Not a good start to the week

So, tomorrow we were supposed to have guests here from another school. The administration wanted me to do a sciene lesson with them On Thursday and a follow-up lesson on Friday. I thought that it would be great to have them bake the banana bread recipe thaton little boy and his mom make for us occasionally. I asked her for the recipe should I could have the measurements in grams. I’m still waiting for the recipe. So I get two American recipes and have o decide which one I will use. But then it turns out the other school district couldn’t get its trip funded, so it was called of. But I decided to do some baking with the kids anyway. I found a really easy sugar cookie recipe. The administration makes sure the kitchen has everything we need. So I send my TA down just now to make sure she can pick it up tomorrow morning when I need it. She comes back and tells me the kitchen says I can’t put baking powder and baking soda in the same recipe. I tell her I’ve been doing i5 for years in two different countries and the baking powder here is from Germany so I’m doing it my way. If it screws up, it screws up. Nobody has the guts to try something new here. Meanwhile, I’m still in a clinch with my bank. I do not understand why they are afraid to transfer my money for me. This is so frustrating. The boss has made some other suggestions has to how I can get it done and I might just have to have him help me do it. I’m getting no answers at all from the bank. transfers work for other countrit’s. M bank here and my bank back home both use the same intermediary bank. Where is the problem?! The only happy news is that I salvaged two giant pieces of cardboard and we will make a house out of them for the kids. Oh, and I’m going on to see you the movie Black Panther on Saturday night. I can’t wait. It’s gotten such good reviews. I’m not a big superhero fan, but I really want to see this one. oh, and Matthew has been able to get us some tickets to some great classical concerts in March and April. That’s something to look forward to. And another three ng. Next week is a 4-day weekend for international women’s day. Sonia, Fouad and I are headed to Nizhny Novgorod on an overnight train. And then comes spring break. And I still get two days off for when I worked overtime. I’m looking forwa4d to the breaks.

The excursion to Sviyazhsk

Sviyazhsk is an island about an hour’s bus ride west from Kazan in the Volga River. Sonia, Fouad and I had bought tickets last week for a day trip today. Thomas d3cided to join us and got his ticket a few days ago. Ther3 wer3 15 of us in the bus and the tour was in Russian. All fou4 of usknow a little bit of Russian so we figured, between the four of us we might understand something. And we managed pretty well. But th most amazing thing to us was tha5 our guide started talking as soon as the bus drove away and she didn’t take a breath for the next hour. She droned on constantly with so much information, you just couldn’t process it all. And it’s weird the way Russian female tour guides talk. There’s a certain intonation and pitch to their voice tha5 makes then sound like they’re reciting the Russian constitution from memory. There is a real difference between thei4 conversational tone of voice and their prof3ssional tone of voice. When we got off the bus, we all headed to the bathrooms then climbed up the stairs to the actual island. It’s about 70 feet above the river and we could look around and see men ice fishing all around us. Even a skidoo went sliding past. We saw several cathedrals and the place where the revolutionists executed their opponents in the early part of the 20th century. Some of the information outsid3 of some of the buildings as written in English so that was a big help. When we went into the cathedrals to have a look, one woman was always admonishing Sonia to put a scarf or hat on her head! They were really very strict about it. And, of course, our guide was talking the entire time. She was just full of information. The island’s relatively small so w3 were able to cover the whole thing in three hours. We had a half our break for tea and a really great pastry. I had made some cheese sandwiches and had chips and Oreos with me, so this was our lunch break.Then we watched at a reenactment guy teach a guide how to shoot a crossbow. Afterwards, we met at the museum, as instructed by the guide, (See? We did understand some things.), and got a tour of the museum from anothe4 guide who talkecjust exactly like the guide who accompanied us. It was unfortunate that the museum visit was a guid3 tour because the exhibits all had English explanations and I would have gotten a lot more out of it if I had just ha$ time to read the things. One really interesting thing about the island is that it’s covered with stray cats. There’s a story behind this, but I was not able to figure it out. I’m going to have to research that one. In any case, afte4 the museum tou4 we hopped back on the bus, where I promptly fell asleep and headed back to Kazan. Sonia and I had been invited to Matthew and Valeriya’s for dinner, but when we arrived home we had the message that Valeriya wasn’t feeling well, so we’ve postponed it for a week. No problem. It gave me plenty of time to FaceTime back to the States and just sor5 of mentally prepare myself for this week. I may have already mentioned that the school will receive guests again this week and I’m supposed to give a cooking demonstration with the kids. This will have to be well-planned!

