The Day.

Today’s the day, folks!  MADONNA.  Of course, you won’t really get any photos from me unless I attempt to put them online from work… but this would mean braving the ‘Russian Roulette’ that is the USB ports in our extremely crap computer.  If you choose the wrong port…. time is up for your flash drive.  We’ll see.  For now, I have to get out of this cafe and into a sushi place for a presuperstar concert lunch!  I will give you the scoop tomorrow – promise!

 

My Awesome New FAB Pad

So, my last two or so posts weren’t overly optimistic.  Let’s face it, I was struggling to sound even remotely sane, much less bubbly.  In my exhausted, frustrated and emotionally confused state I somehow forgot to tell you about how freaking AWESOME my new apartment is.

Picture this (you’d better, cause you aren’t getting real pictures anytime soon): A spacious bedroom.  Nearly one whole wall is windows (currently covered in aluminum foil to keep out the midnight sun, but still, windows).  There’s a small wooden table in the corner, where I can eat breakfast and study Russian and for the GRE (that’s right, who wants to go back to school?!).  In the opposite corner is my bed, double or full, a perfect size.  I’ve got a dresser (haven’t had one of those for 8 months) and a off-white antique wardrobe with a huge mirror on the front (novelty!).  At the foot of my bed sits a  small fridge that rattles only a little in the night.  Above my bed, near the ceiling are a handful of rectangular windows that overlook the kitchen and bathroom.  They’re high enough that you can’t see anything in the bordering rooms but they add such a cute touch to the room and allow some of the rediculous sunlight to filter into the interior rooms.

The kitchen is about as small as you can imagine.  I can take about one full step forward  and travel the entire length of the room.  There’s an ancient, possibly cast iron stove that needs to be lit using a match after you turn the gas on, a little sink to do dishes (and all the other uses you can think of for a sink, as it’s the only one), the smallest washing machine known to man, a little radio and a microwave in the kitchen.  Crossing the kitchen, you enter the ‘shower room’.  The shower is about a foot off the ground, and probably 2.5ft x 2.5ft.  Read: tiny.  The curtain is the wrap around kind that makes me think of old cartoon showers and full of…. dolphins, I think?  Anyway.  To get to the ‘toilet room’ you have to climb through the shower (yes, really).  The door to the room opens into the shower, so a good sized notch has been cut out of it to allow for more swinging room.  Well, that’s harder to explain than I thought it would be.  But, maybe you can picture it.  I tried.

In any case, I love my cute little apartment.  I think I love it cause it’s mine.  Sigh.  OH!  I have a little tv and VCR too.  It didn’t have the right cords before today, but Jen is SO going to watch her a little Johnny Depp as a pirate tonight!  First English entertainment in a month!  Woo Hoo!

 

Speaking Too Soon

Last week I decided that not having a computer wasn’t all that bad, it actually felt a little liberating.  Two minutes later, someone was offering to fix it.  Did I jump at the suggestion? Of course.  Unfortunately, I became optimistic  *shudder* and thought I would have a working computer in no time.  No such luck.  Apparently windows just completely died, but that is easily fixable.  BUT, I guess my computer is heating up way too much, so the tech said I should get it fixed at a sony service center.  First, I should buy a hard drive or use someone else’s to save all of my stuff, and give my computer BACK to mr. tech man.  It’s starting to sound like too much work.  We’ll see how crazy I am after a week of little to no entertainment.  I know I have a plan, and I know it’s only 25 days until Jane gets her butt here, but…

I found my Madonna ticket!  Palace Square, August 2nd!

I seem to have lost a lot of things between moving three times.  Like, a frying pan and peanut butter.  How does that happen?  I have my own paranoid suspions.

Experienced a Russian movie theater today, to watch ‘Ice Age 3’.  It didn’t matter that I barely speak Russian or that I hadn’t seen the two movies that come before this one, I understood the film and it was good.  It might have had something to do with my current lack of entertainment when I laughed harder than the kids in the theater.

Time surely doesn’t seem to be passing quickly.  I blame everyone who told me it would, and myself for believing them.  Oh well.  Concentrate on the future, so on.  Hopefully I will be online again soon!

 

Step back from the sun!

Phew.  What a weekend.  I have to keep telling myself I should feel lucky that I didn’t spend the majority of it sitting in my room, staring at the wall, litterally twittling my thumbs.

Friday was pretty difficult.  I ended up having a ‘row’ with our DOS about her treating us like 7 year olds and ‘punishing’ us for ‘not keeping our room clean’.  Basically she took a handful of our resource books up to her office so that we couldn’t use them because we ‘left them laying around’.  So, now, we can’t effectively give homework or supplement our classes.  I confronted her about it, and, when I got an extremely condescending explanation accompanied by a smile, I had to take it to the director.  If you want to make me mad, be condescending.  I don’t deserve it, and I won’t take it.  Sorry.

