The other teachers have written about their daily schedules, or what a typical day at the AH is like, but that isn’t going to stop me from delighting my readership with my take on that very subject.

Boiled down, I come to work with enough time to grade journals/homework and write the next day’s lesson plan (usually around 10 am).  From four until 7:30, I’m in the classroom teaching.  After that, I’m free.  This sounds pretty monotonous, but for a first time teacher everything is new, every grammar point, every theme, every subject is something interesting (well, not interesting, but new) and requires your brain to move and digest until it comes up with a suitable way to convey the new grammar, theme, or subject to the Russians.

This can take some time, as they don’t always think like you want them to, and the teachers’ assistant always has helpful (sometimes tedious) suggestions to improve your lesson plan.  Grading isn’t hard, its keeping up 30 some odd conversations written diary style with every student you’ve got that is difficult and time-consuming.

Teaching is actually the easiest part of the day if you’ve done all the legwork beforehand.  Its like acting, and if you wrote a script you’ll do just fine.  If you half-assed the first part, then teaching becomes much harder, and thats probably the same time the teachers’ assistant will sit in on your class.  They know when you’ve slacked off, it’s what they’re paid to know.

Midterms are this week, Thursday and Friday.  I ripped almost all of mine from previous teachers’ exams, put it into one and added something that shows Bob touched this exam.  Honestly, the past exams are excellent and I would be hard pressed to improve upon them.  Imitation is a very sincere form of flattery.

I might be going to Riga, or some other city (I’d love a longer trip to Moscow), the week after the week after midterms (second half of the first week in November).  I am definitely going to Krasnodar (Краснодар) for New Years (Новый Год).