A few difficulties

I haven't actually written anything in a couple of weeks; I've been too busy. But a few things have happened recently.

First, I thought I'd mention the state of the train transportation. I use the train twice a week to go to Butovo, a suburb of Moscow. It takes nearly 30 minutes for me to walk to the station, and then after getting on the train it takes about twenty minutes to get to Butovo. From there I have to take a bus, so it's quite a commute--about 70 minutes if the transportation timing is good. The train is super cheap here--to go to Butovo and back it costs one dollar. But the problem with the train is that when it's crowded, it's ridiculous. Tonight I was packed into the train car's entrance, completely unable to move because of all the people. It's an unreal experience that I'd probably have to take a picture of to convey the full effect. I couldn't believe that I managed to do it. If the temperature were much higher I would probably have had some kind of a breakdown.

Also in exciting news, I noticed this morning when I took the trash out that there were apple cores littered around the trash can (under the sink). I was annoyed with myself for being so careless, but I didn't want to take the time to clean them up. Then tonight I noticed that a piece of bread I had thrown away this morning had a nice half-dollar size hole in the middle. It definitely wasn't there this morning. This, I concluded with the other evidence, meant that I must have some kind of pest living with me.

I had heard scratching and scrambling a few nights ago and my near-asleep state went directly into panic mode for a couple of minutes. I consoled myself by thinking that with all the stray cats around (generally at least ten somewhere around the front of the apartment building) there wasn't much chance that there would be any rodents. I guess I was wrong. By the way, my greatest fear is probably rats. I was originally traumatized by Lady and the Tramp and then the fear was reinforced by the novel 1984. I'm okay with them in a container or on the street if I can see them and they're not very close, but knowing or thinking that a rat might be around without being able to see it is just about the scariest thing I can imagine. Even in video games I get really tense about this (see Elder Scrolls series).

As far as I know the whatever-it-is (I'm hoping that it's a cute little mouse, since I've not actually seen it yet) hasn't left its home under the sink. I don't remember ever finding the cabinet open, and I've left food open and out in the kitchen for several days without noticing any foul play. Even so, I'm sleeping with both the kitchen door and the bedroom door closed tonight. Normally I don't bother with these doors because they're both folding and a bit of a pain to close. Actually the kitchen door isn't difficult to close--it seems to be relatively new. The bedroom door, however, is probably the original from before the apartment was renovated, as it can barely move at all, and when I do manage to stretch it across the door frame it has difficulty actually latching shut. These doors are really something else and I don't know of anything like them in America--I'll have to put up a picture sometime.

The work load for this week is intense, and I'm basically working every day from today until next Friday, maybe Saturday. So I shouldn't have written this really, but oh well.

Random thoughts from the last 2.5 weeks.

Things I miss about Vietnam:

• The food. I had Solyanka yesterday, a traditional Russian soup, and it was wonderful. However, it seems difficult to get vegetarian options here
• The prices. I'm bringing in about the same amount of money as in Vietnam, but the prices I've seen so far are similar to those in France, a bit higher than America.
• My bathroom. But I doubt that will ever be beat (although there were a few times when I wouldn't have minded it being heated).

I'd say that the only disappointment I've had so far is the state of my flat. Although there wasn't anything on the floor, it was otherwise rather filthy. The previous owner clearly had a culinary bent for all the utensils and dishware he owned, but didn't have the sanitary concerns to properly clean them. Also, there were plenty of things left in the refrigerator, like onions and pork and half eaten tomato sauce. There was even a full bag of foul-smelling potatoes under the stove top. I've dispensed with most of the perishable items and stuffed almost all the personal items (DVDs, cologne, coin collection, etc) into the top shelf of my large closet. I still have to do a thorough cleaning of the kitchen, dinnerware, and refrigerator, but then I think I'll feel pretty good about being here.

The only permanent disappointment is the shower. It really only sprays straight down because of the way it is put on the wall, so I have to squeeze into the upper right corner of the tub if I don't want to hold the shower head myself. Even so, it's preferable to my situation in France because it's private and much cleaner (though still a bit dirty).