Pictures from Sviyazhsk

The Believe It Or Not Museum

The long weekend

Yesterday was Defenders Day, akin to our Memorial Day. It’s a very significant day for the Russians. You have to consider how much they suffered at the hand of the invading German army during WWII to understand what it means to them. So we had the day off. Thursday evening I got a personal tour of the synagogue here in Kazan. I had tried to visit it in October and couldn’t get in because s me event had been going on. But one of my students is Jewish so I asked his parents what a good time to visit would be. The dad, who is very involved with the Jewish community, invited me for a tour. Between 1915 and the early 90s, it wasn’t allowed to exist as a synagogue and it was converted to a teachers’ Center. The people carried on their religious practices in the privacy of their homes. When it reconverted to a synagogue, everyone aided in restoring the building. The local Imam even made donations from the Moslem community. The social center at the synagogue serves about 3000 people in need in Kazan. They provide necessities for the disabled and the needy. It is a very close-knit community. Before I could remark about how impressed I was with Kazan, Ilya said himself what a tolerant city it was. He mentioned that, when he and his wife got married, friends of all faiths attended. Kazan is really a unique place. I was too tired to stay in town for the City Club meeting that night so I headed home and ran into Sonia on her way into the meeting. She told me the next day that she had me5 some Canadians and Americans this time. Yesterday was a lazy morning. I worked on my 1000-piece puzzle, which I finally finished today. I read a little and just relaxed before I met Sonia downtown for a leisurely late lunch at Basilico’s, the great Italian place. Fouad and Ravil joined us and the conversation turned to the lack of security at Russian airports. I was able to walk through security in Moscow with a half filled bottle of water and Ravil said he even had a knife in his backpack once which they didn’t notice. Hmmmm, what a difference to airports in other countries. In any case, Lorene from France joined us and we walked down to the promenade along the Kazanka River where they flood the bike path every year so people can ice skate. It was great. The whole thing, including skate rental, only cost $2.50. It was late afternoon and it had been sunny all day. When we got on the ice, the sun was just going down and they turned on the lights. It was really lovely. I hadn’t skated in about 25 years, I think, but I did fine. Fouad and Sonia needed some time to find their sealegs but then did just fine. The whole rink is about a quarter of a mile long. One time down and back with plenty of rest stops was just enough for us all. The only one of us to take a fall was Lorene, who was trying to get a little fancy. No serious injuries, just a little hurt pride. We all slept well last night. Today, the first thing I did was get my haircut. This time nobody there spoke English. But the lady understood what I wanted and was very happy with the results. The whole thing, with a tip, was $6. And as I’ve mentioned before, tipping is very unusual here. We wanted to use the remaining two tickets on our museum pass, so Sonia and I headed downtown and met Fouad. We went to the Believe It or Not Museum and the Haunted House, which was more fun and wasn’t really a museum. The BION Museum was just a collection of weird stuff like an eight-legged goat and replica of an alien corpse found at Roswell, NM. (Really?!) But the Haunted House was really well-done and I thoughT Sonia would have a heart attack. We couldn’t stop laughing when we got out. We walked down the pedestrian zone afterwardsto a Tatar restaurant which I had been to before. Sonia and I both had lamb with potatoes in onion sauce and Fouad had a quesadilla. How Tatar is that! Later, we went to get a new battery for Sonia’s watch and she and I stopped at the grocery store to get some snack stuff for tomorrow when we take the excursion to the Sviyazhsk monastery on an island in the Volga River. It’s a one hour bus ride each way and a four-hour tour in Russian, so I’m going to read the English English translations before I go so that I get the gist of everything. we figured if we took some sandwich stuff, we wouldn’t have to sit too long in a restaurant eating and could get the most of the day. And it’s definitely a place I want to visit in the spring by boat. Then I will be able to take the bike along and ride all over the island. Thomas is going to join us tomorrow. He’s also teaching on Kazan and we met him at City Club. It’s nice to have new people joining us. (On that note, Ravil says there are bike rental places all over Kazan and he and his buddies rent them in the summer to ride out to some of the lakes. They are bikes with gears so they would be better for a long distance ride.ill keep that in mind.) We get back from Sviyazhsk at 3:30 and are invited to dinner at the department head’s at 6. That means I’d better study up about the island and get my lesson plans done tonight. Next week we will have visitors from another school observing in class again. The department chairman wants me to do a cooking lesson. So Thursday we are going to bake banana bread and Friday we will read The Little Red Hen. that means I’d better have this well thought out.

The beautiful Kremlin

Ice skating

There is a neat ice skating rink on the bike path along the promenade on the banks of the Kazanka River.

