Basketball!

As school rolls along and winter temperatures and snow return once more to St. Petersburg, the spirits of IA students and teachers alike are raised by our school's one athletic team: the IA Cossacks. The Cossacks are the basketball team of our school and have recently begun their season.

This Tuesday, Amanda and I had the pleasure of finally getting a chance to watch our team play a game. Unfortunately for us, most of the games are right after school gets out, and we are busy with Russian language lessons and drama practice four nights a week. Thankfully this week the Cossacks were playing a Russian school less than a kilometer away from our school so we decided to skip Russian this once to see the team play.

Almost all of the 9-12th grade boys at the school are involved with the team in some capacity, so it was a good chance for me to help support my students. After a shaky start that left the team down 22-10 towards the end of the first half, the Cossacks regrouped and reeled off a 26 point run and ended up winning the game 54-35. Since our school doesn't have a gym (we rent time at a facility for our PE classes), every game is technically a road game. However, our students and their families made a good turnout at the game.

The style of play in Russia is a bit different than in the U.S. in some ways. While American basketball is certainly very physical, it is also marked by frequent whistles for fouls called. The Russian game is a bit more fast and loose with physical play uninterrupted by the numerous fouls that are called in the U.S. There were a few moments in the game that looked more like street ball than high school basketball. I say the Russians are on to something: cut the whistles and let 'em play!

IA is blessed to have as many different programs as it does given our small size. Having two bands, a basketball team, a choir, and a drama program may not seem like a lot for most high schools, but when your entire school is only 94 students in grades K-12, it is something entirely different. We are blessed to have personnel at the school to direct the bands and plays and coach a team. The one drawback for the students is that it means that they are usually involved in ALL of these activities since our numbers are so small. Still, we are very proud of our students and the hard work that they put in in so many different areas.

The next chance we will have to watch the team play is during the field trip to Moscow in two weeks which will culminate in a basketball team. I'm looking forward to being there to cheer our team on to hopeful victory!

Here are some photographs of the Cossacks in action:


The team lined up before the start of the game.


Defense!


Timeout.


Attacking the basket.


Halftime shoot around.


Fighting for a rebound.

Keep checking back!

-Matt

It Begins Again

After a wonderful three week break over Christmas and New Year's, last week we once again returned to work at IA. It was a good week back and it was fun to be with our students again. While getting up early in the morning has not instantly become fun once more, it makes it easier knowing that we have the privilege of teaching such a great group of kids and get to work alongside other great teachers.

This quarter is going to be full of activity as always. For me (Matt), I will be helping to lead a field trip to Moscow during the second week of February. I had been planning to do this for the past two months, but recently the scope of the field trip has expanded as we realized at IA that we could combine the trip I wanted to take with another field trip for the AP English class as well as a basketball tournament the school is playing it. The end result: a full week in Moscow! The 11th and 12th graders will be going to the state historical museum, the Kremlin armory museum, and the estate of author Leo Tolstoy, and we will all get a chance to cheer on the Cossacks as they compete in basketball. Amanda will also be going along as a chaperone for half of the week as well. This is an exciting opportunity for us and our students and should be a fun and educationally rewarding time.

At the moment we are settling back in to our classes and trying to find new ways to motivate our students for the new semester. My Russian history class finished a week where we took a break from history to focus on learning about logic and reasoning. One of my chief goals for this class is to help prepare my students for college, and a big part of doing that is helping them grow as thinkers and writers. The change of pace was probably nice for the class, but next week we begin again with Russian history as we look at the period between the reigns of Peter the Great and Catherine the Great. My 9th and 10th graders are in the midst of learning about the Industrial Revolution in America as we explore the Gilded Age. The 7th/8th grade history class is eagerly embracing my spur of the moment decision to make class a team competition to find answers to history questions. I decided to do it as a way of trying to get them to do a better job of carefully reading their textbook and it went over so well that we will try again one class this coming week! Amanda's class is embarking upon a science fiction unit and had fun this week learning about utopian communities, while her 4th and 5th grade language arts class has begun a creative writing unit and are hard at work on original short stories.

