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…
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