A day in the life of me

Well, I haven't posted since Sunday...and for that I'm sorry, it would be lovely to have a scribe to do this for me. Now I'm assuming some of the wonderful people that read this blog might be interested in my basic day. For the sake of awesomeness, we'll pick a day that I teach at 7:00, or as they say here; 19:00. So let's begin!

8:45 - iPhone alarm goes off, I wake up just long enough to decide if I want to make myself breakfast.

8:45 and 5 seconds - I hit the snooze button.

8:50 -  iPhone goes off again, I turn off the alarm and turn on the alarm I have set for 9:15.

8:55 - I hear my cell phone alarm go off on the other side of the room. I get up and turn it off, then fall back asleep.

9:00 - My iPhone alarm goes off again because I hadn't actually turned the first alarm off. I finally turn it off.

9:10 - I wake up 5 minutes before my alarm is set to go off. Time to lay in bed for another 5 minutes.

9:15 -  iPhone goes off for the final time, I turn it off and go to take a shower/brush my teeth/get dressed/pack my bag.

9:40 - Stand in the kitchen for a minute debating if I feel like I have time to make a sandwich for lunch.

9:42 - Decide I don't have time to make a sandwich, instead I grab four packs of 3-in-1 instant coffee, some little bottles of drinkable yogurt, fill up my water bottle...Debate if I want to make myself a sandwich again.

9:45 - For the second time, I decide I don't have time to make a sandwich. I put on my shoes and head out the door.

9:47 - Finally finished locking the doors, now I spend 3-5 minutes waiting for an elevator. I haven't found the stairs yet.

9:50 - The elevator came quickly, so I take it down to the lobby, turn on my iPod, look around to make sure someone is watching - then put on my sunglasses all cool like. Now I can walk to the metro in style

10:00 - About 1,000 feet from the metro the smell hits me...it smells like I just got punched in the face by raw sewage.

10:03 - After wading through the gypsy farmers market I make it on to the metro...Now it's time to sit and make use of my Kindle.

10:10 - Three stops later the train is packed, at this point it is imperative to avoid contact with all women over the age of 50, or they will come take my much coveted seat.

10:20 - I get off the Purple line at Taganskaya, so I can switch the the Brown (Ring) line.

10:23 - Look around the platform for people I know, 14 out of 15 times I don't see anyone I know.  Train arrives, time to bring the Kindle back out...Standing room only on the train though.

10:40 - I get to to Novslobodskaya(sp) and it's time to look around to see who else is here that I know...I'm usually much more lucky here. Take the escalator up to the street, before I leave the station it is most important to put my sunglasses back on.

10:47 - Walk through the doors of Language Link, training starts at 10:50.

12:00 - Break one, time to make a cup or two of instant coffee, odds are at this point I need to give a pack of coffee to Max.

12:15- Session two, I can't wait for lunch.

1:15 - Lunch time, what to do now? Oh wait I haven't planned my lesson yet, sigh. This severely limits my options for lunch. Go down to the alley to get a Doner Kebab, or if I feel like eating something that won't make me sick I'll go to Teremok for blini, or to Micky D's.

1:30 - Lunch in hand it's time for planning -

2:10 - Spent the last 40 minutes aimless perusing the internet/Facebook and talking to people...Looks like I'll plan my lesson at 4:30.

2:15 - Session three: STOP - Grammar Time!

3:15 - Break time, more instant coffee for me, and some aimless wandering

3:30 - Session four - More grammar

4:30 - "Done" for the day, however I still need to plan my lesson - Time to plan!

6:00 - Lesson is planned and signed off on. Time to go get something to eat before teaching.

6:30 - Last minute tweaks to my lesson, and photocopying.

7:00 - Teaching time

7:05 - Realize I need to go the bathroom.

8:30 - Break for the class, and bathroom break for me.

8:35 - Class resumes, only another 45 minutes.

9:20 - Class finishes and now it's time to mingle with everyone before we leave.

