Happy.

I haven't been this happy in a long time. Today, I had a while to think. I threw up this morning because of dehydration :( Oops. So I didn't teach today. I slept for a while and then I just kind of had a string of epiphanies. I realized how completely happy I am here. How much I needed this. How much I love these kids. How I was wasting my time before. I was living day to day, not doing anything spectacular. Working, day dreaming, and, in a way, wasting away. Now, I'm living my day dreams. I'm making a difference in these kids lives. I'm living across the world. I'm making a difference. I'm doing something that matters. This trip is exactly what I needed. I'm so glad I made this decision.

Will I like it? Yes.

Yesterday was such a fun day. We made some delicious apple pie with Sveta, took some naps, took a canal boat ride tour of St. Petersburg, got some delicious dinner, and some divine cheesecake. The boat ride was freezing!They had blankets sitting out for you to use and I was still frigid. But it was worth it. Something about being out on this huge river, looking at these historical sights that I've seen in books and history classes just really touched me. I felt so content, so happy with my decision. This is exactly where I need to be right now. And I am loving every minute of it. When I was first thinking about going to Russia, I was so scared. Will I like it? Will there be cool people going with me? Will 4 months be too long? Well, if I could go back in time and answer those questions for myself, I would say. Yes, you will absolutely love it. You will meet some people in Russia who you will adore. They'll make your face hurt from laughing every day and you won't ever be lonely with them around. And no, four months is not too long. If anything, it isn't long enough. I'm starting out the fourth week here and it still feels like I just stepped off the plane. When I was home, it felt kind of like I was stuck. Not moving forward, not moving backwards, just stuck. I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. But this trip is helping me so much. It has given me meaning. And I love that I still have 3ish months left of this. This is where I belong right now. This is where I need to be.
I love me some Russia :)

I love these fools. 

Pros and Cons of the Motherland.

Здравствуйте Everybody! Well, so far I am loving Russia! Here's a little pro's and con's list about it so far!

Pros:

1. It's very green and it reminds me of Alaska. 

2. I love all of the historical sites and the stories behind them. 

3. I love the Metro. It kind of lulls me to sleep when I'm on it. And it's so conveniently close to our apartment!

4. I love my apartment and the girls I share it with. They're so much fun to be around! The other night, we had a dance party in our kitchen. I may or may not have pulled a muscle and walloped my elbow hard while krumping around. Was it worth it? Yes. Yes it was.

5. These girls I came with are the BEST. One of my biggest worries about coming on this trip was that I would have to be stuck with a bunch of jerks for 4 months. Well, I'm happy to report that they're all pretty fly!

6. We walk everywhere. I thought I would hate that but I actually really like it. It's a little bit therapeutic. And my pants feel looser! Hurrah. 

7. The food is delicious! We eat lunch at the schools we teach at and every time, it's divine. We had this milk soup with carrots and meat. It sounds weird but I loved it.

8. The kids are adorable! Today, a little girl names Laura kept kissing my cheek and wouldn't stop holding my hand. It reminded me how worth it it is to be here. 

Cons:

1. Russians are mean. Well, they look mean. They never smile in public. I've gotten the stank, death stare at least 100 times. 

2. There are so many inconveniences. Like if you use big bills, you get yelled at. We got banished from a grocery store because we used big bills. 

3. It's going to get cold... 

4. I hate not being able to understand anything. I feel like the world's biggest idiot when people try to talk to me. Especially when I'm paying for something. They always start laughing at me! One day, I'm just going to bust out some Russian and they're going to feel dumb for making me feel dumb... Haha Probably not. 

5. We never have food... We suck at grocery shopping, so we're always either starving or making weird food. 

The Traveling Cow.

I feel like I should introduce a very important traveling partner I have on this trip. His name is The Traveling Cow. I got the The Traveling Cow from my good friend Josh Warhurst. Josh got the Traveling Cow (let's shorten it to TTC for the sake of my fingers) from some friends in Washington who told him to take TTC with him on his travels. Well, he, so graciously, bequeathed TTC to me on my travels. So, now you know. The TTC has had a pretty good trip so far! He's been in my bag everywhere we've gone and he's got a couple good pictures in with his traveling partner, Finn. Marci, my head teacher, loves Adventure Time. So Finn is her traveling partner. Here's a couple good shots of the TTC being the world traveler that he is. 

