School Year in Review

Now that the school year is over, I thought I would recap it for myself and you in a list of pros and cons.

PROS

• Actually teaching math
• All the students who came to see me outside of school
• All the students who felt comfortable enough to call me
• My wonderful, warm, homey apartment
• Attending 3 balls
• Discovering who I am when I'm on my own in a foreign city and who I want to be
• Traveling across Russia and bits of Europe I've never seen
• Meeting up with my sister in Tenerife, Spain
• Hosting Thanksgiving with Americans and Russians
• Saving money so that if I want to move back to the states, I might actually be able to afford a house down payment (note, this definitely means not going back to the Bay Area)
• Becoming a swimmer
• Having a job that let me leave for a week for my grandmother's funeral
• Walking through the forest to work
  

CONS

• Air Pollution
• Noise Pollution
• Litter
• Lack of the sense of community I had in SF
• Far away from my friends and family which meant missing 2 weddings of very important people
  
• All the delicious baked goods and dumplings (con because my hips have increased in girth)
• There is a very limited market for single, foreign women here
• Long, dark winter
• Having to ride the loud, smelly metro to get to the forest
  

Other Events

• Also this year, William and I broke up which could go onto both lists. It was really hard ending a relationship of almost 2 years over the phone. Dealing with the sadness and loneliness alone in a foreign city. It was a relationship of laughter and fun through 2 very stressful job years, but in the end didn't grip my heart and one where I never had that feeling of "you just know." I still feel right in the decision.
  
  
• I struggled with the teaching in having to learn how to actually teach math, not just do crowd control. I'm still working on that. I also had to deal with having my trust broken repeatedly with students cheating. Learning how to forgive but not forget.