Kendra to Kira

Last Bit of Moscow

2008-05-21T07:38:00.002-04:00

The night before I left, my host mom came home kind of late and asked me to start some pasta while she walked the dog. She made a salad when she got back and then went to change her clothes before dinner. I was thinking, "Pasta and salad? This is not a normal Ludmila Petrovna meal." When she got back, she went to the cupboard and got something out: a giant bucket of KFC chicken! :-D She said that she wanted to enjoy something special with me before I went back to America. (Usually she cooks some sort of meat herself, but buying meat already cooked is definitely special.)

Then we sat and talked for a really long time. We mostly talked about my time in Moscow. What did I like? What didn't I like? What do I remember suprising me the most when I got here? Did I like staying with her? And so on. She's really great. I love her.

The next day when my taxi came, she was so sweet. A hug, a kiss, a tear, and her telling me to come back soon really made it difficult not to just start bawling.

I'm going to miss her so much! I'm going to miss all of Moscow so much! It really started to feel like home. I was sitting in my room packing and I closed my eyes, picturing myself back home. I pictured myself opening my suitcase, putting things away in my closet, putting books on the shelves, making my bed--and then I realized that I was picturing myself back in my room at Ludmila Petrovna's! The one I was sitting in, packing my stuff up in! That's how much I really felt at home there. I really, really am going to miss it.

Right now I'm sitting in an internet place in Bologna, Italy, during my 24-hour layover. I really don't know how I feel about going back to America. I was so excited about it for so long, but when the time came to leave Moscow, I really didn't want to go. Now I'm in this middleground, this waiting place, and I'm really confused. I don't know where I belong anymore. America? Or Russia? Maybe it will come to me once I'm actually back home. Or at least I hope so...

Things I Eat in Russia

2008-05-15T11:43:00.005-04:00

In America, I hate Diet Coke. Seriously, I think it's the worst-tasting diet beverage in the world. However, in Russia, it's called Coca-Cola Light. This is not, I repeat not, the same thing. It's amazing. But why in the world does this all-American drink taste better in Russia than it does in the United States??? The only reason I can come up with, is that there must be some FDA-unapproved ingredient(s) in it. It's really sad that I'm probably getting cancer from drinking it, but that's not going to stop me. Mmmmmmmm carcinogens. :-D We definitely need more in our Diet Coke in America. :-D

I also have come to love cabbage in Russia. Before it was just that thing you make coleslaw with, and add to Ham and Cabbage so it's not just Ham. However, after having it probably dozens of ways in the last 9 months, I have really come to appreciate its flavor and wide variety of uses. I'm going to post some recipes at some point. I just have to translate them from A) Russian to English, and B) the metric system to our weird cup and spoon system. :-) Be patient. They will come in time.

On Russian Men...

2008-05-15T11:35:00.004-04:00

Okay, so the post isn't really about Russian men, but rather Stalin and his terrific reign, which just happened to have ridiculously detrimental effects on household life in Russia, among many other things. Unless otherwise noted, everything in this post is based on information given in my courses this year.

The year is 1928. It has taken Stalin 4 years to cunningly pit his rivals against each other and wind up as the last man still standing, but he's done it. And now that he's the single most powerful man in the country, he probably is thinking it would be best if those annoying "opposers" just didn't exist in the future. (Or, ya know, that's how I like to justify it.) So, he starts eliminating the opposition. However, this post is less about political oppression.

Then World War Two rolls around. Stalin decides that when facing the Germans and their tanks, sophisticated bombers, etc., it would be best just to have some men with some guns. I guess they also had some planes, but not very many. So, as I'm sure you already know, people were dying in droves. They had to resort to unconventional tactics. Pilots were flying in to tanks (what else are you supposed to combat tanks with when you have no heavy artillery?). The Russians would also try and fly their planes really close to the Germans' tails in order to chop them off. Sometimes the pilot would successfully chop it off without damaging his propeller, and only the German plane would go down. But, of course, sometimes they would go down together.

By the end of Stain's reign some 40 million Soviet people had perished (that's a conservative estimate), a fraction of which were women. The men who were left were not... well, they weren't exactly the cream of the crop. The ones left that didn't go to war were really old, really young, or sickly. However, the men coming back from the war were, in general, worse. You can imagine after fighting a war that they certainly weren't adequately prepared for, they didn't come back bright and chipper. They were hardened from the horrible living and fighting conditions they experienced. They no longer knew how to interact with people. They came back to their homes to find wives, mothers, fathers, brother, sisters, children, and even pets missing. (Why did I add pets specifically? When rations were small or non-existent, Spot and Fluffy were really tasty.) The relatives that were left were then subject to the veteran's extreme nature. Men also came back from the war and didn't have jobs anymore. Most were so young when they went away that they didn't even have a job from before that they could've lost. Some were trained in a couple weeks for easy jobs and stayed in them, but some went on to take classes at night to achieve a more sophisticated specialty. Many were so scarred from their experiences, they couldn't work at all.

Unfortunately, a lot were permanently mentally damaged by their wartime activities. They would randomly have fits of rage and violence. Wives put up with it because they knew it was the effect of the war, and that if they left they probably wouldn't get another husband because of the shortage of men. But then daughters saw their mothers acting this way, without knowing why, and thought that this was normal behavior between a husband and wife. And so the downhill spiral starts. Already generations of Russian women have seen their mothers doing anything to make their fathers happy—even taking beating after beating. Now a man can get away with pretty much anything and his wife or girlfriend won't leave him. But ya gotta have a husband! Even if he's not so great...

I do have to say this: I am by no means saying that all Russian men are bad. There are certainly a lot of them that qualify as great fathers and husbands. And I don't mean to imply that Russian women are stupid for staying with them either. It's just an interesting and scary cultural phenomenon that, like most of the other bad ones, was started by the extreme decisions of Stalin. The whole situation really interests me. And I hope it has been interesting for you, too! :-)

MAIL

2008-04-25T07:51:00.003-04:00

To whom this may concern:

If you were thinking about sending me a package, STOP RIGHT THERE. Don't send it. You've missed your chance. I'm going to be home in 4 weeks, and your package is going to take longer than that to get here. Send it to one of my parents and they'll make sure I get it. Or you can give it to me when you see me! It's sooner than you think!

Please send mail no later than MAY 1ST. That will give it a good two weeks to get here. Or, again, you can send it to one of my parents.

And if you weren't planning on doing either of those things, well, then you can just completely ignore this. :-D

26 days until America!!!

Changes...

2008-04-23T11:47:00.002-04:00

Today, for the first time, I saw a car and it startled me. Well, that's not true. Cars quite often startle me in Russia, but it's for reasons like how dirty they are, how small they are, how old they are, how generally funny-looking they are, etc. But, this time the car I saw was... American. Not only was it American, but it was an Avalanche. Huge, black, gas-guzzling, and shaped like a sneaker. It reminded me of home. I don't even like them in America. But here it just stood out. I take it as a sign that I'm probably going slightly insane from being away from home so long. *Sigh.* I miss America and its wasteful consumerism. Although, Russia is definitely giving us a run for our money.

Now, if you know me even slightly, you'll probably have caught on to the fact that I'm kind of a germ freak. I don't like touching doorknobs, telephones, ATMs, and don't even get me started on bathrooms... However, when living in Russia, this kind of all goes out the window. It has to...or you die. In a place where bathrooms might not have a toilet seat, hot water, soap, toilet paper, or the ability to flush whatever tissues you have in your bag after you use them, you kind of forget why you aren't supposed to touch the doorknob on the way out. Also, standing on the metro has become easier, but contact with the grimy bars at one time or another is almost always required. Really, though, the only thing I still don't like to touch is the handrail on the metro escalators. I know it's a really weird thing to not want to touch considering the same people touch them that touch the rest of the metro, but they're made out of this rubbery material that always feels sticky (probably like escalators in America, I just don't remember). And I just can't take it; they feel dirty. Although, if you think that this is a significant improvement for a major germaphobe like me, I have started doing some really weird things that I never used to do in America. The most disturbing to me, specifically, would have to be that every time I eat a piece of fruit (ie. apple, pear) I wash it. With soap. I know, I'm a seriously troubled person.

Also, my perception of fashion has changed. Not that I can't look at Americans and see that they are obviously fashionable, but just that when I look at Russians, I don't place them on the same fashion scale. I have developed this weird sense of fashion, to the point where I — despite all efforts — have actually caught myself liking it. Okay, I shouldn't say 'it' as if I like what Russians wear in general, but I occasionally think, "Oh, that looks nice/pretty/cute." Then, almost immediately afterward, I usually feel like I have to smack myself. One time I was standing on the metro in front of this girl, about my age, who was wearing one of those necklaces that has like 4 or 5 different length chains of the same necklace. It was silver-colored with these blue and purple hexagonal gems, each a little smaller than a dime, set in the necklace: so if the gem was facing out it was blue or purple with a silver edge, but if it was facing in, it was just silver. She also had little dangly earrings with a longish chain with a gem at the bottom. I kept looking at her necklace (which is kind of conspicuous when you're standing in front of someone sitting on the metro...with your knees almost touching), but I thought it was really pretty. I even thought to myself, "I would wear something like that." Then, almost immediately afterward, I realized where I had seen jewelry like that before: it was almost exactly like the jewelry from Pretty, Pretty Princess (or maybe just some random kids jewelry we had when I was little) except silver and not pink! It even looked like plastic! I think I could've died. Luckily, she stood up to leave just then, so I took her spot and sat hanging my head in shame. And things like this are starting to happen way too often...

Well, I have a presentation in about 36 hours that I haven't really started yet... But next time I promise a very interesting discussion about the men and women of Russia. We had a great time talking about it in Speech Practice... :-)

A new system...

2008-04-12T11:39:00.001-04:00

So, yeah. It's been a while since I've updated. I thought I would update more once I got my computer. However, I haven't updated the stuff from the second half of the trip, so I kept feeling like I couldn't post something about Moscow until after I covered the stuff that came before it. Well, I kinda gave up on that. I promise it will come. I promise. Just right now I can't sit down all at once and do it. ...Or even enough that would constitute a post... So, Moscow...

I have this new system. I always sit on the metro and think about thing that I should tell you guys. However, by the time I get around to posting, I forget it all. So, I have a new system. I just remember the first letters of all the things I want to talk about, and make them into a word. The letters trigger the topic and then I get to tell you all about it.

Today's word: OMITS

We'll start with M. Moles. The Russian population is a lot more mole-y than the American population. Sooooooo many people have them. On the metro I see people with huuuuge moles on their faces. I don't understand it. I have been told that they just don't get them removed like we do in America. That may be true. However, I find it highly unlikely that droves of Americans are heading to the dermatologist every year to get things cut off their faces. I would love to know, evolutionarily, why Russians have so many moles. What makes this a desirable trait to pass on to future generations? :-D

You're going to like I, I promise! ICE CREAM. Russians love ice cream. They eat it year-round. It'll be the middle of winter and people will be eating ice cream on the street! There's all kinds. Russian's favorite "to go" ice cream is the эскимо (eskimo, trans. "ice cream on a stick"). There's more kinds that you could ever imagine! And now that it's actually spring, I see someone eating one every day. Mmmm...

T is for Transport. As you all know, Ann Arbor is not the world's biggest place. 10-15 mins of walking and you're already where you want to be, and that's at my leisurely pace. I'd kind of forgotten about that recently. Here, it's at least 10-15 mins of walking PLUS 30-60 mins on the metro. Driving or taking the bus for a half an hour to get somewhere is never going to bother me again! Also, when you're walking or driving somewhere, if you're late you feel like you can at least do something to make yourself less late. Here, if I leave my apartment 5 mins late, I can walk the 8 mins to the metro in 7 and the 5 mins to my school in 4. Other than that, it's just sitting or standing and waiting with nothing to do! I miss my маленький город (mall-en-key gore-uhd, trans. "little city")!

So, I realize that my system doesn't work too well. It really only works if you end up writing the post in the same day. Or, maybe, within a hour after you come up with your acronym. I had forgotten both O and S for the LONGEST time. Now, after 2 weeks or so, I've remembered what they are. So, here we go.

O is for Old people. Russia has a demographic crisis right now. Basically, too many people are dying and they're not pumping out babies like they used to. Just like in America, the baby boomers are getting older and so our "greatest generation" is, unfortunately, becoming weak and feeble. It seems like everyone in Russia is old. And a woman. And they're slow. Oh, so slow. And they're always walking in front of me. Especially when I'm late. I'll be walking in a metro transfer that's wide enough to fit two people walking next to each other, and I'll come upon a little бабушка (BA-boosh-ka, trans. "grandmother") who's walking smack in the center of the hallway. No room on the left, no room on the right, just takin' our sweet time getting through the transfer. Sometimes I just turn sideways and squeeze by, but sometimes I feel oppositional and stand at their side with my arm touching theirs until they realize that they're not the only person in Moscow at the moment and move over! Now, you're probably thinking, "Ohhh, poor little old lady getting practically beat up by Kendra!" But they're not helpless little old ladies! They're mean, they're rude, and they think that just because they're old, all of this is okay! It's not okay, and I'm here to tell them. Well, everyone tends to tell them nowadays. They mostly keep their mouths shut, but they're quick to shoot you a look of severe disapproval. They're also a prime example of the truthful saying, "Don't make that face, or it will stick that way!" Hehehe.