Ya gotta love the banks!

So keep in mind that the USA imposed sanctions on Russia in 2014. Also keep in mind that my British colleague uses the same bank I do and has absolutely no problem transferring money from the Russian bank to his British account. That being said, I went to the bank on January 23 to transfer some of my salary back to my US bank. According to my banker in the US, all that would be needed for an international transfer would be the bank’s routing number. So armed, I walk into the bank and tell them what I want to do. It’s one of those deals where you have to get a number like at the coldcut counter at Wegmans and wait to be called. And wait to be called. And wait to be called. Finally it’s my turn and they lead me to an office in the back where a manager speaks fairly good English. Oh, you didn’t have to come into the bank, he tells me. You could have done it online. I tell him that’s not what I was told when I opened the account. Let me show you, he says. So we get on the website on my iPad and start to fill in the information and, surprise, surprise, it doesn’t work. The Russian bank requires the SWIFT number of the bank to which the money will be transferred. My bank does not have a SWIFT number. But my US bank uses an intermediary bank in cases such as this which also happens to be the intermediary bank my Russian bank uses. It seems as if this shouldn’t be so difficult then. But instead of doing it electronically, I have to fill out paper applications. And my Russian banker says up front that it will take awhile for it to happen. Hmmmmm,takes awhile means to me a week, maybe two. So every once in awhile I would text himto see what was happening. He was always checking into it. Meanwhile the money is still sitting on my account! So it’s the 19th of February and still nothing has happened so Tuesday I grab the boss and make him take me to the bank. This time we didn’t have to wait at all. They lead us right in to the manager’s office. So it turns out that I am their first American. Us to customer. They’ve never had a case like this before and also the political relationship between the US and Russia is not particularly cordial, nobody in the bank has been willing to sign off on the transfer because they are afraid of unpleasant consequences. So everyone has just been kicking the decision upstairs and not wanting to be the person responsible for the decision. How lucky can I get. But it seems that they have finally regulated everything and the transfer should take place tomorrow. And joy of joys, since I wax their pioneer case, now they have a template for how to do it and the next time I make a transfer I can do it directly online! I’ll Blevins it when I see it. Man, I would have been better off stuffing my money in my mattress.

The weekend

Someone came to my door this evening to explain where I should go to vote in the coming election. Nope, I wouldn’t get away with that here! The weekend was busy again. Saturday Sonia and I walked to the subway station and went down to the tourist bureau. We have a 3-day weekend coming up.at first we wanted to go out of town, but the place we wanted to go was a 9-hour train ride and I didn’t want to fly again. So it didn’t make sense for a long weekend. So we decided to take a bus excursion out to a monastery on an island in the Volga River. We booked that for Sunday morning. Saturday we will probably visit the two museums we still have to see on our multi-museum ticket. And Friday we might go ice skating at the promenade down by the river. So there won’t be a lot of traveling stress. I got back home in time for a Skype call to Germany and then the bosses took me out to dinner at a really great Indian restaurant. The decor was fabulous and the food was good and spicy. Actually, they are trying to convince me to renew my contract for another year. On the one hand, i would like a break from 8-hour work days; on the other hand, these kids are making so much progress, I’d like to see how they develop before they enter kindergarten. I’m thinking it over. Yesterday morning, I met Adil for breakfast. Adil was born here in Kazan but the family moved to Denmark when she was very young. Her English is impeccable. She still has lots of relatives here so she is trying to acclimatize herself to Tatarstan again. If she can find a job, she would like to stay. She’s found a part time position teaching English to little kids. I suggested she check out our school. After breakfast I ran over to the mall and bought a bunch of Hot Wheels cars for the kids. We are talking about comparisons now, so they are perfect to compare to the bigger cars we have in class. Plus, I built a parking garage out of (What else?) toilet paper rolls. The he kids played with it and the cars all afternoon and my TA was going to help them paint it when I left. But back to Sunday. Afterwards I met Anna and we walked to the orangerie and the zoo. The orangerie was in some crumbling old buildings but the plants were nice, and a pleasant contrast to the snow outside. The zoo was very depressing. It was like something out of the 50s. The cages were small and the animals just didn’t have any room. I don’t want to go there again. Later we ate at a great Chinese place. I. Finding restaurants that serve spicy foods. Hooray. Tomorrow I’m head d for the bank again with the boss. I filled out forms to transfer money back to my American account at the end of January and it still hasn’t happened. This is getting annoying. But the boss volunteered to come along and give them hell. And since he’s got more influence and better Russian skills than I do, I’m going to let him.

