Happy holidays, everyone! As always, sorry for my lack of posts.. But I am here now to give you a little photo update. Enjoy!
A few shots around my village:
Surprisingly, it's been a very mild winter. It's only snowed a handful of times and most days, though cold, are bright and sunny.
There weren't many of us around for Christmas cause a lot of volunteers are either traveling or in the states right now but the few of us left had a little get together:
We started the night off with a little gift exchange. It was supposed to be a White Elephant sort of thing but everyone was too nice to steal gifts so it didn't quite work.. In the end everyone just picked random gifts, one of which included balloons (above). I got an avocado! That may not sound like much but I was extremely happy with it. I went home the next day and made the best guacamole I've ever eaten. Man, I miss Mexican food..
Then we sat around watching cheesy Christmas cartoons (Charlie Brown and the Grinch).
The only problem was our poor planning left us with no real food. The everyone-bring-a-dish method doesn't work if everyone brings snacks and deserts. Our Christmas feast consisted of cookies, pie, pumpkin bread, cheese and crackers, broccoli with ranch dip, chips, apple crisp, and.. oh yeah, more cookies.
In addition to the Christmas get together, there were a few New Year's parties at school. The first was with the upper class students:
This is the decorated hall.
Most of the girls dress up.
This is my counterpart with our homeroom class.
Every class has to make a poster and this is ours. It says Happy New Year in Russian
My counterpart and I
My counterpart and I with some of our students
There were a few contests for the students. The one in this photo involved two 11th form boys carrying girls onto the stage. Whoever had the most girls by the end of a certain amount of time won. That white and black blur on the right side of the photo is one of the boys with a girl in his arms.
Then there were a bunch of performances. Every class did a song and a skit.
Then there was the teacher's party..
Two teachers dressed up as Santa (or Ayaz-Ata) and his wife
There's a tradition here of people dancing around the tree while singing New Year's songs
Me outside of the schools with my counterpart, the school director, and another teacher
All of the teachers at my school
Me with all of the foreign language teachers (2 English teachers and 2 German teachers)
Then there was a lot of drinking and dancing. Good times.
That's pretty much it for now!
Oh, and I got my LSAT score! 166! Which puts me in the top 7%! Not as high as some of my practice tests but I'm definitely satisfied!
