Great news: WE HAVE A VOLUNTEER! Moscow welcomes Jeff Maloney with open arms as our new teacher! He'll arrive in a mere few days to join us in our exploration of Russia and our adventures with the little kiddies.
In the October news, we went to a soccer game. Boring topic, right? Wrong. Soccer, or "futbol" in Russia is cause for gang activity among rival teams. Seve and I bought some scarves and hats to support our local team, the Locomotives, but our native coordinator told us we were only allowed to wear while physically at the game. Anywhere else, and we'd get jumped. On our metro ride home I hid our revealing attire in my bag while several drunk Russians boarded around us singing various "Go Team!" chanty songs and punching each other in the arms. Fights broke out. Cops were everywhere. It was pretty cool.
Our team's colors are red and green so throughout the years I think I'll bring these little treasures out at Christmas time and hang them on the tree while Seve can gather the kids 'round and tell them the tale of the bare-chested Russians who chanted "We will, we will F*** you!" at our wonderful soccer game.
We also held a Halloween bash for our kids! More photos can be seen at our Flickr. Seve went as a mad scientist/teacher and I went as a boring ol' cat. He was in charge of the piñata station while I worked pumpkin decorating. Our native coordinator thought allowing our kids to actually decorate the pumpkins would be too messy so instead we had the kids draw pictures, cut them out, and
tape them to the pumpkins. Lame, I know.
For our week long vacation, we went to St. Petersburg. It was magnificent, and I mean that in the dictionary definition sense. I mean, just look at the Hermitage, it's quite the intimidating building:
We weren't allowed to take pictures inside, but we, uh, did anyway:
We had a blast in St. Pete. Aside from all the regular touristy stuff, we managed to find a junk-turned-into stuff store that Seve fell in love with. He bought a clock made out of car parts. The shop was so cool, it had a "mounted moose head" made from bicycle parts and earrings made out of rubles and kopecks (that naturally cost 30 times the amount of the actual rubles and kopecks made to make the earrings). We also saw Michael Jackson's "This Is It," and now I don't see how I can ever continue living until I get some orange pants. And a military jacket. With big, pointy sleeves.
We also went to a Zoological Museum. You know, the kind with realistically stuffed animals.
They had animals from all over the world, and the remains of a real Woolly Mammoth! Also, a mummified horse:
I would like to end this post with a picture of a . . . puma? Some of the animals were a little old and needed restoration, and sometimes the restorer did a shoddy job:
By the way, Happy Birthday Sarah!!
