Russia Day 11 9/24

Aside from the fact that I woke up feeling like death today, I do have some things to update.

Well since I felt crappy (I woke up and I couldn’t breath through my nose at all and my eyes were so puffy I couldn’t even see myself in the mirror, and I have been sneezing non-stop and my throat is itchy), I called Kate from class on Nina’s phone since I’m out of rubles on mine and asked her to tell Zoyla (our teacher) that I’m not coming to class today since I couldn’t get a hold of Lena. She was really nice about it and said she’d take notes for me and tell someone in GRINT, so I think I should be fine, although I’m kinda pissed because I stayed up really late with Nina going over my hw and it was actually pretty long and correct. But whatever. So today I’ve just been sleeping and periodically watching parts of shows, such as X-men in Russian (cartoon) and some freakin weird but kinda funny movie called Swamp Devil (it was in English but Russian dubbed). I think I’m on the Sci fi channel or something because now I’m watching a show that reminds me of Star Trek. Oh and Ele called me to see if I was ok and see if I needed anything, I thought that was really nice of her. Even though I’m pretty sure no one knows where I live haha. Nina has been gone all day, so Idk if she even knows I didn’t go to school, but she is pretty sneaky and spy-like some times so she might. I’ll tell her later though anyway. I just don’t want her freaking out that I’m sick, seeing as she probably just had a cold all this time she’s been sick and she has been going to the doctor every day for the past week.

Anyway, on Wednesdays (I don’t think I’ve mentioned this yet) we don’t have regular class, we have a history lecture with this older Russian guy named Alexander. He is freakin hilarious and says really random things, like that ‘Stalin was like the he who must not be named guy… voldemort?’ and Idk. He just highly amuses me. The first Wednesday lecture class was disrupted for a good 10 minutes because a butterfly was flying around and Kate wanted to free it, and his phone kept ringing. I feel like I may have already told this story. I also like Wednesdays because we get to start at 11 instead of 10, so it’s nice. But anyway, so yesterday after school there is randomly a Russian movie club now, and we watched White Sun Desert or something, it’s a really famous older movie, and when I told Nina and she was like ohhh that’s my favorite movie!! It was pretty interesting but kinda weird. It was about a guy who was trying to get home to his wife from the desert after a war, and he kept running in to people on the way who needed his help. There were subtitles ha that’s how I understood. It was a comedy too actually, and it was pretty funny. Overall I liked it. After that I was just at the dorm for awhile doing homework and watching some VERY interesting videos on youtube, and as I was on my way back at like 10pm Nina called me to see if I was coming home or going to the dorm again. Oh yeah I slept at the dorm the night before, but I’ll get to that. So I told her I was coming home, and as soon as I walked in the door she started offering me all this food and things to drink it was really cute. She actually gave me these little cottage cheese pancake things I have been wanting to try at the various coffee houses we go to, so I was really excited! I think she missed having someone to feed. Oh and I asked her about the laundry situation (apparently you are supposed to set something up with your baba where you pay her and she does your laundry), and I basically said ‘Can I use that?’ and she was like do you know how? And I said in Arizona I do… and she said the girl before me paid her and she’d do it. I was like that’s fine, how much? And she said we could deal with money later. Then she went on to talk about how the girl before me never ended up paying her, and that she was really fat apparently and ate A TON. I don’t know what that had to do with anything but it was kinda funny.

Tuesday we went on a Boat tour of the Moscow river, and that was really cool! I took a lot of pictures, but my camera did die at one point. I’m not too worried though, because all of us are friends on facebook so I can steal other people’s pictures. We saw Moscow state university, which is freakin huge and if I can remember correctly one of the seven sister buildings that are pretty much all just freakin huge buildings with cool architecture. We saw some of the ‘high-scrapers’ as Lena called them (I thought it was cute) from the downtown part of Moscow, and a lot of bridges and parks and some more churches towards the end. Oh and there was a pretty large amusement park as well. We got off of the boat I think in Kitai gorod, which was by where the Indian restaurant we went to for Karry’s birthday was, so we split in to our little groups and just walked around some more. We ate at this place called Coffee House (transliterated, it’s pretty funny) and had an interesting time trying to get our bill figured out with some chicken sandwich issues, but I had an awesome banana split :D

After eating, we walked around in the other direction and found St Basil’s Cathedral and the outside of the Kremlin and Lenin’s mausoleum and the gigantic and really famous mall GUM haha. It was really pretty though because we got there at night and it was all lit up with a billion little Christmas light type of things that are apparently on GUM year round. That mall seriously was like a palace, it was like 3 stories tall and just…huge!! And really beautiful. We got a few pictures with the Cathedral and just kept walking around. When I got back Nina gave me Borscht (she keeps giving me dinner too for some reason, I don’t know why but I don’t complain).

On Monday, I think I just went home after school, but Ele called me later and asked if I wanted to go with them to this Georgian restaurant. When she called again saying she was leaving, meaning I was supposed to leave, I realized I had no idea where my keys were and I was searching around forever before I left. So I was already late meeting them, and since they are by the Vuihina (?? I have no idea how to transliterate that) metro by the school I was getting on the Novogerevo one by me, and I got really lost at the station I was supposed to transfer at and ended up on the street and had to pay to get back in. I knew it would happen eventually… So I finally found them like 30 minutes late and we were on the metro when we realized that Ele’s guidebook says that this restaurant is jacket and tie attire required. We were like uh… let’s just get off and find somewhere random to eat. So we walked around for a teeny bit and came across this place called like, Lemonade or something haha (it was Italian food…??) It was really good, and we found a Subway!!! And on the Metro on the way back, this drunk guy came up to Kelly and was talking to her in English, Russian, and Greek. He kept switching. He was from Moldova and said he was on an expedition here… He was literally like an inch from her face while talking to her, and wavering around while he stood. He got on the metro we got on, so we got off on a random spot to get away from him. While we were trying to leave, he told Kelly she has AMAZING teeth and asked for her phone number. She told him she didn’t have a phone and we got off and just got on the next metro going the same way. It was prettttttty funny. Oh and the guy next to me on the metro was like keeled over in his seat with his head between his legs, and some kind of liquid was definitely dripping from his face. I was very disturbed. Oh, trashed Russians at like 11 oclock on a Monday. This was the night by the time we were leaving to get on the Metro, it was like 10:50 (my curfew of being able to walk home by myself is 11) so I called Nina and told her I was staying at the dorms. Ele’s room has a spare bed so I just slept there, after being on facebook for an extended period of time and kind of doing my hw. And sorry if I don’t respond to everything on there, I get literally 60 or more alerts every time I get on now (since I get on so much less) and have quite a few messages to go through, which is why I figured it would be easiest to update everyone by a blog!

Well that is pretty much everything I can think of, and now I just wish I could get online easily to upload this and all my pictures! I think I will try talking to Nina about it again…I’m pretty sure she said the girl before me could get internet here. But I don’t know if it was using a wire or if Nina does have one of the secure wireless networks I can see but don’t know the password. I think I’m going to need a dictionary for this conversation. Well, tomorrow is Friday so it’s class and then who knows what, and Saturday we are going to this Tsaritsyno Estate place and a Honey Fair haha so I’ll have more to write… and I think some of the girls wanted to go to a dance club this weekend too, and I want to wear the one dress I brought before it gets to cold. But seeing as I’m sickly…eh I’ll still probably go. See ya!!