Little bits and bytes

So,

What's new here? I had Thanksgiving with the Mormons yesterday, which was great. As it got closer to the holiday, I was missing my family more and more, so I was pretty happy to have some firends to eat and talk with. They are quite an interesting bunch. The younger ones are in "companion" pairs, and they are bound to each other for 2 years, or until they get a transfer slip in the mail. They literally can only be apart in the bathroom! But yeah, a week from Saturday they'll get their new orders in the mail, so some of them might be getting shipped off to a new city in Siberia. We even played a game of risk, although I can never take board games quite so seriously anymore. It was also good in that they live in the North of the city, so I finally had a good opportunity to see a new neighborhood.

I've been teaching Thanksgiving for the past week, and for the students it's kind of boring, but I tell them the whole story just the same. I even make them go around the table and talk about what they're thankful for. Most of them are thankful for the families, their friends, their universities, and so on, but some real wise acres today were being thankful for the table, the floor, the chairs, and other pieces of furniture. Some of them are even thankful for me! I've been giving the best Thanksgiving speeches of my life, which leads me to believe that I have a lot to be thankful for. More than ever, I know what it means to have a loving family and loving friends, and that's pretty great.

All my foreign friends are having birthdays and celebrating them in all sorts of adorable ways. Everyone's getting pretty close by now, so that's nice too. I might even have a chance to rap in the club with a guy from Ghana sometime soon! I'll have to practice.

Grad school applications are still weighing me down, but I've made quite a bit of progress. In fact, I only have 3 personalized sections of my personal statement to go! Then: ENDLESS EDITING. I'm feeling more relaxed about the whole thing, but will be very happy to be done, to just wait and enjoy life.

I'm also just about ready for our break from work. Teaching is fun, and there are a lot of rewarding moments, but the daily grind is getting to me. I am planning a sort of forum on different dialects/accents of English, to which I'm inviting the Canadian Kate and the British guy Michael. I think it should be interesting for the students as well as the native speakers. Anyway, I'm getting pretty excited about the prospect of travelling with some other ETA's around Russia and Europe. I'll probably be leaving Tomsk for Novosibirsk on the 2nd of January or so. There I'll meet Matt and we'll head to Ekaterinburg for Abbie. Next stop: PETERSBURG! Then we're planning about 2 weeks in Europe: Germany, maybe Amsterdam or Paris, Prague. It'll be just what I need, I think. After Europe we'll be back in Moscow for a Fulbright orientation thing. If anyone will be in any of these cities or countries, or nearby, let me know so we can meet up!

Lots of love,
Jason