Saturday I went with some other teachers to a beach north of the city.  The weather and atomosphere in general were absolutely awesome up there.  We just sat by the water, swam, cooked shish kababs (we call them shashleek) and relaxed.  The downside was spending 2 hours standing on a crowded, 90 degree bus there and two more similar hours coming back.  Not only am I sunburnt, my muscles are actually sore from hanging on to the poles on the bus.  I won’t go into detail about the bus, just know that that was the worst transportation experience I have ever had.  I hope to wipe it from my memory.

When I got off the metro at midnight I was right by a big 24 hour supermarket, so I decided to pop in and pick up some necessities – milk, primarily, so that I could have coffee (I am addicted now, I think), but some other things too, cereal, bananas, etc.  There’s nothing like waking up and knowing you have something good and refreshing to eat.  Anyway, I got my stuff, went though the checkout and the freaking cashier wouldn’t let me buy my milk.  I can’t imagine why.  So, because that’s all I really came in for, I put my food in a locker and went back through the store, just to buy milk. When I got to the checkout again, they said something about shutting down all the registers for 10 minutes.  .  .  Ugh.  So there I stood.  Silent.  Staring.  Sunburnt.  Slightly Sandy.  Eventually I aquired breakfast and made it home.

Today I met my friend Elen for a little morning shopping, it was great.  I think we always have a pretty good time when we are together.  I found some clothes that I would like to buy, but I couldn’t today.  After that, I went directly to a Zenit football (soccar) game with the same people.  For some reason I expected it to be inside(?!).  Alas, I wore the exact same cut of shirt that I wore to the beach and just intensified my sunburn.  Oh well, this Wisconsinite needed some color. 

I wish I could give you some pictures from this weekend and the month 8 picture (EIGHT!), but, I can’t for now. You’ll just have to imagine.

 

Oh the DRAMA

My life is filled with it right now, it seems.  I’ve moved twice in as many months, I’ve had 4 friends move away, dad visiting and general work chaos (like heavy duty demolition on our building WHILE we are teaching inside, under the constant threat of death by building colapse) add on the ‘loss’ of my computer – the source of every ounce of entertainment here in this Russian wasteland – and the fact that I got three hours of sleep last night after seeing mylosest friend off at 6am and you get one weepy, tired, stressed out Jen.

Anyway, no update on the computer, still black screen no matter which option I try ‘repair’ or no ‘repair’ on windows.  I might buy a card reader for my camera memory card and go to internet cafes to keep you updated.  Hopefully I haven’t lost all of my pictures that were stored on my laptop’s hard drive.  We’ll see.  At this point my biggest worry is in two weeks when I will be moving to a single apartment, with no computer, no interent, only Russian TV and no one to talk to.  The plan so far: Up the Russian lessons and study for the GRE.  So… 1996, only, without tv.  And living alone.  Ok, how about so…. 1980 mountain hotel closed down for the winter with only a typewriter.  Yeah, let’s hope that doesn’t happen.

 

An Apologetic Update

Hello out there, blog readers!  I just wanted to check in and apologize for not writing lately.  My schedule’s been increased, I’ve moved, Dad was here and we’ve had or are about to have 5 teachers leaving.  That’s a lot of goodbye parties, let me tell you.  Anyway, I am taking a break from my mountains of planning to do to fill you in on a little bit of what I have been up to.

I moved across the courtyard.  This was a generally sucky and sad task because A) I did it by myself, B) It was raining and C) I actually felt sad about leaving that craphole of an apartment because it meant the end of an era.

Dad came and we had a good time walking to the moon and back  around town and seeing the great sights of St. Petersburg.  We saw Swan Lake, went to the Circus (without any bears or tigers though, a bit of a disappointment), saw some amazingly b.b.o. (big beautiful and old) churches, ate some extremely delicious food, strolled through parks and learned some stuff in museums, but only the 1% I could translate.  We also saw two attempted robberies and a near drowning on the Neva.  Hopefully I will be able to post pictures soon, but the stupid internet at my new apartment is even MORE tempermental than at my first.

I haven’t had Russian in 3 weeks, and I believe I have lost some of what I knew, to put it mildly.  I start again tomorrow, so I have some major studying and homework doing to do.  Truthfully, I can’t wait.  Learning this language has been really good for me.

Cassie, Aaron and Elizabeth are all gone now, Fiona and Joel are leaving in a week, so this has been a somewhat challenging period to get through mentally and emotionally.  I prefer things to stay the same, you know, but the last ten days has really put a strain on my denial ability.  I still hear the missing teachers talking in the staff room and I still picture myself going back to the old apartment.  I do see this as part of the progression toward the end.  It’s always been coming but now I can mentally check certain steps off in my head.

I will be moving again in 8 or 9 days, and AGAIN about 10 days after that.  Hopefully I will be done then, settled in for the final push to the end.  Which, by the way, the end will rock my socks off, as far as I can tell.  Jane, Moscow, ferry cruise, Stockholm, Minneapolis (4FFFUM), and home.  Home has it’s own pull, I can’t wait to get back and see everyone and everything and eat again.

Ok.  That’s the update for now, back to the grind.

