Mars has two moons, Phobos and Deimos

Two of my group members are thinking of going home. I am so sad about this. They are both girls and without them it will be the only girl.  How can they think about going home even before we have for to our sites??? On the other hand, I have respect for them that they are doing this now rather than when they are at their site. I have been aching to go to my site for a while but I cant imagine even thinking of going home right now.

My advisor came to visit this weekend. It was a blast. Except Ally and Sarah announcing their intentions to leave. But I enjoyed talking to Camille and we hit it off right away.

So I think I am picking up a couple of classes since there will only be three of us now. I am glad I will be getting more experience. Ludmila, our Technical Trainer, says I am doing pretty well but the more experience, the better. Tomorrow I pick up a new eleventh form (grade) class. I’m stoked but also a little nervous. I saw my fellow trainee Charley teach them and it looked really tough. There was this one kid in the back who just slept through the entire class. I couldn’t believe it but Charley didn’t mind so he just let the kid be. Watch out tomorrow though BUSTER! I’m not going to let you sleep in my class…I say now…

So it’s a couple of days since I wrote the first paragraph and Ally and Sarah are gone. They called the office on Monday and they were already gone the next morning. Swift, and not much time for us to process it all. It was sad but some good came out of it…(Peanut butter handed down from Ally, Thanks).   Speaking of peanut butter, I once met a guy in a hostel in Uruguay and he said this to me about Americans, “I have met many Americans in my travels and I have been pleasantly surprised to find that all stereotypes about them are not true except one, Americans LOVE their peanut butter!” Tee hee. That makes me happy.

We have three more weeks at out training site and this point was marked by an interview last week with the administration. I was nervous going into the interview but left feeling very positive and encouraged. The interviewer mainly asked me questions about how training was going, was I truly committed, etc. The big interview (PLACEMENT!) is in two weeks I believe. That’s the interview that really determines where I’ll be placed. (The south east most likely by the way). I taught eleventh grade today for the first time! It was so intense to think the students were only about 4 years younger than me! But all went well and the students even clapped at the end of the class. Charley normally teaches the class and during a drawing activity, one group dedicated their drawing to Charley…It was cute. I hope to get pictures up of their drawings, which by the way, the theme was Zoos.

So officially only 3 weeks of training left. I can’t believe how fast it has gone by! In the next few weeks we will have our placement interviews, demo lessons, and LPIs. The placement interviews are self explanatory. It is an interview to decide where our permanents sites will be. The demo lesson is a lesson that I perform in front of the Peace Corps administration to determine whether or not I am able to teach or not. The LPI means “Language Proficiency Interview”. Its an interview aimed to test our language skills and determine if we know enough of the Russian language to function at site. We have had two mock LPIs so far and they have both gone well so I am not too nervous, but I had better not pat myself on the back too early. I am mostly nervous about the interview because that really determines how my site will turn out.

This weekend Jun, Charley and I will spend recording texts onto CDs for our school. This is part of a community project that the Peace Corps requires trainees to do during training. In my opinion, it is a rather boring project but it will be really useful in our school where teachers lack authentic audio materials. We have 5 books to record wish us luck that we get it all done in the next three weeks! On Wednesday we attended a methodological workshop at another school in our village, School #2, (Yes that is the name of the school). We were asked to present idioms used in America. At one point in the presentation we were explaining the idiom “pain in the neck” when one of the teachers yelled out, “So it’s the same as ‘pain in the ass’?” It took everything inside us to not bust out laughing, but we said yes and the gentleman seemed very pleased with himself.

So I am sure all my American readers know that Thanksgiving is next week. We are pretty stoked over here since the Peace Corps decided to give each of us an extra 20грн to make a celebration. (That’s about $2.50. Im ballin’! (Is that correct?) For the first time ever, I am going to attempt to cook stuffing…mom why did I not pay more attention when you were cooking??? Luckily the Peace Corps gave us an awesome cooking book with all the recipes a volunteer could possibly want, including typical American holiday recipes. Sweeeeeet!

Anyways, I am sorry I have not had more time to write about my awesome adventures! Our old LCF, Yelena, is back and she is a lot harder than the other LCF, Alia. She is good though; she keeps us on our toes and we learn so much more with her. But I suppose that in three weeks I will get to site and I will have nothing to do so I will be writing more. Enjoy the silence while it lasts. 😀 (COMMENTS PLEASE!!!)