Midterms, Snow, et. al.

This week has been very busy so far and I just wanted to write a little bit about it. Last Saturday, Eric and I headed up to one of the local schools for basketball with some of the local kids. They are younger than us and, suffice it to say, in quite a bit better shape than we are. But, we had fun and showed them that the Americans can play a little too. We are hoping to take advantage of an opportunity or two and try to play about twice or three times a month.

On Tuesday night, we were in serious need of some entertainment, so we headed over to a place near Joanna's that has billiards. We had the entire place to ourselves and so we tried our hand at Russian billiards. If you want a little more info, check it out here. The thing is, Russian billiards is quite a bit different from pool. First, the table is a lot bigger, as are the balls. The regulation balls are either 68 or 71 mm, which are numbered and not colored. The pockets are about 2-4 mm. wider than the balls, so as you can imagine, there is not much room for error. The most common game is played with 16 balls just like regular pool, but once the pyramid is broken with a red cue ball, any ball can be used as a cue as long as you strike another ball with it. Joanna and Eric played as a team against Sara and I and, in the end, Sara and I triumphed! It is a pretty fun game and is a lot cheaper than bowling, which is seen as a novelty and can cost more than $20 an hour at night.

Other than that, we are busily writing mid-terms for our students, which have to be completed today so that the students can review for the exam next week. We are also busily trying to plan for our trip to Petersburg that is coming up in a little over two weeks. We are hoping to spend a couple of days in Petersburg on the cheap and then maybe take a train to Tallinn or Riga. We shall see how it works out, but I am excited to head back to Petersburg!