A Short Update

So much has happened since my last post. I was given one city, only to end up in another. I discovered that Russian Tea Cakes are actually Lithuanian(What? Why? How? I don’t know.) I had an interesting experience with my tickets and visa.. but I am tired and I will cut to the chase. You can expect a more in depth/well written post tomorrow.

Today was my first day attending school number 28, one of the best schools in all of Kirov. Kirov is a city of half a million people, so everything is huge. I have to walk 7 flights of stairs to get from my apartment to the ground, and then almost all of my classes are on different floors as well.

For most students, classes vary day to day. My first day I was supposed to have an English class, a Russian class, a Biology class and then two Russian Literature classes. However, the Russian class was in all Russian, plus I detest Biology, so I stayed with my English teacher. It was such an amazing experience. Her first class was around 15 incredibly behaved students who were all very kind to me. Then she had a class of 6 or 7 students who were her “slackers,” but she was very surprised and pleased that they understood me. I think she is too hard on them, they were all very bright in my opinion. And then my favorite class of all, the second formers.  School in Russia is divided into Junior classes- first form through fifth form, and Senior classes-sixth form through eleventh form. After senior classes, students go to College and then University. Forms are essentially grades. So my third class was teaching a group of second graders the alphabet (I also taught my English teacher the word squat, which she pronounces squad.)

I really like my host family, and my “mama” Irina is very kind. She doesn’t speak English and I don’t speak Russian, but we are learning to meet in the middle. I learned “хорошо” (khorosho) which means good/well/okay and she learned good. Most of our conversations are “да, нет, *hand gestures* *sigh* IVANNNN.” But today she spent about five hours with me, teaching me to read from Ilya’s books. Tomorrow I am going to translate fairy tales from Russian into English. I will also write a better blog post. But it is late and I am afraid that jet lag and a long day of a foreign language wore me out more than I expected it would. I am too sleepy to revise this so it may disappear after I write a new blog post tomorrow.

Пока Пока,

Piffy