All of this goes to show that this quarter will be just as much of a flurry of activity as the last two have been! Today we had a chance to relax for a bit: Amanda went shopping with our friend Svyeta, who teaches the 4/5 class at IA, and I went to a museum on the history of St. Petersburg's water system. Good times:-)

Here are a few photos from the water museum since they are the most recent ones we have taken. Not exactly essential viewing to understand our Russian experience, but the museum was interesting and there are a few good photos.


The museum is housed in the large brick tower. It is run by Vodokanal, the water utility company for St. Petersburg.


Museum interior.


A statue at the front of a museum of a man with a water delivery cart.


A photo of the back of the tower with a glass staircase that was recently added.


And one more from the base of the tower.

Keep checking back!

Matt

Tallinn, Estonia

We recently enjoyed a wonderful vacation in Tallinn, Estonia! We headed there on December 27th and got back on December 30th.

Also, for this trip "we" means Matthew and I and a family from IA. Darlene works in the elementary working with special needs and advanced students and Jim is on th school board. Their son is in the Junior high so we will both have him in class next year.

We took a pretty nice bus there so we got there around 3 in the afternoon. The one downside to the bus was that they played music videos the ENTIRE 6 hours of the trip.

When we got there we went on a walk to the Old Town (there is Old Town Tallinn and New Town Tallinn) city center and there was a Yuletide Market going on.

This town hall stands right next to the Old Town center. It is the best preserved Gothic building in North Europe. For dinner we went to this great place called Old Hansa. It was medieval themed and lit entirely by candles. The waitresses are dressed to the time and all the food was very themed to the time period as well.

Later in the week we went to another place like this that had a swordfight!

Matt had a sausage plate with elk, boar, and bear sausage!

The last day we were there we went skating at this outdoor iceskating rink. It is right under another huge and lovely church.

A short walk from our hotel was the Toompea Castle. That huge wall runs around a large portion of Old Town. This existed as a wooden fortress in the 9th century. The tower is named Herman. :-)

Inside the walls was the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral. We went in and it was gorgeous!

This building is where the Estonian parliament still meets today. So as we walked around we found tons of embassies nearby.

We found an overlook on the city and since sun rises for a long time and late in the day we were able to get this awesome picture!

The streets are cobblestone and twist in all directions.

US! Matthew got me the hat for Christmas. :-)

Matthew wanted to show how high the wall is that runs around the city. So if you see the group of people up by the railing, that is the rest of our group!

A cool door. There were tons of carved, sculpted, and painted doors around the Old Town.

A huge Catholic church in the Old Town. So many churches!

We've talked about snow removal before but here is an example of what we mean. This thing was about a yard wide and hanging completely over the building it was on. One good door slam would bring a massive amount of snow thundering down on whoever was under it. And you can see the layers that are in it as it built up.
Matt and Jim in a tiny door we found that led to a wood crafts store.

One of the churches we were actually able to go into was the Holy Spirit church.


It was gorgeous and the upper seating levels were covered in pictures from stories in th Gospels.

For one day, lunch was potatoes, sausage, and cabbage cooked on a wok outside at the market. You had to eat it fast so it didn't get cold but it was very good.

A sign across two towers at every entry point into the Old Town that welcomes you in for Yuletide.
The picture below explains these, but there is a road that is all hand crafted things (hats, paper, leatherwork, glassblowing) and the opposite side of the shops has these tombstones.

Our hotel. It was a nice hotel had a fun shape.

And on the way back we had a bus almost literally to ourselves. They booked six people in seats 5 and 7 and those were both in our group. So the company sent out a new bus and all of the overbooked people and our whole group were on that bus. But this is the sunrise on the way back!

So overall a wonderful trip. It was nice to be able to go somewhere for fun adn not have to worry about visas or anything! Definitely want to go back next year!