S is for STINKY. Oh my does Moscow have an unpleasant smell. There are certain smells that are identifiable and easily described. Like, our stairwell generally smells like a dumpster. There is a reason for this: we have a trash shoot in our stairwell, and only living on the third floor, we aren't far enough away from the dumpster where they fall to. Entryways and hallways mostly smell like port-o-potties (Russian: той-той, toy-toy). Even the entryway/hallway to the building of our school smells this way. The street can smell like anything: dog poop, car exhaust, vomit, rotting flesh, etc. However, there's this one smell that I just completely associate with Moscow. It's utterly indescribable, and therefore the only way to know what it is, is to come here and smell it. I'm not going to even try, but for those of you who've been here, you know what I mean. It's really gross, but I guess you get used to it. The smells have started getting stronger since the snow's melted. Of course, loving snow and cold, I have to come here on the year they have all-time high temperatures in March and April. Blech. I miss the snow, and all stinky things on the street being frozen.

Anyway, now that I've posted this out of order (there will still be at least one travel post to come), I'll hopefully be able to convince myself that it's okay to post more. I've got less than six weeks left in Moscow, and I feel like I should try and get all the thoughts down before I'm back in America reminiscing. :-D

I'm going to try and post some more pictures later today. Make sure you check them out! :-)

The rest of the West...

2008-04-05T10:40:00.001-04:00

Krakow, Poland
Wawel Hill
This is main attraction of Krakow is the castle and cathedral which are located on Wawel Hill. It's really funny how most of the city is flat and then there's just this giant hill all of the sudden.
Wawel Cathedral
The cathedral has like a bunch of stuff in it. And you get this ticket with a part that gets stamped for each of them. It's really weird. It's like most organized, and yet most disorganized thing I've been to. Every time you go through one of the "exhibits" you exit the building and had to go back inside through the one entrance. The exhibits: Crypt, Tombs, Sigismund Bell, and the Cathedral Museum. The Sigismund Bell is the largest bell in Poland. It's pretty big... One might even say huge. :-) It was pretty cool walking around the other stuff with Shannon because she knows a lot of Eastern European history and she told me about what all the stuff these people did during their lives. Like, I saw the only woman in Polish history to be king. Pretty darn cool.
Main Market Square
The main square was pretty cool. It has a 16th century building called the Cloth Hall. It has a big (and overpriced) souvenir market. Then there was St. Mary's Church.
The Florian Gate/Barbican
The Florian Gate is pretty much just a gate, otherwise known as an arch in a wall, but it did have a cool icon in it. And the Barbican is like a giant defense bastion (aka tower) which was built in 1498.
The Mall
It sounds lame, but it got dark and cold really early so we went to the mall and got warm. I also bought a coat and stuff so that I would stay warm as we went to colder and colder places. Also, we has just flown in that morning and were leaving by train that night, so we didn't have a hostel to go to or anything.

Prague, Czech Republic
Hostel #1
We got in so early that our hostel wasn't even open yet. So we went to McDonald's and ate something before we went back. Then we got there and they told us we couldn't check into our rooms until the afternoon.
The Mall
The second mall in like 12 hours? I know, kind of pathetic. But this time we had a reason! Shannon's huuuuuge backpack had broken, and mine was really too small for the length of our journey, so we both bought medium-sized backpacks. For a travel backpack, $50 wasn't so bad. Most school backpacks now aren't that cheap! It's so much nicer than a suitcase, too, for short trips. Yay! By the time we bought them, we went back to the hostel and could check into our room.
Prague Castle
Prague Castle is definitely the coolest castle ever. EVER. It's also ridiculously high up. Especially when only having slept like 4 hours or something. But it was totally worth it. So beautiful.
St. Vitus Cathedral
This cathedral is in the castle and is amazingly beautiful. It has a large number of ENORMOUS stained glass windows, one of which was designed by the famous Mucha. Really awesome.
Old Royal Palace
Also in the castle. The Palace is pretty cool, except for it's emptiness. There was only one or two rooms there with stuff in them. I mean, it was pretty interesting stuff, but... Well, I guess you can't ask tons of furniture and stuff when a palace is like hundreds and hundreds of years old.
The Story of Prague Castle
This exhibition is located underneath the Old Royal Palace. Pretty cool, but way way way too in-detail. You could spend like 1,000 hours in there and not read everything. Whoo. But they had the artifacts there. Cool old stuff!
Basilica of St. George
In a beautiful red building in the castle, this church is definitely not as cool as the cathedral, but it is really old. And in a red building. I dunno, I guess this was like the thing in Prague I wasn't really impressed by.
Golden Lane
Lonely Planet really says it best: this "16th-century tradesmen's quarter of tiny houses built into the castle walls, is a souvenir-laden tourist trap." We just kinda walked through it since we already bought the ticket. I mean, it was really cute—really, extremely cute—but we weren't in the market for souvenirs.
Charles Bridge
This is a really old bridge from the 18th century with 30 statues along it. We watched the fireworks on New Year's from the bridge. There were lots and lots of fireworks everywhere, but the main ones were from a barge on the river right in front of us. Amazing!
Old Town Square
There's like lots of cool old stuff: St. Nicholas Church, Old Town Hall, and an astronomical clock that was built in 1410 and still works! Although, kind of unimpressive except for the fact that it's extremely old.
Mucha Museum
This was a very small museum with some very amazing artwork. I really like Mucha a lot. His style is very unique. He was also obsessed with Russia (and slavic people in general). Awesome. :-)
Wenceslas Square
This is a really long skinny square with a statue of St. Wenceslas on a horse. There's also a shrine to the victims of communism, the major ones being two students who burned themselves alive in 1969 in protest at the Soviet invasion.
The Communism Museum
Squeezed in between Prague's largest McDonald's and a casino, it's really amazingly objective. The information itself was really moving enough, to make it more emotional would've just been off-putting.
The Jewish Museum
Really amazing. The entire museum spans like 6 or 7 places. Each one is dedicated to a different theme. The Spanish Synagogue was definitely the best though. It was the most beautiful, and it housed all of the information from the 20th century. Amazing...except for all the crowds of tourists pushing and shoving.
Hostel #2
The hostel was really hard to find, and the people weren't very nice, and they didn't even know how to turn the heat on (luckily, I figured it out), but it was located near a VERY delicious Chinese food restaurant. Mmmm, I miss Americanized Chinese food.
Language Skillz
Also, one more thing. I speak Russian, a slavic language, a very hard language. So, when I say that Czech is the most ridiculous slavic language I've ever seen, you won't take it lightly. Ugh, gross. Kudos to everyone who can hack it.

Vienna, Austria
Hofburg
The Habsurgs' Imperial Palace in the city is amazing. It's huuuuuuge. I've never seen a bigger palace. We got to see the royal dinner service collection (I forget what it was actually called) as well as the Sissi Museum and the royal apartments. They even pointed out the rooms that Alexander I stayed in during the Congress of Vienna after the defeat of Napoleon. Sweeeet.
Museumsquartier
This is like a huuuuge complex of museums, including the Leopold Museum and a modern art museum. The Leopold Museum has the largest collection of Egon Schiele paintings, which was awesome. Who knew? The modern art museum had a really cool exhibition from contemporary Chinese artists, as well as some Yoko Onos and Andy Warhols in its regular exhibition.
Naschmarkt
Oh my god! The food market! Looking back on these pictures makes me want to cry a little bit. Everything was so delicious-looking! And everyone was so nice! Well, except for that one lady who wanted us to pay 5 euros to take a picture of her stand. Ha!

And that concludes the Western Europe part of our tour... Please forgive me for taking so long to get this stuff up.

And don't forget to check out the photos! You can see what all of this stuff looks like there...

Next up, Eastern Europe...

Istanbul!

2008-01-17T12:16:00.000-05:00

I know I haven't updated in entirely too long, but we haven't really been places with the world's most awesome computers...

Right now I'm in Bucharest, Romania. I've finally put pictures up from everywhere except here. Tomorrow we take a 19-hour train to Istanbul, where we'll be for a week.

My phone won't work in Turkey, but since we're going to be there for so long, I'll get a new card for my phone. Let me know if you want the new number!

Hopefully, since I'll be in one place for a relatively long time, I'll have a chance to update you more on what's been going on the last couple weeks. Wish me luck on the train! 19 hours is the longest one ever for me!

Oh, the places I've been!

2008-01-07T12:21:00.000-05:00

After London, I met up with my friend, Shannon, who is studying in St. Petersburg this year, but who also goes to U of M. Here's what we've done so far...

Brussels, Belgium
Rue de Brouchers
This is possibly the biggest tourist trap in Brussels. It's an entire street of restaurants where people yell at you to come eat at their restaurant. It's really a weird experience. They're basically the Belgian version of Russian flyer-hander-outers.
Grand Place
The medieval square in the old town is really a sight to see. Unfortuantely, it has also been restored/rebuilt so many times since then, that it probably doesn't look anything like it did. But still cool.
City Museum
On the Grand Place is the city's museum. We were wandering around and we came upon this room called the "Dressing Room" and we had no idea what they were talking about. It was entire room full of outfits for the...
Manneken Pis
This is a statue less than 2 feet tall of a little boy peeing. No one knows where the Manneken Pis came from, so there are lots of legends about it. Very amusing.
Waffles
Next to the Manneken Pis we had Belgian waffles with Belgian chocolate on top. Amazing. Not like Belgian waffles in America. They must put sugar on the waffle iron or something, because they have this sticky, sweet, but kind of hard, coating on the outside of the waffle. Deliciousness!
St. Michael's
Beautiful church. HUUUUUUGE. The pictures do it better justice than this description. :-0
Congolese Food
So, we decided to take Lonely Planet's advice and go "off the beaten path" and try a Congolese restaurant in Brussels. I decided to get something we had determined was chicken, as well as plantains. Shannon, on the other hand, decides to get something random off the menu. The waitress gives her this look and says, "You konw that's [insert word we can't understand], right?" I say to Shannon, "Maybe you should just get the other chicken thing..." She decided to be adventurous and get the mystery dish. It turns out to be this green gunk that tastes (and smells) like fish. Disgusting. Shannon has learned her lesson: don't order random things off the menu, or if you do, change your mind when the lady looks like you're crazy for ordering it. :-)
Palace
The palace in Brussels was rather tame, except for the fact that they had these awesome bushes out front. Kinda looked like a mini labyrinth. Must be even cooler in summer.
Chi-Chi's
I didn't know that Chi-Chi's still existed! It was amazing. Except for the food, which was horrible. :-)
St. Catherine's
St. Catherine's is pretty much destroyed. All that's left is a dirty tower. Except there was this winter festival there where we got the world's largest cotton candy, and saw an "ice monster" almost a block long.

Amsterdam, Netherlands
Canals
The canals in Amsterdam are beautiful. They're also annoying. Only being able to cross the street where there's a bridge is weird.
Anne Frank House
It was amazing to see a place that I'd been hearing about for my entire life. Except for the fact that it in and of itself it's a good place to visit, it was a rather crappy museum. Also, it had shortened hours on Christmas. What's up with that??
Movies
I love countries that don't dub! We saw Eastern Promises and Enchanted, both of which you should see. :-)
Fatballs
Apparently, fatballs are actually a Dutch food, and not just a Holland-MI-during-Tulip-Time food. Amazing. :-)
Consulate
My first trip to an American Consulate! We went to get Shannon more pages for her passport. Then we tried to go to the Reijksmuseum, but it cost 10 euros! Ew!
Van Gogh Museum
Pretty cool. Van Gogh was a weird guy. Unfortunately, they also didn't have any famous paintings, just like the Picasso Museum. But I know a lot about Van Gogh?
Red Light District
The Red Light District is completely different than I thought it would be. Maybe I just never thought about it or something, but if you want to know more, I will be happy to getll you, I'm just not going to talk about it here.
Steidlijk Museum
This was kind of a bummer. The regular exhibition was severly boring, as it was only a partial view because they're in a temporary location. However, there was an exhibition on Andy Warhol, which was amazing! I am so interested in him now; he was one weird guy.
Burger Bar/FEBO
FEBO is a fast food place that has vending machines for sandwiches. HILARIOUS. Burger Bar was this place that has like 18 different sauces for your french fries. So much better than the typical mayo.
Train to Copenhagen
There was this really weird Dutch guy in our compartment. I don't want to talk about it. Blech.

