Marine Corps Ball

After getting home on Saturday from St. Petersburg, I took a nap before starting to get ready for the Marine Corps Ball. Instead of getting ready at my place and riding the metro over in my fancy dress, I packed all of my stuff and took it over to the embassy compound, where I got ready with Vienna, Josue's girlfriend. She turned out to be super cool, so it was fun to get ready together. It reminded me of high school when I would get ready for formal dances with my friends. We took a van over to the ball, where we met up with Elliot and Josue.

After a cocktail hour, they had the beginning of the ceremony. I was right in the front so I could see, but they did it far enough over on the other side of the room that I couldn't get great pictures. Elliot was the youngest Marine, so he was in part of the ceremony. After that part was over, we had dinner and had the second half of the ceremony. They had a buffet with a million different choices. All of it tasted really good so it was hard to choose and I ended up with a super full plate. After dinner was over, we took pictures, mingled a bit and then went to dance. Everyone had a great time dancing. I have a bunch of really great pictures. After a while, it was getting close to the end of the ball, so we went back to the embassy to change clothes and go out. We went to a club called Fabrique. It was fun there, but we didn't stay super long. When we were back in the car, I had a long chat with the driver in a funny mix of Russian and English. I was trying to practice my Russian, but I didn't know a bunch of words and he knew English pretty well, so it was really fun. The whole experience of going to the ball was so great. It was a perfect night.

Since we were leaving to go to Egypt on Wednesday, Erin and I had planned on hanging out with Elliot and Justin on Monday and Tuesday. We had two different dates planned out, neither of which worked out how we planned, but we had a great time anyway. We wanted to watch Harry Potter but it was only playing in Russian then, so Erin, Justin, Vienna, Josue, Elliot, and I went to a German food place for dinner. I tried escargot for the first time and it was delicious! I just figured everyone said that it was good to sound cultured, but it really was good if you didn't look at it for too long.

On Tuesday we had planned on going ice skating, but the rink collapsed a couple days before so it wasn't going to be open for another week. Instead, we planned on going to KFC and then making snowmen by the river. We couldn't find KFC so we ate at a Chinese food place instead. Elliot and I ordered almost everything off the menu because we were so hungry. It was pretty funny when they were bringing it out because we realized how much food we had actually ordered. After dinner, we decided not to make snowmen because the snow wasn't good enough and we went back to watch a movie. Even though everything didn't work as planned, we're pretty good at having a fun time anyways.

Marine Corps Ball

Click on the picture to see the rest of the album

St. Petersburg

While in St. Petersburg, we stayed very busy, waking up fairly early every morning and staying up pretty late every night. Since I have a hard time keeping all the museums and palaces straight, I'm just going to write about my favorite/most memorable parts of the trip.

One of the days, we went to a "museum of curiosities" that was basically a museum of everything that Peter the Great liked to collect. The oddest, and by far the most interesting, part of the collection was an entire room of deformed fetuses. Some of the descriptions should be redone, in my opinion, so that they don't call any of them "monsters". Besides that, it was interesting to apply what I learned in Humbio core to what we saw at the museum. There were babies with a single eye, a ton of conjoined twins, and a lot of other developmental problems. A lot of people in the group were bothered by what they saw, but I found it very interesting. The creepy part was when some of the fetuses were dressed in clothes. Apparently that was so they wouldn't scare as many people, but I found it to have the opposite effect on the people that I saw.

One day it snowed really hard the night before. I keep getting reminded that Russians are not excited for snow like Americans are. When we saw the snow, we ran around in it, had snowball fights, and looked like little children. The Russians were much less excited, and continued about their days. While the snow was really fun, when it melted, it made walking on the sidewalks exceedingly difficult. I now understand what people were warning me about when they said the slush was terrible. It was really slippery and got everyone's shoes wet. I much prefer the snow.

On Thursday night, we went to see Don Quixote at the ballet at the Marinski Theater. I really liked it because it was more playful and a little less serious than Romeo and Juliet was when we saw it at the Bolshoi. It was still really good, though. At the first intermission, we went to get champagne and met another American student studying in Russia. He seemed really nice, but he tried to convince us that he was from Russia. That doesn't work too well when you have a very clear American accent. A couple people got caviar because it seemed like the place to get it, but I tried theirs and it tasted awful. I've only had caviar three times now, but i'm pretty sure I don't like it.

Mass graves

The hardest thing to visit was the cemetery for those who lost their lives in the Siege of Leningrad. There were 600,000 people buried there in mass graves marked only by the year and civilian vs. military. There was a wall with a very nice poem dedicated to those buried there. My favorite line was "Death would sooner be afraid of us than we would be afraid of death."

I left St. Petersburg a day earlier than the rest of the group in order to get back in time for the Marine Corps Ball on Saturday. When I got on the train, I was excited to be in the same compartment as a family with a little daughter because I figured they would go to bed early and sleep until we got into Moscow. But, when the father asked me if I drank Russian vodka, I knew I wouldn't be getting much sleep. As much as I wanted to sleep before the ball, I didn't want to be rude, so I joined the two Russian men in my compartment in drinking the vodka. It was pretty harsh, but after a bit, I realized they were sort of testing me to see if I could drink it without asking for juice. If I would have known, I would have just gotten juice at the beginning.

As for my general impressions of St. Petersburg, I don't really understand why everyone raves about it so much. I had a good time there, but it isn't as different from Moscow as I had imagined. The streets were wider and straighter so traffic was a little less horrible, the buildings were prettier, and the metro was nicer but not as well put together. There are definitely pros and cons to both St. Petersburg and Moscow, but Moscow feels like home at this point, so I'm inclined to say that I like it more there.

Before St. Petersburg - opera and shuffleboard

It's time that I finally update my blog. We got delayed on our flight back from Cairo, so I have a little more time in between papers to update.

At Liga Pap after the opera

After coming back from Istanbul, we had a week in Moscow before leaving again for St. Petersburg. The highlight of the week was when Elliot and I went to see MacBeth at the Bolshoi. We hadn't made specific plans for dinner so we ended up running around in our opera clothes looking for a decent place to eat. After wandering for a while, we found a sushi restaurant that looked pretty good. The sushi there was as good as the sushi at home. I'm no sushi expert, but it was pretty good. When we got to the opera, we were surprised by how good our seats were. We were in the sixth row from the front, right in the middle. It was kind of difficult to figure out exactly what was going on, even though both of us knew the story. At intermission, we went to a snack area that was much nicer than the one I had gone to when we saw the ballet a couple weeks before. Everyone around us could speak at least three languages (mostly Russian, English, and French) and were switching between them with very little difficulty. I'd like to be as good as that someday. I had some really yummy strawberries and cream and champagne, followed by a juice box to add some extra classiness. Haha. After the opera, we went to Liga Pap, where we were definitely overdressed but had a good time.

