Once Upon a (summer) Time

My mom asked me to write this so she would "have something interesting to read." A month later, I'm finally getting around to it - Happy Thanksgiving?

Summer was a bit of a whirlwind, partially because I stayed almost a week less than in the past.  In trying to cram an entire year's worth of things into about 3 weeks, I managed to: go to a 4 day music festival, have overpriced brunch in Manhattan with friends from college, stay in a lake house with other college friends, see most of my friends and family, road trip down to DC with 2 hours notice, catch the Milford Oyster Fest, and eat everything on my list of foods not available in the food dessert that is Moscow.

After getting back to Russia, I still had some wanderlust to get out of my system, so I took a quick trip to Romania.  Bucharest was a weird mix of classical European and super Soviet, but had great food and the world's largest Parliament building.  Constanta was really beautiful, and allowed me to finally swim in the Black Sea.

Back to Russia, and work/life have been business as usual.  Construction was finally finished on the square by my house, I convinced my roommate not to move away forever, and I've been SUMMONED FOR JURY DUTY AGAIN.  Again.  For Thanksgiving, I'm having a potluck, in which I'll try to fit way more people into my apartment than is probably advisable.  What can go wrong?

Fun fact before you go: remember when Crimea started being Russia again? Remember how the west was like "Not cool bro, give it back"? It's okay if you don't, people kind of stopped mentioning it.  The Levada Center mentioned it recently when it polled Russian citizens on whether they thought Crimea should be returned to Ukraine; a whole 3% said yes! How about that. 

Only holidays, no crises

For those of you who didn't know, Russia has a lot of national (or public) holidays.  This year, for the first time since coming to work here, I had all of them off! This includes the two 4-day weekends in a row for May holidays.  The bad news is that I caught the flu and was so sick that I ended up calling out on one of the days we DID work.  The good news is that in June we had another long weekend, and I was well so I took a little England trip.  The week after that was normal in terms of it being a 5-day workweek, but then I had visitors and got to show them Moscow (and hopefully leave a good impression...I think I succeeded.  It mostly involved eating, shopping, and selfies, so I don't see how it could've gone wrong)! Everyone who hasn't visited, step up your game.  It's been 3 years, the dollar is really strong, and I live in an amazing location.  

Then there are summer holidays, or summer vacation in American - I'm coming home for a few weeks this summer to swim, sun, shop, and stuff my face.  Please pencil me in.

In other news, there's no "deep" crisis, whatever that means.  So everyone can calm down.  Everything is casually at least twice as expensive because THERE IS NO CRISIS and everything is totally fine, in case you were wondering.

Lastly, the Guardian recently did a really well-written, interesting, and informative series about Moscow called Moscow week - I strongly urge everyone to check it out; most of what they say is really accurate and will give you a much better idea of what Moscow is actually like, in addition to maybe explaining a little why I like it here so much.    

The summer, and then not the summer

I spent the first half of the summer finishing out my employment at EF Mayakovskaya, and with it my time teaching children for the foreseeable future. I'm glad to have had the experience, but it's not for me right now.  Before heading back to the US, I took a weekend trip to Warsaw to visit my friend Pawel and his family.  They were the best hosts I could ever have asked for, with Pawel's parents feeding us delicious (and huge amounts of) home-cooked food for every meal, and Pawel himself showing me pretty much everything there was to see in the city - the Old Town, New Town, parks and palaces, forests, a very new castle, and even a pit stop for shopping and a mad souvenir hunt. Warsaw is much smaller than Moscow, and most buildings are new - they were reconstructed after the war, but kept as close to their original style as possible. In short, I loved Warsaw and it was a welcome break from Moscow.   

The following weekend, I flew back to the US for the next month, where I was met with friends, family, and familiar food.  I spent as much time as possible at the beach, got a fair bit of shopping in, and spent a lot of time driving to and from seeing people.  I was able to help my dad out with doctor's appointments after his heart surgery the first week I was back, and I'm happy to say he's been recovering well and quickly.  Another thing I got to do at home was go to and camp at a 4 day music festival by the beach in my city called The Gathering of the Vibes.  I camped with a big group of friends, and in order to gain free entry I worked with another friend selling tickets in the parking garage for a day.  Not bad at all! I didn't get to spend a single day on my own during my vacation, but it was a lot of fun and flew by rather quickly. 

When I got back to Moscow, I started my new job teaching English to EF's corporate clients.  It requires quite a bit of commuting every day, but I really love it so far.  I've had a few stints of being ill and also found out I have a new lentil allergy, but I've also gotten out to see friends and enjoy some of our parks.  I even rowed a boat a few weeks ago before the cold set in! And despite what you may be hearing in the news, there is plenty of food on the shelves, and it has not decreased in quality.  Though cheddar cheese has all but disappeared, leaving me deeply distraught. 

It's been said that without regularity, your writing suffers, so hopefully this hasn't been too painful to read.  That's my news from Moscow for now! 

Notes from Russia

Notes from Russia! I made a nice little excursion to Vladimir over Women's Day weekend, and it was lovely - beautiful old things, minus the hustle and bustle of Moscow.  Also back in March I celebrated my birthday for nearly a week with dinners, walks, and happy hours.  

This summer I'll be coming home for about a month to soak up some sun, sand, and fresh seafood; tickets have already been purchased! Please prepare to feed me. 

Despite the situation in Ukraine heating up and the west placing sanctions on Russia, nothing has changed on the ground here.  Although I did find some really great sweet and sour sauce in the store, so that was pretty groundbreaking.  

In other news, my landlady callously (and rather unfairly given that we live at the last stop on the metro line and a 15min walk from the station) raised our rent, so we're hoping to move after summer vacation - hopefully closer to the center.  