More sidewalk scenes

And it snowed again today. The pedestrians have to struggle here.

The sidewalks of Kazan in February

This car has been standing in my parking lot for who knows how long. And now, throughout the city, people are carving steps into the 6-12 inch layers of ice so that people can at least step up and down from the curbs without breaking every bone in there bodies.

European badminton championships

It’s clear to me why badminton is an olympic sport. Sonia, Fouad and Edward, the new teacher at our school, went to the championships last night.i almost didn’t make it. MY TA sick, so I have to wait until the last kid goes home. Sometimes it’s not until 7. But the match that we wa Ted to see started at 7. The last kid went home at 6:10 and I rushed out to meet Sonia Nd Edward and grab a taxi. It was good that the sport arena was near our place. The matches we were interested were Spain vs. Russia for Sonia, of course. But this is a really demanding sport and it’s not the same as when you play in your yard. Holy crap. It was amazing. Fouad’s taxi was stuck in traffic so he showed up late. We stayed until 9. The walked to the grocery store and got some pizzas and went to Sonia’s to eat. Edward is still working off the jet lag and I was tired from a long day. Some we didn’t stay too long because Sonia wanted to see the Real Madrid soccer game. Today was another long day. The last kid went home at 7:15! I will be alone again tomorrow, but Edward will be in to observe my class so I’ll put him to work. And tomorrow we celebrate Chinese New Year. We’ll carry our dragon around the halls and the kids all made Chinese lanterns.

Back to school

Yesterday was a pretty normal day. I still hadn’t slepT well. But it’s always good that the kids sleep for about 3 hours afte4 lunch. It give me a chance to get everything done. yesterday I got to mee5 Edward. He’s the newest addition to the English-speak8ng staff. He arrived Saturday and is from Tennessee. He’ll be teaching the class that’s a year older than mine. He will be able to do writing exercises with them, which will be interesting. He’s going to join Sonia, Fouad and me when we go to the badminton match between Spain and Russia. Yes, badminton. And it’s not a sport for sissies. Check out an Olympic match on google sometime and you’ll believe me. Today we celebrated the rite of spring. It was pretty similar to Shrove Tuesdsy, the day before Lent when Catholics traditionally used up all the grease and cooking fat in the house. But this celebration was customized to the Russian culture with a witch chasing the winter away and lots of pancakes to eat. Nobody does folklore and fairy tales better than the Russians. We danced, sang and said poems. The kids wore necklaces with dough rings around their necks and the little girls wore head scarfs. They looked like those little wooden Russian dolls that you take apart and find another little wooden doll inside. It was fun to see. We had seven kids today and they had a good time. So, as I already said, tomorrow we’re headed for the badminton match. This will be fun. And I’m feeling better, so I suspect I will get a good night’s sleep.

Chinese new year dragon and the rites of spring

Yesterday I made the dragon from paper towel rolls and today we celebrated the rites of spring.