Copenhagen, Denmark
Palace
We saw the changing of the guard, and we also went to some sort of museum. Changing of the guard was kinda lame, as well as the museum. It was basically the crap the royalty had left behind, plus some dresses the current queen used to wear. (Who knew Denmark still had a queen???)
Little Mermaid
I knew that Hans Christian Andersen was from Denmark, but I had no idea there was a statue of the little mermaid here! Sweet!
Lunch
We went to lunch at this cheap place. We both ended up getting something with french fries, plus a mountain of mayo. It was all over everything by the time we were done eating. Blech.
National Museum
The National Museum apparently has this really awesome exhibit on the vikings! ...But it was closed. However, I did get to see a really cool and informative exhibit on ...the rest of the world? Awesome.
Tivoli Gardens
This is like an amusement park from 160 years ago. It looked pretty awesome inside, but it was about $10 just to get in the gate. Not appealing.
Train/Bus/Plane to Krakow
Our plane was from Malmo, Sweden to Krakow, Poland. Malmo is just across a straight-type-thing from Copenhagen. How difficult could it be to get there? Actually, it wasn't that hard to get to Malmo. However, the airport was 30 kilometers from Malmo, and we missed the last bus of the day. So, we ended up paying like $75 to get a taxi there. Then we slept in the airport until 6am when we could check in for our flight. That is where I wrote the last really long post from.

Well, I've been using the computer here in Bratislava for entirely too long. Even though Copenhagen was like 2 weeks ago, you'll have to wait a little longer for more. :-) Tomorrow, Budapest! Yay!

*PS* Check out the new photos!

More Photos!

2008-01-01T13:57:00.000-05:00

Hey!

I've decended back into laziness after the last HUUUGE post. However, I did add some pictures from everything up until our current city, Prague. It's not everything from those cities, but it should give you an idea of what I saw... :-) (See "Newest Photos" on the right!)

Also, we have a more definite itinerary for the next month:
Prague 30th-3rd
Vienna 3rd-6th
Bratislava 6th-8th
Zagreb 8th-10th
Budapest 10th-13th (night train)
Chisnau 14th-15th (night train)
Bucharest 16th-18th (night train)
Sofia 19th-20th (night train)
Istanbul 21st-25th (night plane)
Berlin 26th-27th
St. Petersburg 27th-31st (night train)
Arrive in Moscow the morning of February 1st

Hope everyone is having a great start to 2008!

142 mins of internet time might not be enough...

2007-12-28T17:01:00.000-05:00

So, I've been really, really lazy when it comes to posting. It always seemed like waaaay too much to sit down and write about at once. Now that I'm at the airport overnight, I have plenty of time to catch up on it all! It's not like I have anything better to do... :-)

Let's start back from the beginning. Before I only gave my impressions on the cities in general. This time I'll go through everything thoroughly, whether you want me to or not! :-)

***I know this post is going to be ridiculously long, so I'm going to try and arrange it in a way that is easily navigable for those with short attention spans/fleeting interest. :-) You can also just hit the highlights by going to the Photos on the right-hand side of the blog.

Barcelona, Spain
Picasso Museum
One of the things I went to in Barcelona was the Picasso Museum. It doesn't really have any of his famous stuff, but it has a LOT of stuff in general. They show it all chronologically, which makes it really cool to see how he progresses throughout his (really long) life. There's also really good commentary from the museum along the way. I always think of Picasso being a little edgy and racy, but never crude. One of the rooms that lacked commentary completely was this room full of sketches of prostitutes in, well, rather lewd positions: "Two figures and a cat" sounds like a rather harmless title, right? Think again. There were also sketches of men in rather embaressing situations, and the titles of the drawings were just men's names. :-) Oh, Picasso.
Cathedral of Barcelona
Next, I went to the Cathedral of Barcelona. I was kind of annoyed that I had to pay admission, but then I walked in and saw the amazing courtyard and realized why they charged... It was kind of like a really nice park, but completely surrounded by building. They also had a little museum with some really old religious artifacts (which may or may not have been from this cathedral, I don't know). Then I went in the actual cathedral and it was so big! There were pretty much rooms devoted to the saints and Jesus and Mary. And the candles! They were so beautiful! They only sold the kind in the glass-jar-type-things, and they were all red, so they were amazingly beautiful when their little flames shone through. Then I couldn't find the exit, which was kind of embaressing.
La Sagrada Familia
This church has been being built since 1882, and won't be completed for years to come. It is the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen in my entire life. It is so tall, so wide, so ornate. *Shakes head in disbelief.* There are no words. Just go see it.
La Pedrera (Gaudi Apartment Building)
First of all, I did not know that the apartment was on the top floor. So, not wanting to take up unnecessary space in the elevator, I started walking up the stairs. Like 8 floors later (okay, maybe not that many...) I got to the apartment. It was a huuuge apartment. And it was cool to see the period furnishings. The really interesting part, however, was the museum in the weird attic-like space directly below the roof. They had stuff about all of Gaudi's works. And then the roof. Oh my God. Seriously, how did he come up with this stuff? That would not be a relaxing place to go to after a long day of work!
Park Guell
This is another one of Gaudi's designs. It's on the top of a hill (mountain?) in Barcelona and has the famous mosaic benches. The plaza that the benches are on is actually the ceiling of the thing below it. It's basically just a bunch of columns, but the ceiling is also mosaic, with beautiful circular highlights. And the place with the Three Crosses has amazing views of the city.
Las Ramblas
This famous street is basically just one long, skinny park with bars, restaurants, and expensive shops on either side. The coolest thing about it to me, though, are the street performers which take over during the day. Their costumes are amazing, even if their acting skills are not.
Metro
My first experience with the Barcelona metro was not a pleasant one. I didn't know that there was no way to get from one platform to another once you were inside the turnstiles. Arg.

Lisbon, Portugal
Castelo de Sao Jorge
This castle is beautiful. There's really nothing but the outer shell of a castle left, but that is still enough to be impressive. And the view of the city is unparalleled. See photos for further explanation. :-)
Oceanarium
Europe's largest Oceanarium is in Lisbon as a result of some European festival thing that was there a few years ago. An Oceanarium isn't really like an aquarium; it's more for the preservation of marine life. It was amazlingly cool and I saw lots of stuff I don't remember seeing in regular aquariums.

London, England
Buckingham Palace
So, Buckingham Palace isn't open in the winter, and the changing of the guards is done every other day. I really only waved to the queen and then high-tailed it to a more exciting locale.
Queen's Gallery
This gallery isn't really your typical art gallery. It's more an appreciation of all things art, or sparkly and royal. There were a couple beautifully-detailed Michelangelo sketches in the rotating exhibit. It was just a pain to get into, but the overly-cheerful and -happy staff more than made up for it.
Westminster Abbey
It was dark by the time I got out of the Queen's Gallery and I decided to go check out Westminster Abbey to see if it was worth coming back to the next day. As I was walking there, I turned a corner and this beautiful, white church pops out from behind the dark building. It was definitely a good choice to go at night. It looked so beautiful, especially with Big Ben (and the London Eye) shining just to the left. However, this is where the fate of my eternal soul gets a little shaky. It costs like eight pounds to get into Westminster Abbey. That's over $15. As I was leaving, I realized I was only about 15 minutes late to evening services. So, I kinda fibbed about just going to services and they let me in for free. However, the guy inside said that they had already gotten past the point where they let people in late, so I had to sit not with all the other people. I just sat down in the place they told me to and looked around for a little bit. I didn't like actually see all the stuff you get to see if you pay, and I didn't take any pictures, but I still felt bad. To rid myself of this guilt, I just bought some over-priced postcards in the gift shop. By the way, how am I the one who's going to Hell in this story if the church has a gift shop??
Shakespeare's Globe
It was pretty cool to see a building unlike anything I've ever seen. However, I don't think I fully appreciated the whole Shakespeare-aspect of it.
Tate Modern
I now blame the Tate Modern for my all-consuming love of modern art that has developed in the last two weeks. Really, this is such a phenomenal art museum; I can't stress this enough. I could've gone back the day after and spent another three hours looking at all the same stuff I looked at the day before. Amazing.
Tower of London/Tower Bridge
So, I didn't actually make it in time to see the inside of the Tower of London (crown jewels and all). However, I did get a chance to see the outside of it. And the Tower Bridge that's right next to it. Both were beautiful, but the bridge definitely outshined the tower at night.
British Museum
I have to go back to London, even if it's just to see the British Museum. The admission to this museum is free. However, it is so big that I didn't read more than 5 sentences in the entire museum, didn't go in all the rooms, didn't stop walking in the majority of the ones I was in, and it still took me an hour and 15 minutes to walk through. This is the most extensive collection of ...everything... that I've ever seen. It would take me a month of weekends to get even close to fully appreciating all the exhibits. And I somehow managed to miss the Rosetta Stone. But, don't worry, I got to see Cleopatra, so it's all good. :-)
Natural History Museum
No, I didn't get enough the day before at the British Museum. The Natural History Museum was very cool, but also a lot like the one in DC. And there were just as many misbehaving children. Blech.
Harrod's
I actually managed to find time to go to Harrod's, dispite the fact that no one ever told me what it was, just that I had to go. I mean, I knew it was a store, but I didn't know it would be like that. It's like one giant department store. GIANT department store. Each room has a different theme. Some have crystal chandeliers with gold wallpaper, while others have 10-foot-tall gold Egyptian sculptures and other artifacts. And there are six floors of it. Of course, it was like three days before Christmas when I was there, so it was packed. This lady on the escalator in front of me decided to stop at the bottom and not walk out into the hallway, so I had to like scoot around her with my shoulder bag and everything so the thirty people behind me on the escalator didn't end up on top of us. Then they all started lining up behind me and pushing, so I kept bumping into her again. When she got to the top of the escalator she whips around and asks, "Would you like to go in front of me???" I didn't process the question because I simply didn't understand why she wasn't getting on the escalator, so I just said, "Excuse me?" and she repeated her question, but a little louder and with a little more emphasis. I just said, "No, thank you," and she got on the escalator. But I should have made some sort of comment about her conduct at the bottom of the escalator, and could next time she not stop there so that thirty people on a moving metal sidewalk suspended 50 feet above the very hard ground floor don't have to worry about where they are going to land. Other than her, though, the English people were very pleasant. Especially when I had to ask them to repeat things a lot. British people in American movies do not have your typical English accent. Most of them speak a lot quicker and with much thicker accents.

The next day I hopped a bus to Belgium to meet up with my friend Shannon, who was in my Russian classes at U of M. This was on the 22nd. We've hit quite a few cities since then, but those stories will have to wait for another time, as I only have 4 minutes left of internet time.

Merry Belated Christmas, everyone! And if I don't talk to you before the 1st, Happy New Year!

Spain, Portugal... England!!!

2007-12-19T16:46:00.000-05:00

Spain was beautiful. I'm not sure I've ever been to a more beautiful place. All of the food was so delicious. The people were friendly. The weather was great. I definitely have to go back to Barcelona. But maybe I should see the rest of Spain first. :-) The day I left, I wasn't really hungry. I didn't really eat anything, and I felt like it was a shame because the food was so amazing. I got done going to the Gaudi things and then I decided to head back to Las Ramblas and check out the market which I tried to go to the day before, but it was closed. It was amazing! (See album "Barthalona".) Everything was so fresh and beautiful. It all looked so delicious! I wandered deeper and deeper into the market and came upon a couple of "bars" that served food. I looked at a couple of them and decided upon one where this woman and her daughter were sharing a plate of seafood. I ordered a beer and pointed to what they were eating. The guy just laughed at me. There weren't many foreigners there--which was what appealed to me. The food came and it was an amazing grilled seafood feast: an entire fish, a razor clam, a giant prawn, a squid, mussels, clams, scallops, and lots of little octopus thingies (decidedly not squid, as they only had 8 legs). And it was all covered in some sort of delicious, Spanish, herbed oil. Plus fresh-baked bread. Mmmm. Best meal ever. EV-ER.

Then I left for Lisbon. The first night there I had this delicious dinner at a fancy restaurant. It was like some sort of tomato-y gumbo-y rice thing with shrimp and lobster. Good, but expensive. The next day I just ate at pastry shops the whole day because the only affordable food I could find other than that were fried, battered meat on stale rolls. Not appetizing. However, I did go to a killer castle on the tallest hill in Lisbon. And Europe's larest Oceanarium. Sweet. Unfortunately, I can't post the pictures because this computer has had it's USB capabilities disabled by the hostel. Nazis.

