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?
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?
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