Despite my lack of communication and contact with the rest of the world outside Russia, I am doing very well. I just got a power adapter so I should be able to Skype/email/call now. Unfortunately, the time in Moscow is 11 hours later than on the west coast. So I probably won't be able to talk in the middle of the day, but I can talk in the morning or at night.
Since I'm a few days behind, I'll give a day-by-day of what I've been doing. The flight on Singapore Airlines was very nice, though I was hoping for a wee bit more room. The food was good, and the entertainment was great. They even had little games to learn a bunch of different languages. I spent a while learning the numbers in Russia, but I managed to forget them soon after getting off the plane, making purchases much more difficult. After getting off the plane, I ran into Lisa, Erin, and Lilly (who are all in the same program), who were apparently on the same plane but I hadn't seen because the plane was so big. We found our way to baggage claim and didn't have too much trouble getting our baggage. One woman even helped me grab my bag off the carousel when another pushed me out of the way (and I mean **pushed**). After getting our bags, we went through what seemed like customs, but we didn't actually do anything except walk through a doorway with a guard. We found the person who was waiting for us with our names on signs (Masha). I felt pretty cool. Haha.
Once we were out of the airport, we took our overloaded luggage carts and the taxi driver loaded them into the van. The van was pretty old, but it seemed to be working fine when we got into it. After a while in the taxi (I didn't really have a sense of time after the long plane ride and change in time zones), the driver seemed to be having some trouble driving the car. It was a manual transmission and he kept changing gears willy-nilly and revving the engine. I don't know if it was because the car was acting up, or if he didn't really understand how to drive a stick shift, but he shifted from a high gear into a low one and the car came to a jolting stop and would not move out of traffic. People were honking and going around us, and after 15 or 20 minutes, he managed to get the car to the side of the road and call another taxi. When that car arrived, we didn't quite know what to do - it was a tiny car and we had already filled the big van. He called another "bigger" car, which was only slightly bigger than the first one. We had to split our group into the two cars, but only Masha could speak Russian so one of the cars would go without a Russian speaker. That car was mine. Lilly and I got into the taxi and crossed our fingers that the driver would take us to the right place. Thankfully, my host mother was waiting downstairs when we drove up to the building and she helped me into the apartment.
As I quickly found out, my host mother, Galina, speaks very little English. It is amazing how much can be communicated entirely through gestures, noises, and continuing to speak in your native language to someone who does not understand. That is how we've been getting along for the past four days, and nothing horrible has happened. She is very nice and wants to make sure I'm always taken care of. She cooks very well, and I've been eating delicious food the whole time I've been here. She makes this cabbage soup that everyone eats here, and it is very good. Also, we've been eating watermelon at every meal. There are watermelons everywhere and they are the one food that seems to be affordable. It costs about 65 cents for a huge watermelon that lasts for days with only a couple people eating it. It is also one way to stay hydrated, since they don't seem to drink anything besides tea.
On Sunday, Galina took me for a walk to the Metro so I would know how to meet up with everyone on Monday. I live within walking distance of the Academy, but the meeting place on Monday for orientation was the Metro. It's about a 20-minute walk from my apartment to the Metro. It may sound childish, but I was proud of myself when I was able to cross the street by myself. The drivers here are crazy and don't stop for anything. They do not want to let anyone go in front of them, so merging looks like hell. It is really scary to walk in front of these cars and pray that they will not hit you. After coming home on Sunday, I didn't do much except sleep most of the day, trying to catch up from a few nights with almost no sleep and the 11-hour time difference.
On Monday, I made it to the Metro without getting lost and met up with everyone else for orientation. We walked down to the Academy and had our orientation. Afterwards, we bought cell phones and wandered around the shops and market. We went to McDonalds, and we tried to read the menu, but with only a couple of us having studied the alphabet already, ordering was a little difficult. But, everyone got what they wanted through sounding things out and pantomiming. They have free wifi at McDonalds, so that is where I'm posting this from. I do have internet at my place, but we are going on a little excursion in a while, so I didn't want to walk all the way home and all the way back.
I have a million things I could talk about, but I'm going to leave this for now and try to catch up on emails.
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