Oh, also I have fallen in love with shuffleboard. My second favorite part of the week was playing shuffleboard back at the embassy. I am not the best at it, but it is so much fun! I'm getting better and last time, Erin and I even won!

Istanbul Day 5

I realize I'm about two weeks late finishing this entry, but here it is:

The palace we visited

On Sunday, we decided to go over to the Asian side of Istanbul. We walked down to the ferries and got onto one right away. It only took about 15 minutes to get to the other side, which seemed super fast after the previous day's boat ride. When we got off the ferry, a couple of us were really hungry so we stopped to get some food before setting out for the day. Thank goodness we did, too, because it was a long day before we ate again. We started exploring before we really knew what there was to do on that side of Istanbul. It's not a touristy side at all, and we didn't really see any tourists while we were over there. We walked for a while until we found a palace. We were only allowed to explore it on an official tour and we didn't want to wait for the English tour, so we decided to tag on to the tour that was given in Turkish. The tour guide was confused why we were on the tour since we didn't understand a word he was saying, but it was fine. We took a bus back from the palace to the ferry. It was one of the craziest bus rides I've ever been on. I didn't feel like I was going to die or anything, but it was really fast and swerving around corners. Definitely eventful.

The group on the ferry

Once we got back to the European side of Istanbul, we ate lunch at another kebab place. We decided that we wanted to go to the Egyptian Spice Bazaar. Eduardo and Teava mentioned that they had gone the day before and saw a bunch of pet food stuff, so when we were pointed towards what we thought was the bazaar and saw pet food, we thought we had found it. We kept walking through and only saw pet food, pigeons, leeches, dogs, roosters, fish…but no spices! We were debating whether or not we had actually found it, but decided to leave since we couldn't bring puppies back to Russia, no matter how cute they were. Right after we got out of the "pet food bazaar" (the only name that really fits it), we immediately saw the spice bazaar. It was similar to the big market place, but it had spices (hence the name), which were really fun to go through and smell.

We left the bazaar and walked to a pretty park, where we stayed until we had to go back to the hostel. It was nice to just sit and take it all in. We headed back to the airport, ate some dinner, and went to wait in the line at the airport. It took soooo long! By the time we got through, we were literally sprinting through the airport. We didn't want to miss our flight. But, when we finally got to our gate, our flight was delayed. They didn't say how long it was going to be delayed, but everyone was getting antsy because we knew we were already getting back late and delays would only make us more sleepy the next day in class. Finally, we got on the plane and made it into Moscow safely. Eduardo's host parents were nice enough to pick a few of us up (him, me, and Jean).

Istanbul was probably my favorite place I've ever visited. Everyone should go if they get the chance. It's amazing!

Istanbul Days 3 and 4

Sorry this is taking so long! I'm almost done with the other entries.

On Friday, we went around in smaller groups and explored the city. In the morning, Jean, Lilly, Erin, and I went to the bazaar again to shop for more gifts. I spent more money than I had intended, but I bought some really cool things.

In the afternoon, Jean, Ellen, and I decided to go to the Turkish Bath since everyone had been talking about how great it was. We didn't really know what to expect, but we decided to get massages since it seemed like a nice way to relax. When we got there, we were handed a towel and a pair of panties each and shown to our changing area. We changed and managed to find the area where we entered into the bath. We walked through one room into another and then we were led into yet another room. This room had a giant marble slab in the middle and was really warm - not quite sauna hot, but it was pretty warm. One of the attendants in the room came up to Ellen, who was in front of us, and ripped off Ellen's towel. She tried to protest, but to no avail - the towel was already laying on the slab, waiting for her to lay down and get massaged. Jean's towel was taken off next, followed by mine. We all felt a little awkward at first, but everyone in the room was wearing the exact same thing, so we tried to get over it. We saw other people getting massaged, and we realized we were about to get into a really awkward situation. There wasn't any way around getting massaged, so we decided to just suck it up and deal with it. Our "massage" wasn't so much a massage as it was a full body scrub by an old, sweaty, obese woman in her underwear while we were wearing only bikini bottoms. To say it was awkward is to seriously understate our feelings at the time. After our scrub/massage, we went into another room to the hot tub. When we left there, our towels were gone and we didn't know where to find new ones. There weren't any new ones in the room where we were, so we ventured topless into the next room where the attendant was covered head to toe. Thankfully, she pointed us in the direction of new towels and we went back to the dressing rooms to change. It was definitely a bonding experience between the three of us and a funny story to tell everyone when we got back to the hostel.

Everyone met back up at the hostel to go to dinner with Jack and Nancy at a nearby restaurant. The food was pretty good, and it was nice to eat all together. After dinner, we headed back to the hostel for a belly dance show. The belly dancer was wearing five-inch heels while she was dancing - impressive! She brought up people from the audience to dance with her (it was a small group - I don't know if I'd really call it an audience). It was pretty entertaining to watch. Two people in our group - Eduardo and Erin - got up to dance with her. Erin had mad skills, too.

On Saturday, we went on a trip to the Princes' Islands by boat. On our walk over to Nastia and Liza's hotel, we met some stray dogs who decided to be our friends. They kept play-fighting, but it made a lot of the people in the group nervous. The dogs kept lagging behind and then running up to catch up with us. One of the times they were running to catch up, one of them ran straight through my legs, almost making me fall over, and reminded me of the time in middle school when my dog ran into me on the beach and broke my toe. We got on a bus at the hotel and drove to the water, where we got on the boat that was going to take us to the islands. It was a really long ride over, and it was foggy, but we had a really good time on the boat, playing cards and chatting. The islands we went to theoretically didn't have any cars (except for emergency vehicles), so they were really quiet. It was really nice. We made friends with a bunch of the stray dogs on every island and had a pretty quiet day wandering around the islands. On the last island we went to, we got to ride horse carriages around the island. It was my first time in a carriage, and it was really fun. We even raced another carriage.

Our boat

Jean, me, Lilly, and Grace on the boat

The adorable puppy we named Scout

After we got back from the islands, we went to dinner near our hostel, which took a really long time, but was really good. While we were there, we saw a fire truck outside with its lights on, so we were really curious what was happening. When we got outside, it smelled like smoke, but we couldn't find a fire anywhere. We went back to the hostel, and after about 5 minutes back there, the electricity went out. We didn't know why it went out, but the people who worked there distributed candles and we all went into the 6-person room downstairs and played games. I was feeling kind of sick, so I decided to go to bed early. Apparently the electricity came on in the middle of the night, but I wasn't awake for it.

