A (postponed) year in review

A review of 2015? Of my 25th year? In either case, it's about time I got on with it before I forget everything.  I brought in 2015 from Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.  A few months later I rang in my 25th birthday back in Moscow.  There was a good amount of mid-year exploring - to Manchester, up and down the east coast of the US, and a brief stint in Romania (they don't have good cheese, but their schnitzel makes up for it).

I started taking Russian lessons again for the first time since college.  I successfully hosted my first Thanksgiving potluck (and without anyone destroying my apartment!) before marching straight into Christmas, which was probably the hardest away from home since I've moved here.  Luckily there were plenty of good friends around to make it easier.

Next up I headed to the land of my people, where Pawel and his family made me feel right at home during the new year's holidays (even without water).  I headed back to Moscow, but not before a side trip to Krakow, where Pawel tried his best to freeze us to death on his self-guided walking tours of the city.  But we lived! And had a great time :)

As for life in Russia? The sanctions are still on, life is still harder, and the ruble is still in a sorry state.  But Russians are really good at handling crises, and I learned about a dozen phrases to express this during my lessons.  In addition to the phrasal verb "to launder money", which became really relevant after the release of the Panama papers.  Spoiler alert, most people here didn't bat an eyelid after their release, and some predictably stamped it as a Western conspiracy.  For some more light reading about the current state of the Russian economy, look here.

Now I'm a ripe old 26, and what do I think I've accomplished? I've traveled a bit; I've become a pretty good teacher; I've worked on translations that were used in an art exhibition.  I've figured some things out, and more importantly, I've figured out some of what I still have to figure out.  So here's to 2016, to 26, and to needing a new passport soon!  

No, thank YOU

Day 2 of teaching: still very challenging, but also encouraging.  I reported to the office at noon again today in order to fill out some paperwork, which I then had to bring to HR.  2 metro rides and a million signatures later, I headed back to the Mayakovskaya office of EF (this is where I work.  EF is well known around Moscow and has many locations.  This location is named  after the metro stop it is closest to...about a 5 minute walk away) with apx. 20 mins to plan my first lesson for the day.  I had another group of intermediate teens, but what I learned from yesterday combined with a totally different situation led to a pretty successful class.  Unlike yesterday's group (which I teach again tomorrow...hopefully it goes better), this was the first class of the semester for these students, and none of them knew each other beforehand; this meant no side convos, no note passing, and no giving me a hard time for being the new guy.  I also learned to have a more set structure and incorporate more fun stuff.  After doing intros, we covered taking a gap year before/during/after college and talked about all of the negatives and positives associated with it, in addition to different types (travel, internship, volunteer, etc).  After this we worked on phrasal verbs, which was a little difficult as I myself barely have a grasp on the matter.  I sprinkled in 2 games, 2 videos, a random debate, and some homework that I scheduled while they were re-watching one of the videos, and ended at 649pm - right on time.  As the kids were leaving the room, several of them thanked me for the lesson.  Thanked me! As opposed to running out of the room as quickly as possible...I basically wanted to hug every one of them.

Immediately after this group, I sat-in and somewhat co-taught Sheila's adult group, which has been together since August.  Sheila is an older English woman who has been in Russia for over a decade, and she's being moved to a different school (which she found out about only upon getting to work this morning and was not pleased about...luckily she didn't take it out on me and encouraged the students not to either).  We spent most of the time going over homework, so I'm not sure how I'm going to pull off a 2 hour lesson on Thursday, but we'll see.  The group is good, if a little quiet, and I look forward to teaching them...I just hope I can answer their tricky grammar questions and stimulate some good conversations!

After work, Chien and I took the metro home together, bought a few groceries, and hung out while cooking ourselves dinner.  Quiet end to a busy day, which is about all I could handle.  And if there's anything you, my dear readers, would like to see on this blog that I haven't gotten to yet, please let me know in the comments section! I aim to please. Or at least...I'll see what I can do.  That's all for today!

God Bless the Teachers

So I've said it many times before, and I'll say it many more times (now that it applies to me): teachers are grossly underpaid for what they do.  Today was my first day of work, but before I get to that, listen to me briefly whine.

I was wrong about defeating jetlag, because after going to bed at 1am I woke up at 5...it's 1118pm...I'm still up.  Then I had to call Citibank and tell them to get themselves in order and stop messing with my account.  During this 20min phone call, the landlord comes for the rent, which is short because I couldn't get my money from Citi, and then the Citi rep was having a bitchfit (excuse my language) on Skype because I asked him to please hold on one moment.  Then I spilled foundation everywhere, and then I went to work.  Awesome.

Now, on to work! I got there at noon, and my directors (Sarah and Natasha and Braden) all showed me around and told me what was what.  Sarah told me I'd have a group at 5, but the group was really half of Ryan's and hadn't been divided yet.  Take book, attempt to make lesson plan, great.  Then lunch at Natasha's friend's restaurant (3 course meal for $10? Don't mind if we do!), then back to lesson planning and running through the teacher's manual.

The other teachers I've met seem awesome so far, and I'm looking forward to working with them.  My group of 12 teens, however, is a totally different story.  The lesson was supposed to run from 510-650, but by 610 we had run through the entire thing because they didn't feel like cooperating. There was a cross between them not saying anything, speaking to each other but in Russian (which I expressly stated was NOT ALLOWED when we began the class), speaking over each other, and getting off topic.  So then I tried to drag them through separable and inseparable phrasal verbs, but they were having none of it...at this point, in addition to the previous list of misbehaviors, they were also ignoring me/passing notes. Then I mistakenly thought we got out at 640 and released them, when Ryan comes running over from the next room and herding them in because, duh, we get out in 10mins.  So I play a game with the only ones we were able to catch.  It's hard to teach teens when you yourself still look like one, and it seemed as if they thought of me both as a peer and a bothersome authority figure at the same time...I'm going to have to switch my tactic for the next lesson on Thursday.

After my lesson, I sat in on one of Nick's to observe, although he was teaching adults instead of teens. When I finally got back to Rechnoi Vokzal (my metro stop) at about 10pm, I rewarded myself with groceries (figured I should have something besides bread, cheese, and sausage).  Quick note about groceries here: SUPER super affordable.  As in I got a carton of eggs, a bag of macaroni, 2 tomatoes, 3 apples, 2 liters of water, a juicebox, and a chocolate thing all for $4.  Yesssss.

I go back to work tmo with a similar schedule, so for now I'll leave you with this: