Russian Cooking

First of all, the sun was shining shortly after it snowed on Saturday. Beautiful.

Sveta came over in the afternoon to teach us how to make borsch (beet soup) and pelmeni (a russian ravioli). The borsch turned out super delicious. It had chicken, beets, cabbage, carrots and of course potatoes in it. 

The pelmeni was slightly more complicated, but not too difficult. First we made the pasta from scratch and rolled it out pretty thin.

We put the pasta over the pelmeni maker, which looked like a metal sheet of honeycomb. We put hamburger meat with some seasoning as the filling in each of the little pockets of dough.

Then we covered that with another layer of dough.

And squished them together with a rolling pin as Sveta is demonstrating in this picture:

Voila! Pelmeni.

After making them we boiled them for around 30 minutes and then ate them with sour cream.

They were delicious.

Valentine's Day

Don't worry, I wore red to celebrate Valentine's day. Or maybe unintentionally communism? Who knows.

I did receive lots of kisses on Valentine's day, but not necessarily from the person I wanted them from. Lonya, a little boy in my class wouldn't stop kissing my cheek while I was teaching. I think it was his attempt to make up for his less than perfect behavior on occasion? Well, here is a picture of him from today, in which he is ironically winking. Maybe? 

 

Ildar was basically out of control most of the day yesterday. He entered the classroom and laid down on a bench and started doing sit ups. Hmmmm. Well, that certainly did not decrease his energy later on. But he was very excited about the alien sticker that he received today. Also, you can't see it in this picture, but he was also wearing black and white striped socks up past his knees with shorts.

Nikita is just adorable. But he is a chatterbox. Unfortunately a Russian chatterbox. If only he had a setting that I could just switch to English, but as of yet I am unaware of one existing.

I snapped this photo as I was leaving the school Thursday night. Don't ask me how, but the kids have recess out here everyday. They seem to manage to have fun waddling around in their giant snow clothes. Next time you are sad about there not being a snow day, just think about the little Russian kids who should probably have a snow day everyday. Or at least indoor recess.

Anyways, happy belated valentine's day from me and the boys in my class!

Private 3

Last night I taught at the private school. The kids were super well behaved. We played pin the tail on the zebra first, which the kids liked. Mostly they liked it when it was my turn though because I was ultra dramatic and tried to put the eyes on Andre's shirt instead of the zebra while I was blindfolded. 

This is Anya, Dima, Andre, Tioma, and Sonya. They are the older group. Sonya is pretty much fluent, but the rest speak some, but not super well yet. 

Kostya and Dosha 2 are in the younger class. Apparently they weren't super excited to get their photo taken.

Marina, Dosha 1, and Alina on the other hand were all about the photo-op. And aren't they adorable?

You gotta love them.

Basic Reading

This morning I taught my basic reading class. I co-teach the class with another girl, Megan. She teaches the reading part to half while I do fun activities with the other half and then we switch back and forth. Today we made owl puppets. Nastia, Elya, and Motvey particularly enjoyed making their owls. They named them Olivia, Stephanie, and Angry Bird. 

Apparently bunny ears are a world-wide thing. Classic.

Motvey with his puppet.

He added angry eyebrows to his. He also kept asking me if I had an ipod he could use to play angry birds. I think he is obsessed.

This is the other half of the class for today. We had a few missing, but here are Monya, Alisa, Mosha, and Igor. 

They are super cute.

We played pin the tail on the zebra, which they really enjoyed. The best part was when I was blindfolded and they all tried to help me put the tail on at the same time.

Oh, and I unintentionally matched the zebra, which I'm sure just made everything even better.

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.