Marrige, school, and jobs

So it has been seven months since I last posted anything. In fact, I forgot that I had a blog until a few days ago when my friend told me that now I was married it was the law that I must start blogging again. Here are some of the things I have learned about married people; 1 sleeping in the same bed takes some practice. 2 If the toilet seat is up there are other more important things that need to be discussed so just put it down yourself and pick a battle about something else. 3 Finding out that your husband is coming home and getting really excited about it is ok. 4 Being married is so much better than long distance. 5 Who knew that guys would honestly eat anything? Seriously, Randy eats the mold off cheese and likes it. Ew 6 I really like being married 7 I just wanted to end with seven things.
So marrige is fun and good. I like it. I like living in my own house, I love Randy, but the real life stress of school and finding jobs is hitting me hard. After the registrars office lost my transcripts today and I the institue doesn't have me on record as a living human being, I feel rather unknown and forgotten. I was finally able to register for classes this semester and it is going to be pretty technical. I am trying to get all of my rudimentary education classes done and over so that I can get into the education program in the fall of this year. Of course registering this late is a bad idea and all the classes that I want are full and have waiting lists with 9 people in them, but I will prevail. There is light at the end of this tunnel and I am going to rock the socks out of classes like Media Technology for Libraries. Although two of my classes are online and that scares me a little. I think that everything is going to be just fine. I just have to keep breathing.
Jobs are a whole other matter. I don't know how the rest of you stay at home people can do it. Money stress, boredom, and guilt play a huge roll in my life right now. I have a lot of things to do, I just don't want to do them. I still haven't gotten thank you cards out for reception gifts, but tomorrow is the goal to have them in the big blue mail box. Thanks for the gifts if I don't get the cards out. In Cedar City, the amount of people not graduated and the amount of people that are graduated are about the same, and everybody is looking for a job. The job economy is saturated. Needless to say, I am left swimming desperatly looking for anything. I guess this too will pass, just like it always does. I know everything is going to be fine, I just don't know how.
I am excited to see my family for Christmas and I want to tell everyone ah humbug because it is just the way I roll. I hope your holidays are good and that everyone has a splendid new year.
I'll give you a better blog of what Randy and I are up to in the next little while but for now, you get this.

The funniest thing just happened!

So I have not kept up with this blog very well, but I have to tell you the funniest story ever! I was reading some letters that I just got today from home. Most of the people in my group came over to just hang out and they have to be home by 10 for curfew. Three of them left at 9:40 to be home on time. Fortunatly or unfortunaltly they took the same elevator down the 15 stories that is my apartment building. At level four they were stalled and became trapped in the small 5x5 Elevator. At 10:05 I get a phone call from Emily that went like this "MEGAN!!!WE ARE TRAPPED IN THE ELEVATOR, GET US OUT, GET US OUT, CALL OUR HOST FAMILIES AND TELL THEM THAT WE WILL BE LATE, GET US OUT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!MY PHONE IS DYING, GET US OUT, MY PHONE IS DYING. Click. I needed to know what floor they were on so I ran out of my aparment and on to the elevator landing pad with only my socks and phone. I was trying to hear them scream. I turned around to see the door to my apartment floor close and I do not have keys, or shoes. I am now locked out of my apartment without shoes trying to get the three American's in the Russian elevator out. I do not speak Russian! So I rang my neighbors doorbell hoping that she would come unlock the outer door for me. She is not home. I wait another two minutes deciding what to do, and then someone from my floor opens the door. I sprint into the corridor shouting "Sbaseebah" and grabbing my shoes, keys and phone list as I frantically call people that will know how to get them out. Everyone I called was not home, or never answered their phone accept for Ted, who didn't know what to do either. That was when I decided that I would manually pull the doors open. That would be the adrenaline and momma bear talking. I started checking every floor to figure out where they were. It sounded like they were on every floor. I got to the sixth floor and asked them if they could hear me. They started to scream so I thought that sounded promising. I realized shortly after trying to get the doors open that they would not come with just me pulling. I began to cry out of frustration and helplessness that I felt. I went onto the balcony and prayed a very short plea for Heavenly Father to get the three stranded people out of the elevator. Not two minutes later did I hear them yelp out of surprise and a lot of noise coming from the fourth floor. I sprinted down the two more sets of stairs to find them laughing and angry at the fact that they had been stuck in the elevator for an hour. They were so grateful to the Russian man that used the jaws of life to get them out because Gabe needed to fart, Nathaly needed to pee and Emily was hyperventilating. They told me as we all jogged back up to my apartment that Nathaly almost peed in a bottle. After we get into my apartment and everyone has taken care of their needs, Emily turns to me and asks me "What took you so long?" I started to laugh so hard the tears streamed down my face as I said that I had come running out of my apartment to hear where they were that I locked my self out of my house and couldn't get a hold of anyone that would have been helpful in getting them out. Even now I am laughing at the fact that this is not a movie, things like this really do happen, and God answers even the most simple prayers. I am reminded of Elder Worthlin's last talk before he died. We should laugh at our adversities. Life is good.