WCC2018, days 2 and 3

I had ordered breakfast from the hostel yesterday, so after my shower I walked into the kitchen and there were my bowl of oatmeal and a plate of crepes on the table, along with bread, butter, cheese, yoghurt and an apple waiting for me. I couldn’t possibly eat it all, so I took what I couldn’t eat along for lunch. The first sessions were off campus. My group met on the platform of one of the subway lines to walk to the Moscow Traffic Management Centre. Holy crap. 3,600,000 cars and trucks pass through Moscow everyday. I won’t borers you with a bunch of numbers. But their traffic cams can detect 25 different traffic violations. Besides all the statistics, the most memorable thing was the official who gave the presentation. His English was so goo, he was correcting the translators. And, he had a sense of humor. You always get the impression that that’s a rarity in Russia. Even the Russian lady from Green Peace who sat next to me commented on it. So Green Peace and I grabbed the subway after the presentation and headed back to the convention center. When I got back I met Valery and we grabbed a couple of the finger sandwiches they were serving for lunch and went up to the lounge to eat. We met a professor there from Turkey. He was saying that he teaches technical engineering at a university near Marmoris. When I asked him about his students, he said that it was about 50/50. About half wanted to improve the environment and slow down climate change and the other half wanted to play video games. I attending the afternoon sessions but they weren’t really that interesting. There was going to be an evening session off-campus, but my cold was getting me down and I decided not to go. I headed back home and stopped at my transfer point for another KFC supper. When I got back to the hostel, the receptionist tried to talk me out of getting registered by the police. The law here is that, if you are a foreigner, every time you stay in a hotel in a different city, the hotel has to register you at the police station. Of course that’s a lot of work for the receptionist and of course she didn’t want to do it. So she had 20 excuses why I shouldn’t bother. I insisted and I won. That would be all I need; get kicked out of the country because I attended a bike conference. The really cool thing about today was that I ran into a German guy who is working in Tatarstan, specifically Kazan. He introduced me to the Tatarstan delegation and these people are super interested in putting bike programs in schools. I immediately texted my boss who was all for it. So I made some great connections for Kazan as well as for Rochester. I didn’t really sleep well because my room was unbearably hot and I could adjust the temperature. Also, I was coughing like crazy. So I was glad that the sessions didn’t start until 10 a.m. on Saturday. I got ready and stopped at a French pastry shop at my transfer point and picked up what looked like a short eclair and a cup of coffee. The thing was chocolate through and through and weighed a ton. It was really filling. The sessions were interesting and informative. But I was sucking on hard candy and drinking water all day because I still felt pretty crappy. I ran into the delegation fdrom Tatarstan again and the lady and I hit it off very well. She even videoed me on a bike while asking me questions. It worked well until my Russian ran out. So it looks as if positive things will be happening this spring with bicycles at Balance-City School. But probably the highlight of the day was meeting Olatunji Oboi Reed from Chicago. He started the Slow Ride there a couple of years ago and now runs a group called Equiticity. This guy really knows his stuff and is a very inspirational young man. Check him out on google or listen to the presentation he gave at the conference on Facebook. This guy is impressive. We had a great conversation and it turns out we have a mutual friend who now lives in Rochester. Boy, the world really is a small place. Everything ended at 4 aNd I headed straight back to the hostel. I couldn’t stand the thought of another KFC, so I stoped at the grocery store and got some microwaveable spaghetti carbonara and some crap salad for dinner. It was another early night but still didn’t sleep all that well. I got up and got ready, packed and checked out at 10. AND, I got my police registration form. I wasn’t leaving without it. I had decided I didn’t want to stand out in this weather with a cold and watch the bike parade. I just wasn’t fit enough. I took the tram to the transfer point and was surprised when the tram driver got out at one point with a long metal bar and switched the tracks manually. Apparently the guys had been cleaning snow away and had left the tracks in the wrong position. I got off at my transfer point and looked all over for a Cafe for a leisurely breakfast. All I could find were stand up places and I didn’t want that, so I ended back up at KFC, with a facsimile of an Egg McMuffin, hash browns and coffee. It was an adequate breakfast. Since I didn’t have to be at the airport until about 5, I decided to visit Leo Tolstoy’s house, which I didn’t get a chance to visit in November when I was in Moscow. It was an easy subway ride and then a 20 minute walk, partially through slushy streets. Walking there, a lot of bike riders came up the sidewalk returning from the winter ride. I heard later from Valery that there had been between 3,000 and 4,000 riders. Great! Nothing stops us! I got to the Tolstoy house, and to show you what. Class act this place is, the booties you have to put over your shoes are leather. But, I can see why they needed them here. The floors were beautiful I laid wood. The house had original furnishing and wac very, very well kept. I was glad I get to see it. I spent a good hour there, walking through the house and the gardens, then went back to the subway station to head for the railway station where I catch the train for the airport. it was great. I calculated my public transportation rides pretty well and only had 18 rubles left on my travel card. I bought my train ticket and the train left at too. I get there 35 minutes later and was even able to figure out how to get my boarding pass from the automatic checking machine. Victory! Now all I had to do was to wait about 3 hours until boarding time. since I hadn’t eaten since the late breakfast, I went to a place that sold baked potatoes. You could load them up with all sorts of toppings, but I was happy just to have butter. And it really tasted good. Then I went down to another place and had a chocolate donut for dessert. I sat down and signed into the WiFi and started to right this all down. Only when I got home did I see that the WiFi had cut out and none of this had been saved. So I’m writing this all for the second time! The plane came late and it was snowing so I was wondering if I would be staying another night in Moscow. But we got in all right and only about 45 minutes late. Sonia ordered me a taxi again and I got back home about 10. I ran over to Sonia’s for a pizza ,and then home and tried to sleep. It least my place wasn’t as hot as the hostel.

What it looks like on my school playground

The snow is to the top of the playground equipment. The kids have a great time climbing up the snowbanks.

Moscow slush and Tolstoy's house

Pictures from the WCC2018

The other lady is from the Kazan government. She wants to do bike projects with my school.