Yeah, speaking of London... YAY FOR BEING IN AN ENGLISH-SPEAKING COUNTRY!!! It's amazing. Also, everyone has cute British accents. Today on the metro ...tube (that just sounds funny)... I heard this like 3-year-old girl speaking with this posh British accent and it took all my effort not to laugh every time she talked. She was like the girl in Family Guy that Stewie is in love with. Hilarious stuff. Anyway, last night when I got here I came to my hostel and they gave me my room, I walk in it, and everyone in the room looks at me. I look around and realize all the beds are already taken, and that's why they were all so surprised to see me. So, I go back, tell the guy, he appologizes, gives me another room, I joke and say, "There's not going to be someone sleeping in this one, right? Haha.", he says no, and I go off to the room. Yeah, someone sleeping in that bed, too. I go back and they finally just put me in an empty room. So far I have slept in 3 different rooms for 4 different nights and never had to sleep in the same room as someone else. Yessss. Maybe I'll have some company tonight. Who knows. Today I saw Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, Parliament, and tried to go the British Museum, but I didn't realize today wasn't Thursday, so it had already closed. Oops. I also ate some amazing Indian and Japanese food. Indian food has an amazing quality that it is exactly the same no matter where you eat it. The Japanese food in Russia is different than the Japanese food in America, which is different than the Japanese food in England. England's is probably the most authentic. And delicious. The only thing that bothers me about London is that everything is really expensive. If you think about $1 being 1 pound, everything is almost exactly the same price it would be in America. However, if you take the exchange rate into effect, you want to cry a little. No, a lot. An American girl that told me how to get to my hostel by bus, also gave me the money for the bus because I didn't have any pounds. She was like, "Here's the 2 pounds you need." I say back, "I can't take that; it's like 4 dollars." She says, "No, it's like 2 dollars--you have to stop thinking like that!" She's right. If you think about 1 pound being 1 dollar, everything is completely reasonable (for a big city). I'm just going to be crushed when I look at my bank account afterward.

**My internet time ran out at this point. I wrote this on the 19th, but I'm just posting this now that I'm back on the internet.

Photos!

2007-12-17T10:58:00.000-05:00

I finally got around to uploading my pictures from my last vacation, as well as everything since! Check out the links on the right-hand side under "Newest Photos". :-)

Now, I'm off to the airport! Lisbon, here I come!

And the journey begins!

2007-12-15T18:07:00.000-05:00

Yay!!! I made it to Barcelona in one piece!

Despite the fact that our plane took off an hour and a half late, we still landed on time. I'm not sure they had the arrival time calculated correctly... :-) Or maybe they're just so used to flying from Russia, that they know all the planes will take off an hour and a half late. :-D That was the most inefficient and poorly laid-out airport I have ever been in. It looks all new and shiny and modern, but it's procedures are soooo Soviet. Awesome. :-)

I am also disappointed that I entered the Schengen zone through Italy and not Spain. That means no more stamps in my passport until I leave Portugal. (def. Schengen countries: European countries that have abolished border checks between countries that have signed the agreement. 15 full-fledged members, plus some that are in the middle of the process.)

So, it's like just after midnight here. I'm going to go walk Las Ramblas for a little and then go to sleep. In the dorm room that I paid for 1 bed in, but no one else is staying in. Amazing. It's really strange, too, because it's RIGHT on Las Ramblas, RIGHT by the metro! :-) Maybe tomorrow I'll have some company.

Anyway, I'm gonna go try and find a spiffy Spanish sim-card for my phone. :-) Night! (Or whatever time of day it is where you are...)

Silly old Russia

2007-12-08T13:04:00.000-05:00

In my few months here in Moscow, I have come across many strange Russian phrases. However, there are two special ones that when I hear, I can't help but chuckle to myself.

1.) Вот это вот (vote eh-tuh vote, trans. "there it is"). I'm sure all of my fellow Russian-as-a-foreign-language-learners are just as confused by this phrase as I am. My problem? Well, let's break the phrase down (or at least I'll try and use my shaky understanding of idiomatic Russian phrases to display why I'm confused. Well, really just amused, because I know what it means). First, вот: on it's own, "вот" already means "there it is". For example, I misplace the lid to the water bottle in the kitchen and ask my host mom if she knows where it is. When she finds it, she would most likely say, "Вот!", "There it is!" Next, вот это: most of the time "вот это" means "this one", but even in English you can sometimes use "this one" and "there is is" interchangeable. For example, I'm standing in the mall with my friend and she asks me which store I bought my boots in. I point to it and say, "Вот это!", or "This one!" However, if at first I don't see it and I look around for a minute before I find it, when I point and say, "Вот это!", you could translate it as either, "This one!" or "There it is!" And, lastly, as I've already pointed out, "вот это вот" also means "there it is". For example, I'm in class doing a grammar exercise and I make a stupid mistake. The teacher looks over the exercise, asks me to correct it, and then looks over it again. If I've done it right the second time, she'll say, "Вот это вот!", or "There it is!" (the correct answer). But she could also just say, "Вот!", still meaning "There it is!" So, now you're starting to understand my issue. I was explaining to my friend Robert last night how amused I am by this phrase, and said he had never heard it before and didn't know what it meant. Before I had the chance to explain, his Russian girlfriend defined it simply as "Вот!" and laughs at it with me. It just adds to the ridiculousness of it all, when a Russian can even point out the exact thing I find so amusing. I think that when I can finally use "вот это вот" naturally, I will have mastered the Russian language. It just sounds so stupid when I say it.

2.) Очень не плохой (oh-chen knee plah-hoi, trans good). This one is just all-around amusing. First, "плохой" means "bad", the adjective. "Не плохой" means "not bad", just like in English. And "очень" means "very". Knowing all these things you might assume when they're put together they'll be something like "not very bad", which, to me, means something is actually worse than "not bad". For example, in response to te question "How's your soup?", "Not bad." means pretty good, while "Not very bad." means just a little bad, but not VERY. This is not the case in Russian. So, then we try to translate word-for-word, hoping for a better approximation: "very not bad". You have to admit that it's kind of amusing to think that Russians walk around saying things are "very not bad". Go ahead, laugh a little. But, it doesn't sound funny in Russian. (I know, I'm disappointed too.) It turns out it's just this really weird way of saying "good". It's like Russians can't bring themselves to call something good, which, let's face it, seems to go against the whole Russian mentality. So I guess it kind of makes sense that they would have to come up with something that means good, but still uses the word bad. :-) Gotta love 'em!

Along the same lines, here's a story my grammar teacher told us on Wednesday to display how Russians aren't even phased by something that is actually bad. ("Everything is bad, so why should I be surprised?") She had to wait a long time for a metro car at a really busy metro station, and when a train finally came, there were so many people that she couldn't get on. So, she's still standing on the platform waiting for a train when all of the sudden there's a loud explosion from the tunnel the last train left down. Everyone leans forward and looks, but nothing can be seen: no fire, no smoke, no nothing. No one came over the loudspeaker and said anything, so when the next train pulls up, everyone gets on and they head down the tunnel. All of the sudden the train comes to a sharp stop, so quickly, in fact, that the people that were standing and not holding on that tightly fell right over. It started getting hot and people opened the little windows to let some fresh air in. However, the car started filling with thick, white smoke. Apparently the smoke smelled horrible and people were breathing through scarves or sweaters. And everyone was completely silent. The conductor said nothing. They just stood and waited. The smoke was getting thicker and thicker, and it was getting harder and harder to breathe. But what could they do? Where could they go? Finally, just as the woman next to my teacher said, "I think I'm going to faint!", the train started moving. They got to the next station, everyone had to get off, and that was that. The question in her mind then was, "What happened? What caused this?" Apparently, it was just some sort of tube that exploded and they fixed it right away. However, later on, she realized that this was not the most important question she should be asking. What she should have been wondering was why everyone got on the train after they heard the explosion in the tunnel! As soon as she said this, I immediately realized that I hadn't even thought about that! Of course, that's the first thing I would have thought 4 months ago if I heard this story! Oh, Russia, what have you done to me?? :-)

To wrap up the Russia discussion for today, I have chosen something my conversation partner, Misha, told me. He works for the State Television and Radio Company, in the online news department. So, he researches and writes articles, recently pretty much only on the State Duma elections (Russian version of the House of Representatives). The company, as you probably could tell from it's name, is state-owned, the state being almost single-handedly controlled by the party Единая Россия (ye-deen-a-ya rah-see-ya, trans. United Russia). Well, apparently the people who work in this specific department aren't that keen on the party in power, and Misha even wrote something mocking them in one of his articles. Apparently, United Russia didn't like this very much and let them know that the party would no longer be giving them interviews, and that if this happened again, their department would be shut down completely. Now that's democracy for you! I guess, unlike most people, Putin doesn't love the sweet smell of freedom of the press in the morning. :-) All hail United Russia!

Now on to more fun, exciting, vacation things! My friend who I'm traveling with, Shannon, and I have started finalizing plans. It looks like this will be the agenda, give or take a few cities:

Barcelona, Spain

Lisbon, Portugal

London, England

---Meet Shannon---

Brussels, Belgium

Amsterdam, Netherlands

Copenhagen, Denmark

Malmo, Sweden

Krakow, Poland

Prague, Czech Republic

Vienna, Austria

Bratislava, Slovakia

Budapest, Hungary

Ljubljana, Slovenia

Zagreb, Croatia

Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina

Belgrade, Serbia

Brasov, Romania

Bucharest, Romania

Sofia, Bulgaria

Istanbul, Turkey

St. Petersburg, Russia

I leave Moscow on the 15th of December and get back on the 1st of February. It's going to be an awesome 6 weeks. I can't wait!

Let me know if you have a preference as to what city (cities) you receive a postcard from! :-)

The dirt...

2007-12-05T08:35:00.000-05:00

So, people told me that Moscow is a dirty city. When I think of a dirty city, I think of trash everywhere, etc. I didn't know they meant something different. Moscow is just plain filthy, and not because of litter. Everything is just covered in a layer of black, soot-like scum. It's disgusting. I feel so bad for the people who have to mop floors here--it's a never-ending job. Cars are disgusting, too. Anyone who buys a car that's not black/dark gray is a moron. You can't even read license plates sometimes. Cars will be COMPLETELY black from the tires to the windows. It's like someone took a can of black spraypaint and just laid it on thick. So gross. Everyday I come home and I wash my face and hands and the water runs gray. My pants are FILTHY after wearing them once. And I never really understood why people got shoe shines until I came here. Now I wish I knew how to efficiently shine a shoe. It's so ridiculous. I can't believe I breathe this air 24 hours a day. Фу! (Fu!, trans. "Yuck!", "Ew!")

Today for the first time I saw a woman wearing yoga pants. Like, those atheletic pants made out of t-shirt material with 2 stripes running down the side. All of the sudden I realized I hadn't seen someone wearing them on the street since I was in America. So weird.

So, you may have thought I was a little harsh about the dogs in a previous post. Well, I forgot to tell this story. My friend Justin told me he was walking home one day by this market that sells meat. Well, old women usually buy meat for the stray dogs that live near the market, but it was late and the market was closed and therefore there were no old women hanging around. So, the dogs started following him and when he didn't give them anything they started attacking him. One bit right through his pants and into his hip! He still has scars from it! Another time a stray dog bit him in the arm. This is why I don't like the dogs (hence "Kill them all."), and why I get very nervous when one even seems to be remotely heading in my direction. I don't want to have to get rabies shots while I'm in Russia. A girl that I work with was walking in the Red Square and some guy with a pet monkey came up to her and put it on her arm. She just put her other arm up to steady it and keep it from falling, and it bit her! So, she had to get rabies shots. None of these are Russian experiences I think I need to go through.

So, I am very lucky to live at the last metro stop. Doesn't seem intuitive, does it? However, this means that I get to sit for the entire length of my metro commute (45-60 mins). If I lived two stops down I'd be stuck standing the 40-55 mins. Everyone wants to sit, so this means at my metro stop we all just wait for the next train if the current one has no seats left. But the trains don't stop at the exact same spot every single time. So, even if you were standing in front of the doors when they shut on the last car 30 seconds ago, you might not be in front of them now. One day I was in the second row of people waiting and I think that something like this happened. The people in front of me went in, so I followed, and a girl to their left (not in front of the doors, but still in the first row) slides in behind me, meanwhile PUNCHING ME in the back. This is completely uncalled for. It's not my fault that this train didn't stop in the same spot it stopped last time. I mean, she was a girl and I have a very puffy winter coat, so it's not like it hurt; it's just the principle of the thing. What person punches another person over the order of getting in the metro car? I mean, we both got seats. She was only 5th instead of 4th. And it's not like I was cutting on purpose. Ugh, ridiculous.

Anyway, I should be studying for my culture class (The Language of Films and Theater). I have to prepare two presentations and study for the exam. For tomorrow. Which I have done nothing for. Oops. :-)

News...

