Of course Thanksgiving is not a holiday on Russia. So, of course we had school. The kids had yoga class and after that we sent them in to the bathroom to wash their hands before lunch. Picture a communal washroom with 4 or 5 sinks and several bathroom stalls. Has I’m helping one little boy at a higher sink, I hear kids behind me starting to scream. One of the faucets had broken and was spraying water all over the place! I had my TA get the kids out of the room and told her to find the custodian. Meanwhile, I’m pressing down on the faucet for all I’m worth to prevent too much water damage.
It took him about 3 minutes to get there and shut up everything off. By this time, I was soaked from the waist down. I went back to the room and ate lunch with the kids before riding home to change. So it was a good day to be thankful that I live so close to the school and was able to get home to change. And since the kids were down fo their naps, I also took the time to enjoy a cup of coffee. What the hell.
The afternoon was uneventful. I got back home at 4:30 and started setting up for Thanksgiving dinner. There were three of us. We had sauerbraten, red cabbage, tortilla, cucumber sandwiches, apple crumble and baked potatoes, not necessarily in that order. We ended up having a three-hour conversation about child-raising techniques in different countries. With America, Germany, Spain, Russia and the UK represented, it was really and interesting discussion.
Yesterday I was again enlightened. I was informed that girls who are given feminized versions of masculine names (Alberta, Edwina, Josephine, etc.) grown up to be rude and bossy. When I told my conversation partner that my aunt was named Alberta, she just sort of backed down.
I went to bed early last night and got up early this morning. After puttering around here for awhile, Sonia and I went shopping. We walked through the open market to say hello to our friendly market ladies, the. We went straight to the print shop to print out the two soccer tickets we have for a great game tomorrow. It’s between Kazan (of course) and a team from Moscow which is higher I. The standings. It should be a great game.
Then she took me to one of the biggest honking stores Ive ever seen. It’s called Ashan, it’s basically like Walmart, with absolutely everything. They have a section where you can buy rice, spices, candy, whatever by scooping as much a you want out of a bin and paying by weight. So you don’t have to get a bag full of something you only need a teaspoon of. And they had large assortments of everything. They are as consumption crazy here as we are in the States.
We ate a quick pizza at the mall. I notice that many places here don’t put tomato sauce on their pizzas. Just cheeses and toppings. They are not bad. Sonia’s pizza margarita was covered with a layer of cheese which had some chunks of tomatoes on it. I had a mushroom and ham pizza. It had a different kind of cheese than Sonia’s, then had the mushrooms and pieces of ham on top of the cheese layer.
After our leisurely lunch break, we headed into the craft shop to find something to decorate the classroom in for winter time. I was pretty much told that this is what has to be done in a classroom in winter. I am not a big decorator, so I took a couple of pictures of possible things I could use and texted them to my TA to make sure I am on the right track. She approved, so I will stop on the way home from the soccer game tomorrow and pick them up.
We also went into The sport shop Decathlon. This is the place where I bought my bike basket. The store has moved to a new location, but the guy who sold me the bike basket was there and remembered me. He was so pleasant and made sure I got my store discount card. I can’t wait to really see if I get discounts from the stores where I have these cards some day.
Since this plaza is right next to my favorite “home depot”, of course we had to stop in there too. I’m looking for two wooden mallets that the kids can pound pegs into a board with. No luck finding them so far. Not in “home depot”, not in a kids’ toy store. I’m going to have to do more research on this one.
On our way back home, I stopped in to get my haircut. I ca Nutella my Russian is getting better because this time she didn’t cut it as short as she did the last time. She really understood when I said “enough”.
So now I’m in for the night. I wand to get some reading done, listen to “Wait, Wait...” and then eat leftover sauerbraten. I’ll be eating it the rest of the week. Sonia and I did decide, however, that after the game tomorrow we will stop at Amigo Miguel’s for a burrito.
I’ll let you know tomorrow how the game goes.
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