Winter Cycling Conference, day 1

Very exciting! There are 39 countries represented here. It’s pretty equally divided among men and women. Average age is maybe between 40 and 45. We heard from Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Russia, England, the Netherlands and Canada. amazing things are happening all around the world. And it’s not about the bike, per se, but about making urban areas more liveable and creating sustainable transportation for all. So glad I came to the conference. I met people from Toronto, Montreal, all over Russia, Finland and austria. There is a simultaneous translation. It’s all very well organized and very professionally planned. And the topping on the cake is that the hostel prepares my breakfast for me tomorrow morning. After breakfast I head downtown for my workshop. I’ve chosen to visit the traffic command center. Then we head back to the conference hall for afternoon sessions. Another busy day. I’ve actually been too tired to do any of the evening part events. But that’s OK. The hostel is a nice place to hang, except that my room is unbearably warm. The lady at the desk said it was centrally regulated. She suggested I open the window. All fine and good, except that the windowsill is six inches above my head! Another interesting thing I noticed today was, at the coat check at the conference, you could immediately tell which women were Russian because they gave the coat check guy their boots in a plastic bag before they but on their regulR shoes. Plastic shoe covers were fortunately not required.

Parking in Moscow

City club and Istanbul.

I forgot to mention that we had another city club meeting on Thursday night. This is the group that comes together to speak English. I met som3 more nice people, including Adil from Copenhagen. And several of us got into a discussion of cycling after I mentioned that I would be in Moscow this weekend for the Winter Cycling Conference.A Russian woman was saying she thought there would not be a lot of support for Cycling from the older generations here because people of her parents’ generation were deprived of material goods for so long under the Soviet system, now they want to show what they can purchase. Bikes would not be a first choice for them. Makes sense. But I know several of my younger colleagues like to cycle so Thang’s are changing slowly here as they are everywhere. Advil and I will be meeting later to talk about life in Russia. Onday after work I went over to Sonia’s and Fouad came over later. We booked our entire spring vacation. We are going to fly south in Russia to Krasnodar for two days. After that, we will take the overnight train to Sochi and spend another two days on the Black Sea. Then from Sochi we will fly to Istanbul for 4 days. None of us has been there. We will see all the touristy things then Sonia and I will fly back to Kazan and Fouad will fly on to Beirut because he hasn’t been home in awhile. It will be another a tie vacation. Yesterday afternoon I got really frustrated. The guy from school was trying to help me print out my boarding pass and it wasn’t working at all. He even called the airline and their suggestion was to try another browser. After 3 or 4 tries, we gave up. But w3 did orde& a taxi for 4 a.m. This time we ordered something besides Uber because that always gets screwed up. We called my hotel and corrected the check in time. It was just such a long and tedious process and I kept worrying if this taxi deal would screw up too, because at 4 a.m. there wasn’t going to be anyone around to help me! But both Sonia and the guy from work said I should call them if it didn’t show up. Nice people. So this morning it was rise and shine at 3:15 a.m. and at 3:50 I got the call that the taxi was waiting. He was a nice guy who spoke very good English and drove carefully on The snow-covered roads. Did I mention that it was snowing again, too? He was really interesting because he said he was a volunteer for Navalny, Putin’s opponent in the coming elections. Put in has not been making Navslny’s life easy and I bet if this taxi driver I sent careful, there might be consequences for him, too. At the airport I had a croissant that. Ishtar have been left over from the French Revolution, and a bottle of water. I flew with Utair, a local airline, and it was a great flight. I slept the whole way. It was amazing to the piles of snow on the runway at Moscow. The were really bombarded this weekend. In fact, there’s a car near my hostel here that’s buried under drifts at the side of the road. I’ll try to get a picture of it tomorrow morning. But, I. Any case, I took the train in from the airport and caught the metro in the direction I needed to go. Keep in mind, I googled all these directions before I left so I’d have an idea of what I was doing. Since you can’t pay cash on the buses in Moscow, I got a troika card which allows we to us tram, bus and metro at a discount price. And you can keep reloading the card. And when you get on the bus in Moscow, you got on in the front, swipe you card and then go through a turnstile on the bus. So if there are a lot of people, it takes ages and the people still outside in the cold scream for the others to hurry up. When I went down into the subway there was an information lady who Checked the route to the hotel again for me. so I knew where I was transferring and where I was headed. When I got off the bus I knew I had to walk to the left. When I asked several ladies just to ch3ck. , they all said I had to go right. Hmmm. I tried their way and of course it was wrong. I finally to a tram back to where I though5 it was and, low and behold, another lady helped me find it off the Main Street in a courtyard. It’s really a nice place. It’s very clean an modern-looking. They even have room service from their own restaurant at no extra cost and WiFi. And the girl at the desk spent a lot of time helping we find the right directions to the conference center. I have a nice room to myself with a tv. The bathrooms’s across the hall of course. By the time that I got to the hostel, called Mother Russia, by the way, it was noon and I was starving. So I figured I would go check out where the conference venue is and grab something to eat. It turns out the tram is an easy tram/metro ride away. And at the transfer point I found a KFC, a grocery store and a French pastry shop. Unfortunately, on the return trip, I first got on the metro in the wrong dir3ction. When I discovered my error, I got off at the next stop and jumped in the metro headed in the other direction. This time at the transfer point I took the time to eat something at KFC but figured I would wait until tomorrow for a chocolate eclair. I ran into the store and got a bottle of water and some cookies. Now I’m already in for the night and am Going to turn in soon. I have to be up early for the conference tomorrow.

