Hello all,
12 weeks under my belt. Everything's gotten to be pretty normal. The shock and awe has pretty much worn off and I just go about my days like anywhere else, laughing to myself at the daily struggles of Russians.
Let's talk food. I've got the Russian version of 7-11 which I visit pretty much everyday, buying whatever weird food creations catch my eye. I'm actually there so often that the security guard knows me by name and everytime I come in he tries to get some English practice, which is hilarious. Tonight I told him how to say beer. His name's Roustam, he's from Georgia. Haha. It's been a terrible struggle filling my belly without a microwave. I'm lost without one. How do people eat without microwaves?? My roommates, to my utter amazement, cook almost every meal they eat. It's mind-boggling. They spend about a half hour preparing a meal and brewing tea, then just go to the table and eat it for 7 minutes, then go about their day. And I just go in the fridge and gulp down a drinkable yogurt, maybe throw down a couple sweet pickles, maybe a slice of God-knows-what type of cheese, and that's it, done deal. If it wasn't for drinkable yogurts I might've had to fly home early. Our fridge has two very distinct cultural styles in it - on the one hand there are beet roots, cucumbers, cabbage, tomatoes and other raw materials that go into cooking a meal and then the leftovers of those meals, which usually include fish heads of some sort, and on the other hand there are drinkable yogurts....tons of them. I usually do most of my eating on the road. The kindergarten feeds me and there is a blini stand right next to our house which I visit quite often. Blinis are like crepes, or thin pancakes. Russians fill them with any and everything at their disposal, from caviar to ham n eggs. I kinda feel like one right now actually and I probably would go get one if it wasn't such a HUGE production to get ready to go outside in the snow. And last thing, I have not seen any corn whatsoever in Russia and its starting to annoy me. They tell me Russians don't eat corn. What are they communists??
My Tuesday morning class from hell got canceled after one class, which is just fine by me. That was the class with the single little old lady at the tobacco institute. What I forgot to mention was that at that single class right in the middle of giving the lesson I tripped and fell (pretty hard) on the ground and she started laughing at me. Hopefully that's the reason the class got canceled. No falling on the job.
A funny thing happened at the kindergarten this week. I had to take the class to arts & crafts, (or as I like to call it arts & farts & crafts). But in order to do that I had to unlock the door to get out of our room. It's usually not locked and the Russian lock system is extremely confusing to a person who's used to normal things, like turning the lock counter-clockwise to unlock and vice-versa. But of course its the opposite here and in my furious struggle to get the thing unlocked I got the key jammed. The teacher came to help but she couldn't unjam it either. So we were stuck in there. People from outside the door tried to unjam it but they couldn't budge it either. A very disheveled person from outside the school had to come in through the window with tools but he couldn't unjam it either! So another worker with a huge beard came in through the window with a POWER SAW and had to saw the door off its hinges!! It was absolutely hilarious. He had the goggles on and there were sparks everywhere and smoke and the kids were going crazy and I was just laughing and laughing. I am single handedly going to bring down the Russian infrastructure, one door at a time.
Ok thats all. Until next time.
12 weeks under my belt. Everything's gotten to be pretty normal. The shock and awe has pretty much worn off and I just go about my days like anywhere else, laughing to myself at the daily struggles of Russians.
Let's talk food. I've got the Russian version of 7-11 which I visit pretty much everyday, buying whatever weird food creations catch my eye. I'm actually there so often that the security guard knows me by name and everytime I come in he tries to get some English practice, which is hilarious. Tonight I told him how to say beer. His name's Roustam, he's from Georgia. Haha. It's been a terrible struggle filling my belly without a microwave. I'm lost without one. How do people eat without microwaves?? My roommates, to my utter amazement, cook almost every meal they eat. It's mind-boggling. They spend about a half hour preparing a meal and brewing tea, then just go to the table and eat it for 7 minutes, then go about their day. And I just go in the fridge and gulp down a drinkable yogurt, maybe throw down a couple sweet pickles, maybe a slice of God-knows-what type of cheese, and that's it, done deal. If it wasn't for drinkable yogurts I might've had to fly home early. Our fridge has two very distinct cultural styles in it - on the one hand there are beet roots, cucumbers, cabbage, tomatoes and other raw materials that go into cooking a meal and then the leftovers of those meals, which usually include fish heads of some sort, and on the other hand there are drinkable yogurts....tons of them. I usually do most of my eating on the road. The kindergarten feeds me and there is a blini stand right next to our house which I visit quite often. Blinis are like crepes, or thin pancakes. Russians fill them with any and everything at their disposal, from caviar to ham n eggs. I kinda feel like one right now actually and I probably would go get one if it wasn't such a HUGE production to get ready to go outside in the snow. And last thing, I have not seen any corn whatsoever in Russia and its starting to annoy me. They tell me Russians don't eat corn. What are they communists??
My Tuesday morning class from hell got canceled after one class, which is just fine by me. That was the class with the single little old lady at the tobacco institute. What I forgot to mention was that at that single class right in the middle of giving the lesson I tripped and fell (pretty hard) on the ground and she started laughing at me. Hopefully that's the reason the class got canceled. No falling on the job.
A funny thing happened at the kindergarten this week. I had to take the class to arts & crafts, (or as I like to call it arts & farts & crafts). But in order to do that I had to unlock the door to get out of our room. It's usually not locked and the Russian lock system is extremely confusing to a person who's used to normal things, like turning the lock counter-clockwise to unlock and vice-versa. But of course its the opposite here and in my furious struggle to get the thing unlocked I got the key jammed. The teacher came to help but she couldn't unjam it either. So we were stuck in there. People from outside the door tried to unjam it but they couldn't budge it either. A very disheveled person from outside the school had to come in through the window with tools but he couldn't unjam it either! So another worker with a huge beard came in through the window with a POWER SAW and had to saw the door off its hinges!! It was absolutely hilarious. He had the goggles on and there were sparks everywhere and smoke and the kids were going crazy and I was just laughing and laughing. I am single handedly going to bring down the Russian infrastructure, one door at a time.
Ok thats all. Until next time.
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