9:30 - Everyone walks to the Metro.

9:37 - Get on the Metro to go home, this trip is a million times better with a riding buddy who can speak English.

10:15 - (Riding buddy gets off - If applicable)

10:25 - Arrive at my station, I can pick up the sweet scent of raw sewage before the train pulls into the station.

10:28 - Walk through the remnants of the gypsy farmers' market.

10:33 - Go the grocery store to pick up some more drinkable yogurt and instant potatoes for tomorrow...Maybe buy something to cook for dinner.

10:40 -  Decided against cooking dinner, walk next door to Micky D's.

10:45 - Dinner in hand I walk home.

10:53 - get to my apartment building and wait 5 minutes for the elevator.

10:58 - Spend 3-4 minutes unlocking the doors to get into the apartment.

11:00 - Wash my hands to get the grime from everything off them, then go into the kitchen to put away my groceries and refill my water bottle.

11:05 - Get on my computer to peruse Facebook while eating dinner, maybe watch some South Park if the internet is working well enough.

12:15 - Continue perusing Facebook.

12:45 - Get ready for bed

1:00 - Someone from home starts talking to on Facebook chat right before I'm about to go to sleep.

1:30 - No longer tired, so I read for 20 minutes.

1:50 - Fall asleep.

And that is a generic day in the life of Kyle. Some days I get reviewed, or teaching at 5. Other days I come home and cook dinner, and occasionally I'll make myself a sandwich for lunch...I usually just pack instant potatoes and a hot dog to throw in them. Tonight though, I made Chop-Suey, so maybe, I'll bring that to school tomorrow!

Internet Burgers

I was asked the other day to start keeping a journal of the foods I eat while I'm in Russia. I hadn't though about it until then, that some of the stuff I eat every day is kind of cool...especially the context I eat it in. Well on Friday I had the perfect meal to describe.

This Friday at Language Link happened to be internet burger Friday. In Moscow there is a company that has a website (but no actual restaurant), and you go onto the website and order the burgers...you know so they can get delivered to where ever you are. I know no one can read this, but here's the link. BIG BURGER! So two of the teacher trainers ordered internet burgers and eight interns. I'm not sure why our trainers ordered them, knowing full well how they tasted. Us interns though, we had no idea what we were getting into. We all placed our order an hour before our lunch break, so our burgers would arrive on time. That hour seemed to take forever, all I wanted was my internet burger.

Well the burgers came in almost exactly an hour, and this is what it looked like:

 

It sort of looks like a BK wrapper...well Big Burger could learn a lot from BK. 

There's only so much I should've expected from a burger I ordered off the internet...but it did cost 200 rubles, so all of us had high hopes. 

 Well by the time the burgers had come, all of us were starving and I forgot to take a picture after I unwrapped it, so here's what it looked like half devoured. I got a Stolichny burger, and on it came lettuce, tomato, salami, bacon, cheese, and thousand island dressing.

The Bun: One word can describe this...Stale

The Salami/Bacon: It tasted okay probably better than the meat patty

The Cheese: I couldn't taste it, it there was too much sauce

The Meat...this deserves its own paragraph...Remember in elementary school, the hamburger patties that tasted like rubber? Well this was a step below that. Except in the US you assume the patty is made of beef, here well not so much. Who knows what it was made of, except some sort of protein that is very elastic.

The verdict: For 200 rubles I could've had an entire large value meal from McDonalds that would have been delicious, the only catch is I would've had to take a 10 minute round trip walk...Internet burgers are a cool concept, but let's keep them that way...a concept

A rose is a rose by any other name

According to Shakespeare, a rose will always smell sweet no matter what you call it. I might have to argue him on that though, some of the roses the gypsies sell...well that don't smell so rosy. What do you expect though.

Today was my first day teaching real live Russians, and it went as only in Russia it could.  I my lesson plan set, I had my first day of school activity (It was speed dating), I had enough materials for the students, the classroom set up, and I was in teacher mode. Thank god I had teacher mode, that's about all I can say. I was told there would be 7-8 students, even though 10 had signed up...there never is a full class. This wasn't much of a problem to me, I had a classroom the size of some janitors closets.

