The School, Food, and Shrinking Stomachs

31.8: Today was a more relaxing day. After a cheese and egg sandwich on this strange dense, dark brown bread breakfast, my teachers and I made the minute-long trip to the school. Galina, the director, once again wasn’t in her office but Alexander was; he speaks almost no English, so I called Guyla and she translated for us. Alexander showed us into the main part of the school and introduced us to Irina, the “grand teacher” of the school. She gave me a Kindergarten and Pre-Language schedule and took us on a tour of our teaching rooms. The school is small but clean and our rooms are spacious. Whenever we enter the school, we are required to wear these plastic foot covers, which are pretty much miniature trash bags with elastic for our feet. We feel rather ridiculous wearing them but their purpose is understandable. My teachers donated and organized the school and teaching supplies they brought with them from the States in our ILP Supply Closet, and then we went to lunch. The cook is a gruff, plump woman who always seems to be yelling at us (in Russian, of course), but she is genuine is purpose and cares that we’re fed and happy. I’ll learn her name eventually. Our meal consisted of a 4x2” fish patty, a scoop of mashed potatoes, green bean soup, and an uncooked tomato and cucumber salad. The drink was home-made fruit juice: various kinds of fruit rested at the bottom of the pitcher. Everything was quite tasty, and very filling: at the school, it appears that lunch is the biggest meal. Dinner that night was shredded carrot and apple salad, which was surprisingly delicious, but hardly filling. I know I’m going to lose weight while I’m here. Ironically, contracting strep throat days before I came to Russia may have been a partial blessing in disguise: my stomach is already accustomed to eating very little, and I believe it’s already shrunk. Even though I feel hungry enough to eat an entire pizza, I probably couldn’t (to anyone who really knows me, you know this is cause for alarm: I can usually eat like a fat kid—secretly, my appetite had grand dreams of being a fat kid). We did some more training that evening and I did some Head Teacher stuff; it was a quiet evening.