I would say that Russia is certainly quite similar to Prague, although everything seems more run-down. One of the things I disliked about Prague was that the cashiers never failed to give me dirty looks when I couldn't give them correct change. Out of the four purchases I've made here, only in one of them did the cashier ask me for different change, and she seemed pretty nice about it.

I grabbed some sparkling water by mistake—won't do that again. There's only a shelf between regular and sparkling water, and I had just gotten some water by the same brand so when I grabbed it I didn't notice the tiny letters saying “sparkling” in Russian. I'm really thirsty, but it's almost painful to drink.

I've figured out a way to make the shower much more comfortable. There are three blue cords that stretch over the shower which I assume are used for drying clothes. One is directly over the shower head, but even so I can twist the shower head holder 180 degrees so that the showerhead is almost aiming horizontally instead of almost vertically. The blue cord interferes and causes the showerhead to point more to the left, toward the wall, but it's still quite tolerable.

I've more or less hit the ground running—apparently the only difference between this week and the ones following will be a single 90 minute class. And I had plenty of other things to do, such as clean my house, take papers to and get books from Moscow, and purchase supplies for my flat. Jet lag has consumed some of my time, and I believe that I just got over it today, a week from when I arrived. So between planning for classes, teaching them, commuting, gathering supplies, and cooking, I barely have any time to study Russian.

My cooking has involved some experimentation. So far I've cooked two different meals—one a vegetable and sausage stir fry with a soy sauce/ketchup based sauce, and the other is chickpeas with mushrooms, potatoes, and onions mostly in the mushroom juice and with dill added. They were both very good, although the mushrooms I used in the latter were sometimes practically mush, in which case I had to force myself to swallow them. That's what I get for using frozen, I suppose.

Today I had the best apple I've ever encountered. My boss gave it to me and I almost didn't eat it because it had a couple holes, but it was wonderful—extremely sweet and juicy.

And this catches us up to the present.

A few thoughts about my job situation

Here are a few observations about my workplace:

• The teachers I've met so far are quite friendly.
• The administrators are nice and friendly in a Russian way.
• The teaching style is completely different from in Vietnam. It's much closer to the CELTA course I took, but in the other direction of more teacher time. The games are a whole lot tamer, as the desks cannot be moved and there isn't a whole lot of space, so students seem to stay in the same place the whole time except for an occasional, slow trip to the whiteboard.
• Students are allowed to speak Russian, especially at the lower levels. The teachers can even respond to a question in Russian. Though a few instances were forgivable, I always understood that this was mostly prohibited in Vietnam.
• In the three classes that I've observed, each at different age levels, the students are very serious and attentive. To an impressive degree, considering they sit in the same place for an hour and a half without a break.
• The resources are considerably more limited. No croquet sticks, mega dice, not even the all-important soft ball.
• The dress code. In Vietnam, men were exempted from wearing a tie only in the very young learner classes (7 and under), and anything other than dress shirts and pants were acceptable during summer camp alone (by wearing the summer camp t-shirt, we helped advertise). Here, the senior teacher teaches in a t-shirt and jeans. This might be a difficult adaptation for me to make.

Immediately after my observations, I thought, “wow, in my experience we had to engage the students a lot more than this. I shouldn't have any problems planning a good lesson.” But this school seems a lot more strict about sticking to the course material. I expect that the pace is a lot faster and we don't have time for many games, especially not my staple games from Vietnam like snatch, hockey, chopsticks, dodgeball, and croquet. To be honest I always felt guilty for using these games because so much time was wasted not learning English, but then again perhaps it motivated the students and helped them to concentrate. I do feel like the Russian students will miss out on a lot by not having mini whiteboards and board races, so if I still feel the lack of them in a few weeks I may look into introducing them.

Overall, I'm pretty excited about this new teaching style. I think it will be challenging to balance keeping the material fresh and interesting with staying on course schedule. Another challenge I think will be getting to know the students with so much course material to cover.