April Fools

Today is April fools day but there isn't much joking going on here in Moscow. I am grateful that I live alone because I could just see this day going poorly for me if that were the case lol.
This week has been stressful and it is because the school that we are teaching in decided that they needed our supply room and that we are to be moved out of it in two weeks. At first I thought that this was an joke but it is not. 17 years of built up stuff is going to have to be moved into three small cupboards in a classroom that we use to teach. Needless to say it has been a trial to decide what stays, what goes, and what won't be missed. I am missing being on vacation. Getting back into real life after being away for a week is hard. It is all part of the great thing that we call life. It is no longer April Fools Day but it has been a rough week. I haven't finished cleaning out the supply room, I was verbally asaulted by one of my teachers, two people in my group approached me about the fact that they like each other and there is definatly some drama there. Not to mention the other member of my group is in love with a Russian girl that we met on our first vacation. I am a failure at being a head teacher. I am have made some new goals for the last two months of my time here, and hopefully, when everything is said and done I am a better person for it. My vacation to Finland and Sweden was crazy, I hopped from St Petersberg to Helsinki to Stockholm, back to Helsinki, back to St Petersberg, and then to Moscow for some R and R. I loved Sweden. I appreciated Helsinki and the temple there is one of my new favorites. The temple is Sweden was cool, but it was closed for remodeling and that was sad. We did get to stand in the Temple and that was ok, but I would have like to have seen the Baptismal font. (Since I can't see the celestial room.) Getting to both temples required me to do a lot of work and I organized with our tour guide Sasha the trip for most of the people in the Moscow ILP programs. It was hard, but worth it. The spirit is everywhere on the earth and it is nice to have that confirmation so strong.
My first cruise was on the way to Sweden and I have to say that I am glad that I have never been on another cruise before. Either my parents go on the most expensive and amazing cruise lines, and I am basing my cruise liner to theirs, or my ship was just one of the cheapest ever. My room was below two car decks, lol if the ship was taking on water, I would have been the first to know about it. I shared a cabin with Emily, Gabe and Sarah from Sosny. That was pretty fun and I am a heavy sleeper so the car alarms going off in the middle of the night didn't bother me at all. The first night I was tired and was out by nine totally missing the entertainment part of the cruise. Dinner was expensive and the waiter messed up my order and then tried to persuade me that the dinner he brought was really what I wanted more. Oh well. The blizzard we went through was a little bizar. I don't think cruise liners should go through blizzards. lol I am missing the sunshine and the warm weather that Utah usually has around this time of year but from what I hear about home it is still snowing there too. When I figure out how to make my SD Card read in someones computer, because this one refuses to read an 8 GB card, I will get some pictures of the trip up and running. I had a really good time and I am glad to be back in Moscow. There is more to the story, but it will be in a later blog.