Istanbul, Days 1 and 2

This update is going to take a while, so I'm splitting it up into different days. Here is the update from Wednesday and Thursday.

On Wednesday after class, I hurried home and started to get packed. I hadn't packed the night before because I was being super lazy, so I had to figure out how to get everything for Istanbul into one school-sized backpack. I managed to fit it all (minus a towel) and I walked over to Yugo-Zapadnaya (my metro stop) to meet everyone and get on the shuttle bus to the airport. Getting through the airport wasn't much of a problem, but Jean got delayed getting through immigration because they printed her visa in a strange way. It was valid and everything, but they immigration people were confused. So, it took a while for her to get through, but it didn't take any "fees" or anything. While we were waiting for our flight, we played cards in the waiting area. We boarded on time, but the flight took forever!!! We took off about 30 or 40 minutes after we were supposed to and the flight itself took forever to get there. After we arrived in Istanbul, the first thing I noticed was how much friendlier everyone was. People smiled and didn't look like you just killed their puppies like they often do in Moscow. After everyone got their bags, we bought sim cards so we could make local calls and we got out some Turkish Lira to spend. We had an airport pickup scheduled and there was a man waiting for us when we got in.

Erin and Grace dancing to pass the time at the airport

After checking in at the hostel, we were hungry so we decided to go exploring for food. Everyone was calling at us, trying to get us to eat at their restaurants. Our first walk down the street was unsuccessful because everyone was a little overwhelmed with the yelling men. Once we got to the end of the street, we decided to turn back and pick one. One man approached us and we took a chance and came in to get some food. The place we chose was called Topdeck Cafe and Phillipe (the owner) was super cool and really nice. He talked to us for a long time about how much he liked the US and all sorts of other things. We had a great time there, but eventually we had to go to sleep. Lilly, Erin, Jean, and I all shared a 4-person room and everyone else stayed in the 6-person room.

On Thursday, we woke up and had breakfast (hard boiled eggs, bread, tomatoes, and apples) upstairs in the hostel before leaving to go see Hagia Sophia with the Kollmans (our professors). It turned out to be super close to our hostel - only a 5 minute walk. The building was one of the most impressive buildings I've ever seen in my life. It was huge and gorgeous. There was a place in it where you could make wishes by turning your thumb around in a hole in the wall, which we all did. So we'll see if that comes true…

Making a wish

After Hagia Sophia, we got some corn on the cob from a street vendor. It was possibly the worst corn I've ever had. I didn't want to have corn again for a while. I also tried a chestnut. I wasn't a fan, but maybe it was because the man making them was the same man making the corn. We got real food after that (kebabs) from a place down the street and went over to the Blue Mosque afterwards. All of us girls wore scarves on our heads (I had bought a pretty new one a couple hours earlier) and we were supposed to wear long skirts, but they didn't stop us when we were wearing pants. I don't know if it was because they just wanted our legs not to show and the pants achieved the same purpose, or if it was because they didn't have enough wrap skirts at the front to cover all the women wearing pants, but it all worked out. We took off our shoes, but the other barefoot people I saw were wearing plastic covers on their feet and I didn't have anything. Oops!

Inside of the mosque

The group split up after visiting the mosque, and some of us went to the Grand Bazaar while others went to the Basilica Cistern. The Bazaar was a very interesting experience. I don't want to give away what I bought (they are mostly presents for people), but the people selling them were very forward. They loved using pickup lines to get us to stop. It was a very interesting strategy. We decided they must all learn the lines from a certain place, because they all had the same ones. Mostly they called us "angels" or "Spice Girls" (I'm not sure where that one came from). The pickup line I heard the most was "You dropped something!…..my heart." Jean said the real line says "jaw" instead of "heart", which would make a lot more sense. The second-most heard pickup line was "You must be from paradise" or "Are you from China?" (again, not sure about that one). It was a little overwhelming, but there was a bunch of really cool things at the bazaar.

When we came back from the bazaar, we all met up to go to dinner. We decided to walk over to a bridge that had a bunch of restaurants underneath it. First, we got lost, so we missed the sunset we had wanted to watch. Then, we ended up walking waayyyy farther than we had to in order to get there. Once we got to the bridge, we had a hard time choosing where to eat. We haggled for a good price for dinner and chose a place that was okay.

After dinner, we went to Topdeck Cafe again and hung out with Phillipe again. We hung out there for a long time and some of the group left, but a few of us stayed to hang out longer. One of the bartenders let me mix behind the bar and we met a lot of really cool people. We learned some games from some British people visiting, and we met some other college kids from California. We had a great time, and I have about a million pictures from that night.

Heading out...

I'm off to Istanbul today. We'll be there until Sunday evening and I'll be sure to take a bunch of pictures. Updates when I get back!

Things that would improve Russia

While I am completely loving my time here, there are definitely things that I miss about home that would make Russia a million times better:

• Vegetables. They don't seem to care about healthy food. At all. Every once in a while we get cucumbers and tomatoes, and we eat cabbage fairly often, but I would kill for some broccoli or celery.
• Driving. I miss it every time I don't have my car. Since I won't be driving for the next two years in the Peace Corps, I should get used to it. But, it was even difficult when I was in New York for me not to have my car. I just like driving too much.
• Mexican food. Yes, I have found Mexican food in Russia. But it was so hard to find and there is so little of it (even though the burrito I had at La Cantina was delicious). I think if someone were to bring/popularize Mexican food here, they would make a ton of money. 
• Taco Bell. Not the same as Mexican food, but it's up there. The only fast food we really eat here is McDonalds. There is no competition between Taco Bell and McDonalds. I'm going to get a Taco Bell burrito as soon as I see one.
• Cold water. Russians seem to think that drinking cold water will make you sick. My host mom thinks it is really odd that all I want to drink with my meals is water. But I can't drink coffee and tea instead of water. I don't know how to use our water filter, so I usually get water when my host mom filters it for me.
• People wearing deodorant. Things are smelly a lot of places, especially the metro. I think Russian deodorant must not work. That, or they just don't wear any.
• Being able to order at Starbucks. I would love to have my Iced Venti 4-Pump Nonfat Chai. It's delicious.
• Ice. Again, Russians hate anything cold. Odd since Russia gets so cold. Most drinks don't come with ice. Except at McDonalds.
• Free (almost) texting. All the cell phones are prepaid, so we pay about 10 cents per text. I miss my texting plan.
• Clean air. Everyone smokes. And when people aren't smoking, they are driving cars that put out really gross exhaust. My lungs are going to love the Northwest when I get back
• Cooking. My host mom makes good food, but I miss cooking for myself. I'm going to make her Indian tacos sometime soon. And maybe I'll make burritos if I can find tortillas.
• Smiling people. People don't smile in public. We do our "metro faces" to each other, imitating the girls on the metro who go from looking normal to looking super mean in a matter of seconds.
• Good milk. The milk here tastes so weird. I don't know what it is, but it just tastes off.
• American dollars. I've figured out the exchange rate, but I definitely spend more than I should and just figure that the exchange rate will make up for it. Not a good way to watch your spending
• Real service at restaurants. This kind of goes along with smiling people. There isn't a culture of service, so waiting for food at restaurants takes a really long time. Sometimes they're good, but it usually takes forever.
• And, of course, friends and family. I have my friends here, but I wish everyone else could come to Russia, too. We could teach Russia how to be awesome :)

When it gets closer to the end of my time here, I'll write about the things in Russia that I'll miss, but I don't want to think about that now. I like it too much to worry!

