Lesson Plans, Escalators, and Inside Jokes

"How can I be so tired of lesson planning after only a week and a half?" Erica and I have wondered this aloud several times over the last few days. There have been quite a few adjustments over our first week of teaching, but lesson planning is definitely one of the more exhausting ones. Originally, we thought we'd be teaching 3 lessons per week (one more than our fellow teachers in the CIS). But it turns out that there is such a wide range of levels between our classes that it's more like 5-6 lessons per week. And they follow one after another like waves on the shore. No sooner do we finish one lesson than we are wondering what on earth we are going to teach tomorrow. I have a new respect for all my public school teacher friends who have been planning 5 lessons a week for years- you're all amazing!

Other than that, things are going pretty well here. Erica and I have bonded over home cooked meals, movies, and cultural observations. We've decided that there are so many instances of PDA here that they should be broken down into further categories. So we have SDA (on the street), MDA (on the metro), and our favorite, EDA (on the escalator). I mean, it is a 2 minute ride down to the trains. You have to pass the time somehow, right?

A quick side note: Those of you who have seen the Disney movie "Anastasia" might appreciate the fact that I've had the song "A Rumor in St. Petersburg" stuck in my head for about a week!

Well, I think that's about all for now... stay tuned for more adventures and mishaps! There are sure to be plenty of both!

From Russia with Love

Well, I've been here a week now... I guess it's time to update my blog, huh? Between settling into our new apartment (video tour to follow) and meeting our classes on our second full day in St Pete (!) we haven't had a lot of time to explore the city. But we've had our share of little adventures nonetheless. Like the woman who pulled us onto the metro with her so she could give us directions, only to tell us that we should have gotten on the train going in the opposite direction. :) Good thing we were only on the way to the supermarket, not to class!

On Sunday we met a friend of a friend, Anya, who took us and another German girl (Elizabeth) to her Sunday services and then to lunch afterwards. We decided to walk to the restaurant instead of taking the metro, which gave us our first up close glimpse of some of the landmarks we'd only seen in pictures. It also gave us our first awesome, if tourist-y, photo opportunity!

I had my first typical overseas teaching experience on Tuesday when I went to print out my lesson plan and materials only to find that I hadn't saved them in the correct format and couldn't open them on the office computer! So Erica and I quickly brainstormed ways to do my reading lesson without having the actual text for the students to read. Yikes! I ended up telling them the story and having them work in groups to write down the gist of it (and I took the opportunity to teach them the word 'gist' :) ). It worked out well enough, but I will definitely be more careful of how I format my documents from now on!

All in all, not a bad way to start our year here in St. Pete!

PS. Check out my "Thoughts" page at the top for updated requests