About 15 minutes before class, I was given the packets the students needed for the week, I got ten just in case. As students started to meander in, I had them make name tags, and checked them off the class roster. Wouldn't you know it, the 4th student to enter the room wasn't on the roster. I didn't mind, I figured someone else wasn't coming...and even if the rest did show I had enough materials. By 7:05 I had 12 twelve students, three of them not on the list and materials for 10. It took about another 5 minutes to get the class settled (the class supposedly started at 7).

Well it turns out, Russians don't know how to speed date, so I had to teach them. They took to it like ducks to water, or Russians to vodka. There were most certainly a couple hiccups before speed dating was flowing seamlessly, but that was my fault for not clarifying the rules enough. I'd compare teaching an Advanced English class to teaching 7th or 8th graders. The Russians loved speed-dating as a way to get to know one another, they even understood the harder questions "If you were a board game, what would you be? Why?" I heard a student explaining what board games were, it made me smile. I never did hear an answer to my favorite question "Describe your ideal partner, could it be an ostrich?" oh well, next time maybe. Speed-Dating makes a fantastic ice breaker, just for the record...as long as you make sure to preteach the rules. By the time we finished speed-dating, my lesson plan was useless, and I was two handouts short. My lesson ended up being alright even though I only got through 3/4 of the material.

I didn't think I'd enjoy teaching English, but you know what...I loved it, even with what did go wrong, I felt at home in front of those 12 Russian strangers. I must not have done that bad of a job either, a few asked me after class if I could teach them tomorrow, sadly I must move on and teach a different class. Word of the day: Flexibility


I didn't proofread this

Sometimes there are things you just can't understand

I've been in Russia for 6 days, and in those 6 days I've figured out a lot. 1) Most Russians are totally willing to help you 2)When I walk into McDonald's I just need to ask for the photo menu 3)British English and American English are as different as night and day 4)In Russia anything can happen 5) There's no "American" coffee in Russia

I'm kind of going to skip the first point about Russians being helpful. I asked the security guard in the grocery store where the bathroom was in mediocre Russian, and he looked at me like I had three heads then shooed me away. However my cashier was great, she tried asking me for 7 rubles because she didn't have the right change in her drawer, and I just totally wasn't getting it. So she put up 7 fingers and said "Rubles?" The cashier, a babushka behind me in line, and I...we all burst into laughter. Only in Russia

The 2nd thing I've learned, well I didn't go to Micky D's today, so it isn't totally relevant. However it was a miraculous discovery for me to realize I can walk in and go "Photo Menu Pezshalsta" point at the basket with the photo menu in it, then order away. It's much easier than miming or trying to pronounce the Russian right.

Today was the 3rd day of of the Intern Training Program at Language Link (yawn). Sure it's fun to have something to do, but I'd rather just bum around Moscow with all of the other interns. Moral of the story though, Language Link teaches British English. I speak American English, as do the majority of the interns. "What's the problem Kyle? British and American English are the same, all except for the funny accent." WELL THEY'RE NOT! There are some many different was Americans and Brits use tenses, verbs, and other parts of speech. It's like British English is an alien language. Oh and the Brits spell things weird...There is no "U" in the word COLOR!

 Today was also the day of training where I had to give a mini 15 minute lesson to "Elementary" level students (the students were played by the interns in my group). EFL and Social Studies...you'd figure teaching them would be somewhat similar...it isn't apparently. Well there's some obvious differences, and some things carry over...such as being comfortable in front of a class, and classroom management. The "Teacher-Trainers" want to keep "Teacher Talking Time" or "TTT" to a minimum. That means eliminate narrating what you are doing, example: "Alright class, I'm going to write this on the board and I want you to copy it down." Totally unacceptable for EFL. I'm supposed to just say "Copy this" and then proceed to write. 