Museum of Illusions and the Museum of Giant Things

Just being goofy.

The blizzard and the weekend.

Right now roads are closed to and from Kazan and the airport is totally shut down. The wind is blowing like crazy and I waded through waist-high drifts to get to school today. (Yes, don’t tell me. My waist isn’t high.😁) But it took me 10 minutes longer to get to work and the cars in our settlement were stuck in drifts. People could not move. I’ve only got 4 kids in class today. One of them lives near me and walks, and one is the boss’s son. So it’s a relatively quiet day. Except that the boss’s kid threw a tantrum for 45 minutes. Thank god they’re all asleep now. And I’ve go one little guy, who always cleans out the lint between his toes befor he puts on his pajamas. It is a hoot. But let’s go back so I can fill you in on the weekend. Friday evening we had tickets to the women’s volleyball game. That’s where Sonia took my picture with the ladybug mascot. Emma, Fouad, Ravil, Sonia and I all met at the stadium, which happens to be near the university close to our apartments. Holy cow, these ladies are good. They won in 3 straight sets and are at the top of their league. I noticed that volleyball has changed since we played it in high school. I remember we only got points when we had service. And I remember how the games dragged on and on. Now it doesn’t matter. The point is scored no matter who has the service. After the game we rode one quick trolley stop to the corner and walked to Amigo Miquel for some good Mexican food, since we had missed the opening times a couple of times now. Man, it was terrible. Keep in mind, we had Ravil with us, who speaks perf3ct Russian. So there’s no way the waitress could have misunderstood us. So, she takes our order, Sonia repeats several times that her quesadilla should not be too spicy. The waitress walks back to the kitchen. 15 minutes later, she comes back out to the table to make sure she got the order right. Hmmmmmmm. She couldn’t have down it right away? This was a waitress we had never seen here before. So, starts bringing out the food, one dish at a time as it is prepared in spite of Sonia asking her to bring her fries and the quesadilla at the same time. And the quesadilla was so spicy, she couldn’t finish it. My burrito was even too spicy for me. The snot was running out of my nose and my eyes were tearing up. Then Fouad and Ravil both ordered French fries and the waitress brings them all on one plate for them to share. Not acceptable. We figure the place is under new management and it’s definitely the last time we’re going there. We did have a great discussion comparing Soviet Russia with Russia today. Didn’t get home until midnight but slept nice and long. Saturday was another fun Museum day. They have a museum of illusions and a museum of giant things, which Sonia had always wanted to see. Fouad met us there at one and it was just goofy fun. the Museum of Illusions is actually very cleverly done. Some very talented artist has painted scenes on the walls and floors. If you stand in a certain place in front of a particular painting, it looks as if you’re getting eaten by a crocodile or murdering someone with a chainsaw. ( There are also less violent paintings.) then there is a picture of a camera on the floor where you can stand to get an optimal shot. Some of the pictures look hilarious. Sonia and Fouad took lots and lots of them. Then, before we walked over to the Museum of Giant Things in the same building, we went through a maze of ribbons hanging down from the ceiling. This was NOT easy. But I did manage to find my way out in a reasonable amount of time. The Giant Museum was just two rooms of oversized props which you could sit in or on to take pictures. I will post some more later. After the museums, we walked down to Basilio’s for some good Italian food. Sonia and I shared a calzone and lasagna. The lasagna was superb. Then we sat there for a couple of hours planning our spring break. St. Petersburg, Estonia, Istanbul and Yerevan all came into question. We had to look at who could get visas to which countries, and how quickly. After much discussion and many calculations, we settled on the following: we will fly to Krasnodar in Russia and stay for two days before taking the overnight train to Sochi, a resort town on the Black Sea. Josef Stalin had a summer home there, so I will be visiting a few historical sites. Then we’re going to fly to Istanbul for 5 days. That should be very exciting. I’ve been to Marmoris in Turkey, but never to Istanbul. Sonia and I will fly back to Kazan after that and Fouad will fly to Beirut because he hasn’t been home in awhile and it’s only a two-hour flight from Istanbul. We stopped on the way home to get some groceries and that was it. It was a pretty productive day. Sunday was a trip! A Dina and I had won a pass to Aquapark, a water park-type of place, at the school’s New Years party. We had to use them before next week so we decided to go yesterday. She was going to go to the gym first, so I should meet her there at 12. I check out which bus I need and walk to the bus stop. The electronic sign says i5vwill come in 11 minutes. The wind is starting to blow, it is sleeting, but I am warm and waiting. 11 minutes go by and no bus. I ask another lady and she says this bus is very unreliable. About 10 minutes later we see it coming down the street...and the damn thing blows right past us. Didn’t even slow down, let alone stop. Crap. What to do. So I get on my Russian phone and call a text a taxi. I actually do it righ5 and it says it’s coming. But I never see him. The driver calls me and I answer my phone, but i can’t hear him. after several back and forth messages, I still can’t find where he’s parked. By this time it’s about 11:45 so I’m the nking, screw it, I’ll never make it. So I texted Adina to let her know. It turned out she hadn’t gone to the gym. She had gone cross-country skiing in the woods behind my apartment. She was just about to take a cab to the pool, so she had the driver stop at the corner we’re I was waiting and pick me up. I got lucky there. So, remember how I told you once that, in order to go to a swimming pool here you have to have certifications from a doctor saying you don’t have skin diseases and what-not. Also , you have to wear a bathing cap. Well, not at this pool. And you know that, with all those kids there, somebody has to be peeing in the pool. I’ll bet you somebody paid somebody else a lot of money to look the other way on this one. In any case, it’s a real adventure here, with slides, tubing chutes, straight drops into 10 feet of water from a plastic pipe and all sorts of exciting things. But the place was overcrowded and it really just is a wet amusement park. One time was fine. I’m glad I used the ticket and saw the place. But that will be enough of that. I have to skype in a few minutes, so I am going to write more later.