On the plane, ready for lift-off!

Posing with his best buddy Finn.

                

Finn and TTC with their Mama's. 

 Finn was tired, so he fell asleep on TTC. 

TTC and I at the Peterhof Gardens.

There will be many more TTC pictures. He's a gem.

My Kids.

Sorry, I got a little lazy with the blogging. That doesn't mean that I'm lazy though! I've been super busy with teaching, exploring, and whatnot. Teaching has been, a challenge, to say the least. But I'm learning to love it! I am already so in love with the kids. I love how their faces light up when they see me. It just warms my heart to see that. I feel like I'm exactly where I need to be. Whenever I feel a twinge of homesickness, I just remember the kids. And how great they are. And what a difference I can make in their lives. I'll give you a quick run through of each of my kids.

This is Alesa. She's precious, but she's also not the brightest in the bunch... haha She doesn't ever repeat what I say, which is the point. She just stares at me and smiles this precious smile. She'll nod at everything I say and pretend like she knows what I'm talking about and then mumble in Russian afterwards. She's probably saying how I'm not the brightest either. One day, we'll be able to converse. And it'll be a beautiful day. 

This is Nastya... She's a spaz. Whenever she sees me, she'll jump on me while screaming, "Teacher Courtney! Teacher Courtney!" And she won't stop touching me. She'll hold my hand, grab my face and just be weird. She's definitely one of a kind.

Danya. He is SO cute! He's very calm when he isn't around Danya and Matvey. And he can be very sweet. I told everyone to make something they like with play dough. I came over to Danya and he was hiding what he was making. When I came back over, what's in the picture was on the table and he looked at me with huge eyes and said, "For you." He is so cute. And whenever I ask him something he'll say, "My. Name. Is. Danya." Some teacher before me made sure that he knew his name really well.

Vova! I adore Vova. He can be a crazy spaz most of the time. But whenever I give him a task and he finishes it, he'll come up and show me, so excited. And when I give him praise, he has the cutest most bashful face. He's so cute. He's a little bit slower, so I have to give him special attention and make sure that he repeats what I say. Mostly he'll just mumble it, but hopefully it catches on.

Matvey. This kid is the world's biggest spazatron. Whenever he sees me, he flips out! He grabs my hand, pulls me down, and tries to kiss me. Whenever I get mad at him, he'll look up at me with huge puppy dog eyes and say, "I'm sorry Teacher Courtney." I can't stay mad at him for long, he's too cute. He reminds me of a little boy from home.
These aren't all my kids, just the ones who stand out the most to me now! But I really am loving what I'm doing. It's all been worth it so far.

Teacher Courtney!

Children Will Listen.

Oh man. I am exhausted... I didn't realize how hard teaching kids could be! Imagine teaching insane, very hyper, don't want to be in school children. And then think of teaching them when they don't understand a word you're saying! Yeah. It's hard. I have 2 classes. My first class is called Basic Reading. Basically, I'm supposed to help these kids understand letters and words and how to sound them out. I have this class 3 times a week, 2 HOURS AT A TIME! How am I going to do it? It's seriously going to be so hard. It's only day 2 and I'm totally panicking but it'll work out. The kids are really cute so that helps. I have 9 students in that class; Manya, Vanya, Danya, Matveai (Matt Vee aye), Vovo, Via, Alesa, Leeza, and Anastascia. Matveai is always trying to kiss me or hug me, so I have to be pretty stern with him. Alesa is the cutest thing I've ever seen. Vovo is a terror but I actually really like him. Manya, Vanya, and Danya are SO hard to keep track of. Obviously. Hahah Via, Alesa, and Leeza are best friends and are always holding hands. And Anastascia... Oh, what am I going to do with her? She's always pulling on me or asking me for things, loudly above everyone else. She's a challenge, but it'll be all right :)

Matveai (in the back wrestling Danya), Danya, Anastascia, and Vanya. Vovo is in the back coloring next to Via. 

