How cold is -40? Not Wind Chill, just -40!

52

1/19

It was -40 today; -40 is the temperature where Celsius and Fahrenheit meet, so no matter what you measure it with, it's just really cold. I was surprised that my host mom admitted that she wished we had an indoor toilet today - people here seem so proud of doing things the hard way. I'm with her on the toilet thing lol. I had Saule time my bathroom run - 17 seconds :) Not bad. I'm confident that I can shave that down yet too.

I had a crick in my neck all day today. I haven't had one of those in a long time and had forgotten how annoying it is... School was pretty typical today, aside from the "seminar". The seminar isn't what I thinking it was. It's more like people from other schools came and watched some teachers' lessons. Mine will be next week with my 5th graders. I sat in on a 3rd grade class and my 9A's Russian class. The 3rd grade lesson was so clearly scripted and practiced. The kids' answers were so obviously memorized, it was weird. The 9A class was also quite dry. The director wants me to use the Active board for my lesson. I've never used an active board, but I'm guessing no one has from the way they talk about the thing. I'm planning on just making a sweet powerpoint :)

Then I had English Club/Play practice. My students have rejected the Traditional American Dance lol. They want something longer, more complicated... I'm basically going to watch Slumdogs and see what I can come up with. I'm not mad that I have ambitious students. I played volleyball after English Club. I'm slowly gaining the respect of my coworkers through my slow but steady improvements on the vb court. If only this language thing would come easier for me... that would help a lot. Speaking of which, my Kazakh tutor officially bailed on me. Zhamilya told me that she doesn't want to tutor me anymore. I could have told you that, on account of we've only met twice in the past 3 months that she's been my "tutor". Finally. Now, I can ask Saltanat to help me with out stepping on anyone's toes. It's just too bad I've not made much progress with the language in the first three months that I've been here. Now I sort of feel like I've created a rut for myself - just keeping to myself... Those first couple of months are supposed to be the least busy too. Ooojus.