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween!!!!

The Halloween party at the embassy last night was awesome. Ellen came over to get ready. I used rollers to curl my hair. It took forever, but I got my hair to be super curly - exactly what I wanted for my sailor pin-up girl costume. It was also really fun to play with fake eyelashes and red lipstick. I just wish I could wear it every day! It was pretty funny walking to the metro in our costumes. Some kids shouted "Halloween!!!!" and were really excited that we were dressed up, but I think everyone else thought we were crazy.

Me and Ellen in our costumes

Burger King!!

We got to the Halloween party around 9pm, but Elliot had to keep going outside to escort people. I felt really bad because our group got split up so it definitely took away from his time at the party, but everyone really appreciated it. Erin kept trying to get people to dance, but no one would dance for a long time. After a while, it got going pretty good. It was way fun to check out everyone's costumes. My favorites (after Monopoly man of course) were the Burger King, robot, and Fat Bastard costumes.

Elliot as the Monopoly man (after taking off the mustache)

Robot!!

After the party was over, we convinced Demoni to come out for the rest of the night. We headed over to Liga Pap and ate some delicious chicken sandwiches. I might like that place too much for my own good, but it's always so much fun!

Natasha, Demoni, and me at Liga

The metro ride home this morning at 6am was really entertaining. I got on the first train and everyone else who was out at Halloween parties was on the same train. There were tons of people in their costumes from the night before - way more than I had seen on the way to the Halloween party. It was a little odd to see people with creepy face paint and masks that early in the morning, but it was fun to see people having fun for a change.

After a few hours of sleep this morning, the group went on a Master and Margarita tour of Moscow. We saw a bunch of the places featured in the book and ended up at the Bulgokov museum. They had a huge black cat there that was supposed to be like the cat in the book, but it wasn't particularly friendly and they kept it in a little room that was hidden behind a fireplace. It was really funny when our guide opened up the wall and brought it out. She had to put it back fairly quickly because it didn't seem to like to be touched that much.

I came home for dinner and my host mom had made dinner for her friends. It was really good, and she even had juice! Russians don't seem to be as fond of juice as Americans, so a lot of the host families (mine included) don't have juice. It was really nice to have today, so maybe I'll ask her if we can keep having it.

It's almost Halloween!

Another week, another recap:

Monday: Shout out to Nastia for her birthday! Jean, Nastia, and I were planning on going to the Rotary meeting in the evening and going out for a couple drinks for Nastia's birthday. I got on the metro at my station and the train just sat there for about ten minutes. I didn't know why, so I just stood there waiting for it to move. Finally, after it was uncomfortably full, we moved on to the next station. We did the same thing at that station, but at that point, it was even more full and I started to worry that something was wrong. I was texting with Jean and she said the trains were messed up where she was, too, and Nastia said the same thing. We kept stopping in between stations and taking forever. I got a text saying "There are no trains going to the center," so I started to get really worried. We were all made to get off the train about halfway to where I was going and I thought I was going to have to get out of the station, find a bus, and take it home. I was really nervous because I've only taken one bus since I've been here and it was with Jack and Nancy's help. Instead of getting out of the station, I stood there with the huge amount of people who were still there. The platform was so full I was surprised that no one fell on the tracks there. Another full train came and everyone started shoving and stampeding to get onto it. I was definitely scared at that point. I didn't make it onto that train, but when the next one came, I got shoved on. It was so full on that train that I couldn't even breathe fully. It was hot and slow and I didn't know what was going on. They kept shouting things in Russian over the loudspeaker, but I don't understand enough Russian to understand anything they yell at me. I didn't know what to think, but after all the warnings about terrorists, thinking about the Moscow metro bombings earlier this year, and my general level of anxiety at the time made me really worried. The train was the last place I wanted to be. Partway through that ride, Nastia texted me to tell me that a man had been hit by a train a couple stops down and they couldn't use that track. I was relieved that there hadn't been a huge incident, but it was still horrible for that man and anyone who was around at that time. I was still upset so I decided to get off the train and go to the embassy to hang out early. When I got off the train, I was afraid I was going to be trampled. Everyone wanted to get out of the station, so everyone was pushing and trying to get out first, whether that meant shoving elderly or disabled people or even trampling if it came to that. It was terrifying. When I got away from that, I was so relieved. I was still kind of upset for the rest of the evening, but we just chilled and watched a movie, so it was much better.

Tuesday: Demoni, Eduardo, Nastia, Ellen, Elliot, Toney, and I went to eat at a Georgian restaurant. It was my first time eating Georgian food, and it was really good! I had chicken and the cheesy bread, and I tried tongue for the first time. It had horseradish on it, so it wasn't my favorite, but I'll try it again sometime so I have a real opinion. After dinner, we went to a place called Silver's to hang out for a while. We went home kind of early and I got a good amount of sleep for the first time in a while.

Wednesday: Ellen and I went to our internship for a short time, but they didn't have a lot of surgeries that day. We saw an exploratory surgery on a 41-year-old man's knee and it was really interesting. We have seen a lot of knees now, but this man's cartilage was so soft! It looked kind of like Jell-o. They couldn't really do anything because his knee was in such bad shape, but they said he was a candidate for total joint replacement. I'd really like to see that. After our internship, I met up with Jean to go shopping for caramel and apples. Everyone told us that we wouldn't be able to find caramels, but we did! From there, we went out for the night, but I'll leave the incriminating details out :)

Thursday: Ellen's birthday!!! After class, a group of us went over to Ellen's house to make caramel apples. I'd never made caramel apples before and it was a ton of fun! When we bought the caramels the day before, I didn't know there was a difference between toffee and caramel (both were soft and looked like caramel!) so half of our apples were apparently caramel and the others were toffee. Elliot got us Oreos the day before (they are IMPOSSIBLE to find in Russia. We were so happy he could get them for us!!!) so we used that as a topping to roll some of the apples in after we covered them in white chocolate. The one I made with white chocolate and oreos looked really bad, but I'm sure it tasted good.