Alesa is SO stinkin' cute! Leesa is sitting behind her. 

This was so cute. Vanya made me a hamburger. He's adorable. 

I told the girls that it was time to clean and up and when I came back to the table, they had all left these in the corner and said, "For you!" What a cute little feast. I couldn't even be mad at them for mixing my play-dough :)

My second class is at a Private school, so these kids have very rich parents. Who are very particular about how their kids are taught and how the teachers dress. Which is understandable but very stressful on my part. I teach that class three times a week in the morning. I'm stressing about it tomorrow because I have to teach in front of the Principal of ALL the private schools. Serenity now. But the kids there are cute too, so it should be fine. There's 7 kids, I hope I can remember all of their names... Zehran, Vlad, Andrew, Mark, Vayria, Polina, and Mark. Hooray!

Teacher Marci and Zehran, he's SO cute!

Teacher Andrew and Nikita. He has such a great smile :)

These foam things were the worst thing in the world to have in our room. The kids were going crazy in it. 

Well, hopefully the Private school principal hasn't killed me by tomorrow. Goodnight! Or Good Morning... The time change is kicking my trash. See ya!

Conveyor Belt Ninja.

Privet! Today was not too interesting, but still fun! We woke up around 11... Okay, wait, kinda. So I woke up at like 6:30AM and did my blogging, Facebooking, all that jazz. I was done at like 7 and nobody was awake and I had nothing else to do so I tried to go back to bed! I woke up around 11 again. And that's around when everyone else was waking up too. We're all very jet lagged... haha Anyways! So we sat around until about 12:00 and decided we desperately needed to grocery shop. I'm pretty sure the Lord will forgive us because he does not want his children to starve to death. Well, we started on the 10 second walk to the grocery, which is such a relief that it's so close. The one in London made me want to die, it was so far away. So we got to the grocery store and realized, it was a kind of mall. And there was a bakery in it! How could we pass that up? We walked into the bakery and right away, the workers knew we were American. Maybe it was the way we counted our money like we had never seen such crazy things as coins before. Or the way we chatted away, very loudly, in English. Or that the men in front of us were laughing their heads off, pointing at us, and saying, what i think was, "Stupid Americans! " Luckily, the man standing behind us knew some English and helped us a little bit. But it really wasn't that hard to order, we just pointed at what we wanted, held up one finger, gave her money and enjoyed some delicious Russian pastries. In Russia, it's considered rude to eat in public. There is a reason I was not born in Russia, when something looks delicious to me, that puppy is going in my gullet. I downed that pastry pretty fast and got a couple dirty looks but let me tell you, it was totally worth it. After polishing off our delicious pastries, we went into the grocery store and picked out the essentials. TP, bread, cereal, weird milk, juice (the juice here is divine!) and, of course, chocolate! Yum. Well, we finished picking and went to stand in line. This is where the story gets interesting. I was standing in line, right behind Marci, waiting for the conveyor belt to move forward so I could put my stuff down. When the conveyor belt finally did move forward, the man standing behind me swooped in and set his 2 items right behind Marci's before I got a chance to blink. I, of course, had no idea what to do. I couldn't say to him, "Yo, jerk, move your crap! I was here first." because he doesn't speak English and I don't speak Russian. Plus I don't think Yo is in the Russian language. Well, after standing there for a couple very fast heart beats. I decided to slyly scoot his stuff back and set mine down. So, I took the plunge. I scooted his stuff a little bit and was rewarded with a very sharp, ninja smack on the upper arm. Ouch. It took me a second to register that this jerk had actually hit me! I was so surprised, I kind of just stood there for a second, eyes wide open, shock written all over my face. I probably looked like I had just seen a ghost. I didn't want to turn around and give him the stink eye because then he'd probably start talking to me in Russian and all I know how to say is thank you. And I was NOT going to thank him for walloping me in the freakin' arm. So I just put all my groceries on the conveyor belt and waited. I was checked out by a lovely Russian lady who had never smiled in her life and I followed Marci, Sydney and Katie out. We all walked out of the store and started walking towards our apartment, I turned for a second to look back and there he was. Mr. I-hit-American-girls-because-i'm-so-cool. I tried not to look scared, I tried to look like I had never been scared in my life, but that probably just made me look like I had a stomach-ache or something. I stared at him and waited for him to come at me bro. He walked towards me, with evil in his eyes and he... got into his car. I thought I was going to have to pull out some fight moves that Buffy the Vampire Slayer had taught me. Thank goodness I didn't! That guy would have been in the hospital for days. So with that crisis averted, we walked back to our apartment and enjoyed our juice, chocolate and cereal! The rest of the day, we did some training, prepared for our lessons (which are tomorrow! Ahh!!) and just hung out. I'm proud to say that I did end up falling asleep after 11! I'm not an old Granny anymore! Hooray! But hopefully, my lessons go okay and I don't get trampled by Russian children. See ya later!
And sadly, I didn't take any pictures today! I should have grabbed a sly one of the conveyor belt ninja but then I would probably be dead.

