First Week as a Russian

Today we celebrated many things at the American Home:
1) our first week anniversary of living in Vladimir;

2) birthday of our supervisor/teaching assistant Olya;

3) receipt of our teacher certification certificates.

It was a festive time complete with Soviet champagne! Until we learned that we are going to work yet another day until 10p, sigh! Oh well. I knew my social life in Vladimir would slow down when Zhenya left for the U.S. and when classes started but didn't expect it to halt to an end yesterday!

Oh well. I probably don't need to be out and about everyday. I do need to get out and buy laundry detergent to do laundry. Other than that, I'm all set. Life is good.

I did get another bee sting, this time on my cheek. Again on the right side of my face. Luckily, the swelling of the sting on my right eyelid is gone otherwise I'd be a painful sight. I don't know what it is about Russian bees and I but it needs to stop! I will sleep with my window closed tonight for sure.

What else is new???? AH! The Russian media is mum on their not-invasion and not-bombing of Georgia. Can you believe it?!?!?!? Think Cold War and it's believable. I have to get all my updates on the conflict from BBC, CNN or CBS online. It's crazy. The few Russians I have encountered who use the internet daily have whacked opinions of it. One of them told me that they think that John McCain paid the Georgians to point fingers at the Russians. I told the person that was nuts b/c McCain has no motive to do that and one single American wouldn't have that kind of serious bribe money. The person's response and I quote, "Well, maybe Georgians don't need that much money". I thought I would fall over. Luckily I didn't since we were on a busy street corner, ha!

Speaking of politics, all my fellow expat teachers are vocal about voting for Obama. Go figure. So I scrapped my idea of all of us printing our absentee ballots and mailing them to our boss in the U.S. Especially when I learned that two of them are registered voters in the swing states. Nah. They can fend for themselves on getting their votes in. Ha!

I did meet former and current AH students last night at our school's mixer. It was fun. They are so super interested in us as people and in our former lives in America. It's flattering but strange. Sara, our resident teacher for the last 3 years, has told us that the new students will be even more intrigued as we will be the first foreigners many of them have met. She also told us for the first few months we'll be celebrities around town. Since Vladimir is a small city (approx. 400,000 population) we'll see our students out and they'll wave and want to introduce us to whomever they are with and invite us to join them. I think that will be fun. As long as I don't have to sing autographs, that will be weird.

Okay, off to the magazeen.

Paka!