A Vegetarian with Winter Boots Living with Sneg

So it's been almost two weeks since my last blog- apologies. I got a terrible case of food poisioning the weekend before last - ugh. I was so sick for like FOUR days!!!! I have since sworn off meat. I am now a vegetarian while I live in Russia. I always rolled my eyes when someone said they were a vegetarian, thinking that nothing in the world could stop me from eating meat. Well, that's because I hadn't lived in Russia before. Yeah. After unknowingly eating cat/dog, constantly getting stick and now food posioning, I will no longer eat meat in Russia. Nope. No can do. Perhaps I may change my mind once I get my own apartment and can clean the apartment, kitchen and meat to my standard of clean. Until then, no.

What else is new? Hmmm.... my apartment quest continues. It's not fun like it would be stateside- well, it wasn't fun in CT either so I will rephrase. It's not like looking for an apartment in Dallas, that would be fun!

I FINALLY brought a pair of winter boots JUST IN TIME!!!! It started sneg-ing on Tuesday. It stopped briefly for a few hours that night hasn't let up. It's not the pounding we normally got in CT but it definitely is a steady stream of tiny flakes that is quickly building up. Back to my new word sneg-ing. One of the American teachers, SashAlex made it up. Sneg is Russian for snow and ing is the gerund ending. So pretty funny. We all died laughing when she said it too. SashAlex is part homage to Beyonce's new ridiculous name "Sasha Fierce". Sasha's real name is Alexandra but all the Russians call her Sasha and she started hating it about the same time she started hating Russia and teaching. We try to call her Alex, which is her usual name, but then we heard about Beyonce's ridiculous name and viola! We are a hilarious bunch! I am so serious. I haven't had this many laughs at work before in ages! If we had a live webstream of video from our teacher's office, MTV or CBS or Comedy Central would TOTALLY pick us up as a new reality show!!! We'd be funny, rich AND famous =)

Update on permission for visiting Kameshkovo orphanage... I am now waiting for Tatiana, the orphanage director, to contact the Ministry of Education via phone or letter and express her approval of my visiting. Then the ME will decide whether or not to grant me permission. Well Tatiana is on vacation until NEXT Friday. So at the earliest, she could call the ME would be December 1st. UGH! I was doing fine with waiting and just dealing with the run around of all the bureaucracy. But the last few days, it's been very difficult.

What else? OH!!!! How could I forget??? I got tickets to see Yevgeny Onegin- my absolute FAVORITE Russian story. Four of us are going Sunday night and we got front row seats! I love the theatre! Plus, here it's only $7!!!!

On Saturday we are having a Thanksgiving Dinner here at the school for the staff and our host families. Ugh, I am not really looking forward to this. I wish that I could say that I was but that wouldn't be true. I am just really, really tired. And I feel like I am always here at the school and I need a break. The other teachers feel the same but somehow we all feel like we got "guilted" into preparing this dinner. One more weird thing, they don't sell whole turkey birds here, we are buying it in hunks. HAHAAH! At least it will cook faster.

I will post photos of my snowland, new boots and the Thanksgiving Dinner over the weekend!