Last week we met the big boss of the company who organise our courses in Russia. It was the first time we’d all met him and we had to have a meeting with him for him to check that we were all ok/alive. I thought this was just going to be a 10-20 minute thing, ‘Oh so you’re all still alive, good.’ The end. It was not. It was a meeting of epic 2 hour long proportions. We had to go through EVERY lesson for EVERY group and discuss it. It was ridiculous because I had to sit and listen to another 3 groups talk about their lessons… why they did not split this meeting into 4 separate ones is beyond me… Anyway so this meeting went on for 2 hours and was basically just one massive moan for all us students (we are British – moaning is what we do best). At the end of it I realised that hardly any positive things had been said. This confused me because I really enjoy my course – obviously I was finding pointless things to moan about. Afterwards everyone was in a massive mood which just amused me even more because we were all happy before the meeting of doom. To be fair we had brought it on ourselves after all that moaning!
After the meeting I went to volunteer for Maria’s Children. A couple of the children asked me if I could teach them some English the last time I went so I taught them the alphabet and a couple of words but I thought they’d get bored after that. How very wrong I was. They turned up with exercise books ready to learn more English!! At first I thought – ‘Oh no, I cannot speak English properly myself never mind attempt to teach it!!’ But then I remembered – that is silly. They want to learn! So the last couple of times I’ve been doing English with a couple of children. They seem to really love it! It made me feel so guilty for moaning and moaning in the meeting I had had just one hour before. I have access to amazing education. I have NOTHING to moan about.
The last few weeks I’ve been coming home really late and not really seeing much of Vika and Tzala, I thought it was because I was actually really busy but when I stopped and realised that I was infact just sitting in restaurants for 5 hours at a time I had to question why! I realised I was scared of going home. Not because Vika and Tzala are mean! But because if I went home I would have to speak Russian!!! This may sound ridiculous as I live in Russia – but speaking Russian still seems to be the scariest thing. So I decided I would make myself go straight home after school. This has made me feel better for two reasons:
1. I’m actually doing my homework properly and therefore am less lost in lessons!
2. I’ve been having some really good chats with Vika. We’ve got into the routine of cooking together in the evenings... because I made sure I was always in the kitchen when she got in from work! I can feel how my Russian is improving so much just by having 30 minute conversations everyday… I just needed to face my fear and launch into conversations with her!
I did some more Moscowy things this week as well… trying to explore more places! I went to a jazz club on Thursday night which was really nice. The musicians were amazing and it was just such a chilled place. I drank peppermint tea and felt cool.
Then on Friday I went to watch the tennis (Kremlin Cup) at the stadium. It was only £4 and it was so much fun! The fact that I enjoyed watching tennis worries me. I’m turning into my parents.
And I will end with a funny moment of this week (just one, I don’t want to write every time I embarrass myself):
Tzala has been asking me for ages to change the sheets on my bed but she always asked when I was leaving the house so I kept forgetting. Yesterday she stormed into my room and said ‘Sarah I don’t understand why you haven’t changed your sheets, do you not understand me?’ I replied, ‘Yes, yes I do understand, you want me to change the sheets. Sorry I forgot. I will do it now.’ To which she said ‘No, you don’t understand me’ and proceeded to give me a half an hour master class in how to change my bed sheets despite me saying, ‘I know how to do it!!’ Dunno if the funniness of the situation has come across in me retelling it but heyho.
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