"But Why Isn't Anyone Falling Down?"

Hello all!

I'm going to try to blog once a week, but again, with crazy limited internet access, it's rough. It was unseasonally cold here earlier this week, but for the past few days it's been a sauna - 80 degrees and no where (especially the crowded metro) has air conditioning. It's so gross. Oh, speaking of the metro, my commute to school everyday is an hour. An hour. How nuts is that? And not even driving. I walk 15 minutes from my apartment to my metro stop, then ride the metro 15 minutes, walk 5 minutes to the connecting metro, ride the metro again for 10 minutes, and then walk another 15 minutes from the mtro stop to school. And I do that twice a day. So think about that before you bitch about how far it is to walk to class at Georgetown. Class starts at 9:00 everyday, so I wake up at 6:00, take a shower, and am out of the house by 7:45. And I can't skip breakfast because I need fuel for all that walking! I eat a lot here, but I don't think I'm gaining any weight.

My classes are all super cool. They are all in Russian (of course). I take a grammar class, a history of russian music class (the professor plays the piano for us a lot), a russian film class, a political economony class, a geograpphy class, a phonetics class, a literature class, a "smee" class, which is a russian abbreviation for a news-related class, and a conversation class. The school day ends for me at 2:50 (with an hour for lunch). Classes are either 50 minutes or an hour and 50 minutes, with a "perorif" (break) in the middle. My group of 25 kids on the program was broken up in to 5 smaller class groups, so I only go to the majority of my classes with 4 other people. We have a lecture in the morning where we see everyone, but then we split up. My small class has a great group dynamic and we get a lot done. I totally suck in phonetics class, but I'm sure if I practice more, the teacher will stop picking on me.

The university I go to, Moscow International University is kind of strange because it's a smaller college and apparently the Russians that go there are the "new Russians" aka children of post-communist oligarchs. Because of this, they are all super snobby and really loud and basically hate us for being at their school. They openly laugh at us, and whenever we leave the building to go get lunch, they all stare at us through their clouds of cigarette smoke with condescension. Basically I'm super tough now, and very little phases me, seeing as how I'm laughed at everyday by people I don't even know. Tonight we are meeting our Russian peer tutors, so I hope at least they are nice. I have yet to make any Russian friends, and really really want to!

This weekend, we went on two "excursiya" - one was a cruise of the Moscow River and the other was to a battle reenactment at Borodino, which apparently is famous from the war of 1812 (yeah, I really don't know). The Moscow River cruise was nice, and it was a sunny day out, so we all go to see the sights and get tans. The Borodino trip, on the other hand, was one of those experiences you can only say "well, I did that." First of all, we had to meet at a train station at 7:45 am on a Sunday. Of course, this train station was an hour from my house, so I had to be up and walking by 6:45 am. Once at the train station, we boarded "electreechka," basically super ghetto trains that resemble cattle cars (both in furnishing, crowdedness, and ventilation), and rode it 2 hours to Borodino, which is in the Russian countryside. There were a ton of people selling stuff on the train, from "packyetie" (bags you carry everything around in in Russia) to ice cream to children's books. Once we got to Borodino, a bunch of us had to go to the Bathroom (note: there are pretty much no bathrooms in Russia, except in restaurants and apartments. if you do find a bathroom, it will never have toilet paper. Everyone in moscow carries tissues with them at all times, and not for their noses). So we waited 20 minutes for the bathroom, and had to go in the men's room, with our resident director guarding the door. The "toilet" was only a hole cut out of the cement floor. The smell was so bad, it was almost noxious. So yeah, I survived that. Then we had to walk from the train station to the actual battle site. That was an hour walk, in the blazing sun on a dirt road, but it was fun seeing all the babushkee on the side of the road selling berries or corn or meat they cooked, out of a bucket. Once we got to the site, there were people EVERYWHERE. Russian rednecks abound (because who else goes to battle reenactments?). I bought a mini pizza for lunch, but like everything else in Russia, what they say a food item is and what it actually turns out to be are two very different things. My "pizza" was cold, had salami on it, and just for shits and giggles I suppose, had pickles hidden in the middle. After lunch, I watched the battle with Jen (from Georgetown) and Allison. To get through security, the policeman waved a metal detector at me and it went off. Then he asked me "do you have a knife" and I said no, and her let me through. The police here don't ever do their job, unless it's to arrest drunken foreigners. We sat down on the hill facing the battlefield, with Belorussian soldiers next to us, who couldn't have been more then 16 years old, and the cutest little Russian boy (maybe 4 years old) with his babushka in front of us. The little boy had a toy semi-automatic (again, only in Russia) and kept aiming it at people and the battle, saying things like "Ploheya Franszuckue" (Bad French people, because Borodino was where the Russians defeated the french). The battle was pretty cool, but very confusing. We didn't know which side was which, the kids behind us kept saying "Napolean!" but we couldn't see him, and no one was dying. Seriously, in battle reinactments, aren't people supposed to fall down to indicate they've been shot? Well, no one apparently died in this battle, they just kept circling each other on horses.We decided to leave early to catch at 3:45 electrichka back. We walked an hour back to the station and the train ride back was basically hell in mass transit form. There were only about 5 windows open, maybe 60+ people in one car, standing room only, for 2 hours, and every stop more and more people got on the train. We finally got back around 6:00 pm., dirty and covered with sweat. To recap, total travel time: 8 hours. Actual time at Borodino: 3 hours (max). Like everything else in Russia, it was ridiculous.

I am having a great time here. Living in Russia is like nothing you've every experienced before. Even down to the smallest habit or gesture is different, and people will notice if you don't do it "the russian way." Also of note: There are no garbage cans in Russia, they never have small bills, and if you have big bills (500 rubles or more aka 25 dollars +) it's impossible to break it. People will actually get pissed at you and tell you to put everything back if they don't have change for you. That's just the way it works. Every Russian woman wears high heels 24/7, despite the fact they walk literally miles a day. Every Moscow woman weighs approx. 100 pounds and wears pants that have to be painted on. And the list goes on and on....

Well, love you all! Until next time...

-Me.