Catching Up

I have neglected this blog for a little while because I went on vacation and when I came back the internet didn't work, so that is why there are no new things for the month of March. Here is kind of an instant replay of what happened. Gabe, Ted and my birthday are within a week of each other and so we had a party week that is still going on even now. It has been a lot of fun. There was a man's day and a woman's day in the past little while and over the woman's day vacation, we went to Nizhney Novograd for our first out of Moscow vacation. It was awesome. We rented an apartment for two nights and it was really inexpensive for lodging. We got to see some crazy stairs that are shaped into a giant figure 8, I touch the Vulga River, and then the next day I went and had a snow ball fight on it because it is still frozen over. I played around in the Kremlin, I bought a mace because Russian maces are important..., I slid down an ice patch inside the fortress and had quite the audience staring at me as I did so. I have seen more churches on every street corner here in Russian than I did in Utah and that is saying something. I rode all kinds of public transportation, I met some really amazing people at a ward social in Nizhney that I will never forget and I will always love. One of my life long dreams has been to go inside a mansion that you read about in classical novels i.e. Count of Monte Cristo, or Pride and Prejudice, or more apropriatly, War and Peace, and one of the most amazing families lives in an old merchants house that was turned into an apartment complex during the communist reign and I was able to watch the Best Two Years inside a house that has more history in it than I will ever have in my entire life. The oddity of watching the Best Two years in this mansion adds that much more to the expience for me. This vacation was incredible. So many things that could go wrong didn't, and everything seemed to have a way of working out.
Teaching has been a lot of fun and work. Some of the kids truly hate me for reasons that I don't really understand. It does bother me because all of the other reports from other head teachers say that the head teacher is the favorite person in the whole group. I have concluded that I am the one that gives the most disipline and therefore I am the dreaded, hated, and feared Ms. Megan. That has not been the best part of my teaching expirence, but I love to watch the little kids faces light up when they understand what you want them to do and can respond correctly in English.
There have been the weird stories from my teachers about public transportation that have caused me some stress as the head teacher. For example, one Sunday, Ted Angie and Gabe were riding home on the metro after a missionary discussion and there was a crazy man who came and sat across from Ted. He had a backpack and when he got on the metro he pulled out a saw and a rope that he proceeded to tie into a noose. Then he hung himself from the hand bar and smile creepily at Ted and then ask very polietly in English if he could do Ted the service of hanging him. When Ted told him no, he then asked if any of the people in my group had been into the Russian forrest at night and where we lived and what school we taught at. I had mixed feelings about this story. I was angry that they stayed in that wagon as long as they did, I was jealous that I missed it, and I was terrified that people actually do that.
That was the same day that I filled in for one of my teachers at church. She has a calling in the Sunbeams. I thought that it wouldn't be a problem because I teach little kids the rest of the week and I love my niece who is a sunbeam. I came out of church with foot prints all over my shins, scratches down my arms, and bit marks on my calves. I have never felt so irreverent than trying to help teach Sunbeams. Not to mention I felt abused and frustrated because there was not one thing I could do accept for chase the little girl named Rachel into the priesthood meeting and carry her out of the room interupting all of the men's comments. I must have a way with children because there is not one in Russia, even if they were born in America, that likes me.
I am leaving for Finland, Sweden, and St Petersberg this week so I will not be around to blog about my adventures, but when I get back there will be some much needed good times, and some much needed new stresses. I am pretty excited to visit some new temples and see some pretty amazing new culures.

Good, bad, and silly

Having all of my teachers here has been a blessing and a curse. It is good to have time to be a head teacher, but now I can't use the excuse that I am pulling double duty when I am not doing something that I am supposed to. :( Emily fits in really well and we like having her. My group of teachers are good people and I love them all. I have had the opportunity to hang out with some of the other groups and I am glad to be the head teacher here. It is going to be an awesome three more months. It is crazy to think that almost a whole month has gone by.

We went to the ballet. I cannot say that I was totally impressed with the "Russian ballet" it was just like American ballet. It was funny that the court jester, one of the most impressive dancing characters was Asian. They have to be number one at everything.

The plot I finally recognized half way through the show and there was a lady behind me bellowing "Bravo" everytime anyone did anything. That was pretty entertaining. I had no idea figuring out the plot of a ballet would cause me to think back on odd childhood memories. All in all, the night was fun, we went for McDonalds right after because it was close to the theater, and it was fast. It was also almost 11 at night and everything else PG rated was closed. We could have gone into a gentlemans club but that might have ended poorly.

Church is always fun. It truly does make me feel better going to church and thinking about nothing but divinely related topics for three hours. You never realize how much you have until it gets taken away from you.

Teaching was rough. In level one, all of the kids are calling me a beach because they think it is the other word. I find it really funny, but I have to save face because these kids need some dicipline in their lives and poor Ted would love to teach instead of punish. I have sat in many a class and tired to help the best that I can. I am the mean one that makes them sit in their seats so that is why I am a sandy water front. lol

My apartment is still missing a kitchen and there were nine people that stayed here last night. There should be a max of five. There is not enough space to breath and I am really frustrated. Tonight is their last night so hopefully I don't get in trouble with the owner of the apartment. If they find out that there are more than six people in here, they will kick ILP out of here and we will have to find a new place to have headquaters. It has been super stressful and messy, but I am learning and trying and hopefully I can make this all work out without getting evicted and making people hate me for being a beach at home too.

We visited Red Square and the Chapel of Jesus Christ Our Savior, we also visited Peter the Great riding a whole bunch of Jamacian ships that looks like shipwreck cove on Pirates of the Carribean. We have also rode the metros a lot. I am glad that I played Wii Fit before I left because the balance games have really paid off on the metros. ROFL Sometimes the car will be too full so I can't hold on to a bar. I have to free style ride the metro. I haven't fallen down in the cars yet. I did fall into the snow though. It is cold here, so when the snow melts even a little, it freezes into this horrible ice and my boots are made for walking in the snow, not across ice. It's ok though, falling on ice can be an adventureous sport.

