First Snow and Other Happenings

This morning I woke up early to get ready for language class. We have it every Friday morning at 9:30am. Jessica's host mom is our teacher. Logan and I had to leave by 8:45 to get there on time. We have to go to Molodezhnaya which is a 20 minute metro ride, plus walking. It's so worth it though! I have learned so much just in the last month or so. Russian is EXTREMELY hard. Honestly, the few phrases I do know were difficult to memorize. I have so much respect for Jordan and Logan (they speak the best).

Language class is combined with cooking class. In the past we've made borscht (soup) and blini (pancakes). Today we made APPLE PIE. Now, you must know I don't like pie very much (call me un-American). I LOVED this. I will include a recipe at the bottom since I forgot to take a picture. It was more apple chunks than pie, but it was SO DELICIOUS.

In other news...
1. While walking home today from school, it snowed!!

2. I guess it's officially winter!? Although we still have Halloween to celebrate. Some of the teachers are throwing a party a couple days before. Jenn and I are thinking of doing so too. We leave for our long vacation (aka FINLAND, SWEDEN, DENMARK, NORWAY, AND ESTONIA) on Halloween, so trying to accomplish a big party that day is a little too ambitious. Although we have started the Halloween crafts. ;)

3. Not that I needed to decide, but I decided on a favorite...
Dyoma!

We went "fishing" for one of our activities

Dyoma eating his fish

4. Since I'm on the topic of Dyoma, and my kids in general, here's some fun pictures from this last week!

Dyoma "proposing" to Nika

She wasn't so sure about it

These are some of my 1st graders.
We had an all boys day on Tuesday!
From left to right: Andrey, David, Sasha,
Albert (the crazy one in the back), and Alex

5. Switching gears, many of you know I still do not have a host family. Since I'm still living with Logan and Raya, I thought I would post some pictures of our apartment!

Raya's bedroom, which I sleep in.

Entryway

Shower and sink.

The kitchen!

6. Last but not least, I've discovered I have a love for European chocolate...

Love from Russia,
Paul (Pasha)

APPLE PIE RECIPE BELOW...

Ingredients:
1 Cup of Flour
3 Eggs
7 Apples (Russian apples are smaller, so maybe 5 apples?)
1 Cup of Sugar
1 tsp of butter
Cinnamon

Directions:
Melt butter in warm pan
Cut apples into small cubes, put in pan
In a bowl, mix flour, eggs, and sugar, spread this mixture over the cut up apples (shift it a little so that the mixture gets down into the cracks of the apples)
Put in oven for 45 minutes at 285 Degrees.
Enjoy!