Friday: We had a dinner party at Jack and Nancy's apartment. It was great. Besides the students and Jack and Nancy, Nastia, Sasha, and Fiona's parents came. The food was wonderful and I ate so much salad! It's hard to find a good salad here, but that one was delicious. We had to rush from the party because we had reservations at a karaoke bar. The enthusiasm for karaoke apparently wasn't as high as it had been before, and halfway to the place, we were down to only a few people. So, naturally, we decided to go to Liga Pap instead. Always a great choice. Ellen even got some birthday cake. It was a great night.

Erin, Alice, me, Ellen, and Lilly

Me, Lilly, and Sasha

Saturday: Today! I didn't do anything today. We are going to the Halloween party at the embassy, and I am getting ready with Jean and Ellen. I'm really excited and will definitely update with pictures!

Recap

After being here for two months, this blog is starting to become a week in review. Haha. Well, here is a recap of last week: (sorry for the shortage of pictures! I'll start taking more!)

Monday: After classes, I was hanging out with Elliot and managed to convince a bunch of Marines to meet up with some of the Stanford people who were out for the evening. It was a ton of fun to get everyone to meet each other. Everyone seemed to have a good time, and it was a pretty relaxed night.

Tuesday: I met up with Elliot and Justin and after hanging out for a while, headed over to Liga Pap to meet up with a bunch of the Stanford group. Everyone seemed to have a great time, and we even got our requisite boys-doing-tridelt-hand-signs picture. :P

Elliot, me, Jean, and Justin. Delta <3

Wednesday: Ellen and I went to our internship, but they were confused why we hadn't arrived early like we had for the two preceding weeks. We saw a couple surgeries - one ACL repair and one shoulder surgery that was pretty cool, but not as fun to watch as the calcaneal repair a couple weeks back.

Thursday: After classes, a group of us went over to the embassy to talk to a Foreign Service Officer about careers and internships in the Foreign Service. It was really interesting to hear about the different aspects of life as a FSO. I'm considering taking the FSO test when I get out of the Peace Corps and maybe continue my nomadic life. I have to brush up on US history, but I'm sure I can manage to do that in the next two and a half years.

For dinner, Elliot and I went to a Mexican food place called La Cantina. It was delicious! I finally got the burrito I've been craving for the last two months. It wasn't quite a La Roca burrito, but it was pretty dang good and still makes my mouth water when I think about it.

Friday: For the walking tour class, we started by meeting by St. Basil's cathedral and touring around inside. It was pretty cool and it had the steepest stairs I've ever seen/climbed. After we left St. Basil's, I realized I didn't have much time to get home and change before dinner, so I had to skip out on the rest of the walking tour (I'm not enrolled in the class) and run home. I got home in record time and managed to change and get back out the door super quickly after explaining to my host mother that I wasn't going to eat dinner at home for the second day in a row. I thought she was going to be upset, but she seemed fine. Elliot took me to a restaurant called "The Apartment" (http://theapartmentmoscow.ru/about/). It was possibly the best food I've ever eaten in my life. We had a bottle of red wine that was really good (and I don't normally drink red wine). We had a plate of calamari for our appetizer that was on a bed of greens and cherry tomatoes. When I used to think of calamari, I thought of breaded and deep-fried rings of squid, but this was just straight calamari cooked in wine. It was great! For my entree, I had roast duck, which was exquisite. I'm a big fan of duck, but I've never had it cooked that well. Elliot had the lamb, which I normally don't eat (it breaks my rule of not eating babies…), but I tried and it was sooo good! For dessert, we both ordered the crème brûlée and sorbet because it looked amazing, and it exceeded our expectations. It was creamy and caramelized perfectly on top. After that, I had an amazing berry mojito. Everything I ate or drank there made me want to stay there forever. That's going to be a hard date to top.

Saturday: In the morning we went to the Pushkin museum and saw a bunch of paintings by artists that I actually knew! (Monet, Manet, Renoir, Degas, Picasso, etc.) I don't know a whole lot about art, but it was cool seeing names that I recognized at least. After I got home from the museum, I was planning on staying home the rest of the day, but Nastia and I decided to go shopping instead and to try to find a dress for me to wear to Marine Corps ball in November and a Halloween costume. I was dead set on getting a sailor costume since this will likely be the last time for a couple years that I will be wearing a costume on Halloween. I know I was being hard-headed but I really wanted a sailor costume. I didn't find one last week when we went shopping, but Nastia asked the woman at the store, and she showed us a rack with sailor costumes. They even fit! So, I bought a costume and I'm really looking forward to wearing it. We didn't find a dress, so we decided to go see a movie instead. We saw the new Katherine Heigl movie "Life as We Know It" or "Жизнь, как она есть" since it was in Russian. I bought a large popcorn before we went in, expecting it to be a normal-sized thing to share between two people. It ended up being a giant bucket that I was a little embarrassed to hold. It could have fed about ten people! Anyway, during the movie, I understood most of what was going on, but very little of the actual dialogue. It was still fun, though.

Sunday: Today I went shopping with Jean and Nastia for a dress to wear to the Marine ball. I realize that it is a month away, but I couldn't find any dresses that were appropriate anywhere, so I figured I should shop while I had the chance. After going to tons of stores in the huge mall, Jean suggested we go to bebe. I had almost lost faith in finding a dress, but we found some long evening gowns in the back that were promising. Jean found one in my size that was exactly what I was looking for and it was 50% off! It was perfect, so I ended up buying it. I really like it, and I'm really excited to wear it!!!!

Staying busy

On Wednesday, our economics class was canceled again so Ellen and I went to our internship at the European Medical Center early so we could see more surgeries. When we got out of the metro station, it was snowing! We seemed to be the only ones around (and maybe in the whole country) who were excited about it. Thankfully, I had worn my down coat and super warm boots so I was nice and toasty :) The snow didn't stick, but it was really fun to dance around in while it was falling.

At the Med Center, we saw five surgeries - two meniscus repairs, two ACL repairs, and an installation of a calcaneal plate. (I'd recommend skipping over this part if you are squeamish…) The calcaneus surgery was sooooo cool!!!  They didn't tell us how the man had broken it, but Ellen and I decided he must have fallen somewhere. How else would you break your heel? Anyway, the man was awake (he had a spinal block so he couldn't feel anything) so we had to be careful about any noises we made (laughing was absolutely against the rules, as we later found out). When they cut in to the patient's foot, it was almost unreal. The inside of the soft tissue looked like a combination of hamburger meet and the fat that I had to eat a few weeks back. They kept cutting and pulling the skin back much more than I expected, but we could see a lot of the inside of the foot. The surgeons used really long pointy rods to stick through his foot to keep everything in place while they were installing the plate. Because they had to put so many rods through and had to make sure that everything was in place, they had to use the x-ray machine pretty constantly. They didn't have enough lead vests for everyone, so to start with, we left the room every time they used the machine. That got old pretty quickly, and at one point, one of the doctors grabbed me and positioned me behind him so his vest would block me, too. Ellen kept leaving each time they took the x-rays, until one point when she decided to join our human x-ray vest sandwich. It was funny and all the surgeons were chuckling and the nurses were taking pictures, but when we laughed a little bit, we got in trouble. We managed to stay quiet the rest of the time, and had everything explained to us in detail. It was awesome. We ended up staying the entire day, from 8:45 until 5:15.

