Teaching is a roller coaster--I think most any teacher would tell you that. In addition to the normal ups and downs of teaching, I've also experienced quite a few ups and downs from just living in Russia.
You already know about the rat, but there was also a problem with my neighbors about a month ago. Well, it wasn't really a problem, but it traumatized me a bit. You see, when I hear the door bell I don't answer it--first because I'm not sure that it's for me (I share a hall with two other flats), second because I'd prefer to act like I'm asleep or not at home to having to meet a new person, and third because it's not likely I would understand them in the first place. My Russian comprehension is pretty decent when I have some context, but without context I'm not very good, and being nervous/under pressure also considerably drops my abilities, so a combination of the two typically results in gibberish.
Anyway, the problem was that the flat below mine had noticed their ceiling being damp and had come to investigate. They rang the doorbell many times until one of my neighbors answered, and then they banged on my door. When I opened it, a large man and woman walked into my house without much ceremony (taking shoes off though, of course) and proceeded to inspect my kitchen for a leak. While they were entering though, the elderly lady who lives on my hall scolded me for something. I'm not sure what it was, as all that I understood was "Didn't your mother teach you to..." I might have tried to understand, but I felt obligated to accompany the intruders and the elderly lady seemed satisfied with her scolding and so went back into her flat. No leak was found, but this experience made me even more reluctant to answer the door, and for a while I always checked the hall through the peephole before I left, out of fear that I would run into someone and receive another scolding. Yes, I'm a coward.
Well, I passed my other neighbors on the stairs one day (which happens about once a week as the man often stands in the stairwell to smoke). The man called my name and we had a chat in Russian and English. Basically they told me that they were happy to have me there, and told me to stop by to talk sometime, asked me about the rats, and explained that I needed to wash the floor in front of my flat (which I suspect was what the elderly lady had scolded me for). I haven't stopped by yet, but I'm not as reluctant to encounter my neighbors anymore.
This same week I was walking to work and at a stoplight, a man asked me for the time. I showed him my watch because I knew that would be the easiest thing, but he told me he couldn't see well. I tried to remember the word for 12 (which is one of the banes of my Russian language existence--the similarity between 12, 9, and 19) but I couldn't, so I told him that I was sorry but I was a foreigner. He asked where I was from, and then as we split on the other side of the street he told me to give his regards to America.
I dropped something off at work and then continued to the train station when I met the man again. I walked with him for about 15 minutes and he talked to me in Russian the whole time. I only understood the gist of what he was saying, but among a few topics he talked about how strange it was that men could love a woman for one night and then never see her again. I felt like I had met a character from a Dostoevsky novel (General Ivolgin, to be precise, though this man wasn't as crazy as that).
That Friday was quite rough--one of the students in my morning class kept repeating that she was bored and she kept being mean to a new student (who is far below the English level of the others, but that's no reason to treat him inhumanely of course). My next class was with my youngest students, one of whom wet herself and the floor in the first 10 minutes of class and I had to teach the rest of the class walking around in the mess. I was extremely glad when that day was over.
However, the next day when I woke up and went to the toilet, I discovered that there was a rat trapped in it. Rats have been in my toilet before, I know because I've heard them and seen the residue. This one was a smaller rat though, because it couldn't get out. It was a pathetic sight, splashing around with completely soaked fur, and I've decided that getting stuck in a giant toilet would be among the worst ways to die. Deliberating on what to do, I finally decided that the most humane action would be to drown it. That was rough, and even though the rats have caused me a lot of grief I still cried a bit over it. Then I flushed him down the toilet. But an hour later I heard rats in the kitchen, so clearly he wasn't the only one.
Shortly thereafter, I discovered that my kitchen sink had a leak. When I discovered this, the water washed a lot of the rat residue from under the counters out onto the kitchen floor, and it was absolutely disgusting and the kitchen still stinks of it. Furthermore, having no kitchen sink is a pain, as I discovered. I had to wash my dishes in the shower for a week, which wasn't fun. Fortunately I got sick the next day and couldn't eat much, so I didn't have many dishes to wash that week.
Hmm, I probably should have told that in reverse order. Oh well, those are some of my most recent ups and downs. The holes in the walls and floor have been patched and I haven't seen my rats recently, so that's probably fixed. The kitchen sink is usable again. But even so, I'm tired of living in Podolsk, and I'm going to try to get a new situation as soon as possible. I'll find out more about it tomorrow, I hope.
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