2007-12-03T08:52:00.000-05:00

Stop right there! You! Yeah, you with the letter in your hand! Yeah, that letter that you're about to send me in Russia! Stop! Don't! It's too late! Didn't you hear what I said before? Unfortuately for you, in less than two weeks I'm leaving Russia. And I'll be gone for 6 whole weeks! So, there's no way that letter is going to reach me in time. And a package? Don't even think about it! You can send that package sometime after New Year's and it'll arrive about the same time I do--sometime at the beginning of February. The letter you'll have to wait until at least January 15th to send, sorry. I didn't mean for my awesome trip across Europe to mess with your mailings. :-)

I've also recently decided that I want to become a doctor. "Dr. Kendra Williams." ...Kinda has a nice ring to it. Unfortunately, I will not be able to help you with any of your medical ailments, but if you want to know anything and everything about economics, that I'll be able to explain to you. However, I haven't exactly taken all the classes I need to get into a good graduate school, so I will be returning to the University of Michigan for a triumphant 5th year! Go Blue! This extra year will give me the time to take all of those ridiculously hard classes I didn't think I'd ever need, but turn out to be just what I need to succeed in (and not fail miserably out of) a top Ph.D. program. If any of you would like to tutor me in Calc III or Linear Algebra, let me know! ;-)

Anyway, that's all the news I have for you. I guess it's kind of a lot considering my last post was yesterday, but this entry just doesn't seem to be up to the usual standard. Oh, well. Quality over quantity, right? :-)

I know, I know. I'm a horrible person...

2007-12-01T14:57:00.000-05:00

Sorry I haven't updated in a while.

Russia has definitely changed me in the last couple months. I didn't really notice it, though, until people started pointing it out to me. This is the best example I can give:

The pound. Poor, defenseless animals are rounded up and held captive until they (for the vast majority, I'm sure) are brutally murdered. Is this a grotesque, barbaric tradition that should be done away with all together? (I mean, who do those people think they are going around killing innocent puppies and kittens???) I think not. Kill them. Kill them all. Moscow has over 100,000 stray dogs alone. And they're not cute, cuddly english terriers; they're German shepherds, or rottweilers or some combination of several big, scary breeds. And it's certainly not fun when one of them starts following you. Not having stray, essentially-wild animals roaming the streets was just one of those things I took for granted in the US. I definitely was one of the "but why do the puppies have to die?" people, but I have seen the light and changed my ways.

I also think it's perfectly fine for someone to live with their parents until they get married. In Russia if you don't live with your parents until you're married, it would mean that you have a horrible relationship and probably don't speak to them that often, if at all. Don't worry, though, this doesn't change my personal habitation preferences, or my preference that any guy I date not live with his parents. It's just not surprising anymore. What's still surprising, though, is when a family of 4 will be living in a one-room apartment. And especially when the children are high school age. Common, but not comfortable for me to think about.

I also think it's going to be hard to break the habit of carrying toilet paper with me everywhere I go. Even in bathrooms in restaurants there might not be any.

The most surprising change I've seen in myself has been in regards to cleanliness. I'm really not a germ freak anymore. Really, what's the worst that could happen if I don't wash my hands before I eat a sandwich (or anything else rather touch-intensive)? Bathrooms not having hot water or soap or towels/hand dryers will make you realize that it's probably not all that important anyway. Or if that doesn't do it for you, standing in a PACKED metro car being able to feel people breathing on you might do it. Or maybe even just hanging onto the bar on the metro while standing, because then you'll touch your iPod and your bag and your glasses and your nose and then your pen and your planner and your pack of gum. Really, the germs all just everywhere all the time. And yet I'm still alive. I guess my mom was right all those times she said, "It's not going to kill you!" when I complained something was dirty.

I bought some flat boots about a month ago. They're supposed to be rain boots, I think, but I wear them in the snow. Then, about two weeks ago I started feeling really funny when I was wearing them, and it stopped snowing for a while, so I wore my sneakers. But I felt funny in those too. Last Friday I bought some boots with heels. I've worn them pretty much every day since then. For some reason they just feel right. I also feel awkward when I don't have makeup on. I mean, both of these could be explained by the fact that everyone else is in high heels and makeup and I just feel pressure to conform, so make of it what you will.

I feel like I can now really appreciate some of the things we have in the US, such as safety regulations, or free public bathrooms, or freedom of movement. However, I also am kind of disgusted with America at the same time. We're supposed to be politically correct and unbiased, but we're just as brainwashed as anyone else. Maybe not in horrible hate-crime-y ways like in some countries, but certainly in embarrassing and culturally-insensitive ways

More of the Baltics...

2007-11-12T08:53:00.000-05:00

So, I bought 10 hours at the internet cafe, thinking that this way when I uploaded my pictures to the login number (which takes forever) they would be there for the next dozen times I would use the computer here. However, they only save them for 4 hours. :-( So, no pictures this time. I'm not waiting in line, then waiting for the pictures to upload to my login, then waiting for the pictures to upload to Facebook, then writing cute little comments for all of them. Ha. I'm not that ambitious. Sometime soon, though, I promise...

Anyway, vacation! It was great... Let's see if I can help you out a little in understanding where I was.

Friday, October 26:
We left for Tallinn, Estonia on an overnight train. However, we were not in a sleeper car. I didn't really sleep until after the border checks (both at 4:30am because of the time change between Russia and Estonia even though they were an hour apart). At that point enough people had gotten off the train that we could lay on two seats instead of sitting in one.

Saturday, October 27: Tallinn, Estonia
We arrive in Tallinn at 8:30am to a cute, sleepy little Baltic city. We go to the hostel and everyone's still in bed except for a guy who has to leave for Riga soon, so we decide to come back later. We check to see if there are any places in Old Town that sell ferry tickets to Helsinki, but there aren't, so we grab some krooni (Estonian currency) and head back to the hostel, where the host, Jonathan, greets us happily, if not sleepily, and tells us about the city. We walk around for a while, see some pretty cool stuff, buy some ferry tickets for the next day, and eat some delicious Estonian pancakes, sourkraut soup, and fried mashed potato balls with garlic sauce for lunch and some dumpling-type-things for dinner. Pretty good. Especially the sourkraut soup. We get back to the hostel and everyone's there. It was pretty cool to hang out with all these people who were just travelling around for a while. Then the doorbell rang and I was closest to the door so I went down to open it (the hostel is on the 2nd and 3rd floors). Slippery stairs and socks do not mix. I fell and hit every step on the way down. Probably broke my tailbone, as it still hurts a lot now, and it's more than 2 weeks later. Everyone else was going out for drinks, but I decided to stay home and sleep because I'd only slept like 3 hours the night before, and now my butt hurt a lot. So, I slept.

Sunday, October 28: Helskini, Finland
We got on the boat to Helsinki at 8:30. Okay, more like cruise ship. Pretty ridiculous for a 3-hour ride. I slept most of the way, even though I was very uncomfortable in my chair. Helskinki was pretty lame. It had a couple cool things, but not really a lot. We went to the National History Museum and the National Gallery. Finnish painters aren't very good, in my opinion. The history museum was pretty cool. They had Finnish battle axes, which are by far the coolest type of battle axe. We also ate reindeer. It was amazing. Not as cool as bear (which places also had), but almost a quarter of the price. As my friend Anna's friend put so well, "Helsinki is a cool place to stay for 6 hours; unfortunately, I had 8." Well, we had 10 before we took the late ferry back to Estonia. If you are ever going to go to Finland, you'll probably want to go to somewhere in addition to Helsinki or you'll also be disappointed.

Monday, October 29: Parnu, Estonia; Riga, Latvia
We left Tallinn at 10am by bus and decided to stop off at a little resort town called Parnu (there's supposed to be a little circle above the a in Parnu). We had 4 hours there. This is more than enough for a little beach town when it's the end of October. Apparently it was the first city in the Soviet Union to have electric lights. This is probably why it was considered "resort-like". It was pretty cool, but I could have done with less than 4 hours in Parnu. There's not really much to see. It's kinda a go-to-the-beach place. So, we got to Riga at like 7ish or something and headed to the hostel. Then we went to a Latvian pancake place to eat. Pretty good, but not as good as Estonian pancakes. Then we met up at the hostel with some other pretty cool people from English-speaking countries living in foreign countries. We went out to have a drink or two and ended up going to this really lame bar and these two English stag guys followed us and kept introducing themselves to us because they were so drunk they forgot they'd already asked us our names like a half dozen times. So, we tried to lose them, and ended up just going to McDonald's where some Russians thought we only spoke English and said some pretty funny stuff about one of the guys we were with. The guys were upset, but I just thought it was funny. Then we went back to the hostel and slept.

Tuesday, October 30: Riga, Latvia
The next day we went to the Occupation Museum. I think this is the longest I've ever spent in a museum. It was ridiculously sad, too. Then we went on a really long walking tour of Riga. It was pretty, but we shouldn't have tried to do both walking tours in one day, even though we only had one day there. Riga is an amazing city, and everyone should go there--especially if you're learning Russian. 40% of Riga's population is Russian, and therefore more people speak Russian than English. Pretty cool. Also, they're ridiculously high-tech (they were in Tallinn, too). They have phone booths all over the city, and if you sit within 100 meters of one of these telephone booths, you can use WiFi. Pretty awesome for a former-Soviet-Union city. Heck, pretty cool for any city.

Wednesday, October 31: Riga, Latvia; Vilnius, Lithuania
So, we didn't leave for Vilnius until early afternoon, so I slept in. Then I walked around this cute park by a river and a monument. Then I ate some lunch from a grocery store and got on the bus around 1 or 2. It was a gorgeous day, so of course we were on a bus. We got to Vilnius just before dinnertime. We met up with this guy in our hostel that had answered the door at the hostel in Tallinn and left the day we arrived in Riga. We went to dinner with him at this Lithuanian place. We got the "potato sampler" or something like that, which has all the different potato specialties from Lithuania. There were 2 kinds of zepplins, potato pancakes, stuffed potato pancakes, and even "potato sausage". The potato sausage was mashed potatoes mixed with some sort of meat (I assume pork, but I couldn't tell) and then stuffed into sausage casings (otherwise known as pig intestines). This is probably the single grossest thing I have eaten in my entire life. It tasted and smelled like what I've always imagined food that gives you food poisoning tastes and smells like. I took 2 bites and I couldn't eat anymore. I shudder to think of it. We saw some people dressed up for Halloween and acting like drunken idiots--kinda like being home! :-) Then we got some Lithuanian beers and went back to the hostel to enjoy them. Unfortunately, the only stations they received without dubbing were the news and VH1. We watched the news. Then I slept. And I slept and I slept...

Thursday, November 1: Vilnius, Lithuania
And I slept... Until about noon or something. Then I woke up, went on the computer for a little (no one was at the hostel) and went sight-seeing for about an hour before Anna (the girl I travelled with) and I met up. We at at a different Lithuanian place this time and I was determined not to get anything potato (as I'd had MORE than enough potato the night before) but I ended up getting potato pie, because apparently potato is the only thing Lithuanians do. It was also mashed potato mixed with some sort of meat, but it was tastey this time. Then we walked around a little more and went back to the hostel because the weather was crappy. We hung out for a while, I bought a couple plane tickets for December, and then we went to this weird Italian/Indian/Asian vegetarian restaurant where I had some pretty awful Indian food. Then we hightailed it to the hostel and to the bus station to catch our overnight bus to Gdansk. There were 6 people on the bus, so we laid down and put our feet across the aisles. It wasn't so bad.

Friday, November 2: Gdansk, Poland
We got to Gdansk mid-morning and decided to go to the hostel. We only could leave our bags there because the check-in lady had a break from 10am-2pm. So, we left and walked around the city a little. We saw the sights. There are a lot of pretty buildings in Gdansk, apparently designed in the Amsterdam style. I don't know yet if Gdansk looks like Amsterdam, but if it does, just go to Amsterdam, where they don't speak only Polish.

Saturday, November 3: Kaliningrad, Russia
So our bus left at like 7am so we had to leave at 6:30am to get there, but Anna didn't change her watch to EU time, so we ended up leaving at 5:30am. It wasn't so bad because I got to eat breakfast, which I wouldn't have been able to do if we'd left at 6:30. Bus, tailbone, ow, blah. Then we got to Kaliningrad and I asked the least friendly information-booth attendant ever (In RUSSIAN, mind you! Imagine if I had asked in English!) where the hostel/hotel was that we knew was in the train station. She looked at me like I was stupid. I guess I was I supposed to know it was up the stairs at the end of a ridiculously long hallway behind an unmarked door. How could I have missed it?! So we walked around Kaliningrad and ate lunch at this ridiculous restaurant called "Oleg" where they gave me my 220-ruble change in 10-ruble bills. Ha. Kaliningrad is a BIIIIIIG city, so we realized we had walked a long way and took a marshrutka back. We kinda just hung out around the hotel (we had our OWN room with our OWN bathroom and a TV and paid $41 altogether). Then we wandered over to the local shopping center and grabbed some really expensive pizza from the only restaurant there (but at least it was really good pizza) and some groceries from the extremely Western supermarket. Ahh, sleep (after watching a movie about the Romanovs).