Group at the restaurant before going to the dark room

On Thursday after class we went to the restaurant called "In  the Dark". When we got to the restaurant, we walked into a big room with a huge table. We were all confused because the room was light and we expected to be taken into a dark room. It turned out that we were just in the room so we could order. They gave us a choice of four menus: red (meat), blue (seafood), green (vegetarian), and white (surprise). I chose the white menu after letting them know I couldn't eat peppers or walnuts. We went downstairs to go into the dark room, and while we were waiting for our server to lead us in, they offered us vodka out of a water dispenser. It is supposedly a special vodka that restores sight, but I thought it was great because it came out of a water dispenser. I haven't found any free water anywhere since I've been here, but free vodka is available. Haha. We started with a plate of appetizers. Mine was some kind of mushroom tart with a white sauce, a salad with cabbage, and some seafood thing that I could not figure out, but it tasted pretty good. After finishing that plate, I didn't know we were going to get another plate of food. I had salmon on my plate, but Jean got the most delicious steak I've ever eaten. I ate the whole meal with my fingers, as forks and knives were too difficult to use in the dark. I was able to take the steak apart with my fingers with hardly any effort. It made me wish I ordered from the red menu. After our main dish, they brought us dessert. Everyone else had carrot cake and ice cream, but since I'm allergic to walnuts, I got ice cream, fruit, and a little cheesecake-like tart. It was delicious, but so rich! It was really interesting to have our sight completely taken away for a couple hours. It was a great experience, and I would recommend it to anyone near a restaurant like it.

On Friday, I was really tired after my language class, so I took a nap in the afternoon instead of going on the walking tour class that I'm auditing. I woke up around 4:30 and got ready to go back to the Academy because there was a show that we were supposed to watch. We were really confused what was supposed to happen, but we all came because Lisa and Alice were performing. It turned out to be similar to a high school or middle talent show, with a lot of skits and dances. It was pretty entertaining to try to figure out what was happening since everything was in Russian. When they spoke English, it was almost more confusing because what they were saying didn't particularly make sense in context. When it got to Lisa and Alice's performance, we were excited to see something a little different from everyone else who performed. When Lisa started to sing, all our jaws dropped. She is an amazing singer! Alice's accompaniment on the piano was great, too. They blew everyone else out of the water. It was no contest after that, and they ended up winning first place!

Krushka

After the talent show, a group of us went to Krushka (a sports bar chain) by the zoo. When we got out of the metro station, we were still waiting for Ellen to join us, and we saw the most adorable dog. It was a normal sized dog with tiny little legs. It was so adorable that we broke our usual rule not to pet the strays. It was so friendly, but it was really dirty and smelly so we all smelled pretty gross after petting it. We went to Krushka for a little while and then most of us went over to a party that the Marines were having. The party was really fun, but most of the group left early since we had to be up really early the next morning. I stayed there until the end and got in the vans with the guys to go out. Most of the people wanted to go clubbing, but Elliot and I went to Liga Pap to have a more relaxed night. Elliot and Chris had to get back in time for their curfew, so I waited until Pete got off work to walk me to the metro station when it opened. Oh! And I got a Dunkin' Donut from Pete for breakfast. Haha. A little piece of America in Russia.

In Suzdal. It was cold!

I rode the metro to my stop and then realized I wouldn't have enough time to walk all the way home and get back to the metro in time to meet everyone, so I got back on the metro in the other direction and rode it to the place where we were supposed to meet. I slept on the metro until I got to the stop, which I don't normally do, but I was so tired! We left on a bus to Vladimir and Suzdal, two cities on the Golden Ring. It was an interesting bus ride, and we got to check out some things we don't see in Moscow, like the wooden architecture museum. They also had a bunch of vendors, so I bought some wool mittens, a lollipop in the shape of a rooster (I don't know why all of them were rooster-shaped, but every person selling lollipops was selling rooster-shaped ones), and a gingerbread-like cake/cookie. It was really, really cold when we were there, so we stayed inside as much as we could. The ride on the bus was about 4 hours in each direction, so we ended up getting back to Moscow at 11pm, in time to get on the metro and get home by 12:15 am.

I saw my host mom this morning, and I was surprised that she wasn't mad at me. I hadn't seen her for a couple days because I had originally planned on coming home for dinner on Friday, but never made it home. So, I'm really really happy that she doesn't mind my all-nighters.

Clearly, I didn't get much homework done this weekend so I'm off to do work now!

European Medical Center and my new favorite place - Liga Pap

I've been really bad at updating my blog in the last couple of weeks from the total lack of sleep that I've been experiencing. I'll try to quickly cover it all in one blog post.

I started my new internship at the European Medical Center, where I observe  orthopedic surgeries and shadow the doctors. Ellen is working there, too, so it is really nice to have someone else to share everything with. We go there once a week from 11am (or whenever we can get there) until they tell us we can leave. On the first day we were there, they had already finished all of the surgeries for the day, so we got a second tour of the building by Sergiy (I should keep count of how many people I can find named Sergiy in Russia) and shadowed a doctor named Dmitri. That day was not the most interesting, as we only saw two patients and they were both follow-up appointments. However, this past week we were able to observe two surgeries because our economics class was cancelled and we came early. The first one was on a little boy who had broken his leg and needed to have the pins taken out. The surgery didn't look too difficult and it was over pretty quickly. The anesthesiologist filled us in the whole way through and taught us quite a bit. After that surgery was over, we saw a more serious surgery on a young woman who had broken her leg in a skiing accident and had to have the plate removed from her tibia. The surgery was more difficult and took a lot more elbow grease. It was a lot bloodier and open, but it was super cool to be able to watch.