 

The Seven Month Stretch

 

The End of the Petergof Era

On Friday the teachers and administrators in Petergof had a farewell party.  It was strange – not nearly as pleasant as the Christmas/New Year’s party or the Women’s Day party.  People were in bad moods, I was recovering from a headache and I just didn’t want to think about never going back out to Petergof again.

While the 90 minute commute each way wasn’t the highlight of my day, I did start to see it as my zone out time or my midday nap time three times a week.  Plus, it was nice to work both at the central school and out in the suburbs – I was able to see almost all the teachers and administrators, and had access to all of the resource books.  I’ll be happy to not be a postman anymore though, and never have to cart out reams of paper or extra books again.

The really sad part of this is that I probably won’t ever see blond Oksana again.  She’s a real sweetheart and it’s been great practicing my Russian with her, while she practices her English.  Her English skills have gotten so much better since I first came out there (not because of me or anything, she takes lessons from someone else), but it’s really cool to see such improvement without being involved in the process.  Dark haired Oksana promised that she would see me before the summer is over, probably to take me to Pushkin where her family has a little souvenir shop.  Of course, that didn’t prevent me from turning into a blubbering mess when we left.

I was so ready to just be sad on the bus back to the city.  I wanted to be sad.  But then our Advanced students came back to the school.  Apparently when class was over they got some beer together and walked to the park across the street, got slightly drunk and then decided to see if we were still at school. At the bus stop, drunk Fiona talked them into coming back to the city with us and celebrating the end of classes.  At this point I was a little bit frustrated and angry becuase, damnit, sometimes I just want to be sad and cry.  Instead of pouting about it and being stubborn, I tried to get into the mood by drinking wine on the Marshutka and then on the Metro.  Of course, that worked.  So, we all came back to the city and then we walked with our beverages around until… um.. *cough* 4:30.  About an hour after the sun started to come BACK up.

 

True Speculation

So, as I am sure you have gathered here, we teachers have very little control over our lives.  This generally includes where we live, but once in a while we get to make choices.  When I first applied, I said that I would prefer to live in an apartment.  A couple of days later I was told nope, homestay or nothing.  The next day, it was back to apartment.  Why they even asked in the first place is a mystery to me.

Now, the living situation for summer and the end of my contract is COMPLETELY up in the air and determined by many many factors, most of which have nothing to do with me.  Here’s the rundown, as best as I can explain it.  First, let’s pretend it’s yesterday.

We have 13 teachers at Language link.

4 live in the apartment on Kazanskaya – Brian, Joel, Lucy, Ashley

3 live in Bolshaya Konushnaya I (just made that up!) – Denise, Fiona, Stephanie

4 live here in BK II – Jen, Cassie, Aaron, Elizabeth

2 live by themselves or in a homestay – Becca and Andrew

Now – everybody is leaving at different times and of course Language Link wants to maximize their $ (or Ruble, as it were).  Denise just left, so there is a room in BK.  By July 1st it will look like this:

Kaz – Full still.  Joel *might/probably will* leave on July 7th – leaving one extra room

BK I – one empty room.  Fiona leaves July 7th as well.  Two empty rooms.

BKII – just Jen.  Three empty rooms.

Becca still in homestay (probably, but she is miserable, she leaves July 20th or so)

Now… After July 7th is when things start to get messy.

• If Joel stays and Brian isn’t forced into a homestay (who knows why, but that’s the rumor right now), Jen and Steph can live together in BKI. (perfect preferred option)
• If Joel actually goes home and Steph elects the homestay, then Jen moves to Kaz.  (second prefered option)
• If Joel leaves and Steph moves to Kaz, then Kaz is full and BK I is empty.  Jen *might* be forced into a homestay.

There are some other little factors that one can never completely rule out here.  For example:  Aformentioned, miserable Becca might want to move into BK I, which would mean that it would be full until July 7th, when Fiona moves out.  This means that I would be in BK II for two weeks by myself.  I am not sure that this is possible – they might force me out into a homestay for that long.  I wouldn’t put it past them.

Now.  I really like where I am living.  I love the people, the apartment is nice and roomy, we have a bathtub, living room and an oven – which is more than any other place can claim to have.  If I leave here, at least a couple of people will be upset and feel hurt and I will miss living with these fun people.  Also, if I move, I might only be over there until late June – is moving worth a month?  *BUT*  I really don’t want to take the chance of being forced into some scary Russian woman’s house.  From Becca’s experience it will be terrible.  And I really love the people across the courtyard.

See how complicated this is?!  What should I do?

P.S.  I forgot to mention that I have no idea what Language Link normally does with these apartments in the summer.  For all I know, they could keep BK II and rent BK I, they could rent them both out and force both Steph and me into homestays.  I don’t like to think about this last option.

 

Cause I know you miss the food page…

This is how much food I bought today and then carried about a mile back to my apartment.  Total cost was about $30, and I could not have possibly carried more home.  All I need now for the week is bread and juice, which I will get at a closer store tomorrow.  Acquiring food here is hard work.  Click picture to enlarge.