What a week! Report cards for the first semester were due and for the first time in my teaching career I didn't fail a single student! 2 got D-'s which at our school means they had roughly 50%, but still. And it's unclear whether another 2 (well, one of these two is also one of the D- two) will earn credit due to so many absences. But we'll see.
And then last night I threw a cocktail party! Yay, fun! I wish there was a BevMo or other such place to buy cheap booze here. As it was, I made a bunch of appetizers with some great help from friends and asked people to bring drinks. I would have rather offered a stocked bar, but oh well.
The first guests showed up early at 7:10 and the last left at 3:30 in the morning. Yes, me, up until 3:30!
Which reminds me I haven't updated in a while! Bad Traveling Em! Last weekend I had another true Russian dacha experience, this one in the winter. I work with a guy whose married to a Russian woman. Her family has this great dacha about an hour outside of Moscow. So my friend the college counselor, who I'm going on February break with, this guy and two of his Russian friends all went out to the dacha. When we arrived it was -2 inside the house. We immediately got the fire started and B and I worked on getting food ready. The guys went for drinking water from a spring and got to work on heating the sauna. At 1 a.m. after snacking and a liter of vodka, the sauna was ready. So we got naked and went to sweat in the dry heat and hit each other with Birch branches once you get really hot you run out and lay in the snow. It was great. They spoke nothing but Russian all weekend and I immersed even more. My understanding is getting better and better.
1 comment:
Boy, this was a pretty tame post until the bit about getting naked and hitting each other with branches! Didn't see that coming.
Crazy Russians.
50% gets you a D?! All my life I've contended that 50% should be passing, but no one ever went along with it. I should have gone to an international school.
And you're right: Bad Traveling Em! No new post for over a week! If anyone should have enough blog fodder to post regularly, it should be my friend who lives in freakin' Russia! The same one who gets naked and whips people with branches in the sauna!
Oh, and nice job with the party. 3:30 am? You're an animal.
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