Plants and Students

This week has been rather uneventful, save for my aforementioned trip to the botanical gardens. On Tuesday, I accompanied a group of first year students on a field trip to the university's greenhouse, and I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised. Lena, their teacher, told me that I shouldn't have high expectations, and I certainly didn't. The botanical museum is just a short 5 minute walk from the main building, and as you're walking to the greenhouse, there is a gate and a small building labeled "Botanical Gardens." Since Lena told me not to have high expectations, I was sure that this would be the gardens themselves. Luckily, I was wrong. The botanical garden was housed in a rather large building, and was much nicer than Ohio State's greenhouse because they could actually grow plants and trees in the ground itself (really OSU, whose idea was it to put the greenhouse on top of a parking garage?!). I love plants and am greatly affected by colours (Siberia isn't very colourful), so after a long, gray winter, being in a room with a lot of colourful tropical plants really lifted my mood.

I brought along my camera because I don't often get a chance to take pictures of my life here. Our guide was very enthusiastic about her job and gave us the full tour....twice. We took the second tour after she saw that Lena and I had brought cameras, and so she insisted that we go through again so that she could take pictures of our group next to all the various plants. I'll post a few below, and those of you that are my friend on Facebook can see the rest. Most of the students were a bit too timid to talk to me, so I've noticed that in all of the photos I'm standing with the only girl who made the effort to speak to me. I would have spoken to them in Russian, but I don't think they knew that I know Russian. Strangely though, after our trip, about half the group added me on vkontakte, even though I have never spoken with them.

Like I mentioned before, working at the university has provided me with the opportunity to make a lot of new friends, however, I feel that as of late some of them have been invading my space a little bit too much. If I could back up time, I might not have made the choice to hang out with students that I specifically teach, but that in itself is problematic because I switch groups and there is the potential for anyone to end up becoming my student for a few weeks. I don't give grades so there is no conflict of interest, but I feel as though sometimes they don't take me as seriously as they should.

Really what has gotten to me the most though is the gossip. The fact that I am young and their teacher is then compounded with the fact that I am a foreigner. This is a label that I can never shed, no matter how long I stay here. All of the foreigners here (from Western countries) are strange. All of them. That includes myself I guess, but I just haven't figured out what brand of strange I am. After all, we all chose to come to Siberia for some reason or another, and this is not exactly someplace that is at the top of people's "places to go" list. Anyways, the students loveeee to gossip, and it's unavoidable. The international languages department is seriously comprised of about 80-90% females, and most of them live in the dormitories together. This obviously causes rumors to bound about. Some students who are not my actual students have told me a few of the things that are said about me in the dormitory, and while they aren't bad, I still don't like being talked about, and it makes trusting my other friends harder. Anytime I hang out with one or a group of them, it gets around, and that's just annoying. People like to invent their own version of what events transpired, when really, nothing happens. The whole thing causes me to be wary of hanging out with students anymore. I already transferred out of one group after an inadvertent trip to a club with them caused the end of a two year friendship, which I really miss.

The weather the past few days has become dark and rainy, which has been making me feel a bit down. Also Easter is tomorrow and I don't have anything to do. I kind of wanted to go to church, since Easter is the one day when every Russian goes to church, but I'd feel a bit strange going by myself since I don't know the traditions. Ordinarily I'd always be invited to Lyubov's house (the old lady I lived with), but she is going to her son's to celebrate Easter, his birthday, and his daughter's bday, so I would feel out of place.
But anyways, here are some pictures from the botanical garden: