tomorrow is a work day, so we'll have another party tomorrow. Vicky is amazingly good at the 50 Shades of Grey drinking game, and really got into the spirit of enhancing the characters with silly accents - chavvy Anastasia Steele has to be heard to be believed.
- I've got quite into Anna Karenina now, though I'm only 23% of the way through. It's like reading a really tawdry soap opera where everyone's in love with someone who isn't their spouse.
- Yesterday we got pizza for dinner. 'Nuff said.

Toodle pip old beans!

Trip to Mosc-ow!

The -ow! is for pain caused by said expedition - my legs and feet were killing me after walking round Russia's capital and its gigantic souvenir market all day on Sunday.

Angry, cook-related rant, please feel free to skip this:
--------------------------------
Things started out rather shit. I mean literally, we woke up to find cat shit on the carpet in the hall. At the crack of dawn Galya promptly launched into a 5-minute tirade blaming us for not letting the cat out. I informed her that we had let the cat out, twice (he sneaked back in after someone the first time). She said she told the visitors to let it out, but she should well know by now that any unsupervised cat should not be trusted, and if one sees Smelly Cat (aka Basik/Basil/Ash/The Phantom Pooper) he should be lobbed out the door without mercy or relent. Either way, I have had it up to here *Lois indicates as far as she can reach above her head* with her blaming us for cat accidents, and leaving us to clear up after them when we haven't been the ones leaving them in the house. We always make sure they're put out in a timely manner, because they have no litter tray, food or cat flap here. Which seems odd because she leaves Nyusha in her room at night. Where does Nyusha go to the loo? What does she eat and drink? Galya seems to think cats eat potatoes and drink milk... we tried to update her on the 'cats are lactose intolerant carnivores' thing, but she laughed in disbelief. Poor kitten.

Having not satisfied herself with blaming us for the cat mess, Galya then proceeded to shriek at us for making her late. Nobody bothered to tell us we had to catch a specific bus to Moscow in advance, we thought we were getting a lift. So it was very rich of her, after delaying our getting ready by making a huge fuss and waking everyone up over the cat shit, to then start telling us off for being a couple minutes slower. In the end we caught the bus just fine. She sat in front of us on the bus so I attempted to blow up her head with my mind, Sheldon Cooper style.

/angry rant
-------------------------------

It was a long journey to Moscow: a lift to the bus stop, then a bus to somewhere or other, then a minibus (marshrutka) to Tyopli Stan. We stopped at Typoli Stan at a shopping centre for coffee and pastries in Кофе Хаус (translit. Coffee House) then took the Metro to Red Square. Red Square was even more impressive than I'd imagined. Vicky and I went round St Basil's Cathedral while Sergey waited outside (he was our tour guide/chaperone for the day). I found it most interesting and educational; I learned all about fools for Christ, and who St Basil was. He seemed to go around butt naked working wonders. Fair dos.

We went to ГУМ, which is like a very pretty, classy shopping centre with the very fanciest brands. We popped inside the Russian equivalent of Fortnum & Mason's and nicked loads of free cheese samplers. Mmm lump of Grana Padano :-)

After that we contemplated going inside the Kremlin, but decided it was too expensive and that time was short. On our walks we passed the State Duma and the National Library. We walked from Red Square to Arbat and then all the way down it; it felt strangely quiet, but then it was a Sunday lunchtime. We stopped for lunch at Teremok - we had been after Italian food, but were so starving that we were quite happy with blinis. Sergey suggested we grab a coffee afterwards, but we spotted the doughnut selection and decided on pudding. Suddenly I realised it was a Dunkin' Donuts we were looking at, so absolutely had to get something (we don't have them in the UK, and I'd heard many good reviews from the US). I had a doughnut éclair filled with chocolate cream and topped with chocolate icing and crunchy chocolate balls. Delicious is an understatement.

We hopped on the Metro to the Ismailovskiy market: imagine the entirety of Camden Town was a vintage, military surplus and souvenir market, and you've nearly got it. We spent hours in there looking at the fake Kremlin and being indecisive over souvenirs. I think I've got most of my shopping done bar a couple of guys (Matroyshas don't strike me as very masculine gifts). Once we were done deliberating it was time to get back on the Metro and get on our way home. Queue visiting revolting portaloos, a bakery called paul's, but not that Paul's (oh fine French patisserie, where art thou?) and hopping on a marshrutka back to who-knows-where, where Lyosha was waiting for us in the car.

Overall it was great, but it's strange to think I might live in Moscow for three months. It's like someone being taken to the Houses of Parliament and Oxford street and then being asked if they want to live in London. It's just the tourist sights, not places where one would live and see every day.

