Our summer break is coming to an end and already we are mentally shifting gears to prepare for the coming year. This coming Monday marks the beginning of our teacher meetings which will take place throughout the week. The Wednesday of the following week (August 22nd) is First Bell Day, the formal beginning of the school year, although actual classes will begin on the following day.
This past week Amanda and I have had the chance to do some work at the school and to have meetings with our headmaster and new academic principle to begin work on sorting out some important scheduling and logistics things for the coming year. As always, there will be changes for the coming year and every year presents its own unique challenges. The fact that our numbers are down quite a bit in the middle and high school has made it a bit tricky in terms of deciding how the classes will be grouped together for the coming year. It looks like Amanda and I should be set in terms of our teaching assignments for the coming year, but I will hold off on posting anything specific just yet since final decisions and scheduling won't be done until next week and past experience has taught us that these things are subject to change:-) Either way, we expect the coming year to be a good one and are looking forward to it!
One important logistical detail that really needs to be completed is the construction work going on our building. The owners of the building decided to replace the windows on one half of the building (the half where my room is) and workers have been working on this throughout the summer. However, the work still has quite a bit that needs to be done and the inside of the school is a mess! Right now, we have been told that things should be finished by August 20, just two days before our first day. This means that many teachers will not have much time to get into their rooms and get things organized for the coming year, and that is assuming that the work will be finished as projected and will not go longer. We are all being flexible, and area actually holding our meetings next week at a different location, but please pray that everything comes together so that our school year can start in a normal way.
In addition to the work that we have been doing to prepare for the coming school year, we are still working on our quest to visit some of the interesting but less-famous places in St. Petersburg. The past several blog posts have recounted our efforts so far, and today we set out once again to take in a part of the city that featured several interesting places from the book that we have been using. Today's journey took us to the Petrograd Side of St. Petersburg and several more places of historical and architectural significance. What follows are pictures that Amanda took (many in stylish black and white to add to the ambiance) and my comments. Enjoy!
This building was not actually one we set to find, but we both thought it was interesting. It was built in 1913 and obviously draws upon the Middle Ages for inspiration.
These two photos are of the Ioannovsky Convent. The main church of the convent is the burial place of St. John of Kronstadt, an influential Orthodox priest who spent most of his life ministering in Kronstadt and St. Petersburg and is one of the most revered church men in recent Russian Orthodox history. There was a bit of confusion as we went into the church to visit the chapel and burial vault when a man informed Amanda that she could not go in unless she was wearing a skirt. Thankfully, a helpful lady showed me a box where the church keeps extra skirts that can be worn by the unprepared faithful:-)
The next series of photos come from a little park that was built on an area that had fallen into disrepair in 2005. The Russian composer Andrei Petrov helped with some of the work, and when he died in 2006 parts of the park were made to honor his memory, including a series of imaginative statues involving the violin, his favorite instrument. The statue in the photo above is violin that is meant to look like a woman.
A violin made to look like a shoe.
A violin made to look like a gramophone (the Museum of Gramophones is adjacent to the park).
Me sitting on a violin made to look like an armchair. This looks a bit like a senior picture, but it's still a nice photo:-)
A tree planted by Petrov with a musically-themed grate around it.
A violin shaped like an apple.
A violin shaped like a swan.
An artist created these works on the wall of an adjacent building that looks in on the park. From left to right are Dnail Kharms, Dmitri Shostakovich, Salvador Dali, and Dmitri Likhachev.
The next item of interest for us was the Benois House. This building was constructed between 1911-1914 by three architects from the same family. Throughout its history it has been home to many notable people including the communist leader Sergei Kirov (whose mysterious death in 1936 has been widely attributed to Stalin) and the composer Dmitri Shostakovich.
Inside the courtyard of the Benois House.
Aview of the iron railings on the balconies.
A view of the house from across the street.
Our next step was Austrian Square, an intersection that makes the shape of a star and is faced on all four sides by striking buildings from the beginning of the 20th century (1901-106).
The tower and detailed facade of this particular building was a favorite of Amanda and myself's.
Finally, our last stop for the day was a building from the late 19th century that is considered by a classic of the Northern Modern style of architecture. It was a movement within Russian architecture that drew upon influences from Northern Europe and Scandinavia found in the National Romantic movement of architecture (who knew that reading our blog would be such a tutorial in the history of architecture?).
With the coming of the school year there will be new things to report, but our posts will probably be somewhat less frequent once the full force of a busy new year begins. We've enjoyed our time this summer and may still be able to fit in a trip or two more like the recent ones we have been posting about, but our attention is definitely being focused on the coming academic year. Hopefully we will have something soon about our finalized teaching assignments for the coming year as well as some specific prayer requests for this next year.
Thanks for reading!
-Matt
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