Swan Lake pics

This Imperial Hermitage Theatre was the personal theatre of Catherine the Great and has been restored beautifully. What a great place for us to experience "Swan Lake" ballet.

Yes, I was sitting that close! And to top it off we were sitting in the back few rows! Not a very big place but it was beautiful. 

Found this on the internet and it has a great panorama view of the Theatre. 

Imperial Hermitage Theatre Panorama

Convents and Monasteries

So for our trip this week we went and visited a Convent and Monasteries and some cemeteries of famous people. A convent is a place where monks live and a Monastery is where girls live (I think they call them nuns in Russia but I don't know!) But it is not a monastery any more, now they hold concerts in the main house! It is supposed to be very beautiful. We will be going to a concert next week =) I can't wait! We also went and saw a cemetery... it was very beautiful and some funny stories!! I had so much fun today! =)

"The Help" Party!

Sunday night Jessie, Sam, Reagan, Jessica, Megan and me decided we would have a "Help" night!!! Help as in the movie, "The Help"!! We also combined it with a calibration because we reached the 50 days left mark!!! =) 

So me and Reagan made the fried chicken and Sam and Jessie made Minny's Chocolate Pie (also from the movie)!!! It turned out sooo… good!!!! After sitting down and eating we turned on the movie and relaxed!!! It was a good night!

I love my roommates! if you're feeling homesick they know what to do!  We have a rule that if anyone is homesick we must bring home to them!! To me this place is home!! It’s going to be sad to leave!

100%

After every in-service meeting on Tuesday, we get evaluated in one of the classes we teach. The highest you can get is a 5 and that’s if your spot on!! She evaluates our context, modeling the language, student’s participation, BMC, and our level of engagement with the children.

So my lesson today was Shop. We were building Slingshots. Because of time, all my classes only got to the step where we colored the Popsicle sticks but we had so much fun working together!

Here is the good part… My head teacher evaluated me and I got a 5!!!!!!!!! Yes that’s right I was spot on today!!! I am so happy!!! (…and humble)  =)

SWEDEN

We arrived in Sweden after a 1 hour plane ride and we had about 2 seconds to buy bus tickets and find the bus!!! It was a 1 hour bus ride to Stockholm! =) I think one of my favorite parts of the trip was the bus ride because we passed so many beautiful bridges and mountains!! It was beautiful! It’s like driving up to Show Low, Arizona but 10 times better!!! It was so green with the white snow everywhere!!!

After the bus ride we went to a church and sat through about 15 minutes of mass at the Church of Sweden! My head teacher Sam read scriptures for everyone!! It was so funny!!! After that we walked to the hostel. On our way we stopped at the bridge and took picture of the sunset!!! It was beautiful!!! We finally found are hostel. There were 8 of us and 12 beds. So we had roommates!! Let me tell you 2 were nice and the other 2 didn’t come in till about 1 in the morning! I wake up and turn over to see a fat naked man with locks of hair on his head AND back. If you were to combine both you could make at least 10 sweaters. It was a very big surprise to see that when I woke up. For those of you who are worrying about me, it turned out he was not all naked, he had his finest "tighty-whities" on!!!

I left the room very fast when we woke up!! After the morning fun we walked around and did a free tour that was very fun in its own way. DID you know the queen of Sweden married her gym trainer!! Scandalous!  You learn something new every day!!! After learning that valuable information we went to see the changing of the guards!! It looked funny but kind of lame too. We thought there was going to be this big thing but nope, not so much!!!

By then me and Reagan needed a bag of candy so we stopped and got a big bag of the stuff!! And guess what, it was gone within a day!  After that we needed a little exercise so we took jumping pictures by the water and watched the sunset! The clouds ruined our sunset plans because they were covering it all up, so we just headed to MacDonald’s!! (Cheapest thing to eat in Sweden) We ate there twice in one day and once each day after that!

The next day we walked around and bought more gifts and trinkets. I got an "I heart Swedish Boys" t-shirt and a key chain!! You can’t have enough key chains!!! I have a key chain from everywhere I went! So then we headed to the airport and flew from Sweden back to Estonia where we caught a bus (after a 20 min walk) that we rode back into Russia!!! I loved my vacation!!!

Sorry... no pictures of the Hairy Man in the Tighty-Whities. =)