*****

Yesterday we helped the children write Christmas cards to their Godparents (I think that means people who sponsor them). They decorated cards with feathers and sequins and such, with our help as translators. It was charming, if a little unseasonal! Knowing the post around here, the cards might just arrive on time! We have Liza from Ecologia Youth Trust here for the week, she's a friendly, witty lady and I enjoy chatting to her at mealtimes.

Today we're back to the ususal: teaching classes, moving logs and ironing. Bizarrely someone did the breakfast dishes during our class, so we were relieved of duty. Strangely masochistic as he is, I'm very grateful to the guy.

Same New Same Old?

I haven't updated since Sunday because we've really fallen into a routine here, and frankly I don't know whether that's exciting for anyone to read. Since a 3 weeks ago we've been receiving weekly timetable rather than daily, which makes it seem like time is going much faster. If you want a routine run-down, here it is:

08.30 - Wake up, get up and get ready for the day
09.45 - Breakfast
10.15 - Wash the dishes
11.00 - Free (aka lesson preparation)
12.05 - Teach a class
13.00 - Either teach a class or free
14.00 - Lunch
15.00, 16.00, 17.00 - One of these hours is free, the other two hours community work and/or other housework. Timings of each mixed up.
18.30 - Dinner
23.30ish - Bedtime

After dinner we're usually free, lesson planning, chatting, reading and so on. We had our first Russian lesson in over a week yesterday, which was nice because it was our last lesson on participles (which are devilishly hard in Russian, but frequently used in literature). Next time we'll be on to a much easier and more amusing topic.

Vicky's off washing dishes now, tomorrow will be my turn to do after-dinner duty. We've been added to the rota for that because all the adults here take a turn on it to add to their huge workload.

Classic

Nothing new with people really, I still find the cook infuriating, impolite and revolting as ever. Kids are still sweet and still crack me up. Kittens are still cute.

It's not really a grind or a drag though: I enjoy teaching, I don't mind all the housework because I know it's appreciated, and I've got good company to talk to.

Think of it as old but good, like an album that you've listened to many times. Sure, you've got your favourite tracks, and some you don't know and love so much but still like listening to. Can you tell I've been listening to London Calling by The Clash quite a lot over the past few days? What a brilliant record, simply timeless.

Спасибо Sundays/ Halfway Sunday

Today we are officially more than halfway through our time here in Orion. To celebrate we've been drinking Russian beer, eating marshmallow clams called Zephyr, crisps, and some things called Choco-Pies which are similar to Wagon Wheels. We've been playing the Science of Sleep drinking game while watching the film, which is a great film: funny yet confusing.

Спасибо this week must be said to:

- Yura for the incredible home-made sushi today (smoked salmon, cream cheese and cucumber flavour), easily the best dinner here yet in my opinion

- Maxim and Vicka for inviting us to play Game of Thrones - having read most of the rules in English Vicky and I are now much more on the ball. After I left for kitchen duty Vicky placed second out of four people. Max obviously won haha, but he's very competitive. Makes me want to beat him at it even more!

- Katya for taking mercy on us: after the 'experimental week' it has been declared that the Kindergarten are incapable of behaving themselves properly in our 'classes', and therefore we won't be looking after them from 5pm until 6.30 every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Huzzah! Instead we will have classes with the two 6-year-old girls Daryona and Sonya. (Monday update: we had our first lesson today and it went very well: a lot of improvising had to be done, but the end result seemed to be that we had educational fun.

- Vicky for being especially supportive and, as usual, hilarious, and for making sure I pay my sit-up fines for using the computer.

- Kozel for making tasty, tasty beer :P

- The students who are working hard and giving us plenty of patience while we try out new things and work on our teaching style and lesson content. The books we're working with can at times be very dry and repetitive in their lesson plans, so we're using our creative powers to tailor them to be more interesting to the students.


Additionally, I've started from the beginning of my Serbian textbook doing all the exercises, in an effort to keep my Serbian up. I don't want to come back in 4th year and look confused, and moreover I intend to go to a Serbian summer school next year so I'd like to be of a decent intermediate standard when I go.
-------------------

Monday edit

Just in case you're looking for some useful phrases you might need to learn the Russian for before coming on your year abroad, I would recommend the words for:
- Help!
- Flood!
- Hose
- Mop

I wish I were joking, but seriously, we were washing up a filthy milk churn from the farm when all of a sudden the drain hose detached from the half-full sink and the whole lot of filthy water spilled out onto the floor. There was dirty water EVERYWHERE. We were mopping for a full 50 minutes to get the place clean, leaving us only 10 minutes to prepare for our 4th form lesson.

Perhaps I'll look back on this blog later and laugh, but right now, I'm still feeling horrified.