Thursday...

I realize that I haven't posted much lately. Things have been very busy for the last week and a half since we got back to classes. We had teachers from the city and region come to do professional development seminar on Monday and Tuesday. I'm not sure how much we actually teach them, but it is really great that we get to speak English with them. I'm starting to learn the character of each of my group a little bit. I also have to say that it is much easier to teach the material the second time around. There is not the sense of feeling your way forward. Part of it is experience and part of it is comfort: It will be interesting to see how things go from here on. I also have an individual student who comes a couple of times a week. He works in the sales department of a company and wants to improve his English to get a better job. In addition to all of this, I am keeping my fingers crossed about graduate schools. I hope to begin hearing answers in the next few weeks. Yikes!

The weather here has been unusually warm, still. There is a link on Jane's blog to a story from NPR about the Russian winter this year. They temperature hovers around freezing and we get a a little snow every now and then, but nothing like the record-breaking snow and cold that Russia experienced last year. This is much more like an average Indiana winter than I thought was possible here.

In all, things are pretty routine, which is comforting, but it would be nice to break out of the routine some. We are supposed to go to Moscow a week from Sunday to go to the ballet and we also have two short vacations coming up in late February and early March. I think those will be great chances to get out a little and have some fun!