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…