The website was down for the past 24 hours, so I jammed these two days into the same journal entry. The days seem to run together nowadays anyway, so if makes it easier on me. I got about two hours of sleep before I needed to be up for class on Wednesday, so I was hoping Ludmilla would let up a bit on the Russian. Hmmm…good thought, but not that lucky! She slammed us pretty hard once again, but did go light on the homework.
After class, Curt, Javier and I went out for dinner to a restaurant kinda like KFC and chatted for a long time while at the restaurant. The Metro has lost its awe, and I now feel like a true Muscovite as I monotonously ride the Metro without effort. And now that I can finally read the names of all the stops, I actually look like I know what I am doing.
Slept most of the afternoon, and then went to the big market for food. Javier and I spend about 1200 rubles ($40), which was way more than we anticipated, but we did our best to stock the fridge.
As for today, Thursday, Vera is back till the end of the week. She was actually pretty nice today, especially to me, as we only had two hours of class because we were going on a tour of Moscow with the Russian students and Constantine. The weather was horrible, and you’d think that since we were in a mini-bus, it wouldn’t be that bad…yeah right. The windows frosted over within minutes, so we had to get out at every stop. This has been the coldest day here in Moscow so far this winter, and yet to boot, it was snowing and blowing all day. First, we stopped off at Red Square only to find it closed for the day; so we went and checked out the river side of the Kremlin. On the way to our next destination, the bus driver took us through these narrow back streets, and we barely made it through. Worst thing is that we had a line of traffic behind us honking and carrying on.
Our next stop was Moscow State University, and the Olympic Sports Complex. Pretty impressive, but not the best day to see either of them. We’ll be back soon. We drove past many cathedrals, and the Moscow Palace on our way back to the hostel. After a quick late lunch, we went with Dr. Chumakov to a secondary school not far from the university. Here, wesat and conversed with Russian high schoolers to improve their English skills. They all spoke very good English, some of the best tat I have heard, but yet they were still a bit embarrassed to speak English around us “native speakers”. These visits are a part of our international experience as we benefit by learning about the younger side of Russian culture, and get to help them out through service to our new community. We are planning on going back every Thursday to do it again.
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