heading home

so i am going home tomorrow! i took all my final exams and got my grades (all As, which apparently isn't that exciting because it's very hard NOT to get all As).

i've had a cold this week and it has led me to a very interesting observation. apparently, in russia, having a cold is quite possible the worst. thing. ever. example: i didn't go to some of my classes since i just had to take finals, and i was feeling really awful. i told my phoenetics teacher that i was sick and she said, "do you have a fever? you look like you do." and my grammar teacher told me not to come to class the next day if i was still sick...keep in mind i had an exam (my final exam) that next day. later i was in my room and i walked out to the fridge to get some juice, and i met up with our housekeeper. she heard my voice and knew i was sick and said, "don't drink anything cold! drink hot milk with honey! WITH HONEY!" i went to my mass media class the next day and my professor said "i heard you were sick" (were they all talking about me?) and she didn't make me take my test! my grammar teacher met up with me on the way to the store and told me to buy medicine...i went to the pharmacy but i couldn't understand all the different medicines (seriously, there is medicine for EVERYTHING). later she asked me what i got and i said "i didn't understand anything." and she got mad at me, saying "you need to get better! ask an american student!"

all in all it was an interesting week, especially because in the US there's more of a "suck it up" attitude in terms of cold.

yesterday i went to the canadian embassy. as i was leaving the dorm i met up with my phoenetics teacher (olga ivanovna) and she gave me this stone in the shape of cheburashka (russian cartoon character) that's supposed to keep me safe on the plane and bring me happiness in love. quite possibly one of the sweetest gifts ever. i'll have to post a picture.

anyway i can't wait to be back home.

sorry!

okay i'm back. i keep meaning to write a big post but time isn't always on my side! :)

first off, rob got extended an extra three months in iraq. lame.

off to happier things. last weekend we went to Souzdal. we went to the train station around 4 pm to get tickets and let me tell you, it's a ridiculous experience in russia. they kept sending us to different windows and we couldn't really communicate well. eventually one girl with us flipped out and cussed out one of the workers, which kind of freaked us out haha. anyway we got the tickets and it was all okay...just took awhile. we caught the train around 8 pm (note to self: don't take a train out of moscow on a friday night, especially on the friday before easter). there were SO many people. we all crowded onto the train but it was PACKED. long story short, nikki, tanya, john and i had to stand in the aisle for the first hour of the trip because there were no seats. eventually enough people got off at different stops, though, and we were able to sit down. we started talking to this guy sergei, who was sort of hitting on me. ("talk to me beautiful." haha). i also talked to this older woman who was very interesting...we talked about soviet times and such, in both english and russian. at the end of the train ride (in all about 3 hours) she told sergei and i to exchange numbers! so i gave him mine (since i won't be here much longer) and we got off the train. then we had to take a cab to souzdal (the train ended in vladimir, another little town about 40 miles from souzdal). the guy had no idea what monastery we were staying at since we didn't know the name and he ended up charging us a lot because he drove us all around, but we got there okay. this monastery had a hotel that actually was pretty cheap and quite nice.

the next day we walked around souzdal and visited some monasteries (there are many, as my pictures will show). we ate some really good meals at some tastey restaurants too. it's a lot cheaper there than in moscow so it was nice not spending so much. we went to this one market and bought more souvenirs (i bought mittens and a hat because it was cold and i didn't bring mine, haha). at night we really wanted to try some mead (it's beer with honey...a medieval drink. souzdal is famous for it) and we went to this one place where we thought we could try it. but nope, they didn't have it. we went to a few bars and eventually found it. p.s., mead is pretty gross, haha.

on sunday we needed to go back to vladimir to catch a bus to moscow. we didn't realize that the bus station was 2 km away. we walked the whole way and this stray dog followed us, haha. we were exhausted. anyway we got to vladimir and then got on the bus to moscow. this policeman came back to where we sat after awhile (we were very nervous at first) and said he wanted to practice english with us. we talked with him for an hour about whatever, and when we were getting close to moscow he went to his seat and gave us a jar of homemade raspberry jam that his grandmother made! i haven't tried it yet but i'm pretty excited.

so that was souzdal. i'm uploading pictures so check them out: http://picasaweb.google.com/caitlinelectric

the other day i was hanging out in my room and got a knock at the door. it was this guy who had been hanging out in the common room...a russian student. his name was grisha. he sat and talked to me for so long (because, again, he wanted to practice his english. i'm a magnet for these people). it was pretty odd all in all. but interesting. he wants to go to cuba.