I could use some peanut butter. Other than that, I am really good. After all the people leave my house I will be great and this is pancake week were the Russians only eat blini (crepes) for an entire week. It is incredible. After this week I will be bursting with happiness.

I am still trying to make the pictures work and failing miserab ly. The first picture is the lighting at the ballet, the second picture is my group on our way to school, and the third is me in front of the Church of Chirst...the really long name. If you want to see me facebook will have them all posted.

Friday the 13th

I find it completely ironic that Friday the 13th has been the best day of my life for the past several years now. It could be my appreciation of the number thirteen as it is my second favorite two digit number. (The first being 21.) There have just been so many happy memories and "lucky" stories. Probably the best date I ever had was on Friday the 13th, which was both happy and lucky. LOL I would just like to say that today has been wonderful. I believe that we should make this day a true holiday and everone should get over 13 as a bad number. When you add the digits together that equals four. It can't be that bad considering that the number four is very popular currently. (That one was for Luke :)) I am going to tell you why today was so amazing, you will just have to muse with me for only a minute longer.
Today was great because I got up, got dressed, and walked to the school at ten. I read my book and listened to music as I walked, and I didn't trip, get lost, and I wasn't bored the whole ten minutes. Then I got into the school and all of my group showed up this time. We then all walked to our Russian speech class where I learned some pretty cool words and how to make Blini, or for Erin, crepes. I will totally send you the ingredient list and you can make them on your own and have amazing dinners!!! With Nutella. It will be just like European connection, I promise. After Russian class, I went home to get some jello out of my fridge that I was going to use for a lesson today, and discovered several other boxes of jello. This is so much cooler than it sounds because I needed a box of Jello for class and I didn't know what I was going to do without it. Then I get to the school and I gather all the supplies I needed and set up class thirty minutes early so that I would be ready for the kids this time. This whole week I have been too late and everything starts off crazy. Opening went awesome! Then gym went awesome and the kids were talking to each other and were being good because they liked what I was doing. Then we had Jello in our next lesson and all the kids totally liked Jello and paid attention again. I thought I was going to cry because of how good everyone was being. It was a super plus because the kids picked up on how much I smiled at them today and wanted to come to my class. (The native coordinator came into my class earlier this week and told me that I needed to be less loud and smile more because the kids were afraid of me.) Life is good. I left the school so happy and excited to go back on Monday even though my teacher should be arriving tomorrow. She got on the plan today and I found that out today which made me even more happy. Then I came home and read my mom's e-mail about black spray painted roses for my dad and laughed so hard I cried, then I watch V-for-Vendetta and cried because the movie is so beautiful. I ate grilled chesse sandwiches and my family knows my record for how well those go for me and they came out perfect. I also opened a random bag of grilled vegetables that I bought at the store and they were amazing. Then I ate a snickers bar which is my favorite candy and now I am writing this super upbeat e-mail all about how wonderful Friday the 13th really is. *Sign of Contentment*
I have to mention that the rest of this week has been incredibly stressful and I was dreading today because kids are always crazy on Fridays and I was not super excited to clean up a Jello mess just in case it didn't go well. I would like to thank everyone that has been praying for me because I have felt the help and I know today was truly inspired by a Heavenly Father who loves me and knew that I needed this day to get me through the rest of my time here in Russia. Thank you thank you thank you.
So now that you have puked because of the oozing happiness from this blog, I would like to give you a heads up on what to expect in the coming days. I will be going to Swan Lake the ballet tomorrow, with a very famous composer that I will be able to spell someday. I get one long weekend this month that we might go to a monastary and a cemetary! As bizzar as that sounds, I imagine this could possible be the best vacation of my entire time here. Monks and dead people, could life really get any better? lol
I also have another long vacation in March that I will be going to Finland and Sweden. I haven't decided if I want to go to the Baltics yet because I would like to spend some time in St. Petersberg. I don't think that I will get a whole lot of other opportunities to visit Russia like the opportunity that I have now. Then again, will I get to see the Baltics? I would ask for your advice, but I don't want you to throw anything at me because I get the opportunity to travel to these places.
My last thoughts right now to conclude, I love snickers bars, Hugo Weaver is amazing, I miss all of you, and my apartment smells like cabbage soup.

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.