Misc.

I have a lot of half-written blog posts that I just can't really seem to make into full posts. This is going to seem like a pretty random list of stuff.


Annoying Problem:
Students who think that I'm the only one who can teach them. I wrote about this last year. Except now my title is "Director of Studies" and my contract hours are reduced.

My proposed solution was to give everyone a nifty-sounding title, but this did not really fly with administration.

The reason this bothers me is that, while I am a good teacher, a huge part of my job is training other teachers to become good teachers. When students say that none of our other teachers can teach them, they are basically saying that I am no good at the training part of my job.


Though they might have a point:
I was helping one of the teachers plan his lesson.
A: Okay, so next I would elicit questions from the students.
B, writes "Illicit questions from students."
A: Well, that would be a much more interesting lesson.


Weather:
Every year, I get back to Moscow just in time for some ridiculuously hot weather. And every year I think "well, I might as well enjoy the opportunity to wear all my summer dresses because it gets cold really fast." And a week later every year I think "what happened?!? It was 90 degrees last week and now it's 50-something."

This is my way of saying that it's been a bit cold.


Shopping:
So I was rereading The Luzhin Defense this summer. It's not white stockings and bluish shoes but gray stockings and bluish shoes. I have no idea how I mixed that up. It was pretty easy to fix.

Other than that, I have mostly been window shopping because I am trying to save money. But I did buy a gray hat. Not even Suze Orman could disapprove of this hat.


Swimming:
The first thing to remember is that people don't have swimming pools here because they mostly live in apartments. None of the complexes here have pools, though that might be different elsewhere. The point is, if you want to swim after the weather turns cold, you have to go to the public pool.

Anyway, going to the public pool here is a multi-step process.
1. Go to the doctor (you can do this without an appointment). They want to make sure that you don't have heart problems and that your feet are not fungus-encrusted. If you pass, they write you a health clearance and you pay about $9 to get it stamped.
2. Then you bring your note to the pool, where they enter your name in their database. This is good for 6-12 months, and then you have to get another doctor's note.
3. Make an appointment to swim. There are a number of 45-minute sessions in the morning and evening on weekdays, and all day on Sunday. You can make your appointment for the same day, but you're more likely to get a space if you buy in advance. They print you a ticket with your name and appointment at the admin desk. 4. Take this ticket to the cash desk and pay about $5 to get it stamped.
5. Bring your stamped ticket to the locker room, where they give you a key.
6. Change, shower, swim. Make sure you have a swim cap because they won't let you in the pool without one.

For all I know, public pools have the same procedure everywhere. But I had been putting all this off for a while because I thought it seemed like a lot of steps and I hate swimming anyway.

In fact,
a) It doesn't take as long as it sounds.
b) If the pool is indoors and nobody is looking at you, swimming is actually a lot of fun.
c) You can, however, still hurt your feet. Always stretch first!

In general I'm really liking this swimming-as-exercise business. It's much better for my feet and knees and lungs than running or walking, I don't have to worry about cars like I do with roller-blading, I can swim no matter what the weather, and it might help me do something about my little tyrannosaurus arms. Let's see if I can actually keep it up.

The disadvantages are the cost, the fact that I'm going to need a hair dryer, and the location of the pool (across town). I'm also not really going to give up walking, as that has a psychological benefit. Is there room in my life for one and a half forms of exercise?


For more about Russian bureaucracy:
Read Mikhail Zoshchenko. I hadn't even heard of him until I had already been living in Russia for a year. I find him hilarious, but I don't know if I would have before I came here.


Exciting News:
I'm going to Petrozavodsk in a few weeks!


Solution to Annoying Problem?
Occasionally when I send a text message, I send it to the wrong person. There are two reasons why this might happen.
1. If I'm sending a message about somebody, I might accidentally send it to that person just because they're on my mind.
2. I'm in a hurry and two people are close together alphabetically.

The first is not so bad because I don't send unpleasant thoughts via text message. That's just good sense. It's usually something like "I'm observing Mabel's class today" and then Mabel is like, "Why are you referring to me in the 3rd person?" And then I realize that I've made a mistake.

The second is not really bad, either, because it should be obvious that I've made a mistake. And because, on my old phones, the "formal" (students, administration) list was separate from the "informal" list (colleagues, friends), so even if I made a mistake, it would have the right level of formality. On my current phone, they're all mixed together.

So the other day a text message for a colleague was accidentally sent to a student, and I thought, "great. Now our students are going to think that I'm barely literate," as I use a lot of abbreviations. Not great for my professional image, kind of embarrasing. Probably obvious that I had made a mistake.

Except! The message starts with "Hey, how is KZ?" KZ=Kizhi Island in the context of this message, but that doesn't matter here. What's important is that these are also said student's initials. Which means:
1. I am barely literate
2. I call my students by their initials
3. I refer to them in the third person

Points 2 and 3 make me seem unspeakably creepy!

This is my way of saying that my next phone had better let me make separate phone lists.