yesterday there was quite a bit of excitement. turns out there was a fire on the 7th floor of my dorm (i'm on the 9th floor). they're fixing the showers down there and apparently were storing some propane tanks. luckily there were no explosions...as we know, with a propane tank involved the situation could've gotten a lot worse. anyway some guy came banging and yelling up to our floor but i was napping, so i really had no idea what he was saying. eventually jordana came into my room and said there was a fire. i jumped up and ran out and this girl said "get a coat." and i said "nah i'm fine" and the guy who was yelling said "no! get a coat!" haha. we ran downstairs, saw some russian firefighters, etc. it was just smoking though so i don't think there was any damage.

anyway i think i got you all caught up. don't forget to check out my new album of pictures, devoted to souzdal.

finally pictures.

picasa finally decided to be good to me and now you can see the pictures from karaoke, the cemetery, nikki's hospital stay, etc. so check them out, let me know what you think :)
http://picasaweb.google.com/caitlinelectric
i started a new album, called "russia, album 3," which is where the more current pictures are located.

looks like we're heading to souzdal, a moscow suburb, on friday. a two day stay. i'm very excited to get out of moscow and see some more beautiful places...expect many, many pictures. hopefully my camera is up for the job.

classes have been going well. i found out when i'm taking all of my finals, since i'm out of here on the 29th. hard to believe i've been here 2 months, and that i'm going home so soon. i'm glad i still have a month though. i'm going to try to squeeze in a trip to st. petersburg, so we'll see how that goes.

anyway other than that things are going swimmingly. i miss all of you, see you soon!

moskva

yesterday we went to the novodiechy cemetery, which has some very famous graves (chekhov, bulgakov, mayakovsky, krushev, some others). i took some beautiful pictures, but picasa is not running well right now so i will post them later.

nikki is back from the hospital and doing well. she looks good and we're glad that she's out of that freaking hospital, haha.

not doing much today. rob goes back out for the mission cycle today so we won't talk for 8 days, which is probably good because maybe the time will go by faster. maybe, haha.

i've been feeling a little homesick lately, i won't lie. now i know that i can't live in a city, ever. way too many people and it's way too depressing.

but i'm having fun, tons of history here. i hope everything's going well.

oh russia.

russia continues. nikki gets out of the hospital tomorrow. the hospital, by the way, is awful. very unsanitary and the nurses aren't very nice because they don't get paid very much. so we're happy that she's coming back, haha.

not this weekend, but next weekend, we're planning a trip to souzdal. it's a city a few hours from here...apparently very beautiful.

i wish i could write deep wonderful entries but it's just not happening right now, haha. russia is going well. we went to a market and bought a bunch of souvenir stuff...might go back sometime soon because it's beautiful. they had bears performing too. i took some pictures and some wee little movies that i shall post eventually.

sorry for being so boring! :)

kremlin!

so we finally visited the kremlin. we had a 4 hour tour, which was insane and intense but amazing. i put up some pictures...the link is in the post below. i made the kremlin its own album :)

my friend nikki went to the hospital yesterday. she had been having intense stomach pain for awhile and her coordinator finally said she should go. unfortunately we went to the sketchiest hospital ever...the hallway looked like a scene from a 1950s insane asylum. she's okay though...they took out her appendix and she is recovering nicely. i went there with her last night around 12 with her boyfriend beslan, from chechnya. i was so glad to have a native russian speaker -- we had to hail down a "cab" (i.e. a random russian person who wanted money to give us a ride) and i would never do that with my semi-limited russian skills. anyway we got to the hospital and met nikki's coordinator (a russian). they weren't going to let me and beslan in -- they were going to make us just stand out in the cold! again, beslan came in handy because he got the guy to let us in (the guy said "why does she need a cheering section?" haha). anyway we were there for awhile, then hailed a "cab" back. all in all an interesting night. happily nikki is doing fine.

again, the kremlin was AMAZING. so many pretty buildings, my camera died because i kept photographing everything. enjoy the pictures. some of them are similar, so please forgive that. we spent a lot of time in the armory, which has all these treasures from imperial russia, including gilded carriages, diamond-encrusted crowns, etc. the total value of that place has to be in the millions or billions. it was wonderful but exhausting...i came back to the dorm and took a 4 hour nap!

well i hope you're all doing well!