The Saturday before the past Saturday we wanted to watch the Oregon-Stanford game, but it was on at 4am our time. The Metro is closed between 1 and 5 so we decided to stay out all night and watch it at Liga Pap, a sports bar that Sam and Grace found earlier in the day. In the morning before the crazy night, we went to the Kremlin and had a guided tour around the whole place. It was pretty interesting, but it started raining, so we didn't enjoy it as much as we might have if it had been good weather. After a couple hours at the Kremlin, Jean, Nastia, and I left to get lunch at TGIFridays because we wanted American food. We hung out there for a while after we finished our food, and continued our American gorging at the Cinnabon across the street. It was fantastic. From there, we headed over to the hockey stadium and saw a game between Dinamo (the Moscow team) and some other team. It was a lot of fun. There were a couple fights on the ice, but the thing that drew our attention the most was the "cheerleaders." Their clothes looked like they had been attacked by tigers. They were completely ripped up and their silver underwear was sticking out about as much as it could before they wouldn't be considered to be wearing clothes at all. They changed after each period, and each outfit was slightly more revealing than the last. They were pretty bad dancers, also. They distracted from the game more than they should have. It would have been one thing if they were good at it, but they were pretty horrible and had to dance during every single break.

After the hockey game, we went home for a couple hours to nap and relaxed until around 11pm, when we headed out. We started out at a bar/club that some of the people had been to previously, and we danced there a little bit before moving on to the next place - a bar called Bourbon Street. We had a great time there. They played American music and I liked almost all of it. After a while there, we went over to Liga Pap, where we stayed the whole night. The Oregon-Stanford game wasn't on ESPN here, so we watched the Florida-Alabama game instead. We got to see a couple highlights of the Oregon game, but we missed most of it. We were so tired by the end of the night/morning that we fell asleep in the bleachers (the seating there). There is now a very nice picture of us on their Facebook page. Embarrassing!

On Wednesday (after catching up on some sleep), Nastia, Jean, Ellen, and I went to Liga Pap again to hang out with some of the Marines stationed in Moscow right now. They were all super nice and we had a great time. We had such a good time with them that we ended up hanging out with them again on Friday night, when we stayed out the whole night again until the Metro opened. The rest of the group went to Kazan this weekend, so we didn't have an excursion on Saturday and got to sleep for much of the day.

On Thursday night, we went to see Romeo and Juliet at the Bolshoi Theater. It was amazing. I've never seen a professional ballet, but I think that I may have been spoiled by the quality of the dancing there. It was just so good!

On Friday, we had a walking tour to the area outside the Kremlin and in a couple really nice historic hotels in the area. We went to the Metropol last, and it was the most beautiful hotel I've seen. I would love to stay there. Jean, Eduardo, and I stayed with our professors, Nancy and Jack, and had drinks while listening to the live piano music and got to know each other better. It was a nice break from the super-fast-paced life in Moscow.

Yesterday, I hung out with our new friends again at their dorm. It's pretty nice there. It would be really nice if all of us who were studying abroad here could live together, too. I'm a bit jealous of them, but they have to be here for a long time and have real jobs, while we are studying and are only here for 4 months. It would still be nice, though…

New Jerusalem and food...lots of food

I am sitting here trying to do my reading for class as I let my uncomfortably full stomach get less full, just in time to eat more. My host mom loves to feed me. She loves to feed me so much sometimes it's the last thing I want to do. She makes delicious food. I never thought beet soup would taste good. But it does! But, sometimes when I don't want to eat, I have to anyways or risk hurting her feelings. Often when I get home from school she will ask me, "Why didn't you eat cake for breakfast?" It's hard to explain through my very limited language skills that after two bananas, a plum, cereal, tea, and milk, I didn't feel like topping it off with cake. We also eat a lot of melon. I know that she was sad that I wasn't eating enough melon, so I made it up to her by eating 11 pieces in one sitting. Yesterday I ate eight pieces. She's going to call me into the kitchen in a bit to eat more melon. I guess we'll see how much I can eat today.

On Sunday the group went to New Jerusalem Monastery in Istra. It took about an hour to get there by train and it was a gorgeous day. We walked around the church and the monastery grounds and then had some tea at the museum there. After that, we walked over to a part of the grounds where they had a peasant's house (obviously rebuilt) from about 150 years ago. The house was constructed really well and it was really interesting to hear about how everyday people (well, at least the richer peasants) lived back then. When we were walking back to the train station, we happened across two painted statues. I have no idea why they were there, but they were pretty entertaining.

The train ride back was a little more uncomfortable. The seats were all taken and the train was a local train, rather than an express train, so it took quite a bit longer to get back. We were standing in the area where the passengers board the train for most of the ride, which wasn't terrible until a girl who looked about 13 (she was probably older) came into the area with an adorable little kitten and tried to put a cigarette in its mouth. It was definitely an experience being in a tiny area like that for so long with everyone.

It started raining again today. It is a really comforting noise and I love looking out the window to see it, but I think I'm going to wear waterproof shoes tomorrow. Tomorrow is the first day of my new internship, and I'm really excited to observe surgeries!

We are starting to make plans for Thanksgiving, and it looks like we are going to Egypt! I am really, really excited for it. During the month of November we'll hardly be in Moscow. The first long weekend (Nov. 4-7) we are going to Istanbul, Turkey. The Friday after that until the following Sunday we will be in St. Petersburg, and then we are going to hopefully be in Egypt for the final weekend of November. It will be really exciting and I'll make sure to take tons of pictures.

Classes, internship, and the zoo

On Tuesday morning, we had our academic orientation. All of the classes sounded so interesting that it made it hard to choose. Right now, I am taking 24 units, but I'm only allowed 23, so I have to somehow drop one unit. I am taking:
--Russian I
--Russian-American Relations: from the War of Independence to the War on Terror
--Economic Reform and Economic Policy in Modern Russia
--Foundations of Russian Culture through the Visual
--Six Centuries of Russian History through Architecture: Walking tour

The language class is a continuation of the intensive language program that we've been doing for the past three weeks. The idea of it sounds interesting, but it went kind of slow the first day. I think that once we get the readings it will be better. Our first econ class was just an introductory lecture, but it seemed pretty good. Professor Mau is very busy so I get the feeling we will get out of class early fairly regularly. I loved the Culture through the Visual class. We talked about the Russian Orthodox Church and its iconography. It was fascinating, and it seems like every class is going to be like that. I wasn't able to go to the walking tour class this week because I had an interview for my new internship, but I'm excited for the walking tour class as well.

Speaking of the internship, I am starting a new internship next week. I wasn't happy with the other one that I had, so I interviewed at the European Clinic of Sports Traumatology and Orthopedics. Every Wednesday I will get to shadow surgeons and observe orthopedic surgeries. The clinic is really nice - it would be a nice clinic even in the US.

After our academic orientation on Tuesday, we went to the Moscow Zoo. The entry was free for students - one of the first free things I've seen in Moscow. They had some really funny things in their zoo. After walking past the llamas and alpacas, we found our way to the raccoon cages. It was the saddest raccoon I've ever seen. There was only one in the small cage and he looked so sad! All of the cages looked really small and PETA would be all over it if they saw it.

