School...And stuff.

Okay!! So I've been in Russia like two weeks now (or something) and I'm really loving it. Adjusting has admittedly been rather hard, but I'm feeling better all the time. I think I'm learning quickly, though not because it feels like it to me.... Everyone keeps being shocked by how much I know and my pronunciation. So I think that's good (or they just have low expectations....) ;D

Anyways. So my host family, Inna and Dinara, are so awesome. As it turns out, Inna speaks lots of English and Dinara speaks almost none. We live in a small flat on the 6th floor. With no elevator... (If I don't have amazing thighs at the end of the year....) It's really cute. I'll put up pictures, or a video or something, soon.

School! So, I go to School no. 80 (школа но. 80) which is an English specialty school. That means that a lot of the students speak lots of English. Which is cool, but bad since I'm not supposed to speak English (tehe). Luckily, they mostly prefer Russian, and I get to talk with them alot. I mostly hang out with 11th form-ers and they're cool, although apparrently I'm going to start taking lots of classes with primary school-ers (great...) which should be very very good for my language learning because while they are learning English, they must speak lots of Russian and so it should be very helpful to me (did that make any sense...?)

Also. I had my first individual Russian class and OMG, it was amazing!!! My teacher, David (pronounced like Dah-veed) is really cool. We had a small conversation (I'm getting better at understanding little sentences by picking out words I know, tehe) and looked at places on the map we had been. Then we did some exercises in my exercise book, and that was cool. I'm getting better at reading, and he says my accent is very good (which is really cool, cuz I didn't think so..) but I want to get better anyways. I want to have no accent someday! (I don't actually know if that's possible.... but hey, humour me) Anyways. And then we were talking about what I do after school (which currently is very very little...) and he suggested I participate in like a sport or something. He mentioned how he does lots of martial arts at some place and told me about this girls Aikido class, which sounds cool and I think I might do it (maybe with another AFSer from Thailand, a girl named Ploy (she pronounces it like Proy though)). Also, I mentioned that I like swimming and he suggested I do that too. I know that in the US the swim season is in the spring, but I wonder if it is here too? Also, I don't even know if they have like school swim teams or what. But anyways, I digress.

Oh, I have to make a presentation (like a ppt) for some event thing, on America and where I live. Any suggestions? That'd be helpful, thanks. ;D

Yaroslavl will be celebrating it's 1000 year anniversary next weekend, so we will have school off on Saturday (did I mention I go to school six days a week?) and there will be a big celebration all over town. I can't wait!! Inna, my host mom, told me that people will buy fireworks and that they will prolly big going off in the sky everywhere (heck, someone did that just yesterday, it was so cool). And yeah, buying and shooting off fireworks is totally legal and normal here. And we're talking full fledged fireworks too. It's kinda cool (and a little worrisome... haha).

So yeah. Things are pretty cool. I will put up like a zillion pics, asap. My camera died and I don't have a converter yet, but I promise I will have one before next week! (I hope...) If I don't, well then there will be lots of videos instead of pictures. Tehe.

Okay, I'm going to go.

Lots of love, all.

беттина