Great Bounty

Friday we had an excursion to a Russian school, a mandatory excursion. Most of us were NOT looking forward to this; we had to meet at 8:50 in the morning, it took an hour on the metro (for me) to get there. Plus, all of us imagined our worst possible high school moments and feared being brought back to that. But, I am pleased to say, I'm fairly certain all of us were pleasantly surprised. It was more like being taken back to elementary school, since all of the classes I shadowed were either with 8 year olds or 10 year olds. We shadowed three classes, I went to English 5, Russian 5, and Conversation 3. They "5" means the 10 and 11 year olds, the "3" was the 7 and 8 year olds. The English class was really interesting, the way they described everything in Russian to the kids. They were learning to ask "tail" questions, like "It's a nice day, isn't it?" or "Dima has a cold, doesn't he?" They all had trouble between "do" and "does." The teacher also made them turn around and introduce themselves to us in English, which was precious. And they were all SO EXCITED. They practically fell out of their chairs raising their hands, and some were so anxious to answer the question that they made little noises to demonstrate that they knew the answer. I don't EVER remember being that excited to answer questions... but who knows. That was a long time ago for me.

The Russian 5 class was depressing, since I could barely understand what was going on. That's right, 11 year old Russian was too ADVANCED for me. Eventually I understood that they were breaking down sentences into their parts and analyzing them. They did it SO fast... I was impressed. The Convo 3 class was interesting too. They had to read a little story on the board and then write it down from memory. At one point one of the kids, who had been turning around occasionally to give us a look, raised his hand and asked "Are the Americans going to be reading our stories?" The teacher said "No, of course not, I'm sure they don't want to." After that we got free rolls and tea and coffee. So, all in all, a fun excursion... though this coming friday we're going to the circus, so that might take the 1st place for "best excursion."

Then yesterday we went shopping at Izmaylova market, the HUGE souvenir market on the outskirts of town. Seeing as the day was pretty cold and people don't want to go shopping outside when their hands are likely to freeze into blocks of ice, and also as the dollar has been ROCKING the exchange rate lately, we got tons of really great deals. I generally was able to bargain around 100-500 rubles off the price, which is pretty exciting. The last time I went, the vendors were unwilling to bargain much at all and everything was at least a couple hundred rubles more expensive. I don't want to say everything I bought, since most of it I'm going to give away as a present, possibly to someone reading this. I will share one of my proudest purchases, which is mine:

Oh yes, that is a real fur hat. I bargained him down 500 rubles and got it for 1,100 rubles. That's 40 bucks. Usually they're 1500-2000 rubles. It's really warm. And please, if you will, notice the random balls of fur that hang for no reason from the ear flaps. I love this hat.