Sunday, November 4: Kaliningrad, Russia
We walked a lot. A LOT, a lot. We went to this church and saw the most ridiculous museum ever. It was mostly centered around Kant who lived in Kaliningrad. It must have been 5 stories tall. And there would be like these cool old paintings, and then one from 1994. I'd see some cool old stuff from way back when, and then a CD. It could have used some organization. Also, some English descriptions. Apparently only Germans who want to see their Prussian roots go to Kaliningrad, so everything was in German. Really crappy city. Too big to be walkable. Not enough to see in the amount of days it would be comfortable to walk through. I did get to see some Soviet military equipment, though. Then we left for the airport at 7ish, after managing to lock our backpacks in a left-luggage locker (apparently you pick your code on the INSIDE while the buzzer is going off. Oops). No harm though, because the guy was like, "Describe the backpacks." So we very poorly started saying colors in Russian and he was like, "What is INSIDE the backpacks?" And I was like, "A banana!" because I had bought two at a supermarket and only ended up eating one. He laughed, opened the locker and said, "And the banana?" and I open my backpack and pull out the banana. He just shook his head and walked away. Bus to the airport. Plane to Moscow (plus two busses at the airport). Bus to the metro. Metro to my home. Finally, back in my own bed...

All in all, it was a good trip. Hopefully, I'll have some more pictures up soon. There will be more descriptions of the specific places I saw along with the pictures. I just can't sit here any longer because I have to go pick up a package at the post office! :-D Yay!

Back in the USSR!

2007-11-04T18:58:00.000-05:00

Apparently, I don't know how lucky I am...

For the last week I've been in former-Soviet states that feel refreshing and progressive. Now that I'm back in Russia, it really does feel like I've gone back in time...

Anyway, it's 3am so I'm going to go to bed, but I thought you might want to know that I made it home safely.

More soon! I promise!

The Baltics...

2007-10-31T05:26:00.001-04:00

So far fall break is going well. We've been to:
Tallinn, Estonia
Helsinki, Finland
Parnu, Estonia
Riga, Latvia
and in less than 2 hours we leave for Vilnius, Lithuania.

It's been so great. I don't really have time to do a full update now, but I wanted to let you know that I posted some pictures. Check out the recently-added "Newest Photos" section!

The waiting game...

2007-10-26T07:55:00.000-04:00

Okay, so, 3pm in Moscow is 7am on the east coast. It's ridiculous to think that anyone would be answering emails or Facebook messages at this hour, but still.

Plua I woke up at like 11 today to pack because I thought it would take forever, but it didn't. And last night I didn't finish my dinner, so there was some салат (sal-ah-t; trans. "salad", in quotes because it's more like the tuna/chicken mayo-y type salad) and half of one of the котлеты (cot-let-e; trans. ground beef patties that taste more like meatloaf than hamburgers). Well, I ate the "salad" when I got up and was going to eat the beef thing with an orange a couple hours later, but my host mom came home at noon and started making lunch. So we had pork, fresh veggies, and canned corn (which I have officially gotten used to being cold) and then she reminded me that I need to eat the beef thing before I leave. Sometimes she eats them with острый кетчуп (os-tree kyetchup, trans. spicy ketchup (but it's actually regular ketchup... which inspires the question, what is regular Russian ketchup?). I really have to eat them by themselves.

So I was originally going to bring a backpack and a wheely carry-on, but the my friend, Anna, who I'm travelling with, called and said she's just bringing a backpack. I just fit everything that was in my carry-on into my backpack, and only had a few small things left over to put into my purse. I have no idea why I didn't just try the backpack in the first place. Just goes to show I'm not an efficient packer.

I better go force down the last of my leftovers so my host mom doesn't freak. Then I'm going shopping for delicious train food (aka a loaf of my favorite bread and some pre-sliced salami), which should cost me about 60 rubles total (trans. $2.40). Mmm, my favorite flavor: cheap!

Goodbye for now! The next time you hear from me I'll have at least two more stamps in my passport! :-D

And just when I was starting to get used to her...

2007-10-25T14:12:00.000-04:00

Russia, that is...

Anyway... I finally found a place that the photo-upload application on Facebook works at. So, I put a few new pictures up of my trip so far. Hopefully they're a little more impressive than the randomly-selected pictures I put up when I had no idea what I was uploading. And there'll be more to come!

So, the itinerary for the next week or so...
Friday: leave for Tallinn, Estonia at 6pm
Saturday: arrive at 8:30am and spend day in Tallinn
Sunday: leave for Helsinki, Finland (by boat) at 8am; arrive 11am and spend day in Helsinki; sometime go back to Tallinn to sleep there again
Monday: 4-hour trip to Riga, Latvia
Tuesday: Riga
Wednesday: 4-hour trip to Vilnius, Lithuania
Thursday: Vilnius; night bus to Gdansk, Poland
Friday: Gdansk
Saturday: 5-hour trip to Kaliningrad, Russia
Sunday: Kaliningrad; flight home at 8pm

The other day I went to the library to check out a book, to find out that you can't actually check books out of the library. You can reserve them and then read them in the library. Or you can copy them. Anyway, not the point of the story... I was about to leave when I saw some bookshelves with paperbacks for sale. It being the Foreign Languages Library, I thought just maybe some of these books might be in English. They were! I bought nine books for less than $25. I love Russia. Although, it is difficult to tell sometimes if a book is the original text. Russians apparently like to have the text dumbed-down a bit for them before they will attempt an English version. Seven of the nine I'm sure are original-text versions. The copy of Lolita says it's the original text, but I'm fairly certain Nabokov wrote in Russian, so I'm not sure that's possible. And I thought I had found and original-text version of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde, but now that I take another look at it, I'm not so sure. I already read Murder on the Orient Express, and the other 6 are: The First Jungle Book, The Second Jungle Book, Peter Pan, Alice's Adventures (Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass), The Hounds of Baskerville, and Slaughterhouse Five. Should be a good time--even if I don't have a high school English teacher to tell me their "significance". ;-)

I don't remember if I posted this already or not, but Russia is not the world's most multicultural place. Every time I see a black person, I think, "Oh, right! I knew something looked a little off without you!" So, this happened like 5 times or so since I've been here. Yeah, scary. ...I miss my multicultural motherland.

Oh, I don't think I mentioned the time she brought home a package of whole, salted fish, each about 7 inches long. I was really hoping they were for the stray dog that she feeds... They weren't. She showed me how to eat them: you cut off the head, cut off the stomach, hold the tail and make little bites up to the tail where you bite it off. You kind of eat them like a celery stalk, if you were holding the leafy end in you hand, and didn't eat that part. ...And you ate the whole stalk in one mouthful. She showed me a couple times and then asked me if I wanted to try some, adding something like, "They're SO delicious!" I think I said something along the lines of, "No, thank you. I don't quite believe you..." She laughed and that was the end of that. Well, she kept eating them, but she didn't ask me if I wanted to try them again.

The reason this came to mind is because the food has been delicious for the past few days. ...And when I say delicious, I mean just like home! :-D We (I) had "American sandwiches" the last few days. It was great! She bought this bread called Harry's American Sandwich (which is like Wonder Bread, but completely square) as well as some ham, lettuce, and tomatoes! It was amazing. Except for the mayo not being Hellmann's Light, it was pretty perfect--almost like being in America again! :-D

I should be able to keep in touch pretty well (or at least as well as I have been) while travelling. Feel free to shoot me an email or something. However, I heard on the grapevine that some of you have sent me letters and/or packages. Unfortunately, I won't be able to get those until Tuesday, November 6 (I get back Sunday night, but Monday the 5th is a federal holiday). Well, if they're even there by then. Letters seem to be taking about two weeks, on average, and I've been waiting a month, tomorrow, for a certain package... I mean, I'm confident that everything winging it's way to me as we speak, will be ready and waiting for me when I get back.

And on that overly-confident note, I bid you farewell. Wish me luck at the border (x7)!

It's a little political...

2007-10-21T09:43:00.000-04:00

Yes, I really had to make it rhyme.

I've been fielding some questions about politics in Russia, next year's elections specifically. Here goes nothing... (Let's hope Putin is okay with what I have to say...)

An overwhelming majority of people love Putin. Actually I shouldn't say that. An overwhelming majority of people have no interest in politics whatsoever, and these people generally answer polls to say they'd be happy to have Putin for a third term. It looks like they won't amend the constitution in order for this to happen. However, they totally want him to be prime minister. And this is not degrading in any way, unlike a president running for vice president (or anything else for that matter) in America. The most shocking thing I found out is that, also not like America, Putin can be president again in 4 years. The limit's not 2 terms in a lifetime here, it's just 2 consecutive terms. So, basically whatever happens during the next term, Putin will be elected president again in 2012. The only chance of this not happening is if Putin does not have a hand in politics whatsoever during the new guy's term AND things go really well. Then that guy might have a fighting chance against Putin. But, at least right now, that seems unlikely.

How is this a democratic country, you ask? Well, the people are voting... But more than that, no one cares. As my politics teacher so aptly put it: "Russians don't care if Russia is a democracy; it's only important that the West thinks that Russia is democratic." Putin even asked famous people to run against him in the presidential elections (i.e. director Mikhailkov) to make Russia seem more like it was having democratic elections. Hey, if Russians are receiving the type of political system they voted for, isn't that what a democracy is all about?

Next topic: Russian drinking laws... (This is where you ask, "Wait, there are drinking laws in Russia??") The drinking laws in Russia are few and far between. You can't buy alcohol if you're under 18. (Laugh here.) You can't drink alcohol on the metro. (Laugh here.) And I'm fairly certain the blood-alcohol limit for driving is close to (if not actually) the European standard of zero percent. This one's not really a laughing matter, despite the fact that everyone does it too. The weird thing is that even in America you can buy alcohol until 2am, but in Moscow the metro closes at 1am. And the only time of day the streets aren't over-packed with cars is the middle of the night. So, they're kind of just asking people to drive home drunk. I mean, the metro opens again at 5:30, which is really not all that long to be closed, but if you realize at 1:30am that you missed the metro, those are 4 long, drunken hours til you get to go home. I'm sure people end up taking cabs home, but of you have your car anyway, I'm sure that idea isn't very appealing. (Taxis in Russia are overwhelmingly of the gypsy variety, and the shadier side of gypsy at that.) So anyway, the point is that there are loads and loads of drunken, after-1am car wrecks that probably could be prevented by keeping the metro open another hour or two. Okay, so, the other two loose drinking ...well, let's call them "rules". Basically as long as you look like you might be somewhat close to 18 they pretty much let you buy alcohol. (This generally includes anyone who looks 15 or older.) And as for not drinking in the metro, I think everyone generally takes that to mean that as long as you're not anywhere where the metro maids (like meter maids? ...but meaner and paid less) can yell at you. So, actually ON the metro seems to be okay. Why are people just walking around drinking alcohol, you ask? Because this isn't America. It's totally okay to just walk around with open alcohol. Well, if you're really drunk and a cop sees you, you can get put in ...not jail exactly... I guess it's just a vomit-encrusted, sober-up cell.. until the next morning. In the winter this prevents you from falling down outside and freezing to death (which happened to one of the coordinator's friend's 16-year-old son last year). But the rest of the time it's probably pretty unnecessary. ...Except for the fact that you'd have dozens (if not hundreds) of drunk men lying around the city every morning. Now, I have lived in a college town the last 3 (or maybe 7?) years of my life, so you'll know what I mean when I say I have seen my fair share of drunk people wandering around. However, I'm totally serious when I say that I have never seen a peoples more consistently and completely drunk than I have in Russia. By 6pm on weekdays, and pretty much all day on weekends, the metro stinks of vodka or beer. I still have no idea how they manage to do it; they seem to drink it like I drink ice-cold water on a 90-degree day--except more cheerfully.

Ah, parking. There are no discernible parking laws in Russia. As long as you're not completely blocking traffic, all's good. So, you often have to cross the street simply to be able to walk down it because there are cars parked on the sidewalk. If a road has two lanes each way, it can become one lane each way. If there's a large intersection where you can't turn left (which is most of them), people will park in the intersection! This one always confuses me the most.

If you get arrested for any reason, the minimum sentence is 15 days. Like, once you're booked, that's it. I have no idea why this exists. I know it also happened during Soviet times, but I haven't been able to discern a reason for it yet. Let me know if you find out...