FYI...

i'm putting some new pictures on my picasa...check them out :)

http://picasaweb.google.com/caitlinelectric

been a little bit

i'm sure you're all dying because i haven't updated! haha, kidding.

anyway russia is going well. i'm changing my ticket tonight for april 29 or 30, so come see me in maine :) . we were talking about going to egypt at the end of march but it doesn't look like that's happening. if it does happen, it'll be in april, and only for a weekend or so. i'll need to buy a bathing suit since i definitely didn't pack for egypt when i came here.

we're going to see a play soon, "tartuffe," which the theater department at beloit did last year. the tickets were only 200 rubles (less than $10), and it's in this beautiful theater not far from RGGU (the school i'm at). i was supposed to go see "Giselle" at the Bolshoi Theater tonight but i'm feeling pretty awful (exhausted, dizzy, nauseated...etc.). so i'm going to chill out at home.

classes are going well. the other day in practika rechi (discussion practice) we learned that in russian there is no word for "privacy." the only one in my dictionary is the same word as "seclusion." this explains why our russian friends don't knock when they want to enter our rooms, but rather just come on in, haha. i told the story about how the housekeeper came in and called me a boy, since she had to UNLOCK my door to come in and didn't knock at all. haha. i thought maybe it was just an american thing to be freaked out by it, but there are people from england, france and germany and they all agree with the lack of privacy thing. now we have to write an essay, "what is privacy?"

something a little more serious. a korean girl who studied at MGU (mosckovski gosudarstveni universitet...the other school here in moscow) was attacked and beaten to near-death by 11 russian skinheads. she died in the hospital a few days later (this all happened about a week ago). apparently the russians surrounded her and said "russia is only for russians" or something like that. what's lame is that russia hasn't really reported it as murder, which is what it is...it's more like "a student died today." pretty awful. :( we're kind of nervous for hitler's birthday (4/20)...i think we'll all stay in that day.

otherwise things are going okay. i'm going to go lie down, i think.

saturday

so thursday was international women's day, which in russia means a day off from school and work! that was quite nice. we chilled out all day and did nothing, it was beautiful.

the weather here has been really nice...getting warmer so we don't need hats/gloves/scarves. it's very nice, though the metro is very warm.

yesterday we went to two art museums, the pushkin and then the gallery of european and american art of the 19th-20th centuries. we saw some pretty famous works so that was nice. van gogh, rembrant, renoir, matisse. good times. on the way we were on the metro and my arm got slammed in the metro door (the doors here, by the way, do NOT automatically open upon hitting something). that hurt a lot actually, and i was kind of happy that nobody around me spoke english because i probably said some things that would offend the casual english-speaking listener. haha. jordana and stuart laughed at me afterward.

today seems like it'll be a pretty chill day as well. i didn't do anything last night because i think i'm getting sick, but we'll see what happens. i probably should do some homework, but we'll see how much actually gets done! :)

hello

russia's going well. pretty warm actually...i mean, warm for march. right now we've reached that period where there's no snow but no sun, just a lot of dirt and sludge. yuck. but it's still fun so i'm alright. :)

i posted some new pictures! so check them out! here's the link if you don't feel like going down a few entries for it: http://picasaweb.google.com/caitlinelectric

i met this girl maya from russia the other night when we went back to the canadian embassy, she's very cool. we hung out yesterday and i got complimented on my russian! woo! then later i got complimented again by another girl who lives on my floor. i was very happy :) after that i walked over to korpus 6 to get some money from the ATM and got into this discussion with one of the Oxrana (och-rana, the security for the school). well, it was less of a "discussion" and more of him talking and me nodding. he asked me if i had a russian soul, haha.

i'm still trying to plan going home early. i'm really nervous and afraid that the army will say "hey, it's april 15, go home." if that happens, i won't see rob because i'll be here and won't be able to switch my ticket. so let's hope it's either the day he's getting now, or later. please. :)

i'd like to say that right now the radio in the cafe just began "my heart will go on." and when i first got here it was "the wall." YES.

so yes, we went back to the canadian embassy on friday. i didn't go for long, then gabrielle and i went to yolki-palki, a restaurant chain here. i didn't eat but the food looked decent...we're going to another one tonight. (yes dash, more food!)

classes are going well...i have a big grammar test tomorrow :( it should be pretty "uzashno" (awful).

