Borsch!

At last! I have been in Russia for 2 weeks and was finally given borsch for lunch.

It was delicious.

The Hermitage

On Saturday Sveta took us to see The Hermitage, which is one of the biggest museums in the world. Part of it is housed in the Winter Palace where Nicholas II and Alexandra lived - along with their daughter who you may have heard of. Yup, Anastasia.

The palace is gorgeous. I would definitely have been willing to live here. The best parts were probably the ceilings. Incredible. 

This is the entryway. Talk about grand.

Here is our group in the entry:

This is the main throne room:

The palace has several large malachite vases, which are quite stunning.

And so many chandeliers!

It is hard to see here, but this whole case contains a peacock clock that belonged to Catherine the great. It is incredible. The whole thing is gold and the peacock moves its neck like it is alive.

All of the floors are gorgeous wood mosaics. 

The museum houses 2 paintings by Leonardo da Vinci, 2 by Raphael, and one sculpture by Michelangelo. It is called Crouching Boy. It is slightly unfinished, but so beautiful.

Apparently Catherine the great loved Italian art so she had this hallway made and decorated to copy the Vatican. It is gorgeous.

This is one of the da Vincis:

These are some doors in the da Vinci room that are decorated with parts of turtle shells.

This is the hall of statues:

One of my favorites that I saw was this one, The Three Graces:

Here is our group in the old entryway:

The Gold Room:

The Red Room:

In the Concert Hall we heard a group of men sing acapella. The acoustics were incredible in the room and the music was hauntingly beautiful. 

The group again:

We were all hungry after our 4 ours in the Hermitage, so Sveta took us to get blinis again. This time I tried one with chocolate and bananas. It was fantastic. 

The Crazies

As I mentioned before, I teach 3 different groups. This group has been come to be known affectionately as "the crazies." I teach them 3 times a week along with two other teachers. They are divided into 3 groups and we rotate them through, but teach one group twice each time, our home group. My home group consists of the middle aged girls. They are adorable, though quite rambunctious and full of energy. Here they are:

We had just finished making little penguins, which they loved. 

So cute, right?

This is the oldest group of the three - the boys. They may be few in numbers, but they are quite a handful. We made owl puppets together Friday morning, which they absolutely loved. 

Friday morning was a bit more stressful than usual because one of the teachers who works with us was sick, so we had two teachers for 15 kids. Now the logical way to split them up would be 7 and 8, but no. The woman in charge at the school, Ludmila, wanted them split 5 and 10 with the boys as one class and everyone else in the other one. Things went better than I expected, though it was no small task to hold 10 kids' attention and get them all to practice speaking and complete an owl puppet. But here they are happy as can be:

Despite all their energy and forgetting to speak English, you gotta love them.

Teaching. Round 1

In the last few days I have taught 4 classes. Three different ones, and one that repeated. It has certainly been an experience to say the least.

The first class I taught was a group of 6 year olds who have already been in the program a year, so they are supposed to be learning to read now. We spent a good portion of the time explaining and demonstrating the letter "w." I think they mostly caught on by the end.

The kids in that class are adorable. There is Igor Kim - yes he is asian - and Vlad, who has a full mullet, in addition to several adorable little girls with names like Nastia and Mosha. They were mostly well behaved and enjoyed making the cat masks I thought them how to make and playing a modified version of bowling. 

The next class I taught was that night at a preschool about an hour away on the metro. The kids there range between 3 and 5 years old. Needless to say they are adorable. I thought I might die when cute little Alicia shared a cookie with me during a break. So cute. There is another little boy named Peter or "Pitah" as he says. He may be transitioning into growing a mullet or else is just proudly growing an excellent rat tail. Either way, I love it. 

Anyways, these kids were all super well behaved and I loved them immediately. We made cat masks together and then played bowling and they all participated and seemed to enjoy it. 

