Patience

Thank you to my 5 readers for the patience you have shown in awaiting my random and rare posts.

Thank you especially to my friend Vero who encouraged me to continue watering my orchid even though the flowers I bought it with fell off in the first week. See I bought it the first weekend I moved to Moscow, back in August 2007. For a very long time it just had two pathetic leaves. But I continued to water it. Eventually it grew a few more leaves, so in fact I knew it was still alive, well now in June 2009, here it is:



That's right it has 4 flowers which are stunning. And I've watched them open one by one. The last one I literally got to see open as it did so on a weekend day. In the background you can see my jade which I repotted to give the other succulents more space. It seems to enjoy it's new house, but I don't know if they other succulents are as happy with out it.

The school year is wrapping up. Students were given teacher evaluations to fill out. Overwhelmingly my students think the pace in class is too fast for them and that I don't make it interesting. I'm not sure how to fix either one of those problems. A few students said I should be more patient. And that I can definitely work on. I think if they did their homework more consistently I'd have more patience though...

I was also under a bit of stress trying to finish up my first masters class, dynamic spreadsheets. I'm hoping to finish with an A, but it'll be an A- at the very least. I've signed up for 2 classes this summer, but I'm not sure how well that will go with my insane summer travel schedule (to be posted next).

My classes are all done now, finals taken and half graded. Report cards to write this week and preparations for the incoming teachers. I also want to get some more stuff prepared ahead of time for next year.

I have a few days in Moscow before I leave for summer vacation though, so plenty of time to do that.