Some words of Encouragement

This past month was pretty boring because we had student teachers at our school. The first round of teachers took over most of our classes, and I was getting moderately bored and then I realized we’d have a second round. That’s when I asked if those teachers would like to teach with me, and fortunately for my sanity they did. It was a lot of fun to get to hang out with different teachers for awhile. I did start an English Club for the teachers at my school who want to know English and it is pretty popular so far. I have more teachers at that club than I do students in my other clubs. And they’ve asked me to start a second club for Teachers who can’t meet at the first time.
My new family is good. I have two brothers who live at home and they crack me up. They’re only a year apart in age so they like to fight a lot, but that means my life is more entertaining for me. I’ve never had brothers before so I don’t know if the nightly wrestling matches are what normally happens with brothers or if it’s just mine. Anyway, one of them is fascinated with my MP3 player. He’ll come into my room and ask if he can just sit and sift through the songs, and as he was listening one day he was pushing the volume up and asked how far up it goes (he was at 24). I said I don’t know how loud it can get and he shook his head in amazement. THAT is America; MP3 players that have seemingly endless volume capabilities. (I checked later and found it goes up to 40, I’m not sure what that means exactly, but it’s probably not good for the ears.)

And now for your information and entertainment some journal entry excerpts:
January 17, 2008
It was -30 degrees at sundown, so -45 is expected which means SCHOOL’S OUT! I feel like all these school cancellations make up for all the snow days I didn’t get as a kid.
January 20, 2008
Tonight we banya-ed at our babushka’s house and it was the hottest banya I’ve been in. I almost passed out. I feel like such a wuss. But a clean wuss.
January 25, 2008
I realized something shocking today. In the U.S. we don’t have candy and cookie trays on the table for every meal. In fact, if memory serves me correctly, my mom did her best to not have sweets in the house. But what did we do without the candy? What did we eat with our after meal tea? …wait… wait, WAIT. We don’t drink tea with our meals in the U.S. We don’t have candy at least three times a day in the United States??? I can’t believe it.
January 26, 2008
I can’t decide if I love the banya so much because it’s actually a cleansing experience or if it’s due to the fact that by the end of the week I feel just so disgusting that ANY opportunity to pour water on myself is a miracle. Either way, I feel miraculously clean right now.
January 30, 2008
So at around 1am I got out of bed and went to the outhouse. Going to the outhouse when it’s dark/-40degrees is a process, both psychological and physical. I have to put on my outhouse garb (hat, gloves, light coat, and bicycle helmet flashlight – no helmet) and talk myself into just going out there. “Come on, Jessica, you know you aren’t going to go back to sleep unless you just get out there and do this…” So I get myself out there and back in the house and as soon as I got back in bed we had an earthquake. Had I waited any longer to go/ had it happened sooner, I could have fallen in. [Note: the outhouse doesn’t have a seat, just a hole. And it’s slippery in there because the temperature has not gone above freezing since late November, so falling in is a very real possibility.]
January 31, 2008
My novice club went so well the students wanted to stick around for 30 more minutes! I must be doing something right, yeah?
February 3, 2008
I had chai with them after and they asked me questions about life in America and what my family is like and one man said “This is great! We only ever see Americans on television, but one is sitting here, right now! with us! Drinking chai…”
February 7, 2008
While I was walking to the library with my site-mate a post-woman stopped us and said “You’re Jessica! I have a letter for you!” As I was signing she realized who my site-mate was and “I have one for you too!” [Special Note: MAIL IS AMAZING! Even the post lady is excited to give us our mail, so keep it coming!]

And I will leave you now with an apology for the way my address appears on the side of the blog. Unfortunately the internet I'm using right now is pretty slow and I can't change it... It looks like three little lines, but I promise it's there if you cut and paste.