Not this upcoming week, but the next week we have a week off. So, on Friday I leave for Eastern Europe! A girl in my program, Anna, and I are going to: Tallinn, Estonia; Helsinki, Finland; Riga, Latvia; Vilnius, Lithuania; Gdansk, Poland; and Kaliningrad, Russia. I don't know if I'll have time to update on the road, so I'll try and get in one more (and some more pictures) before I leave. :-)

Tatarstan...

2007-10-08T08:00:00.000-04:00

So, Tuesday night we met at the train station to catch the night train to Kazan. I was very excited, as I had never been on a night train before. We were going плацкарт (plats-cart, trans. third class). This just means that there are no doors between you and the other people. In each section, there are 2 bottom bunks and 2 top bunks, then across the aisle there is one more top bunk and one more bottom. It was fun. Except for the whole getting up really early and waiting in line to use the bathroom.

We got there on Wednesday morning and went to check into the hotel. We got there (after a very long up-hill walk) to find out that our "travel agency called and cancelled". We don't have a travel agency. After a lot of harassing, they finally admitted that the weather was nice and they simply gave our rooms away. But, and this is somehow supposed to make up for it, they did help us find a nice "sanitorium" (aka hostel) to stay in. We were 4 and 5 to a room. It was nice. Clean. Quiet. But there was only one shower for everyone on our floor. And the toilets were the squat-over kind. But it was nice. And cheap, so we got more of our meals paid for (and they were nicer).

So, after the hotel detour, we went on a walking tour of the city. The guide was very sweet, except she kept saying things like, "Right now we're in the city of Kazan--you knew that right?" or "...the October Revolution--you know what that is, right?" So amusing. We saw some amazing stuff, though: the Kazan Kremlin, the Kul Sharif Mosque, the Anunciation Cathedral, the (outside of the) president's house, etc. The thing with the coolest story behind it is the Syuyumbike Tower: it is named after the long-suffering Princess Syuyumbike who was married to three successive khans. Ivan the Terrible then came into town and started destroying things after the princess refused to marry him. In order to save her city, she agreed to marry Ivan, but only if he could build a tower higher than anything else in Kazan in only a week. Well, he did, and then she threw herself off the top of it. Pretty cool stuff, but--as stressed by our guide--only a legend.

The next day was our daytrip to the Bulgar Historical Site. It started out well, our guide was friendly, we stopped to get lunch at a little roadside cafe, etc. etc. We drove three hours to a little park in Bulyarsk to climb the world's tallest hill to see three stones which the Russians have dubbed a monument. Then we sat for 15 mins while the guide tried to find the driver. Then we drove another 2 hours. During this time, the guide and driver managed to get completely lost and had to stop and ask for directions. However, it is extremely difficult to ask for directions when you're in the middle of nowhere. They stopped and asked a hitch hiker--in an army uniform and carrying a hatchet--where Bulgar is. The hitch hiker apparently knew, but wanted a ride. So, we drove him--and his hatchet--to his desired destination, and then they still had to ask for directions (after eating lunch at a very empty hotel playing American oldies). After much ado, we got to Bulgar. It was 2 buildings and a very tall tower (which we climbed) then got back in the car for 30 seconds to see another building, and then drove the 3 hours back to Kazan. Very interesting stuff, but I'm not sure it was worth the 7 hours in a van.

The next day was our free day and my friend Alexis and I went back to the Kremlin and had another look around. Then we ate at a Turkish restaurant where I had--drumroll, please!--iceberg lettuce for the first time in a month! Delish. Then we went back to the sanitorium (so much better than calling it a hostel) and I had a little nap before dinner. Dinner was at a very posh hotel that served real Tatar cuisine. I had лапша с грибами (lahp-sha s gree-bom-e), trans. soup with thin noodles and mushrooms), кролик (krol-lick, trans. rabbit), and a delicious frozen custard thing. Mmmmm.

Saturday was our last day. We went out to the longest breakfast ever, walked around the "mall" for a little bit, and then sat in a cafe and read for a while. At the cafe I had--another drum roll--a caesar salad! It was delicious. It was like being in America. :-D Except not.

On the way back we had were in купе (coop-ay, trans. second class). This time we were 4 to a compartment (two top bunks to bottom) and the cots were longer. Also, we had a door. This actually caused a problem, though, because the train's heat was on and the window didn't open. It was ridiculously hot. And we didn't get to sleep til around 1am, and had to get up at 6:30 to be in Moscow by 7:10. Blech. Then I slept all yesterday. :-D

So, that was my time in Kazan. Hope you enjoyed it! :-D There should be some new pictures to check out on the righthand side! :-)

Kazan

2007-10-02T09:54:00.000-04:00

Today we are leaving to go to Kazan. My phone will be roaming there, so please don't call and don't expect any updates until I get back on Sunday morning. Byeeeee!

At least they drive on the right side of the road?

2007-09-26T13:19:00.001-04:00

I know you've been waiting for it--don't lie. Some pretty weird stuff happens in Russia...

Today my friend Alexis told me this story... When her friend Sarah was studying abroad in St. Petersburg, she had a job teaching English. This was not like my job, though. She taught English to a Chechen prince. He would take her to all the fanciest restaurants and they would study over a meal. Apparently he had four cell phones: one for friends and family; one that he put on his business cards; one private business line; and one for his guy who "takes care of things" for him. Well, one night Sarah was in a bar and she gave her phone number to some guy, who then kept calling her and calling her. She wasn't interested, but the guy wouldn't let up. So, one day during her English lesson with the Chechen prince, her cell phone rings and she sees it's the guy calling her again and she makes a face. The prince asks her why she's upset and she ends up telling him the whole story. He says, not to worry and that he'll "have it taken care of". She never got another call. Now she kind of feels guilty because you never know what a Chechen prince with a cell phone just for a guy that "takes care of things" for him will do in a situation like that... Anyway, I thought this was like the best story ever.

People hassling you: a common occurrence in Moscow. The worst was when I went to the market to buy some boots. Their little shops are just like tall cubicles all stuck together. So to see anything you have to go in the "shop" (if you could even call it that; they're like the room equivalent of watches on the inside of a trench coat). Not that anyone would let you walk by their shop without trying to get you inside. They yell, "Девушка! Девушка! Заходите, пожалуйста! Заходите!" (D'yeh-voosh-ka! D'yeh-voosh-ka! Za-ha-deet-yeh, puh-zhal-stuh! Za-ha-deet-yeh!; literal trans. "Girl! Girl! Stop by, please! Stop by!" English equiv. "Miss! Come on in!") Then once you go in there's a barrage of questions. If you can keep you mouth shut and not look at them, the next step is suggestion. And when I say suggestion I mean grabbing something off the wall, shoving it in front of your face, and telling you why this is definitely the exact thing you need and that you won't find anything better anywhere else. If you're still following the keep-your-mouth-shut-and-don't-look-at-them rule, then you can leave now if you don't see anything you like. If you broke the rule, be prepared for them to keep offering you things and even block your path when you try and leave. (It took me like 4 shops before I figured this out.) Of course, if you do see something you like, you'd better really like it because if you try it on and it fits, they expect you to buy it. And if it doesn't fit, they'll pretty much do anything to make it fit. I bet they'd even bit off that nasty callous on your big toe if that's what it took... Why? Go back 4 sentences to the part with "if you try it on and it fits"...

Milk. In Russia (or maybe all of Europe?) they don't pasteurize milk, they sterilize it. This means it isn't in the refrigerated-foods section, but rather it's sitting on the shelf like Mac&Cheese. It comes in those half-liter boxes like the ones in the US that chicken stock comes in, so they're stackabke and easily shipped. And it's all good for 6 months! Ridiculously efficient, you say? Maybe, but it tastes a little different than US milk. At the school I work at they have cartons of milk, and they look like juice boxes. So weird!

One last thing for today: smoking sections. In the US it's becoming less and less common for places to have a smoking section (and not always because of laws). In Moscow it's very rare for a place to have a non-smoking section. In fact, in The Moscow Times (an English newspaper) restaurants advertise them: "... Free WiFi ... Happy Hour 3-5 ... Non-Smoking Section! ..." So funny! Although, you have to remember that smoking isn't cost-prohibitive like in America: a pack of cigarettes can be as little as $0.75 or as much as $2 (Marlboros at an expensive kiosk). Smoking laws would simply never happen here. Although I have seen a couple of anti-smoking ads... Maybe there's still hope! :-)

I realize my pictures didn't work in the last post. I'll get that worked out sooner or later... :-D

Testing... 1 2 3...

2007-09-25T15:25:00.000-04:00

On Sunday we went to see this men's choir from Saratov sing traditional Orthodox music. It was good except for the whole not understanding anything they said. :-) But the hall was absolutely amazing! I took some pictures with my phone because I forgot my camera. Let's see if uploading them this way works.

There are two pictures of the portraits on either wall beside the audience and one picture of the stage with its huge and beautiful organ that didn't play because the concert was a capella.

If it doesn't work, I'll upload them soon. :-)

The places we go...

2007-09-24T15:04:00.000-04:00

Today I had my first Soviet-Union-flashback experience. Two weeks ago I turned in the form to get my student pass for the metro. Well, it's now time to receive said pass at the same place I turned it in. Last time I waited about two hours. This time I waited OVER THREE HOURS and then the place closed. Ridiculous. It's like the most inefficient thing I've ever seen in my life. It drives me insane. Today as I got closer to the front of the line, people started pushing and shoving, and by the time there were ten minutes left, people were arguing and waving their passports in front of the window. You'd think it was a Soviet bread line or something! Nope, just a bunch of tired, irritated university students. I think I'm going to go back Friday morning and try again. I don't have to be to work until 4 so if I get there at a reasonably early time I have a chance of making it through the line. I guess there has to be something to make you maybe not want to get a student metro pass and just pay the full price. But seriously, we're not animals. Be civilized, people!

Next week we're going to Kazan. It's east of Moscow over by the Urals. It's the capital of Tartarstan, in case you were interested. ...Feel free to Wikipedia that and then tell me exactly what that means. I'm assuming Tartarstan is a region in Russia, but then again the "it's" might be "it was" and not "it is", and then I'd have already assumed too much. :-)

I know I'm a horrible person because I haven't posted any pictures yet, but I haven't found a place to do it yet. ...And I kinda haven't actually taken that many pictures. Oops. But think about it, do YOU carry around YOUR camera everyday and take pictures of everything? No. Why? Because you live there. So be patient. :-)

So... Russia...

2007-09-20T19:11:00.001-04:00

Basically, my entire Russian life can be explained by one phrase: "I think she said..." Most people are pretty hard to understand, including my teachers. My politics teacher especially because she isn't supposed to be teaching us Russian, she's just supposed to lecture. And it's not a dialogue or anything: we sit around a table in her office and she talks until it's time to go. About once a class (twice if we're lucky) she'll ask if we understand And most of the time this question is at the end in an "Any last questions?" manner. I also found out that I'm in the harder grammar class, which is good because it'll be challenging, but bad because I'm the weakest person in the class. This is strange for me because I'm always in the top when it comes to grammar. I'm not sure if I'm actually worse, but I read out loud really horribly so it seems like it. We get tutors for free if we are struggling in our classes so I asked our coordinator, Karen, to get me a tutor for "Phonetics" but I'm really just going to make the poor sap teach me how to read out loud. Hopefully that will make a big difference.

Also, I have a cold. It started on Monday with a sore throat, but now it's just a stuffy nose. This is after I missed two days of school last week because I had the flu. I think I slept something like 40 of 48 hours. It took me 4 or 5 days to get over it. Hopefully this cold clears up soon. My friend Annie, from the UK, told me that Americans always get sick when they go to Britain, and the English always get sick when they go to Russia, so Americans must get doubly sick when they come here. Ну, что делать? (Nu, sh-toe d-yell-let?; trans. "Well, what is there to do?" Implied answer: "Nothing.")

