Some More Pictures...

Just thought that some of you might like to see a couple more pictures I have taken. These ones are of the area near my school. There are two metro stations, Novoslobodskaya and Mendeleevskaya, within walking distance of Central School. These pictures were taken walking out of Novoslobodskaya, on my way to work:

Here is a picture of Dom Druzhba ("building of friendship"), right outside the exit to the Metro Station, Novoslobodskaya. This is a local shopping mall and is home to the Perekrestok, where I do most of my grocery shopping.



Kalyan (entrance to the left of yellow kiosk) is probably the restaurant I have eaten at most often here. It features a Middle Eastern cuisine, but perhaps more notable is the presence of smoke from the hookahs (kalyan is another word for hookah, hence the name of the restaurant) which engulfs the room. I don't really go there for the food or the smoke. It has a business lunch that is 170 Rubles, which is around 5 dollars. You get a tea or coffee, another drink, a soup, a main course (I usually get the shashlik chicken), and a dessert (whatever they have in the pantry).



Club Mango is where I go to work out. I am generally there 3 or so times a week. It is a relatively small gym, but I find it to be quite nice. The inside is very modern, although some of the equipment is a little bit old. They also have classes, a spa, and a tanning salon, but I don't really bother with them.



Vokzal is where everybody from Language Link goes to drink, especially Thursdays. A lot of the teachers have Fridays off. Vokzal also has a buffet, so I occasionally go there to get a meal. It has relatively cheap drinks, and it is right next door to Language Link, which is probably why it is so popular with teachers. I tend to avoid it at night, since conversation will generally drift into topics like language and teaching.



This is the front entrance to the building which houses Language Link. It doesn't look like much, but it is always hard to tell what the inside of a building will be like in Russia (We don't judge books by their covers, do we?).



This here is the front desk of Language Link's Central School where I work. The inside is quite nice, certainly by Russian standards. There are about 20 classrooms, a teacher's lounge, a resource library, and a break room. It gets boring after a while, but it certainly could be worse.