Thinking about reasons I left Vietnam and wanted to consider teaching at an international school:

• Less impact in students' lives, seeing them only twice a week. This probably won't change, but that might be okay.
• It didn't feel very academic with such an emphasis on games. This is definitely not a problem in Russia.
• The administration cared more about keeping parents happy than a student's learning, which was probably more the parent's fault than the administration. From what I've been told, the school in Russia is quite careful about level placement, and the teachers get final word about whether a failing student actually can handle the class.
• There was an emphasis (though diminished at my center, I think) on getting students to re-enroll. As I've heard nothing of this so far here, I think it's safe to say that it's not as important.
• Weekend schedules—nearly 14 hours at the school, two days in a row. This doesn't seem possible in Russia, at least not at my school

Ways this might be better than an international school:

• The schedule is a lot more variable and flexible. I like variety.
• The schedule is also geared toward classes later in the day. I like this especially because in the morning I am typically quiet, contemplative, and focused, an ideal mood for studying and lesson planning, whereas in the afternoon and evening I'm more animated, which is better for teaching.
• All the administration and the senior teacher often talk in Russian, so I'll get more exposure to the language than at an all-English school. Probably significantly more.
• I'm teaching a language, which is slightly more attuned to my interests and expertise than teaching literature.

I do think there are some perks of teaching at an international school that I'll miss out on, such as the stronger sense of community. But on the whole I'm quite glad that things have turned out as they have.

First post from Russia

Well, I would have had another post by Saturday had I had access to the internet. As I didn't, I'm going to backlog my entries to avoid overwhelming.

So, now I'm in Russia. My trip was quite chaotic, maybe to make up for the past when I've been pretty fortunate with air travel. I can only remember two incidents. One was when my parents and I missed a domestic flight to Danang because their flight was late, and then the later flight was delayed for hours because of the biggest storm in years. This was only a bit inconvenient and deprived us of some sleep (well, we might have paid for new flights but they were relatively cheap and domestic). The second was when I missed my flight from Bangkok to Ho Chi Minh City and there were no more flights that day. That was a lot more nerve-wracking because I had nowhere to go, no one I knew, responsibilities for the next day, and low financial reserves. But the worst of this was basically two or three hours of this panicked state.

This time, my troubles began in New York. Although I saw my flight on the board, it wasn't displaying the gate. For nearly three hours I sweated over this troubling fact, but the same thing happened to me at Heathrow so I wasn't desperately worried. Finally at 20 minutes before boarding I asked someone where it was and they told me that I was in the wrong terminal, since the flight was by British Airways and I was in the American Airlines terminal. Okay, then why did they show the flight on the board when all the other flights there were in the American Airlines terminal?

So I ran off and caught a bus. The bus took me somewhere and I just followed a crowd to a familiar sight--the airtrain (I've used it every time I've come to JFK). Apparently the airtrain was out of order, hence the use of buses. I found the bus to take me to the British Airways terminal. Arriving there about 7:35, 25 minutes after my flight left, I went to ticketing and explained my dilemma. The agent understood my trouble as being a result of the airtrain being out of order. She put me on a flight 2.5 hours later than my original, both to London and to Moscow. I wasn't charged. I even got to state my preference of a window seat and was given one in both flights.

But that's not to say that I didn't learn a lesson. As a result of this adventure, I have decided that whenever I make an important decision that I haven't made before, I will carefully examine all the assumptions that I'm making, check for areas of doubt, and make sure I've made every effort to give these assumptions solid basis. That's my goal, anyway.

In New York I knew that I needed to send word to the people in Russia as soon as possible. After going through security again and finding my gate, I only had about thirty minutes before my flight was to board. It took me about ten minutes to figure out how to get internet, which required me to pay for a hotspot. I then filled out a form again for when I was to be picked up, with the later time, and sent it with a brief message noting that I would be a few hours later due to difficulties. I was thrilled from being spared the dreadful fate of paying for another flight, and when I got on board the plane, one of the (male) attendants looked at my ticket and said “Woo, window seat!” I made a similar response, and felt this was a good sign.

