Not the greatest day

I had a nightmare last night wherein I had the class from hell and it took 40 minutes just to get them to tell me their names. I think that's the first of many teaching-related nightmares. I got up, felt like crap, and was supposed to go to a session on giving placement exams. I felt so ill that I almost threw up on the metro. I got there 5 mins late and couldn't find it. Then I had a really rough class where a ten year old kept drawing pictures of pot and vodka with slogans like "Be an alcoholic!" and I had to take them away from her. Kids kept passing notes and throwing balls of paper at each other. I got passed a note that said "Why you don't like vodka? It would make you happy." The kids were upset that I didn't let them play the game I promised if they all finished their assignment, even though half of them refused to do it. They drew me on the whiteboard with angry eyebrows. Then I had to walk to the metro station at 9 in the pouring rain, and of course I didn't have my umbrella. Also, I hadn't had time to eat any proper food all day until just now (it's midnight) and the hallways in the school smelled like delicious food. It was torture. The smell in the toilet, however, was literally gag-inducing. In short, I am tired, sick, cold, and wet. I wish I could go home and eat lots of tacos and sleep.

I think I may call in sick tomorrow.

First full week of teaching!

Sorry I've been bad about posting, but it's been extremely stressful and my internet connection is pretty crap. They took away the classes I was going to teach, so I have no regularly scheduled classes now. I've had to teach cover classes (i.e. be a substitute teacher) all last week, usually with very short notice-- sometimes as little as 4 hours. I'll be doing the same this week, but luckily I already know what classes I'm teaching. It was really stressful, but doable. No nervous breakdowns yet, hurrah! I had good groups my first day, which I'm really glad for. After that though, I've been having a bunch of really little kids-- 7 to 9 year olds. Have I ever mentioned that I hate kids that little? I do much better with middle school aged or older. Y'know, ones that have an attention span longer than 5 minutes, and I don't have to spend all my time stopping them from hiding around the room, or stopping Sasha from kicking Vova all the time. Or stopping the one kid who was cutting his own freaking hair. Wtf. No wonder there's such a high burnout rate with teachers. Tomorrow I have to teach two classes of little kids, and a group of "juniors," or middle-school-ish aged kids. I usually like the latter, but this particular group is really big and ranges from like 9 or so to 13 or so. It's pretty impossible to find something they are all willing to do. Right now I'm not scheduled for classes on Friday, which I hope remains the case because this last week I was so worn out by Thursday night that I could not have taught any more. It's especially tiring because they're all evening/night classes and they're on the other side of the city, so I never got home before 11.

This weekend was good. I just relaxed Friday, and then Saturday I went with my roommates to find this yarn store that was part of the Moscow Woolen Yarn Factory. It was huge. And awesome. I bought lots of cheap yarn-- it was about 2$ a skein. I am working on making an afghan because my thin blanket will not be enough as it gets colder. (I also really need a hat. And possibly galoshes if it stays this rainy, which my students told me it would.) Then I went to a concert with my orientation buddies and we all crashed at one of their places. His flat has a much better location than mine and is soooo much nicer. Not. Fair. The bathroom and toilet was even in the same room, which is practically unheard of in Russia. Not to mention the couches on which to crash. I wish I had couches!! I just have this smelly old chair. ::pout:: But, I did get to try Branston Pickle, and let me tell you, it really is all that Yahtzee Croshaw makes it out to be. At least on a cheese sandwich; by itself it was kind of meh. Apparently you can get it in America, but I've been warned against cheap imitation Pickle Spreads-- you really need to get the real thing.

Well, it's getting late and I am le tired. I think I'm going to start writing some during my metro commute, so hopefully there will be more posts in the future. And as soon as there's a sunny day I'll take some pictures of the neighborhood. I'll try to take some of my crappy little apartment, too-- including one of the toilet, just for you, Holly.

Orientation

Well, I've finished my two orientation days, and things are going pretty well here. I've made some friends (there were 6 other teachers going through orientation with me), and although I'm nervous about teaching, I feel pretty positive about everything. (I'm sure that will change come Sunday night.) My roommates are great-- they're both American and were Russian and linguistics majors. They both speak some Russian and like to practice around the house. I am worried a bit that my Russian won't improve much, so that's good. Our TV doesn't work, and that's how I picked up a lot of Russian last time-- I think I might buy some Russian DVDs. Also I can't start Russian classes yet because I don't have all my hours and I might end up with a conflicting class-- which I really hope doesn't happen because I really want to take a class. If I can't take an advanced class, I might take a slightly lower level than I'm at just for practice. Or, see if I can get a tutor.

Anyway, I'm not sure how much I learned at orientation because we had a lot of people talking at us and it was a bit much to take in. But all of us have mentors who have taught awhile, and I'm going to meet with mine in a couple hours. I did make some friends at orientation, as I mentioned. I kind of think of them as "the Brits" even though one is an Afrikaner and no more British than I am. I had a couple beers with them after orientation last night and we talked a lot about all of our different accents (one of the actual Brits is English and the other Welsh so we were all pretty different in that respect). And we talked about British and American TV and they all agreed that the ending to American Life on Mars was ridiculous and lame. We also decided that our Moscow flats, with their ridiculous peeling wallpaper everywhere, were right out of the original Life on Mars.

Saturday we have our monthly seminar and then a party for the new teachers! I am excited to meet more people. I have to go to an extra seminar to prepare for a week long camp session outside of Moscow that I'm going to teach at. I volunteered for it and I'm really excited about it. It will be my rustic Russian adventure! It will be really great to see more nature, though there are a surprising number of parks around here. I'm not really a fall person, but the changing leaves on the birch trees just about takes my breath away.

I start teaching Monday. I have one group of kids, one of teens, and one of adults. I'm only teaching 11 real hours (I have no idea how many academic hours that is), thank God. They'll give me more classes as other teachers go home or they get more students. I'm pretty nervous, especially as they don't have a copy of all of the books for me to look at. But I'll talk to my mentor about it and I'm sure there will be at least a shared copy that I can Xerox some stuff out of or something.