On Wednesday night we saw Devil's Flower (the movie that looked like Twilight in the poster). It was hilariously bad. We were able to understand most of what was happening through our limited vocabulary, Nastia's translation, and the bad writing. You can see a little bit with this trailer.

Weekend in Kiev

Having been in Kiev, Ukraine for the weekend, I didn't get a chance to update my blog until now. So this will be a long one :) Also, it's kind of late because I'm working on my final for the intensive language portion of the program.

View down the train

Group with Kate (purple jacket) -
(Grace's photo)

On Friday after we got out of our classes, we headed over to the train station with tons of food for the 13-hour train ride. While we were sitting outside waiting for the train, we were all talking and joking around when a guy came up to us to ask us in a Texan accent where we were all from. It was a little funny to hear someone speak English without a Russian accent for a change. He said that he heard me first and knew we were American. I guess I'm loud :P He was very nice, though. After boarding the train, we were waiting and waiting for Sam. When the train started moving, we knew he had missed the train. Luckily, he speaks Russian and wasn't too thrown off by missing it. Sam was supposed to be in my little compartment area on the train (they weren't true compartments because we were in third class, which doesn't have walls) so I decided to make friends with the other two Russian people in my compartment, Kate and Sergei. When they realized I was with a group and that we were split up, they offered to switch places so we could be closer together. It was so nice of them to offer their seats to us so we told them to come back to hang out with us during the train ride. Mistake. Sergei didn't come back - I think he just wanted to sleep or something. But, Kate came back and turned out to be a little crazy. She kept waking up Mikael and saying she was going to sleep in his bed with him, grabbing Eric, crying to Taylor, and speaking really quietly to us in Russian so we didn't understand. She was really strange. She made some of the group nervous when she started obsessively talking about customs and even telling us to tell them that we were her friends. We, of course, did not do that and tried our best to ignore her.

In the middle of all the Kate craziness, the train stopped in the strangest place. It was dark outside but not too late when we stopped at a station in rural Russia. While that doesn't sound that strange, the number of people selling giant stuffed animals strapped to their bodies made it a little weirder. We got off the train and walked through the people, but it was overwhelming to be yelled at in Russian and knocked into by people holding giant crocodile stuffed toys. We got back on the train and "slept" until customs came by to wake us up. I didn't sleep well because they kept the lights on the whole time and the bed was too short to keep my feet from hanging over the people walking by. We made it into Kiev at around 5:30 am and started walking to the hostel. After a bit of an adventure trying to follow the directions, the really nice people at the hostel let us in to put our stuff down, take showers, and hang out in the common room until we were ready to explore the city.

Group in front of St. Michael's

After we left the hostel, we walked down to Independence Square. On the way we passed by a movie filming by what we learned were the Golden Gates of Kiev - the historic gateway into the city. It wasn't open at the time, but we got to peek through the gates and see inside.

Movie set with fake snow

One of the first things I noticed about Kiev was that it seemed much cleaner (especially the air) and friendlier than Moscow.

Once we got to Independence Square, we were able to meet up with Sam, who caught the later train and arrived at 8ish. We ate breakfast and then walked over to Saint Michael's Cathedral, which is apparently properly called "Saint Michael's Golden-Domed Monastery". It was a beautiful group of buildings. The original was built in the Middle Ages but it was demolished by Soviet authorities in the 1930s and rebuilt after Ukraine gained independence. Outside of the church, there was a little structure that people went inside and tried to balance coins on a fountain-looking thing. I have no idea what they were doing, but we tried to do the same thing. It didn't work very well.

 After we left St. Michael's, we walked over to St. Sophia's Cathedral, which was originally built in the mid-1000s AD (obviously a lot of it has been rebuilt/restored, but it still has some original things). We got to climb the bell tower, which gave a beautiful view of the city and the church.

After we left the church, we went over to Andrew's Descent, walked down it, and walked to the Chernobyl Museum. We got a guided a tour of the museum and it was interesting to hear about the Chernobyl disaster, since I didn't know much about it. At that point, we got really hungry and went to dinner at a Ukrainian restaurant, which was absolutely delicious. It was probably the best food I've eaten since I left the United States. It definitely beats out Russian food. We had our own room for dinner and had a great time. We were really tired after doing everything during the day, but we really wanted to check out the Ukranian National Opera, so we walked to the opera house and saw Tchaikovsky's Queen of Spades, which was great and extremely affordable (~$1.25 USD!!). After the opera was over we walked back to the hostel where we watched Indiana Jones and talked to some of the other people staying there before we passed out.

On Sunday morning, we woke up and got ready for another busy day. We ate two breakfasts: one at a Ukrainian cafe and one at a French cafe. The French cafe was absolutely delicious. I could eat everything in there for the rest of my life and be happy. After breakfast, we went to the Kiev Pechersk Lavra<, a monastery that had caves with bodies of monks in them. We had to rent skirts at the front because women weren't allowed to wear pants. We didn't know that before, but we had been warned that we should bring headscarves to wear when we went in churches or the caves. After we went to the caves, we walked over to a WWII memorial park. They had some cool statues and tanks, but I just sat and looked at it all from one place because I was so tired from walking around and not sleeping well. Then, we walked over to the metro and rode it back to Independence Square. We went back to Andrew's Descent to buy souvenirs again. Things were soooooooo cheap in Kiev! It was much, much more affordable than Moscow. Even the souvenirs that were targeted at tourists who knew nothing about prices were ridiculously cheap. We had planned to go to a Georgian food place for dinner, but when we got there, we found out that it had closed down. We discussed where to go after that and ended up deciding on an Indian restaurant. It was decent - not as good as the Ukrainian place, but I enjoyed it anyway. We went back to the hostel to pick up our stuff and headed back to the train station to catch our 9:30 train. We stayed up pretty late into the night having a great time, laughing and talking, and then slept until we got into Moscow at 10:30, in time for our morning class!

I completely fell in love with Kiev and had an amazing time. This is what being abroad is about. I put more pictures up at http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/sredir?uname=HeidiGT&target=ALBUM&id=5519405336678094657&authkey=Gv1sRgCOfKlZGgkMqG5wE&feat=email so feel free to check them out!

A couple of group pictures

I wanted to post a couple pictures of the group so you could see the people I am here with. I stole a couple of these pictures from Grace. Enjoy!

Grace, Erin, Lilly, and Lisa at Propaganda

Teava, Grace, Me, Eric, Nastia, and Alyssa in front of Moscow State University

(From back left) Lisa, Nastia, Grace, Me, Erin (front left), Lilly, and Alyssa at the Mexican Restaurant