The Museum of Illusions

The volleyball team mascot and me

It's a ladybug. I'm the one on the left.😁

Dr. Seuss

The wind has calmed down now, so the walk to school was pleasant again. We even took the kids outside to play in the snow. They really had a good time standing up on the 5-feet tall banks of snow and shoveling like crazy. I find it very interesting that the Russian educators at my school who speak English are unfamiliar with Dr. Seuss’s Books. I bought some and read the kids “Green Eggs and Ham” today. Their English is so good at this point that they can complete the rhymes when I show them the illustrations. They’re really increasing their vocabularies and are now able to sit still through an entire book. And that’s difficult for a kid when the book is in his native language. An interesting thing about Russian parents is that they think the more lessons you make a kid take, the better off he will be academically. They tried to get me to have a Spanish or Chinese teacher come into the room twice a week for 20 minutes and I refused. 40 minutes a week would be a waste of time. Plus, I thought you wanted them to be good at English! Plus, they already have Tatar lessons, music lessons, yoga lessons and the salt room. For crying out loud, they’re learning English while we play. 2and 3-year-olds are not going to learn English by sitting at desks and memorizing stuff. Let them play. But the mom of one of my two-year-olds decided she would have the Chinese teacher give him private lessons after dinner 3 times a week. I went with the kid today. The teacher is a young guy who had no idea what to do. He just kept saying in Russian, “He is so young.” The teacher has been in Russia for two years, speaks some Russian and no English. His Russian was heavily accented and hard to understand. He had no materials with him, he didn’t really talk to the kid. I tried to give him some suggestions but he said he had just wanted to meet the kid today. I don’t know that this is going to work out. Tonight is another gathering of City Club. Sonia and I are headed out in a few minutes to meet with English speakers of many different nationalities. It’s always fun and exciting. Anna, Fouad and Ravil are also planning on coming. I can’t wait to hear what the discussions will be about. Tomorrow we head to the women’s volleyball match. I’m excited about that because they are at the top of of the league. This weekend I’ll have to post the pictures of the stuff I built out of toilet paper rolls and cardboard for our unit on transportation this week and next. It keeps me busy during the kids’ nap time. I have to get ready now, so I’ll write more on the weekend.