Hello again! As you can see from the picture below, we have snow. Not just a light dusting either, real stay on the ground, it's cold outside, snowball fight snow. For me, cold is only justified by snow, so this is a very nice addition to my view and my walk to work. We have had quite a cold autumn so it seems that there is little chance for warmer days to come (warmer as in above 0 degrees) although it is always possible.
This is my student, Timur (his brother is taking the picture), and the pregame photo of the field!
This section is the official "Rubin Fan" section. They have coordinated flags and they were chanting together for the WHOLE game, it was pretty cool how they would not stop and often they would get the rest of the stadium to join them.
As you might have been able to tell from the two previous pictures, for the first half our seats (from the tickets we bought) were in the bend, behind and to the right of the goal, but at half time we went for a walk and happened up some excellent seats along the side line :) Evidenced from this very fortuitous photo where Rubin is about to take a free kick, and guess what? This is when they score!!!
After the goal, many of the young men in the fan section took off their jackets and shirts, naked on top. Most of them stayed like this for the rest of the game! I would like to take this opportunity to remind you that it is about -5 degrees Celsius, and windy so feels even colder. Also, after the goal there was about 30-35 minutes of play left. So I guess these are true fans, and now they are probably true fans with a cold.
We won the game, 1-0! but there were a lot of scoring chances so it was a fast-paced and exciting game. The rest of the weekend I hung out with a couple of my friends/colleagues from the University. The other two young guys that teach there. We went to play pool and bowling and to a German restaurant for some schnitzel and beer! There are a couple big centers with shopping and movie theaters and bowling/pool around the city. We went to one called "Tandem" that is on the other side of the Kazan River - a different part of the city. It was a pretty fun weekend, although completely unproductive as far as work goes. But today, it's back to work! Classes and more classes, and then planning for future classes. So take care, and I'll be posting soon! -Geoff
This past weekend we had a couple days of Holiday. Friday was National Unity day, which I have yet to get some one who knows what this celebrates. I had one friend tell me, "you know, i dont know what this day is for, Tatarstan and Tatar unity? or national unity with Russia? I don't know, but no work today!" That last part I can totally agree on. There really are no breaks or holidays in the school year except for christmas and new years, so there is no thanksgiving or other week off to look forward to. Just these two days of holidays from sept. 1 to christmas. As you can imagine these were some much desired days of rest. To begin my few days off, I went to a soccer game with one of my students and his brother! Our team is FC Rubin Kazan, and on this day we played Tottenham from England!! It was a very exciting game, pictures and descriptions....
We won the game, 1-0! but there were a lot of scoring chances so it was a fast-paced and exciting game. The rest of the weekend I hung out with a couple of my friends/colleagues from the University. The other two young guys that teach there. We went to play pool and bowling and to a German restaurant for some schnitzel and beer! There are a couple big centers with shopping and movie theaters and bowling/pool around the city. We went to one called "Tandem" that is on the other side of the Kazan River - a different part of the city. It was a pretty fun weekend, although completely unproductive as far as work goes. But today, it's back to work! Classes and more classes, and then planning for future classes. So take care, and I'll be posting soon! -Geoff
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