not much going on

dinwe went out to eat today with olga kolodina (who went to beloit last spring), jenny zale (from beloit) and their friend sarah. beforehand we went to a presentation olga did at the american center about beloit...answered some questions, blah blah.

i'm almost certainly coming home on may 1...plan accordingly :-) i'm sad that the army is once again making me rearrange my life, but it will be 8 months since i've seen my boy in may so it's worth it. i'm just hoping it all works out.

sorry, not much to report! :)

cold!

so the other day it got down to -32 C here, which, we figured out, is -25 fahrenheit. i don't think i've ever been that cold in my life! and i'm from maine! haha. but seriously, it was pretty bad. going outside was extremely painful, literally.

thursday night we hung out with some other international students on the 7th floor after going out to eat at this really nice chinese restaurant. we met some italians, austrians, germans...it was very interesting. and my russian was really good, it was definitely a good russian day. one of the austrians told me that when i spoke russian i didn't have an american accent (not like i have a native one...i just don't speak like an american, which is good).

we went to the canadian embassy on friday with the quebecois...every friday evening there's a little party sort of thing for canadian citizens and their guests. apparently as americans, once we get our passports back from the school, we can get in even without a canadian to host us. it was a lot of fun...they had cheap food and drinks. i got hot chocolate with mint liquor in it for only 70 rubles, so that was pretty nice.

after that we went to korpus 4 to hang out with the quebecois some more. we met this british guy who was hilarious AND a professional chef. he made this pasta sauce that smelled SO good, it was insane. i didn't have any but stuart said it was amazing.

yesterday we went to a georgian restaurant, which was quite good. then we watched "v for vendetta" and chilled out.

tomorrow is back to classes :( and i've done no homework so i'll be busy today i believe.

tuesday

so turns out the class wasn't cancelled--it was held on friday instead, haha. but nobody knew so i guess only one girl showed up, and she only came because the professor of the class is the coordinator of this girl's program. haha. not a big deal though.

grammar class is pretty rough...our teacher is one of those who you desperately want to please. she chastised us the other day for not knowing our prefixes better. i really like all my professors. they've all been really nice about me leaving early.

i'm adding some new pictures to picasa, so check the link on the last post to see them. we went to a bar last night with some other international students, mostly from quebec. two were from england and one from korea. at this bar, for an hour on monday (7-8 pm) you can get 4 drinks for the price of one haha. all i had was some orange juice, pineapple juice, and a milkshake. it was lots of fun though. before we left we went to the bathroom and some girl was lying on the floor of a stall, passed out, with a pool of vomit. we were a little freaked out because all we could see was her hair and thought it was a dog or something. anyway we told one of the club guys and they figured it out...our good deed for the day. then on the metro coming back some drunk guy was yelling at my friend nikki from nepal...she pretended not to speak russian haha. he called her "chornaya", which is sort of like "blackie." in a lot of ways russia is kind of racist.

there was a bombing at a mcdonald's in st petersburg. we talked about it today in my "news of the day" class...they're not sure what provoked it but only 10 people were hurt and nobody killed.

anyway i hope you're all doing well. keep emailing and commenting!

hello again

i was supposed to have a class on thursday but it got cancelled, woo hoo :) so it's been a long weekend. yesterday we went to this open-air market which was INSANE. some guys were yelling "devoshki" (girls) at us, and one guy grabbed my arm and called me "baby" trying to get us to buy stuff, haha.

we ended up finding a shop that sells english dvds, which we bought for pretty cheap. very nice :)

today we're going to a used bookstore to get some english books. i've already read "animal farm" and "fight club" and i'm working on "trainspotting" right now. after that i think it'll be "demons" by dostoyevsky. we shall see.

classes are going well, boring as all classes are. i can't believe i've been here for a little over two weeks, it's pretty insane.

not much else to report. i hope you're all doing well.

hello :)

i put up more pictures from red square and some more dorm ones...so check it out! PICASA.
i attached them to the previous Russia album so you'll have to find where the new ones start...if that's too confusing let me know.

yesterday stuart, jordana and i went to red square for the maslenitsa festival. as far as i can tell it's sort of a celebration of lent-easter-the eventual coming of spring. kind of hard to explain. we heard they were giving out free blini, haha. anyway it was wicked cold and windy, the snow was whipping into our faces. ugh. but it was very pretty. we only stayed for a bit and then ate in the sbarro in the mall on red square. we went onto the metro at around 6:15...HUGE mistake. people were EVERYWHERE. we got into the train car and got pushed against so many people. then when we tried to get off no one would move...we almost didn't get off at all until some russian girl got aggressive and pushed, haha. then we all tried to cram onto the escalator. it was seriously like we were cattle. we decided no more metro-riding on weekdays :)

but yes, the pictures are of red square, st. basil's, etc. very very pretty.

