ohb

....the thought crossed my mind that he might have just found them on the road or something

Two good things happened today and in Russia, I think that is probably a record. I'm just trying to remember the first one at the moment, perhaps its the shock setting in. I know there are two of them. Well we'll start with the second.
As we now have a lot of groups in the school we decided to move all the kids groups back to the old school, rather than moving random other groups. There was another option, Natasha teaches only beginner groups and were we to move her to the old school, all our problems would have been solved. This would also have given the students a sense of achievement, for when they 'graduated' from the beginner groups they could move to the new fancy school, there were various pros and cons associated with this idea but the pros far outweighed the cons apart from one little fact. Natasha's temper. The lads were afraid to tell her that she would have to move back to the old place, I offered to tell her, knowing that she doesn't like me anyway, but they were really afraid of upsetting her, this is a group of big Russian guys, trembling at the thought of this little stick of a thing getting angry. For those who were involved in fds, its like the Brendan situation all over again. I wonder am I destined to wander the earth, ending up in situations like this, where a selfish and uncooperative person has managed to wrangle a niche for themselves within an organisation, and though they cause problems and disturb the otherwise smooth running of the place, they have made themselves or convinced others that they are indispensable, perhaps its a form of hypnosis. It's strange because they wield much more power than those who are pleasant and diligent as regards their work. It's the elephant yielding to the mouse when it shrieks loudly enough.
But back to the good things, still can't remember the first. I was walking back to the new school, having taught all my mental kids, I taught them the word 'deadly' today as in 'cool' just for the laugh, you have to be self indulgent sometimes. As I was walking back I found myself on the corner of 5th Army street, this is the street where Serge (my boss) lives and also that where Rory (who's mom drinks in Macs etc.) used to live. To get to the new school you have to do an "L" and I decided to turn back and do the horizontal part of it at the beginning and then just walk straight up Marata rather than turning off 5th army (read that bit again and you'll get it). Anyway I walked a little way up the street before deciding to turn back. There had been three men in front of me when I'd crossed the road but at this stage I'd passed them out. They were carrying what looked like laptop bags though people here often use them for carrying documents, it still being such a paper based country. it must be terrible for the thieves, thinking they've just deprived someone of a laptop when all they end up with is a bundle of paper, probably consisting of the same page in triplicate, knowing what I do of Russian bureaucracy. Any way I had turned around to retrace my steps when the eldest of the three men, stepped towards me and handed me two sweets. it was really odd, I know I shouldn't accept sweets from strangers, but well, he seemed safe enough. I thanked him and kept walking, it was bizarre a bit like something from Amelie, but it made me smile and reminded me that sometimes kind acts do find their way back to you.

posted by orlagh @ 5:10 am