From Russia With Love

Well I started in 2nd grade this week!

I like it better than being in the kindergarten because the kids understand more and are a lot more normal.  Like they are not the monsters like two of the kids in my kindergarten class.  I can actually talk to them and they will answer and engage in conversation.  The teachers are all really nice, too, and I especially like the class assistant because she seems like she's the one who is really in charge and knows everything that is going on.  She likes to learn English and she will ask me how to say things and teach me how to say them in Russian.  Ha and one day the kids were sort of whispering to each other in Russian and they looked and me and Sofia, one of the girls who speaks fluent English looked and me and said "Do you understand Russian?"  And just to keep them sort of in line, I said, "maybe."  And they looked at each other like uh oh so maybe it will sort of make them behave.  The only problem with that is that I'm going to have to actually pretend like I do understand when sometimes I have no idea what is going on...but so far I've been able to keep it up and sometimes I can use the excuse that they are only supposed to speak to me in English...well and my Russian is getting better so it's not like it was a complete lie.

So today I went to the post office to mail something, and this lady came in after me and I was in line behind 3 other people.  And the post office always takes forever.  Anyway, this lady asks me something which I can only assume was something like "where is the line?" or "who is next?" or something to that extent but of course I wasn't sure so I just said, "I don't know."  Ok and remember that I was obviously there before she was.  So the man in front of me took like 15 minutes and I waited patiently and I was standing up at the counter because I could feel the lady behind me moving in for the next spot and then she just goes up to the counter and when the man leaves, she totally BUTTED ME!  Ugh it was really frustrating because I had already been waiting a pretty long time and she knew she was after me.  So since I couldn't tell her, "um, excuse me, but I was next" I just stared her down and hoped that my thoughts would reach her telepathically (and she didn't look at me because you know that she knew what she had just done--taken advantage of the fact that I was a foreigner...).  I just tell this story to illustrate how aggressive you have to be here and how manners are different.  And because I needed to tell someone about how rude it was.