Февраль. Достать чернил и плакать!

So I had kind of a crappy end of last week, a really great weekend (my Russian conversation group went really well-- we actually managed to stay in Russian for almost 2 hours!-- and my team came in second in a pub quiz and got free beer), and a really bad last couple of days. It's one of those times where everything is happening at once and it's a little overwhelming. Tomorrow I have to have an observation for my intermediate class, and I'm really worried. Which is a little funny, seeing as a friend of mine had an observation last week and I kept telling him it was ridiculous to be worried, of course he'd do fine. So, send me good luck at about 10 am CST on Wednesday. Hopefully I'll still have a job at the end of the week.

Also, I found out I'll be going back to camp for the spring session, which should be fun. I don't know any of the other teachers who are going, but I didn't last time either and I made some good friends.

Great day!

Today was a really great day. Firstly, I found out that my new roommate is moving to a flat closer to her school, which means either I get the place to myself or my old roommates will crash here again for awhile (and I miss my old roomies). Secondly, I had my formal observation today and it went great! I haven't had my formal debriefing yet (that will be Friday), but my mentor said after the class that it went really well. She'd observed the class once before (with another teacher), and she said they were much more under control this time. However, I did cheat a bit-- I knew from talking to my old roommate what things she in particular liked and I tried to include them. I also know that she really didn't like any Russian at all to be used in the classroom, so I made a big show of having the kids repeat the English word for a lot of the Russian they used.

I did have a spot of bad news-- I found out that I'll have to have an observation for an adult class as well (Which is annoying, but makes sense. At least my adult group seems to like me.) , and I found out that my 2-to-1 class want another teacher. No word on why. Which is really what irritates me about it-- I mean, they are paying an arm and a leg for semi-private classes, they deserve to have a teacher they really hit it off with. But there's no way I can learn from it, or find out what they wanted, if no one gives me any reasons.

But back to the good-- I went to the expensive grocery store near here and found cornmeal and a decent sized turkey! The turkey was pretty expensive though-- 700 rubles for a 3 kg bird (which is about $24 for 6.6 lbs of turkey in real people units), but whatever, it's Thanksgiving. I just need to find a pie pan and sweet potatoes and I think we'll have everything we need for the meal!