The next class I taught was on Tuesday evening. It was much more of a disaster than the other two experiences. We were there early, but no one was there to show us where our classrooms were. The kids arrived late and were already quite rambunctious. They enjoyed the songs we sang with them and whatnot during our opening. Then we split into classes. I began with the middle group who were all girls. They know each other well and thus loved whispering to each other in Russian, despite my attempts to make them speak English. They would all stand up and point their noses in the air and shout in thick accents, "No Russian! English only!" and then keep on chattering in Russian. I had to have them all stand up and  reassign seats in order to split up the chatty ones. 

Things proceeded fine until we got to adding the whiskers to our cats. That was when I realized I had left my tape somewhere. Unfortunately I had already passed out the pipe cleaners, so there was no going back. We tried to attach the with glue, but of course that did not work. The girls would hold up their cat mask and say "Jessie Jessie! No stick!" and point dramatically to the pipe cleaner that was sliding down the glue. Oh well. At least they understood my name and the idea of 'sticking.' 

We rotated and next I had the tiny kids. We did the bowling game, except we never really got to the bowling part. They were entertained by just playing with the cups we were using and throwing pom poms into them from different distances, which was fine. 

On the next rotation I had the group of boys. All boys. Now normally I enjoy working with little boys almost more than little girls. That was not the case with these boys. Lonya wouldn't lift his head off the table except to hit Nikita. Nikita just imitated whatever Lonya did. The boy with spider-webs shaved into the side of his hair (can't remember his name, so that's how we refer to him for now) had to sit right next to me so that he wouldn't hit anyone. The other two were fine, but incredibly bored because I had to spend most of the time just getting them to fold their arms and not speak Russian. 

After the boys, I got the older girls again. This time I tried to separate the ones who I knew were chatty and liked to hit each other, but the table was too small. It didn't stop one girl from spitting on the table and then rubbing another girls hand in it. Surprisingly, those two seem to be besties still. Things weren't much better this time around with the game. 

We've since had an extensive meeting between the three of us that teach this group and are ready to try again tomorrow with our new battle plan. 

Tonight I taught again at the preschool. We made these penguin necklaces and then played memory.

The older group were perfect little angels. I love them all to death. Everything went really well. They were all talking and making their penguins happily. The younger kids were angels too. Except for one. I could tell that most of them were annoyed that she kept disrupting our game and craft though, so hopefully she gets less distracting with time. 

When I finished teaching, I took the metro to my stop and then walked back to my apartment. Of course it was snowing. Luckily, I haven't minded the snow at all in Russia. 

In fact, I love it!

Once the kids settle down and get into a routine I will snap some photos so everyone can experience their utter cuteness. 

St. Petersburg

Yesterday we walked around the city center of St. Petersburg to get a feel for the city. First stop: The Church on Spilled Blood.

The group:

Me, Paige, and Reagan:

I love the onion domes!

St. Petersburg is considered the "Venice of Russia" because of all the canals and rivers that run through it. In the winter they are mostly frozen. But that doesn't stop the ducks from living their lives to the fullest.

One of many parks. Aren't the trees beautiful?

Spilled blood from behind:

"Life is a road and I wanna keep going..."

A memorial from the first revolution:

The Neva River:

This is the main square in St. Petersburg:

That same square from the other side, featuring the Winter Palace:

The ground was frozen solid in the square, but my feet were toasty warm thanks to these boots:

My first Blini in Russia:

It was delicious.

Megan is going on a mission!

So my sister Megan got her mission call. I want to describe my experience in learning about it. So to start off, I am in Russia. Yup, that's still real. So the time difference is a little wacky. Anyways, I thought that she would get her call on Wednesday, so the moment I woke up on Thursday morning (Wednesday night for her) I got on my computer to check for an email telling me where she was going. Nothing. I did the same thing on Friday morning. Nothing. At that point I assumed it wouldn't come until next week, so you can imagine my surprise when I woke up suddenly at 3 am and not two minutes later received a text message from Megan saying she was called to serve in Korea!

I laughed out loud because I was so surprised. And so happy. I immediately skyped her despite it being 3 am.

Anyways, here's to my little sister going on the biggest and best adventure yet. I am so excited for her. Our classic Mary-Kate and Ashley smile:

I will expect to receive a similar photo with Korea in the background come summer.