I had a unique review of my lesson today, I was intimidating to my students. I treated this mock class as a class I was familiar with and was familiar with me, but that came off as intimidating. There are clear ways to communicate with a brand new class versus a class that you have a fantastic rapport with. For instance, I gave instructions for students to talk to their partner, and after 7 seconds no one was talking...So I clapped and said "I don't hear anyone talking yet!" It wasn't said in a mean way, or even yelled...it was just said sharply, to get the students going, and you know what? It worked. Oh well, I guess if the "Teacher-Trainers" had told me this was my first day or even week with the class, I would have done that differently...but no, it was just a way for them to Nit-Pick.

4) Expect anything in Russia: Nata isn't overly fond of sharing her internet, I bet she would be if I made a big deal of it. Instead of going that route, I figured I could spend some money and get a wireless 3G card for my laptop. I had heard they were about $30 for the card and then another $30/month for mediocre internet. Well, after beers with the other interns and with some help, I went to look at buying a 3G card. I was expecting to pay about 1750ryb for it. Well turns out, it was 750ryb ($25) for the 3G card...I was about right on the price there. BUT! The card came with 2 Free months of unlimited internet, and each month thereafter was 350ryb (about $12). You might think that internet this cheap would be terrible...I mean it costs about as much as dial-up in the US. Road Runner's standard speed is 7mb/s, the 3G I got with MTS has a speed of 7.2mb/s. So the internet I got is actually faster than Road Runner, can go anywhere in Moscow, and costs $12/month whereas RR is $30. I don't get it either.

Now on to coffee, all coffee in Moscow it would seem is espresso. Now espresso isn't bad, however there is something magical about a huge cup of American drip coffee. I haven't found it, and I don't expect to. The best substitute I could find, are these little 3 in 1 packs of instant coffee, sugar, and creamer...just add water.


That's my rant for today, sorry there's no pictures.

Red Square and Starting to Beat the Culture Shock

Yesterday was a big day for me, not only did I get to go sight-seeing, but I also got to meet all of the other interns and a few of the Language Link teachers. Being around other people that speak English and that are in the same boat as me, was a huge boost to me and made me feel much better about my situation...more importantly it alleviated some of my home sickness. It makes me excited to start training tomorrow, so I can A) have something to do and B) Not being alone in the apartment all day.

Before I get into talking about how awesome Red Square is, and how party crazy Moscow is. I finally went grocery shopping. I'd been putting it off for 3 days, and tonight I finally manned up and went to the supermarket, frankly grocery shopping deserves its own post but I don't want to write two posts today. Moral of the story: I'm thrilled that Russia has a taste for Nestle and Dannon. They have all sorts of Nesquik things, such as cereal (which I bought), chocolate dipped blonde sandwich cookies, and ice cream. Dannon of course is all yogurt, but there are some neat flavors like chocolate coconut, and some weird other ones, but it made buying yogurt easy. I bought a small loaf of bread for 18 rubles, which is basically 65 cents. It's easily some of the best tasting bread I've ever had. The milk however comes in cardboard boxes that are just stacked in the middle of the aisle. Oh and I bought a Pepsi, that was probably the highlight of my day, having something that "American" just totally did it for me.

Alright, Red Square: Two other interns and I met at Plushad Revolutsii, which is a ridiculous station, it's filled with all of these awesome bronze statues:

 whenever people walked by the dogs, they would rub its nose...

I think there's something like 32 statues, but only 8 different types, there's a lot of repeats. The metro in Moscow is really a work of art, I'll put all of my pictures on Facebook from Red Square and Revolutsii.

Well I put all of the pictures on Facebook for you lovely individuals to enjoy.

So Saturday with all of the Interns we went to a "cafeteria style restaurant", and I went again today for lunch...fail. For $10 I'd expect to the food to at least be better than Micky D's. When we left the restaurant today after lunch we ran into some interns that had gotten these awesome sandwiches from a street car for 25 Rubles...less than a dollar.