Our academic year at school is nearly finished, which is exciting though also sad as many friends have left or are planning to leave Moscow.  Warm farewells and hugs to everyone as they begin new journeys, which goes for those of you back at home and scattered across the globe as well.  As for me, I'll be here...for now.  

Back in the (former) USSR

The nicest part about getting back to my room was that my subletter, Ira, had washed all of the linens so that I didn't have to do it.  The day after arriving in Moscow, I had to go into EF for training and then the rest of the week for oral placement testing (OPT), demo lessons, and more training.  It was a rough week, as I was still jetlagged for all of it.  Classes officially started on September 3rd this year, and I have some comments about year two of teaching.  

This year has already been going a lot more smoothly than the last in terms of the classroom, and this is even with my new class of 4 year olds.  It was really nice to walk into a classroom of familiar faces, and even nicer when they were happy to see me as well and said they'd been waiting all summer to practice their English with me.  Even with classes completely filled with new faces, I still felt much more at ease because I know exactly how the courses work, what the exam schedules are, and generally how to be at the head of the classroom. 

Work aside, it's also really nice to be back in Moscow.  My Russian was a train wreck when I first returned (still better than September 2012, but...not good) but has already returned to its previous level, I'm already settled in with my apartment, I already have friends, and now I get to focus on seeing the people I love and discovering new things about the city.  People have asked me how I feel about Russia after going back to America, and while I loved being home, I also really enjoy being here.  A lot of stuff doesn't make sense to anyone (example: I went to the shop for apple juice.  A 2 liter box of the same brand with the same expiration date was cheaper than a 1 liter box.  Just because), but that's part of its charm in my opinion.  So, I'm going to keep on keeping on with my Russian adventure and continue my semi-regular updates in the meantime.  

Spring has sprung

Spring has sprung in Moscow, and kept on springing into summer.  Moscow was -8C when I left for Siberia, +8C when I returned, and briefly floated around a comfortable +15C for a couple of weeks. It was nice springtime weather until the temps reached +29C/85F a few weeks ago, bringing us summer. I'm sitting here writing this at 930PM, and the sky is still light.  It's been consistently WAY HOTTER here than back home.  That's crazy.

Also crazy were the May holidays we recently had.  May 1st was International Workers' Day, and it was combined with the holidays we didn't get this January (or was it February?), giving us Wednesday the 1st-Friday the 4th off from work (you guessed it, I had to go in on Saturday.  All good things must end).  Then we had a few days off around May 9th, which some of you know as Victory Day.  For this, the Russians have a huge military parade throughout the city, displaying all sorts of planes in the air and tanks rolling down the streets, followed by an evening firework salute in several locations.  Not bad, not bad.

There have been a few other crazy things going on as well, and I'm struggling to remember everything I've been up to.  One is that my new roomie arrived on the 15th.  He's from England, so I only understand what he says some of the time.  Another thing is that my last week of the academic year at Mayakovskaya begins tomorrow! After that I'll be at Marino school, way in the south of Moscow.  Not looking forward to the commute.  For those of you not in the know, I've re-signed my EF contract and will be sitting tight (with all of the knowledge I've gained so far) for another academic year.  I can't believe this one will be over in 2 weeks.

What else? Random tidbits.  I've now been to Tsaritsyno and Sokolniki parks, in addition to Vorobyovy Gory (no Wiki link for this one, but it's a huge parky, nature preservey place in the southwest of the city, on the river bank) during the holidays.  I officially booked my vacation home for the summer (inquire within for additional details).  I've replaced my first light bulb in this apartment (the exciting life of a sort-of-adult).  I've been branching out and trying new cute/quirky cafes with friends (no disappointments so far).  And, I've played hostess to Jackie's sister, who was stranded at Vnukovo airport when her layover en route to Petersburg changed from a few hours to overnight, with the airline only providing hotel rooms to Russian citizens.  She took it all in stride, even as she, Eggert, and I were drenched with rain on the way to my place.  This is Russia.

What more could a girl want? I'm going to get back to my lazy Sunday, courtesy of the rain.

Alive

I don't really have anything to say, but people have been questioning whether I'm alive so I guess it's time to write something.  First, YES I AM ALIVE.  And still in Moscow.  And still in love with Moscow, which is quite toasty at -4C.  And not in love with figuring out loan repayments from across the world.  I've been working quite a bit more lately (actually working, not just being lazy) since a bunch of new students have gotten added to my schedule, but that just means that I'm no longer ridiculously under hours (though it was nice while it lasted since we have a set salary).  Oh and one of my kids won our grant project, which means she gets 6 free months of study and I get a cool placard thingy.  Like a boss. 

Russian winter isn't freezing right now, but it has managed to destroy my less-than-2-month-old boots (from the salt) and provide amazing sledding and impromptu snowball fights (best snow usages, obvi).  There also hasn't been a day without snow on the ground since it started...whenever it started.  So long ago that I can't remember, but I'm not tired of it yet. 

I also have a question for America: when is the last time you were in a hotel without internet? Not a hostel, not a motel, but a hotel? Jackie and the other Petersburgers visited for a few days this week to attend their midyear Fulbright conference, so I went to stay in the hotel with them in order to maximize hangout time.  The downside was that not only were we without wifi, but internet all together.  And they didn't understand the concept of amenities like extra shampoo or...anything.  Not letting this get us down, we spent most of our free time either traveling to food or eating food as any good vacationer does/as Jackie and I do.

As far as returning to the US, I don't know when that's happening or for how long.  I might live here during the summer and just visit home for a few weeks, or I might resign a contract but have the entire summer off (and no idea what to do with the apartment), or I might go somewhere entirely different for the summer; everything is up in the air and will be for at least the next couple of months.  That just means you guys will have to get your acts together and visit Russia, I promise it will not disappoint!