In London, as I started going through security I was informed that my flight was delayed. This was quite fortunate because my flight was supposed to stop boarding 75 minutes after I had arrived in London, and it took me about 80 minutes to get through security. Heathrow has 45 minutes of free wireless so I sent another email saying I would be about 90 minutes later.

After a nice flight to Moscow, I had no problem going through immigration. The officer was a cute young woman and when I presented my passport to her, she asked, “is it you?” I nodded and then she asked me to smile (because in my passport I'm smiling). I didn't understand her at first, but then I did, and she thought it was quite funny I guess. Somehow it made me feel good.

I couldn't find anyone waiting for me at the airport, but the flight had landed quite early so I waited around for ten minutes, telling the various taxi drivers who approached that I was waiting for a friend. After about ten minutes one of them came back and asked me questions like “do you have a phone number? Do you have an address? Can you stay in a hotel?” All in Russian, and I was able to answer well enough. After a total waiting time of 30 minutes, I had a cluster of cab drivers around me trying to figure out what they could do to help me. At this point I decided that it might be a good idea to call the school's central office (the only phone number I had). I asked the taxi drivers where I could find a pay phone, but one of them called the number for me. We reached my contact fairly quickly.

Quick background: I've been studying Russian quite intensively for the past month. In Russian, four of the weekdays' names come from numbers. Tuesday is a variation of the word for “second” and Thursday is a variation of the word for “fourth.” This had given me trouble before, because this October the first of the month was actually Tuesday, “second” in Russian. When I sent an updated form to the office in Russia from New York, I had said that I would arrive on the fourth. This was not Thursday, as I probably thought in my frazzled mental state in NY, but Friday. Thus, no one had come to pick me up from the airport.

After some waiting, it was arranged that I would take the offer of one of the taxi drivers to ride to Podol'sk. At long last, I arrived at the teaching center around 9 PM. I met the teachers and administrators who were there and after a while I was taken to my flat. After sleeping for about three hours and trying to sleep for two, I unpacked and cleaned for the next six hours. Then I went to the teaching center again for orientation and observations, which took up my entire afternoon and evening. Friday night I made a short grocery shop, had a little snack, then went to bed. That was my first 24 hours or so in Russia.

Pre-Russia

I think I've heard enough jokes and jabs about vodka now. Tomorrow (technically today) I'm headed to Moscow to start teaching English. It has been a stressful last week because I sent my passport and all my documents to the wrong location. After waiting a week and expecting them to arrive, I finally called the embassy to discover that they don't do visas by mail, but that they would take it to a place that would do it for me. Of course I had to pay more money for that and send them more documents, but it was better than having to drive up to DC and try to sort it out myself, and I think faster as well. I ended up being 3 days late to Russia, and had to pay more money for my flight, but all is well now.

I wouldn't say that I'm excited exactly. If I think about it too much I might get nervous. Relief is probably the most significant emotion, but for the most part I just feel like this is an inevitable and almost routine occurrence. The relief comes mainly from finally having a job again, but also for being able to get out of the US, and to do something new.

I will miss cooking though. Today I made a big dinner; lemon pepper shrimp with mustard, rice, buffalo cauliflower with feta cheese dip, sunflower seed bread, and pumpkin spice scones with cream. The cauliflower was a bit limp, but everything tasted really good. I doubt that I'll have the time, utensils, or ingredients to reproduce it in Russia. And alas, Frank's Buffalo Sauce is likely to be scarce...

In the last few days I've spent a significant amount of time cleaning out my closet which was a very fulfilling experience. On the other hand, I've gone through nearly an entire large box of tissues in those few days, thanks to all the dust. In fact, you know how sometimes when you do something for a long time during the day, you feel like you're still doing it when you're in bed? Yesterday that happened to me, but the action was sneezing. It was a very strange sensation.

Nothing particularly interesting has happened in the last couple months. When I accepted this job, I started studying Russian very diligently, but in the last couple days packing and cleaning has taken over. I'm looking forward to getting back into it. And I think that's just about all I can write at the moment. If I'm not working this weekend, I'll certainly have another post by Saturday.