Back to Saturday though, after 5 hours at Vokzal we all went to an apartment to continue festivizing til about 4am. At 4am, it was decided that the plan of action should be to go clubbing. So what do you do in Moscow, when the Metro is closed and you want to go somewhere? Take a Gypsy cab. I couldn't get any pictures of it, but let me assure you, it was as sketchy as you'd believe. The 18 of us took a caravan of Gypsy cabs across the city for the lump some of about $3.50/person, or $14/cab. To those of you who don't know what a Gypsy cab is, it's just a regular guy who picks people up, and for a negotiated price drives you somewhere. The "cab we were in must've been 30 years old, with not seat belts in the back. I wasn't overly worried until I noticed the driver buckled up...when a Russian where's a seat belt, you know it's bad news. It wasn't though, we arrived at the club as a group, and hung out there until last call, which in Russia is about 6:30 when the Militzia come in.

I had had huge plans for being a tourist on Sunday, and seeing the Redbull Flugtag, but getting home at 7:30 killed that dream. I think all of us that went out slept until 5. I'm glad for the first time ever that last call in Portland is at 12:45.

The Post You've been waiting for

This year I got the best birthday present I could've ever asked for, well actually three unforgettable presents.

1) I know understand the meaning of the term culture shock.  It's not every day you get the chance to wake up in a country almost completely opposite of your own. It also isn't every day when you place your order at McDonald's, you need to use the picture menu.

 

Story time, and this leads into my second birthday present. This morning I was supposed to meet with a Language Link rep at 10:15am. I left the apartment a little before 9:00 to make sure I had plenty of time to get where I was going. Well I got on the metro, a little tentatively I may add. Without a cell phone I was traveling into the depths of the Moscow Underground (More on my bricked iPhone later). So I started at the end of the purple line, and had to transfer to the gray line, then get off a Novoslobodskya Station. Well low and behold, I missed me transfer stations a couple times. I finally got to  Novoslobodskya, which is beautiful I might add...here's some pictures 

This looked really cool

 There were ten of these, all different

Well I got to the station, and the company rep was gone. So at this point, I was beyond stressed and I just decided to go home. On the trip home I finally started to get the hang of the metro. It's neat to see all of the different people that come onto the metro and how differently they all dress. In America, we all dress somewhat similarly, but in Russia, it's as if everyone went to Marden's at came back with something different. I'll have to take a picture next time I'm on the metro so you can understand. The ride home was uneventful, but I was still totally fried, and starving...then in the distance, my salvation:

So yeah, I had to order off the picture menu, because apparently a Quarter Pounder with Cheese has another name here. Yeah, I was that homesick the only thing that could help me was the golden arches. So I finished my walk home to my building. Well I got home and my host Nataliya told me Language Link called wanting to know where I had been. So I called the company and had to turn right back around to get to my meeting. This time around, it went much more smoothly....Sort of. I got to the right station, but I couldn't find anyone that looked like they were waiting for me. I must've spent a half hour looking, and finally I decided to call the company on the pay phone. Well, turns out the pay phones only take calling cards, good news was; there was a kiosk right out front the sold them...however the girl didn't speak a lick of English. So I spent about 15 minutes asking people if they spoke English and could help be buy a phone card. So I bought my phone card and called the school, the company rep had been downstairs waiting for me. So the rest of that trip was totally uneventful, and I made it home in one piece with a new found understanding of why Russians looks so downtrodden on the metro.  

At this point I forgot what the 3rd birthday present was, it might be my iPhone not getting any service because it needs to get unlocked again, but it won't restore. So I have to wait until tomorrow to get a working phone. Tomorrow I'm going sight-seeing, so that should be awesome. 

Here's some more pictures I took today:

Sunrise from my room

 Novoslobodskya

 The escalator up from Novoslobodskya, it's probably 300 feet 

 A cool picture of the lights going down the escalator at Novoslobodskya