How do I have a friend from the UK when all of my classes are only with Americans, you ask? I GOT A JOB! Before I left everyone was asking what I'd be doing in Russia and "just taking classes" seemed like very little to be doing, but I thought for once in my life it might be nice to not have a job. Yeah... I had a job before I was here for a week. :D My speech practice teacher said she had a friend who needed native speakers to teach English. Native speaker? Check. Freaking nothing to do? Check. Money-grubbing? Check. Well, looks like I'm perfect for the job. So I go to what I assume is an interview and Helen (Елена) the principal asks me these questions: "What days can you work?", and "Do you have any experience teaching?" So I answer that I can do the Tuesday/Friday classes, but not the Monday/Thursday classes, and that the only experience I have is tutoring college students. Then she asks me to start the next day (two weeks ago). :) I teach two one-and-a-half-hour classes twice a week. One group is eightish and the other twelveish. One and a half hours is too long for ME to have class (Every class in Russia is two "academic hours" long, called пара (pah-rah, trans. "pair").) let alone a bunch of eight-year-olds. Luckily, most of the other teachers actually know what they're doing and I just steal their games and activities. Robert is from England; Annie is from Scotland; Andrea is from Germany (but her mother's English); Justin is from western Pennsylvania (or should I say Ohio?); and Luda (Люда), the music teacher, is Russian. There are also a few other people who work there, but they don't go out with us after work so they're less important. On Sunday, we had a dinner party at Luda's apartment (which is closest to my metro station, but still like a half an hour away if I walk. There are маршрутки (marsh-root-key; trans: "marshrutkas"? They're vans that drive on specific routes like busses, but have better routes and stop more often... I think. I've never been on one.) that go over there in less than ten minutes though, and Luda is very sweet. Anyway, dinner party: we got together and had appetizers while we cooked delicious Indian curry. Oh, and we drank. Somehow they ended up finding out that I hadn't had vodka since I'd been here, and were shocked even though it had only been two weeks at this point...so they went out and bought some. You know how alcohol usually kind of burns when you take a big shot of it? Yeah, that doesn't happen with Russian vodka. I can't really explain it. It's kind of like that first big gulp of coffee/tea/cocoa when you're REALLY cold--except warmer. But that's it, just warm..all the way down. It still leaves an unpleasant after-taste, but not anything like American vodka. It's rather tolerable. I'm sure there will be more vodka stories to come... :)

Oh, I lost my phone the other day. I took it out to look at the time and when I put it back in my bag I think I dropped it on the ground. Either that or the person who stole it was really stupid for not taking my wallet which was right next to it in the pocket. Now I have an ultra-spiffy phone that does email and everything. In fact, it's what I'm writing this on. :) So, if I gave you my old number, or you didn't get it all, let me know and I'll get you my new number.

Well, that's probably enough for now. Even with school and a job, I still find I have a LOT of free time. I've read two whole novels just for fun in less than two weeks. Now that I have a way to update from anywhere, I'll be able to update more often and about a greater variety of things. For example, Russian fashion: Why do Russians wear so much denim? It's not that everyone is wearing it, but rather that the people who do, wear way too much. Your jacket, pants, and purse should not all be denim, especially not three different colors of denim. Or, music: if I hear the songs with the lyrics "I'll be your number-one fan!" or "Out of my head / Out of my bed / All the things that have been said" one more time, I think I'll scream. The first one is just ridiculously bad, but I think the second one is good except for these three lines that literally make me cringe when I hear them. Ugh, I don't even want to think about it...

Ну, спокойной ночи. (Nu, spa-koi-nieghy no-chee; trans. "Well, goodnight.")

*PS* It takes approximately 9 days for a letter to go from Philadelphia to Moscow. (Thanks, by the way!) ...Hint, hint to everyone else. :)

Увежаемые пасажеры!

2007-09-03T09:38:00.000-04:00

"Caution passengers!"

I would say that about sums up our trip so far. It's what they say when you're on the metro: when you get to a station, when you leave the station, and if someone keeps the doors from closing. And I guess it kind of applies to everything in a metaphoric way. So far we've only had orientation, but it's been enough...

Thursday:
We arrived at the hotel and had some time to just hang out, rest a little, eat dinner, etc. It was kinda nice because I'd been going and going and going for almost 24 hours straight.

Friday:
We had a bunch of host family/safety/academic things to talk about. It was pretty amusing, actually. Hrm, we can't physially abuse our host family? That's strange... Then at 6 my host mom came to the hotel to pick me up. Her name is Ludmila Petrovna and she has a little dog named Lada--"like the car". She's very sweet. She's made me feel like I'm at home, and she's a very good cook. For dinner we had pan-fried, breaded chicken; pan-fried potatoes; a "salad" of cucumber, tomatoes, red peppers, and corn; two kinds of bread; two kinds of salami; two kinds of cheese; and some sort of onion-y spread. Then we had tea with two kinds of dessert. Oh. My. God. Amazing. All of it.

Saturday:
I bought a cell phone while we were out. Everyone did, and everyone's phone worked. Everyone's except mine. Yeah, I know. By the time I had given up on it maybe working in a couple mins, I was almost home, the group long gone. So, I went to the same kind of store that I bought it at and they were very confused about what I wanted, but after playing with it a while decided that I had a defective SIM card and needed to go back to the EXACT store I bought it at. Well, I told my RC (Resident Coordinator of my program) and the next day she took me back to the place--I had no idea where it was--and helped me get it straightened out. So, if you would like my new number, email me and I'll make sure to get it to you.

Sunday:
We went to this beautiful park a couple of metro stops away from my house. It was really amazing. There was a wooden castle there during the old times (middle ages maybe? I couldn't really read any of the signs). Oh, yeah, where I live. Here's a map of the metro...
If you click on it, it gets bigger. I live at the south end of the green line (Krasnogvardeiskaya). Our school is where the grey line crosses the brown ring at the north (Novoslobodskaya), but it's to the west of it, so I can get off one of the green line stops and walk there in like 5 mins or so. Not bad at all. Also, since I live at the end of the line, when I go into the city, I ALWAYS get a seat, because the train is empty when I get on! Also, it's safer and cheaper to live way out because people who live out there don't have as much money, and thieves know this. The metro is very easy to navigate. Only one line goes to each platform, so at a transfer station, you always have to switch platforms to switch trains which makes it really hard to get on the wrong line.

Today:
Today wasn't much. We saw a little more of the university. We ate in the cafeteria. It was amazing. I paid $3 for macaroni and meat sauce, a pastry with meat, a pastry with apples, cabbage salad, and a glass of apricot juice. All huge. Everything in Russia is pretty cheap for students. 10 metro rides for a regular person costs about $5.50, but unlimited for a month costs about $6.50 for a student. Amazing.

Anyway, I really like it so far. Except for the whole not being able to look at people's faces things. It's hard for me because it's what you do in America call the time. And school starts tomorrow. So we'll see how I like that. Doing everything in Russian is really difficult, so I can imagine school will be difficult too. Oh well, can't do anything about it now :-) Da svidania!

"I'm leavin' on a jet plane...

2007-08-28T12:11:00.000-04:00

Don't know when I'll be back again..."

Yup, that pretty much sums it up. All I have to do is put everything I'm taking back in my bags. Everything else is set.

It's really weird to think that in 48 hours I'll be living in another country. I was driving to Target yesterday thinking that it's so relaxing because I don't have to think about it. Well, if I do get to drive in Russia (which I most likely won't) even that would be different. Simple things I take for granted, like being able to understand everything, being at ease around other people, walking down the street without a care in the world. All of that is going to be different, not just the actually different things like taking the metro, dressing up to go to class, not having internet at home, etc. Even something as simple as getting some water to drink is different: you either have to buy bottled water or boil tap water before you drink it.

I'm warning you now: I will complain about Russia. I will get frustrated with everything there. I will ask myself why I decided to go. I will get homesick.
My advice to you: Ignore it; ignore it all. Remind me that I'm experiencing something amazing, and that things will get better as my command of the language improves and I grow accustomed to the culture. This is the easiest way for us both get through it.

I can't guarantee that I'll have access to the internet the first couple of days I'm there, but I will try and let you know I made it safe as soon as I can. Once school starts, I'll have access to the internet regularly, so you can expect lots of posts then. :-)

Wow. It's really, seriously happening. Here goes nothing...

Moving...

2007-08-14T13:16:00.000-04:00

Tomorrow is the last full day I will spend in Ann Arbor. It's the end of an era. To commemorate the occasion, I wrote a haiku. ;-)

Ann Arbor
While I was in school
Your bubble protected me
You're not the real world

I'll update more after I move, but I did add some pictures. Check them out! (Click the album titles on the right! -->)

50 days left!

2007-07-09T00:23:00.001-04:00

Even though I know there are 50 days until I leave on August 29, it seems like less than that! I move out of my apartment and leave Ann Arbor on August 16, which is more like a month from now. Weeeeeeird!

I'm mailing out my passport and HIV test results in order to complete my application for my visa! Yay! The final preparations are almost complete! ...I think I might jump out of my skin...

There's a couple of things that I am going to send out in an email, but I thought I should post them here, too:
--I just realized there's an option for you to receive an email whenever I update my blog. If you would like to receive an email whenever I post a new entry, please let me know!
--If you would like to send me letters while I'm in Russia, they are delivered faster if they are written in Russian. I'm going to print some address labels with my address in Russian. If you would like to send me letters while I'm in Russia, let me know and I'll send you some address labels for faster delivery!

Well, I have lots to do for my last class at U of M... 50 days! I'm almost there!

The last hoop...

2007-06-24T23:50:00.000-04:00

I've finally got everything together to apply for my visa—the last hoop! All I have to do is send in my paperwork! Yay!

I've also got my loans together for next year. It amazes me how easily they give away money. I'm very happy about that, though, because I'm taking all I can get.

Things are coming along nicely. Eventually I have to get rid of some of my stuff, put some of it in storage, and buy some more appropriate traveling things. However, for right now I have to study some Russian and take my class during the second half of the summer. I've actually gotten a native speaker who's studying abroad here to be my conversation partner, and then a graduate student from the Russian Department is tutoring me in grammar. My economics class is going to be very difficult, especially working 30-40 hours a week at the bank and all the Russian stuff. Oh well, it will get done, even if my grade in econ isn't the greatest.

It's weird to think that this is the last class I'll take that the University of Michigan. After Russia I'll graduate, so it's really the end of an era. However, it's the beginning of a new, different, Russian one...

Ohhh, I'm so impatient! 65 days to go!

Is anything getting done?

2007-05-22T22:28:00.001-04:00

My temptation is to immediately say, "NO!" However, I feel like I'm kind of at a point where there's nothing I can do but wait.

I sent of a whole bunch of stuff to Middlebury, including my visa application, a copy of my passport, my course request, and my housing survey. I guess stuff is getting done, but it's definitely not getting done by me. I think Middlebury is probably in the process of
getting me an invitation letter by the Russian State University for the Humanities, but all I can do is sit here at wait!

I have to wait until at least May 30th before I can get my HIV test. And without my HIV test I can't actually submit my visa request. I don't find out what classes I have or what family I'm living with until I get there.

Right now the only thing I can do is keep getting rid of my crap (it all has to fit into 2 suit cases + 1 5'x5' storage locker), and get enough money to go there. I can't get rid of too much because I need stuff to live for the summer, and I can't get loans until I know how much to get. That means knowing how much financial aid I'm getting. And THAT means meeting with the ONE person in the WHOLE university that does study abroad financial aid! AND HE ONLY HAS 12 APPOINTMENT HOURS PER WEEK! How can I meet with him if I have a class and a job and he's barely ever available??? Grrr...... *Head explodes!*

I guess what I could be doing is worrying about tomorrow now and worrying about 3 months from now later. Tomorrow I have a midterm in Money and Banking. I should go study... I guess I'll update again when I have something more exciting than "nothing's going on right now..." :-)

The first few steps...

2007-04-25T22:46:00.000-04:00

Hello, everyone! This is my online journal about my year in Russia. Even though it hasn't started yet, there's still lots of fun stuff that I want to share. :-)

So, I've been invited to study in Moscow at Russian State University for the Humanities. See the link on the left for the (mostly) English version website (RSU for the Humanities). The program is through Middlebury College. I have to be in Moscow on August 30, and I won't be done with school until June 15. For a complete calendar (and more info in general) click on the link on the left (Middlebury School in Russia). It's not quite a year, but close. :-)

About a week ago I bought my plane ticket! Now it's like I'm actually going! Getting accepted into the program wasn't quite real (even paying the deposit didn't make it real), but getting a real plane ticket with times and gate numbers and YAY!

Now that this school year is over, I feel like it's almost time to leave! I can't believe it! I know that I actually have over 4 months, but I'm soooo impatient! :-D

I guess for now I have to be satisfied with moving into my "summer home" and taking my final classes here at U of M. If I haven't given you my new address yet, let me know. Although, before you know it you'll be getting my new address in Cyrillic! :-)

I don't know how much I'm going to be posting over the summer, but keep checking back because the closer it gets to August 30th, the more I'm going to have to talk about! :-D

How to make a comment...

2007-04-25T11:33:00.001-04:00

Hello, everyone!

Here's how to make a comment on my blog, so I can see your responses!

1. Click on the "# comments" in pink at the bottom of the post (in the "Posted by Kendra" line).
2. Click "Show Original Post" on the left to see the post you're responding to.
3. Type your comments in the big white text field on the right.
4. Under "Choose an identity" click "Other" and fill in the "Name" blank so I know who you are! (Leave the spot for "Your web page" blank.)

It's just that easy! ...But if you do need some help, check out this website!

Feel free to practice on this post! :-) (Do up to 2 and then you can see what I'm taking about for the rest!)