Some excerpts from emails about school...

I have school six days a week, arriving there at 8 and going home at 1 or 2. I have six classes and they last 45 minutes, with a 15 minute break between each and sometimes a 20 minute break. School was short, but still felt really long. There is no set schedule for all of the days. Every day at the end there is the schedule with the classes for tomorrow posted on a pillar, and all of the kids shove their way up to it to take a picture of it on their phone so they can write it down later. Since it was the second day of school most just talked about their expectations of the class and talked about themselves. Or that is what the girl next to me told me. There were about 3 girls that speak great English. They (my schoolmates) were all nice. I have a safety class where the teacher talks about what to do if there is a fire and a bunch of other stuff. Well, I was sitting there looking at the posters in the class and I turned around to look at the back of the room and there were shelves lined with gas masks. That isn't in our first aid classes in southern Oregon! Also, the mullet is alive and well here. Like one in every 20-30 people have a mullet, so I see them a lot. There is also this hair style that is like a mullet, only they just cut their bangs really short, so the face is framed. I would still consider it a mullet, but there is hair over the ears so I guess technically it isn't. Julia will also go with me to the University one last time, which isn't so bad getting there, it is getting back from there that is difficult. The bus ride is an hour long each way and it is like driving on a bus in Peru. I would actually describe Krasnoyarsk as a mixture between Queens NY and Peru.