And The Teaching Begins

This was my first week teaching full time.  I work at a place called DDUT which is an acronym for Dvorets Detskogo Unosheskogo tvorchstva, which translates to something like, Palace of Children's (Youth's) Creativity.  In DDUT, kids take dance lessons, drawing lessons, music lessons, language lessons, etc.  To get to this place, I must take the metro to the south end of the city, and from the metro I should take a shared taxi bus called a Marshrutka.  These marshrutkas are kind of like a bus, but also a taxi.  You must tell the driver to let you off... I am really bad at this, and have gotten off a stop early or late every time so far.  Someday soon I will master this method of transportation, but in the mean time I make sure to have extra time for traveling.  My classes are quite interesting.  I have children from age 11 to 18.  Boys around the age of 15 are uncontrollable! I tell my classes that I don't speak Russian, although that is not true.  They should only use English in our classroom, but they don't like this rule and speak Russian all the time.  It's funny.  Some of the classes try to trick me into speaking Russian, or prove that I understand them.  It's kind of a fun game, but they know that I understand some of what they say.

I have 10 groups, and all of about 15 students.  This makes for an interesting time trying to remember everyone's names.  Russians don't have as many names as Americans do.  I was actually told that during the soviet era, when a woman gave birth, she was given a list of names and had to choose only from that list.  Some popular names in my classes are: Andrei, Sergei, Sasha, Mihail, Alexandr, Anna, Katya, Julia, Nastya, Viktoria.  I have one class with lots of strange names in it, but these students have come from other countries or cultures.  I have Ilard, Darina Arkedi, Arseni, Galuna, Levan and some others.  It's going to be a fun year. For some reason they have a hard time saying my name.  Katie.  They call me Kate or Karrie.  It's fun.  Most of my classes are pretty good, but they are quite rowdy.  Maybe they will calm down once the classes get going.  One can hope, right?

Back in Russia

Ok, so I intended to write here a while ago, but as I still don't have wireless at home, its been a challenge. This means that I am going to post many things at the same time...  This city is amazing! I've been here for about a month and a half now.  The first 2 week, I stayed with my friend Andrei while I studied and searched for a flat.  He lives a in an area of St. Pete I had never visited before.   I am very lucky to have connections here and my host mom from my previous visit helped me find an amazing flat in the center of the city very quickly.

The flat.  Almost anything you could need is within a 10 minute walk from our flat.  The flat located at the corner of Mayakovskaya's Street and Nekrasov's Street.  Both Mayakovskaya and Nekrasov were writers.  I think I should probably read some of their works, as I’m living on their streets.   Surrounding the flat are many little shops and restaurants.  Directly across from my flat is a Pishechnaya, which is a little Soviet style donut shop.  The make little powdered sugar donuts and the best sweet coffee ever!  To the left is a nice Georgian Food restaurant (which we visit often enough for the woman to remember our favorite dishes).  Georgian food is delicious! Spiced meats cooked on the grill and our favorite Hachipuri, a cheesy bread sort of dish. On another corner we have a bakeshop where we get our bread and sweets.  Bread here is pretty cheap. Right next to our gate there is a meat shop which has a 10% Sunday discount! We also have a fancy little grocery store just next to the meat shop, but it’s a bit expensive so we walk the extra 5 minutes to go somewhere cheaper.  On the corner across from the bakeshop, there is a park dedicated to Mayakovskaya.  A large statue of his head sits there, usually covered in pigeons.  The park is quite small, but its always full of people.  They like to sit there and have a drink or chat.  We live in the city center, but about 10 minutes north from Nevskii Prospekt so its much quieter here.  Grass even lines our sidewalks so the dogs like to walk there. A cat lives in our courtyard.  He is a chubby calico cat that my flatmate named Wolverine.  Wolverine is fed by the people at the grocery store since their backdoor opens into our courtyard.  He gets lots of snacks from them and will never be hungry. We live on the third floor.  In order to get here you need 4 keys.  First the gate to the street, (which someone spray-painted “Blueberry” on, so we can always find our gate), then the steal door to the building and then two locks on the door to our actual flat. Very Russian.

Would you like a tour of the flat? Well if you open the door, you could see all the way to the other side of the flat.  It’s a long narrow layout.  Hang up your coat please and take off your shoes.  On the right is a large room with the toilet, bathtub and washing machine.  In Russia the toilet is usually in it’s own room, so this is a rather western bathroom.  The next room on the right is the kitchen.  It’s a bit small, but it has everything we need, and we like to sit there and chat and drink lots of tea. Just don’t use the electric tea kettle and the microwave at the same time please.  It could result in disaster!  If you continue down the hallway that stretches the length of our flat, the next room on the right is the living room.  It has a fold out couch and a T.V. with a dvd player and a radio.  This room has a big window that we like to sit in and relax listening to Russian Radio.  Continue down the hallway and there is a bedroom on the right where I sleep. Continue further and there is a small room that could either be a walk in closet or a very small bedroom.  We bought a bed and put it there.  It has a window and a radiator as well, so its livable.  Well, that’s our flat.  It’s pretty comfy and cozy. 
Life here is pretty good.