From Russia With Love

Ok ok where to start? Well...I'm going to St. Petersburg this weekend! I'm really excited because everyone keeps telling me how great of a city it is and how it's so different from Moscow and I keep trying to picture Russia not being like Moscow but everyone says it's more relaxed and historical so we'll see. I'll letcha know when I get back if that's all true. Plus, it's really cool because that's where the movie Anastasia took place (well and I guess the real story because that really happened, but I think the movie is much nicer).

Right now I'm teaching summer school which lasts two weeks after regular school...and ok, I'm going to be brutally honest here so if you can't handle the truth, stop reading right now. Summer school is an incredible waste of time. I don't mean it's incredible like it's good. I mean that in the sense that I am wasting an incredible amount of time. The students are supposed to have lessons...and they don't because teachers don't show up. They go on field trips that I don't go on with them and I have to come into school in order to...well I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to be doing while I'm there. Plus, I only have between 2-4 kids and they're in 7th grade so they're pretty much allowed to go to meals and everything when they want. So there's just a little bit of frustration. Anyway.

Last weekend, we did get to go on a field trip for teachers! The school always has sort of a teachers' day after school is out and this year they decided to drive to Vladimir which is a village in the Golden Ring of Moscow and it's supposed to take three hours to get there. But it took five. Five hours on a hot bus. Fab. But anyway, we saw some cathedrals and museums and it was nice but we got a little bored and we were all starving because we had gotten there 2 hours later than anticipated. So then we went to this traditional Russian place for lunch--it was like this big banquet hall but decorated like a log cabin (well it was a log cabin but they made it look all quaint and old-time-ish). The food wasn't great, but I was so hungry that I was happy just to be eating!

Oh and here is a really weird story. Yesterday on my way to school in the metro there was this man talking to the police and he looked like he had been stabbed or beaten up or something. It was really disturbing. I've seen bleeding guys in the metro before, like maybe they were punched or something, but I thought this guy was going to die. He had a bandage wrapped around his head that was soaking up blood and his face was ghostly pale with blood running down it and his lips were covered in blood like he'd been coughing it up or something and there was blood all down his shirt and on his pants and he looked like he was going to pass out and I kept staring at him because I thought maybe it was a costume it looked so gruesome. But it wasn't. And it was early in the morning so I was thinking like he had been stumbling around until the metro opened trying not to die. Ahhh big city life. It was probably the Russian mob or something. Crazy.

And maybe the biggest news: my dad, mom, and sister will be here a week from tomorrow! They're going to be in Moscow! I get to show them big city life, show off how much Russian I've learned, take them in the metro to see scary beaten up guys, eat borsch (which I finally tried...alright, I'll admit it's not bad), and do all kinds of touristy things! It's going to be so great. I really can't wait and I can't believe that they will be here!