"Russia Forever!"

Day 4

Hello everybody! Man, today was an awesome day! Since today is Saturday, it's excursion day! So that meant we get to hang out with Sveta. Who is the coolest person I have ever met. She has this dance moves where she jumps up and down and screams, "Awesome! Cool! Yeah!", she likes to shake you to get you excited, and she loves to steal your camera and be your designated photographer, which we were all fine with! But really though, we all can't wait until next Saturday when we get to see Sveta again! Anyways, this morning I woke up around 6:30, yeah I know. Jet lag is still being a beeotch. I'm fine with it though! I get to catch up on my blogging, Facebook-photo-putting-upping and all that jazz, so it works out. Hopefully I go home with the same wake up early schedule, I've always wanted to be a morning person. So I woke up at 6:30, did all my business and then got ready so we could leave the apartment by 10:15. We were going to meet Sveta at 11:00 to start our excursion, so we wanted to go to the grocery store beforehand and get some money out! Well, we left by 10:40, which was fine because the grocery store is literally 10 seconds away. We got to the grocery store and saw Sveta getting money out too! Which was good because if she hadn't been there, we probably would have bought a cow with one of the random machines there. I've finally figured out the money, so it didn't give me a heart attack when I withdrew 2000 Rubles. (Roughly 66 bucks) Also, water is kind of hard to come by here because you can't drink it out of the tap, you have to boil it first. So we wanted to buy some water at the grocery store too. And, of course, we bought carbonated water without realizing it. Freakin' language barrier. I bought a coke too, which kind of saved my life. After all that, we left the store and went back to our apartment to pick up everyone else to start our excursion! We went to the Metro and took it all the way to downtown St. Petersburg! Oh man. It was beautiful!! We saw St. Isaac's, the Church of Spilled Blood, the Hermitage (the outside, we haven't gone in yet!), some nice Navy soldiers (who we took a picture with, of course. While we were taking a picture, one of them pumped his fist up into the air and yelled, "Russia Forever!" We loved it.), Palace Square, the Alexander Column, the Bronze Horseman, Admiralty Square, the Mariinksy Palace, and Arts Square! Yeah, we had a full day. Thank goodness for Sveta! After all that, we ate lunch! We had been told about Blinis before arriving in St. Pete's, so we wanted to try those first! Mine were weird... I got a caesar one, which had cabbage, mayonnaise, onions, and barbecue sauce in it. My mouth was not a pleasant place after that. I also got a dessert one! It was called a sweet cream but it actually tasted like laughing cow cheese. I'll have to try the other ones because my first experience was not the best.  After Blinis, we went to the most magical place ever. Miracle Island! It's basically a fair/amusement park. It was SO cool! There were so many rides, places to rent roller blades, food shops,  and characters to pose with (Like Lumiere and Cogsworth and Yoda!). We're definitely going to go back and spend a whole day there! Well, our feet pretty much wanted to murder us after that, so we headed back to the apartment. We did a little bit of training and then sat around, listened to some Anastasia (Rasputin is one freaky dude) and zonked out. Well, I did. I have the worst sleeping schedule. I fall asleep early and wake up early! I guess that isn't that bad actually. :) But I really do love it here. I've caught the traveling bug bad. I'm not at all homesick like I thought it would be. I really feel like this is my home now. Like I am supposed to be here. Well, I have to go shower and wake up my roommates in funny ways so big gulps huh? All right. well, see ya later!

