Moving Day!

We moved last weekend! We are so tremendously blessed in our new apartment. We are really enjoying it. So I thought I would show you a few pics comparing our new and old apartments.

So they are way unorganized. But that is because I have been sooooo busy! I am so exhausted. I am going to try to go to a park and the honey festival this weekend and relax a little. I have been working all day and then bringing my work home and working all evening. Not fun, super stressful at work this week. I will fix these later and update everyone! Love!

A Week Down, a million to go!

So I finished my first week of school. It was a bit of a crazy week. My schedule has changed everyday. But it has been such a good blessing. My relationships with my coworkers/ supervisors has been really great, my students (most of them) have been just wonderful! I am really enjoying work and my classes.

Thats another thing, so different than what I thought. My time table (Praise the Lord) decreased from 37 lessons a week to 26. I am so thankful for that. With the 37, they actually couldn't fit in all the lessons in during the times that they have lessons. They gave a few of them to Truc and just had to cut out a few.

So now I am teaching:

1st-4th English with a Native Speaker ( was conversational English last year) This is speaking, reading,writing on a low level appropriate for the age and level of English. I have 3 groups in each grade once a week.

1st-4th grade Science. This I teach with a Russian teacher. Half the lesson is in Russian and then I pretty much reteach the lesson in English. I have this in 2 groups per grade, each group once a week.

5th grade natives. This is 2 5th graders who speak English fluently as an American 5th grader would. So this class is reading, writing, spelling, vocab, comprehension, anaylsis, etc.

6th grade history! They just added this, so this week will be my first class. I will have one group once a week (thats all they could fit in) for a semester. Then the other group the next semester.

The beautiful thing is, I have some kind of book for all my English classes and History class. Then I have the science book in Russian. That doesn't help me except for translating pictures for the kids.

So now you can see why I didn't have much time to post this week. Because I have to do planning for all those classes, including take home reading and all the questions and everything! Love being a teacher! Actually I really do love it.

And to add to all that, we were supposed to move this week. Since there are only 3 girls we are all living in one apartment. We would like to move into a 3 bedroom apartment now. We had one and she sold it to someone else 2 hours before we were to sign the contract! We already had most our apartment packed in boxes and everything! It was such a huge dissapointment. But hopefullly there will be a better one that the Lord has in store for us. We are told there are 4 or 5 more they have for us to look at. Keeping my fingers crossed!

Well here are a few pics from this week:

Some more babysitting. I just love Angus' pizza covered face!

Here is one with all of them, Jude, Amy, and Angus. I just love this one because it really shows their personalities so well.

Here is story time before bed. A classic Green Eggs and Ham.

Christ the Savior Cathedral on the Moscow riverboat tour

Here is part of the Kremlin. It is part that they actually have Kremlin members working in.

Me and Kathryn on the river boat tour.

Kat, Me and Truc on the river boat tour.

One of the 7 sisters buildings built by Stalin.

Me holding a sweet iguana outside the Moscow Zoo.

Happy Birthday Moscow!

Labor Day for You Work for Me

Happy Labor Day to my American friends! Today was our kids first day back at school. Lets just say it was a crazy place today! But it was so nice to see my kids. And I won't lie, not so nice to see some. I started the day thinking I was going to be working on lesson plans all day. I was told last week that they were not having any lessons today. Well they did of course. So I was found in my office 5 minutes after a lesson was beginning. But everything went fine and it was a good day. I just hope my kids are to the challenge this year! It is going to be a lot harder, per my superiors orders. We actually have textbooks in a few classes! So we'll see...

Here is a pic and a cute little video of the opening ceremony.

Yes, that is big coats you see everyone wearing. That is because it was about 40*, windy and sprinkling!

Last weekend we helped some friends move. We watched their kids for several hours while the movers and them were packing. They are a wonderful British family from church and lead our young adult group. Emily had to do all the moving alone. Daniel works for the BBC and was down in Georgia doing some work. So we had Jude, 6, Amy, 4 and Angus, almost 2!

Here is a pic from Truc's first day here in Moscow. We did some sight seeing. It was so hot and we sweated all day! I want those days back. Or really something in the middle. It went from averaging 90-100* a day to averaging 40-50* a day. This is crazy people!

And one for fun! Praise the Lord, our landlord replaced our shower head from 1942. And that is not an exaggeration. But this one has no way to hang. So thankfully Kathryn brought some cute duct tape and it solved our problem!