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.