On a scale from Purple to Orange, I'd say grindle green.

The past few days have been a rough rolller coaster of angst, frustration, a lot of happiness, and topped off by contentment. I am not sure how you can have all of those feelings wrapped up in the burrito of life, but you can. Friday was the first day that all of my teachers taught class. Anything that could go wrong did. We were late, and I got yelled at by angry Russian parents. I couldn't find half the stuff I needed for my classes, I got yelled at. I couldn't get the kids to calm down and they yelled at me. I think a person can only take so much yelling before they start getting grumpy. Needless to say I just stopped talking and stomped home through the woods back to my apartment. I half wanted someone to try and rob me so that I would have an excuse to rip someones face to pieces. The other half of my was scared, probably the most scared I have ever been. The fear won out and I ended up double timing it to my apartment with a bowl full of pudding that got all over me. LOL.
I decided that I didn't want to go back to Red Square Saturday, so my group and I rode around on the metro and went to the markets that sell stuff. As we walked down the rows and rows of fur puffed coats I thought to myself, if it weren't for the fur I would think that I was in China. Then we walked past an oriental booth full of Chinese dresses and silk scarves and I just about fell on the ground with laughter. All flee markets look the same, but the prices in Russia are much more expensive than China. I bought me a pair of black tights, that are more like long johns because they are warm. They matched my church clothes so that I can wear warm things to church and not get made fun of.
While in the market I took a picture of a coon skin hat in the process, this guy came up to me and insisted that I take a picture of him and send it back to America. Pretty random, I guess I asked for it by pulling out my camera though. Did I mention that my whole group dressed up in church clothes because the adult session of district conference was that night? Yeah, one of the girls kept getting called a gypsy and people would run away from her or try to touch her. One of the many perks of not being gorgeous in a foreign country is that people just ignore you.
Distric conference was a really cool expirence. Not only did we have translators, we listened to them live from headsets. One of our translators kept laughing instead of telling us what was funny so we got to listen to him laugh for nearly a half hour...not so cool. We let it slide because the feeling was still good.
The next morning we made the trek back to the hidden central building and went to the general session. I must admit that both sessions we were listening to a brother that I could have swore that I had heard before. He is a German brother and spoke in English. He was very funny, and in his last talk he said something about being a General Authority and it finally clicked in my head. I was able to listen to Elder Wolfgang H. Paul of the second quorum of the seventy. That man is incredible and it wouldn't surprise me if he was called into the quorom of the twelve someday.
Having been spiritually uplifted, I came home knowing that life would be easier this week because I knew a little more what to expect.
Today's teaching went much better. I was with 14-15 year olds that speak fluent English and we had a jolly good time together. We are reading Treasure Island and we played some math games, and then Kosta slept. I would rather he sleep than be a problem causer, so all in all it was a pretty good day. Tomorrow will be challenging, but I keep telling myself that I only have to teach these kids alone for another three days and then I can just visit them. It's good to be a head teacher.
I am still trying to think of creative things that I can eat until I get my oven hooked up. So far I haven't had a whole lot of time to cook when I get home before I am too tired to cook dinner, so it is a helter-skelter meal of bread, fruit and some sort of drink. Not very satisfying, but filling.
I am still trying to put my house together, it is very hard when I am at the school from 1 pm until 8 pm. That is a huge chunk of my day. There is a vaction weekend coming up and I am looking forward to it because then maybe I can get some stuff done.
I have to read ahead on my book to edit it. On Valentine's day, we are going to go see swan lake, we also have the option of going cross country skiing. On friday, we will have Russian cooking and speaking class, so there are lots of new things coming up.