randomness

Between being able to call my mom on Skype pretty easily and keeping up with a lot of other people on Facebook, I don't find myself blogging as much this trip as I have in trips abroad before (and the fact that my keyboard is small and it's easy to accidentally hit the wrong key and delete my post is also off-putting), but I decided it was time for an update.

Teaching is going well. I like my students a lot. Every now and then I'm reminded that they're high schoolers, not college kids, and they're slightly shyer about being quirky than my OU kids (although that may be because my class this past spring epitomized quirky), but their grammar is excellent! And they're generally smart kids who are up on politics and literature (I'm teaching at nerd camp. This makes me happy, because I went to nerd camp once upon a time.).

Last weekend, I got to go to the Hill of Crosses (Google it, it's fascinating), and this weekend, we're taking a trip to Vilnius. Monique, Miranda, and I (two of the other teachers about my age I've gotten to be friends with) are planning to stay in Vilnius two nights instead of one in order to do more sightseeing and go see the final Harry Potter movie. Apparently the movies here are subtitled, not dubbed, which is an improvement over Ukraine.

Today I went to a seamstress and dropped off my dress for Natasha's wedding to get it altered. It will cost me around $10, which I thought was quite good. There was a second-hand store in the same building where everything was 30% off, so I now have a new blue skirt for a little over $4. Second-hand shopping is even more fun in Europe than in the US.

In Y family news, Vitaly and Katya's son David (say it Dah-VEED) was born yesterday (I think), so Viktor and Nadia are now grandparents and I think I'm an honorary aunt. Also, Vlada and her boyfriend Kolya are now engaged and planning a wedding for mid-August. I'm torn between being very happy for them (Kolya's a good guy...he passes my big-sisterly inspection), wishing that they'd waited a bit longer until Vlada had a year or so of college (she just finished high school), and being a bit sad that there is no way I can go to the wedding, since I will already be in the US and can't change my return date, as I have a wedding to be a bridesmaid in the weekend after I get back. Such is life, and there are still 10 more Y family weddings that I can try and be there for after this one.

Understatement of the day

From a student's writing: "[Poland] is located in central Europe which was very inconvenient during the II World War."

Well, yes, I suppose it was inconvenient.

Sunday and Monday highlights

Yesterday Monique and I went to the Russian-speaking service for the Klaipeda Evangelical Baptist Church. I was curious how it compared to Ukrainian Baptist services. The general feel was the same, although it was a very small congregation--only about 2o people, most of them elderly. I'm not sure if this is because church attendance is generally low here, Russian is being replaced by Lithuanian as the younger generation's language, or if the church is more traditional than younger people here want. That said, everyone was very friendly and welcoming. Several people were originally (30-40 years ago) from Ukraine and told me I speak Russian with a nice Ukrainian accent. :) Monique was warmly blessed in Russian by an old lady who gripped her hands tightly and didn't realize that she didn't speak English. I'm not sure if I'll be able to make it back there again this summer, as there's another congregation in town I'd like to visit, but it was a good experience.

Teaching began today--so far, I have 16 students, 4 boys and 12 girls. 11 are Lithuanian, 2 are Polish, 1 is Latvian, and 2 are Russian--one from Kaliningrad, the Russian oblast that's on the Baltic and separated from Russia by Belarus, and one who is originally from Ukraine but lives in Moscow. One is an elementary school teacher and the rest are high school students.

I always get quirky students, and this summer appears to be no exception. I had the students write a description of themselves, and one student included this: "All I need from this life are friends, nature, and dangerous situation like survival on unknown island full of coconuts."

Well really, what more DO you need?

Riga

I had half a post about my Riga trip this past weekend typed out and then Blogger ate it (blasted laptop keyboard that's too small and makes me hit the wrong buttons). So instead, here are the highlights.



~Pelmeni are delicious. The world needs more pelmeni restaurants, particularly with the same low prices found in Riga (for pelmeni, that is...other things seemed a bit expensive).



~Art Nouveau architecture. Greek mythology on crack on a building. Lots of it.



~The Occupation Museum. It fascinates me how the Soviet Union lasted as long as it did being made up of such disparate countries. The Baltics seem quite different from Ukraine, and I assume that the Central Asian countries are also quite different.

~The Museum of the Latvian Popular Front. To quote Miranda, my travel buddy for the weekend, "You know you're a special kind of nerd when they have to unlock the museum for you."

~Just wandering around the Old Town.

Now to post this before Blogger eats it again!