today we had more classes. my grammar class is pretty intense. as is my lit class. we read a story that we had in english AND russian, which is actually harder because you're so tempted to just read the english. classes are 90 minutes each...we begin every day except friday (no classes on friday!) at 10:30 and go straight (except for 30 minutes of lunch) until 3:30. except thursdays, when we only have the morning class! so we shall have long weekends :). i've only had to buy two books which is nice.

oh, and i found out i'll probably be coming home earlier than expected. rob can't get june and will have to have may, so i'll probably leave here on the fifth, assuming nothing changes with the army.

i miss you all!

classes, finally

hello...

we finally started classes. jordana and i are in group 3 (grouped by level). not as high as i'd hoped i'd be, but turns out it's pretty difficult. today we had our lit course, followed by phoenetics and grammar. i'll have my hands full, haha.

i got winked at by some guy on the metro the other day, so that boosted the old self-confidence that was destroyed by the housekeeper who thought i was a small boy, haha.

i'm so hungry. cafemax (where i am accessing the internet) has overpriced food or i'd get some. as i sit here there is kenny g. christmas music going on, no lie. pretty intense.

so on saturday night jordana, stuart and i went to a bar. those of you who know me know how much i drink, haha. this place was out of EVERYTHING we ordered. so finally i just ordered some random alcoholic drink...turned out to be the most intense thing in the world. it was some type of liquer with black jelly beans in it...the guy lit it on fire, then put another empty glass on top. then he took the empty glass and put it over a straw so you could inhale the fumes. so i inhaled, then drank. it was pretty effing intense...very very hot and tasting like black licorice. i still have no idea what it was.

yesterday we went with olga, a russian student who was at beloit last year, and sarah, a girl from illinois who is here on an internship, to see a movie. stuart, jordana and i watched "hannibal: the beginning" in the english theater. it wasn't too bad, not great.

well i guess i'm going to go use up the rest of my internet time, then head to the grocery store. :)

saturday

Hello everyone. Jordana and I are at cafe stereo, checking email and such. good times.

So yes, we visited the Novodiechy Convent which was extremely cool. Very ornate as you can see in the pictures. they had a poster saying "please don't take pictures of the nuns" in russian and english, haha. we went with these two other american students...then we went to this restaurant where i ordered lemon juice, thinking it was like lemonade...nope, it's pure citric acid haha. i put 5 packets of sugar in it but nothing helped. so i ordered a water (for 100 rubles...like $3). then i had these lamb kabob things (the restaurant had a combination middle-eastern/central-asian/european menu). it was good and really not that expensive.

the past few days we've just been chilling out. trying not to get too burned out on museums, since we're here until the end of may. i've watched a lot of mystery science theater, it's my little connection to home. :) i'm trying to get jordana and stuart into it as well haha.

i hope you're all surviving the cold!

pictures, finally :)

i'm sorry that i'm sending you to another site for pictures, it'll just take me FOREVER to load them all on here. so here's my picasa site. if you can't get onto it let me know, i'll figure something else out:

http://picasaweb.google.com/caitlinelectric

check out the "russia 2007" album.

i put captions at the bottom of all of them explaining what they are.

again, sorry!

we're at a cafe right now that has free wireless internet, so that's pretty sweet. i ordered blini (russian pancakes) with chocolate...pretty excited about that :)

anyway i hope you're all doing well, enjoy the pictures!

tuesday

hello everyone :) and thanks for continuing to read.

we took our placement test yesterday...it was actually quite difficult. but we met some other international students (americans, italians, and austrians) so that was nice. the floor they live on is SO much nicer than ours (the majority of our toilets lack toilet seats), but hey, it's part of the experience i suppose.

people keep staring at me on the metro. i assume it's because i have short hair and don't dress like a supermodel (most women in russia look like supermodels all the time). this morning the housekeeper barged into my room while i was asleep (to get my sheets and give me clean ones) and she looked at me and said "malchik?" (little boy) and then "nyet, devochka" (no, girl) lol. so that boosted the self-esteem haha.