- Кортни (That's my name! Weird, right?)

Day 3!

My first day in Russia! Today started off with a good case of the jet lag, so I woke up at 5AM and couldn't go back to sleep. We had to be up and ready to leave by 10AM, so I had a while. I read a little bit and loaded some pictures onto Facebook and then I showered and got all ready. I did straighten my hair which was a huge mistake, it rains a lot here. A lot. Anyways, we all got up and got all ready and left at 10! We headed straight for the school where we'll be teaching at and were showed around by Rodmilla the first and Rodmilla the second, our lovely school supervisors. And Alla, of course. We saw some of the adorable kids we're going to teach and I fell in love. They're so cute! Seeing the school and where I'm   going to be spending most of my time made my 1000 times more excited for this whole experience! After the school, we headed to the Metro. The Russian money is going to be the death of me. I know that it has a 30 to 1 conversion rate. So 100 rubles is like 3 dollarsish. That was weird when I spent 100 rubles for 3 metro tokens. I'll get used to it! We took the metro to downtown St. Petersburg, which is much more beautiful then the area we're staying at. I got in trouble for taking pictures down in the Metro because the Russians don't like it if you take pictures of it because they want to use the Metro if there is a war and they need to hide and they don't want the enemy to know what it looks like down there. Funny, huh? Anyways, we got off the metro and walked to the Russian school where we're going to take Russian lessons! I didn't know we would get to do that and I am SO excited! Seeing and listening to all these Russian words is making me want to learn it SO bad. It's such a hard language though. So we'll see how I do. We got to the Russian school and the man there, whose name escapes me, made us some student passes so we could get into the museums there for free. Usually, tourists have to pay a lot to get into museums so it was a pretty big deal to get these passes. We had to wait for him to make the passes, so we just hung around the school for a while. We had lunch at the school too. We had Russian pizza, which was SO good! Oh man. I think I'm gonna like it here. After lunch, we headed to the hospital for physicals. Weirdest part of the trip thus far. We had to have 4 things done; an ear test, a body physical, a blood test, and a swab of... our anus. hahaha! I still cant stop laughing that that happened. Don't worry, a weird doctor didn't do it, we did that ourselves. Still weird, but not as weird as it could have been. The doctors who gave us the other 3 tests didn't speak any English whatsoever, so we had to play a very funny game of charades to communicate with each other. One of the guys in our group, Andrew, went to Russia on his mission so he speaks fluent Russian, so if the charades wasn't working out so well, then we called him in to translate for us. Thank goodness he was there. After the shocking ordeal at the hospital, we left to go back to the apartment, we had to meet our excursion coordinator Sveta. To say she was peppy is an understatement. She was bouncing all around, telling us how excited she was to see us and how much fun we would all have together. I could not be more excited! Tomorrow, (Saturday the 8th) we are going to the Hermitage (this HUGE museum. If you went there 24/7, it would take you 2 1/2 years to see it all!) and are going to tour downtown St. Petersburg! Get ready for a picture overload on Facebook. It doesn't feel like I've only been here for 2 days, it feels like a lot longer. But I'm so glad I get to be here for 3 1/2 months! London didn't feel long enough at all, so St. Pete's should be the perfect amount of time. до свидания!  (Think Anastasia when you read that one)

Day 1 and 2!

