Of The First Days

So, this is the first post in the blog, aaaaand.... I've been here for almost a week.  Oops?  In my defense, there isn't internet in the dorm.  None.  I've been using my Kindle to get the occasional quick email home, but a blog or long newsy email?  Nope.  SO not happening.  Thus, I started typing up what was going on..... until I got distracted by other things.  To make a very long story short, I'm going to be posting something like this:
Post 1 for the day:  Catch up.  This'll be stuff that happened in the first week that I just hadn't gotten around to typing up properly until a later date.


Post 2 for the day:  Real time blog!  This'll be what actually happened the day of the posting.  


This process will continue until I catch up with everything, at which point I will just post what happened that day.  I'm going to try to be very good and post everyday.  I do not promise that this will actually happen, mind you, I just figure that since I'm only here for a month, I may as well do my best to get something up every day.


Thus, I offer you the first post, which contains the first day and a half or so of my month here in Moscow.



First day in Moscow!  Or, well, second day, really. So far everything’s been going pretty well.  There have been a few mishaps here and there, but nothing too horrible.  Still, it’s a relief to be here after all the fun glitches with getting my visa on time (and I wasn’t the only one who had them).  In all honesty, other than the fact that all the writing is in Cyrillic instead of using the Roman alphabet, Moscow reminds a lot of Bratislava.  The Soviet era architecture, the Slavic language, just the general way people behave, it’s a lot like Slovakia.  So, all in all, it feels a little bit like coming home.  So far, I really like it here.
We’re staying in the dorms of the International University at Moscow.  The dorms are pretty standard, two people per person.  They each have their own ваная and туалет (please don’t hold me to that spelling) so we at least don’t have to use community bathrooms.  I mean, they’re really, really small, but still, better than having to try to deal with Russian small talk at this point.  In other news, like most European places, there isn’t any air conditioning in the dorms.  It’s cool enough that we can just use the windows, though.  We just leave them open all the time, and the air circulates.  It works, and we don’t really have to worry about leaving the window wide open due to the fact that we’re on the seventh floor.  If we were on one of the first couple floors, I’d probably be more worried about having the doors open.
The first day, we mostly ran around doing the necessary little things.  We arrived at the air port, got picked up by Nadia, the director of our program, went to the dorms, and filled out the necessary paperwork there.  Then we met up with Isaac and Sean, two older students from the Ole Miss Russian program.  They’re here finishing up a semester-long study abroad.  It’s been great having them here, because they know all the things like where the cheapest food is, where the reliable ATM machine is, where the reliable money converters are, etc.  Plus, they’re both really nice, funny guys.  At any rate, we then proceeded onward to exchange dollars (or in my case, euro) into rubles.  Right now, the rate’s pretty good: 30 rubles to the dollar.  After we had some rubles, we went out to lunch.
Lunch was.... interesting to say the least.  We went to a little café called Пальмира that wasn’t too far from the dorms.  Valentina Borisovna was at first adamant that we use the Russian menus, before realizing that Carly, Katie, and I were staring at the items in stunned horror due to total and complete lack of comprehension.  Isaac very quietly started helping me translate the menu.  Eventually, I would up getting something called грибы кокот, which was this incredibly yummy melted cheese and mushroom thing, for something like 120 rubles.  On the downside?  Isaac and I forgot to look at the amount in grams, and it turned out to pretty much be an appetizer that wasn’t quite enough to constitute a meal.  Still, it was quite good, and I wasn’t all that hungry, so I was ok with that.  Meanwhile, Carly, Isaac, and Sean ordered a sea food omelette that looked pretty good to me... but not to Isaac, who had apparently just ordered what Sean ordered without bothering to check.  His look of disgust when he unearthed a squid tentacle was priceless.
On a side note, Russia has been quite willing to cater to my pescatarian ideals.  They’re quite fond of sea food, so I’ve been able to have that whenever I need to get meat, or get something involving mushrooms.  I may cave and try пелмены, though.  I’ve been told they’re really good, for all you never want to tell an American what’s in them until they actually eat them.  That usually means that they include some form of meat that would be considered totally disgusting by American terms.  The last time I tried something like that, I ate tartare, one of the few foods for which I would seriously consider giving up the pescatarian thing.  It really must be done.
Back to the story.  After lunch, we went electronics shopping.  Valentina Borisovna needed to get a Russian SIM card for her Moldovan phone, and at least one of us needed to get a cell phone that would work in Russia.  As I had the sole unintelligent American phone of the group, I was nominated to try and see if a Russian SIM card would work with my phone.  They didn’t.  As such, I wound up purchasing a very cheap, this-phone-will-operate-on-the-most-basic-level-and-you-will-be-content-with-such type phone along with a SIM card for about 990 rubles.  Basically, I bought a phone and a month’s worth of calls and text for about $33.  Better still, the phone should work with a French SIM card, so when I go over to France for three months, and really DO need a phone, I’ll only need the card.  Reuse is a very good thing!
After that, we headed back to the dorms, got settled in a little more, then headed down to the dormitory’s snack bar.  There, you can buy snack food, drinks, or a very light dinner for a decent price.  I wound up buying the Russian equivalent of instant mashed potatoes and a bottle of Nestea and ate there.  Afterwards, I headed back upstairs, and tried to read for a little while before collapsing in an achy, exhausted heap on my bed at around 6:30 pm.
You have, of course, anticipated the punch line.  I woke up at around 5:35 the next morning, and my body refused to go back to sleep.  Thus, I spent a quiet, rather uneventful morning reading on the windowsill, and looking out at a really rather beautiful sunset.  Carley (my roommate) woke up and went back to sleep sporadically throughout the morning, before deciding to stay awake around 9:00 am.  At 10:10 or so, we went down to the snack bar to get a breakfast of сочник и чай.  Around 11:30, Sean and Isaac took us to show us the ATM with the lowest withdrawal fee and a little grocery store in the general vicinity.  It was a very nice little grocery store, although the experience of purchasing things in a language you can barely speak is always a little harrowing.  This is where knowing how to count really comes in handy: If you know the numbers, you can understand how many rubles they want you to hand over!


So, that was the first day and a half or so.   Maybe it doesn't seem like much, but it was certainly enough for me!