the other day we went to the museum for contemporary russian history, which was absolutely fascinating. then today we went to a gallery with 57 rooms, it was insane. the art was quite nice though. i bought myself a smaller purse since my laptop bag was too big to take into the museum...i had to check it like my coat and it scares me not having everything i own on me at all times.

we've been watching a lot of movies on my laptop...mystery science theater 3000 is what keeps me sane, i think. when i'm freaking out i just sit down and watch it and all is good.

classes don't start until the 12th. we'll find out what classes we get placed in this coming friday or saturday. i'm not sure i did amazingly well on the exam but i'm sure it's a fairly adequate representation of my russian skills. we shall see i suppose.

for those of you who have asked, rob is able to call fairly often (about as often as he could when i was in the US). so that's nice. he may not get leave while i'm home so we may not see each other until september or october :(. please cross your fingers and/or pray he gets june leave.

well i suppose that's it. keep commenting and emailing, i'm sorry if i take a long time getting back to you.

hello again

you guys are ravenous so i figured i'd do another update :) i'm at the internet cafe. i paid for 30 minutes but they only gave me 26...hmm...i'd complain if i could think of what i wanted to say in russian.

yes, it is difficult to speak russian haha. there've definitely been some issues. for example, stores like you to give them as exact change as possible. so if you have to pay 450 rubles and you give them a 1000 ruble note, they get annoyed. and sometimes semi-refuse it or just get angry.

today we rode the metro and also saw the typical tourist-y things, like the kremlin, st. basil's, and red square. very, very pretty. i didn't take pics because my camera was dead but i'm sure we'll be back, so i'm not worried.

then jordana and i had our first adventure in cooking...we made potatoes and put some of my american cheese on them. it was actually quite good. stuart got to go out to a ukrainian restaurant :)

today at the mall by red square we ate at sbarro, haha. the pizza wasn't that good, but i figure russia's not really known for its pizza so it's alright.

i keep waking up around 3 or 4 and having problems going to sleep. it's nice though because i can call people back home, since it's only early evening for them. :) i am trying (in vain) to save money though. the calls are relatively cheap...to the US, only about 3.5 rubles a minute. really not a bad deal.

anyway i hope you're all doing well, i miss you of course.

an update finally.

Sorry for not updating sooner...yesterday was rough. i was feeling pretty homesick, but today is a lot better and i'm feeling well. thanks to my family for dealing with me yesterday :)

We got here around 10 am. two russian students (they went to beloit last semester) picked us up and showed us around. i thought the outlet in my room didn't work (i was pretty distressed)
but turns out i was using the wrong outlet, as the woman who barged into my room at 9 am this morning told me :)

i woke up shaking from dehydration and lack of food. so we went to the store near the school...i bought yogurt, bread, and jam. supposedly i need to watch out for the jam, another student got sick last semester. but so far i'm fine :) we then met up with stuart, got some more of our stuff figured out, and ventured out to do more shopping. i bought american cheese (i'm very picky about my dairy especially so went with what was safe), juice, grapes, chips, chocolate milk...hopefully none of it gets stolen in the communal fridge, but i believe my yogurt has already been taken so we shall see.

right now we're in cafe max, which is actually a decent deal...50 rubles for half an hour (which is about $2.50 or so) and you can keep the number if you don't use all your time. people here don't smile a lot...if you catch eyes with them they usually just nod or stare at you lol. this morning i came into the building with my yogurt and while struggling to get my card to show the guard (i had been eating the yogurt with my finger due to a lack of utensils, which i remedied later) i dropped the yogurt and the guard got pretty mad. he told me to look for paper but as i didn't see any, he sort of stormed off and got some, then handed it to me and told me to clean it up lol. i was sleepy so it didn't really bother me.

i think i'm getting sick...eating or drinking anything aside from water hurts my throat, in a sort of pain that is worse than i've experienced.

the toilets are gross haha. i never "hover" but i refuse NOT to. the showers don't have shower curtains but happily the doors have locks. the pressure and heat is very good.

anyway i miss you all...keep commenting!

getting closer.

so the plan is, on tuesday (january 30) my dad and i will drive down to boston. i leave logan airport on wednesday at 12 pm, and will land in russia on thursday, 10 am.

i finally got my cell phone. if you want to call me, let me know and i'll send you the number.

i will be very good about keeping this up! :)

11 days!

I created this blog, obviously, to detail my study abroad trip to Moscow. I leave on January 31 and will be there until May 30.

So leave me comments! :)