Well, here I am! In Russia. It's cold and rainy here but I love it already. I'll go ahead and give you a play by play of my whole experience so far. September 5th came so quick, I wasn't even fully packed until 10 minutes before I had to leave. So of course, I forgot some stuff. But My Mom and I drove through the night of September 4th to make it up to the Salt Lake airport by 3AM. When we left St. George, My Dad and cute brother chased the car while we left making me bawl. Mom and I slept in the car for an hour and then checked in at the airport at 4AM. (My flight was at 6:30, which I strongly discourage against. Flying and hanging out in airports for 20 hours sucks!) My first flight was from Salt Lake City to Chicago, that flight wasn't too bad, I slept through the whole thing. I'm so happy that I remembered to bring my Jasmine and Raja pillow and my fish blanket. They saved my life through the horrible airplane/airport experience. After the not so bad first flight, We waited in the Chicago airport for 5 HOURS! That sucked. But we made it work. We ate lunch at this delicious sandwich place called Torta, recommended by my Dad. He knows his stuff. That sandwich was divine. After 5 hours of checking out cool bathrooms with covered toilet seats that move (Coolest thing I've ever seen), reading multiple celebrity magazines, and eating sandwiches that burned my mouth, we boarded the plane to Frankfurt, Germany. Now this flight was horrid. I was sandwiched between 2 people, one a handsome German who didn't speak English and guzzled wine and Jessica, one of the girls in the program, who I'm surprised I didn't knock out because of my falling asleep, head bobbing. Don't worry, she was asleep and never noticed it, I hope. I did start reading the book, The Dark Knight Rises, which is exactly the same as the movie. To write that book, somebody just watched the movie and wrote down everything they saw. Still cool though. I listened to the soundtrack the whole time too. I'm pretty sure anyone who saw me thought I was having a seizure with my head bobbing, awesome music listening and facial expressions to all the awesome things happening in that book. Anyways, after that flight, we landed in Frankfurt. We only had a 2 hour lay-over there which was spent waiting in line for another security check. Man, I hate those. After the security check, we had about 20 minutes until our plane boarded. Which was great, I did not want to wait around in an airport again. I'm still mad that our 5 hour layover wasn't in Frankfurt so we could have gone outside and explored. Someday! This next flight was from Frankfurt to ST. PETERSBURG! Now this flight was divine. I had a whole row to myself, 3 seats all for me! I was in heaven, sprawling out and such. I didn't get one drink or snack that whole flight because I was zonked out. The poor flight attendant had to wake me up because we were landing. Poor guy, I'm pretty sure he never wanted to see an American girl wake up looking like she's been electrocuted and give him the worst stink eye she's ever given. Oh well, he'll live. Hopefully... I was SO glad to finally be off of a plane. We went through customs, got our passports stamped (YES!) and got our luggage. I was so paranoid that my luggage would get lost. Thank goodness it was all there. We thought, I should probably tell you who we are. Flying together was Me, Marci Allen (Our head teacher, who is so fly! She has blue bangs and a pink Unicorn sweater.), Sydney Gillman (SCHS represent!) and Jessica Burt. We thought we had to hang  around and wait for all the other girls, who would land 6 HOURS later then us. So we picked a spot and camped out. We were sitting there for about 15-20 minutes when Alla (Our supervisor) came up to us with an ILP sign and said, "I'm taking you girls to the apartment and then we'll pick the other girls up later. There were 3 cars, one for our luggage, one for Marci and Sydney, and one for Jessica and I. Our driver was the cute Russian lady named Natasha. We found out on the drive that she is a child neurologist! Pretty cool. I'm so surprised I wasn't killed on the drive to our apartment. Russians drive like maniacs! There's no stop signs of anything like that, just green and red lights. So it's basically a mad dash to go. After a few heart attacks, we made it to our apartment! It's such a cute little apartment. We hung out there and slept... for 3 hours! Which was probably not the best idea, but we were exhausted! We woke up when the other girls arrived from the airport. We all pretty much hung out and talked and then went to sleep. Keep in mind that all of this happened over the course of September 5th and 6th. It all just kind of blurred together over time zones and flight changes so I couldn't tell you when was when. So end of day 1 and 2!

This pretty much sums up my whole flying experience.