From Pennsylvania to Moscow

Tuesday, February 22nd was both mine as well as group 2's day off.  We were scheduled to go see several different museums that day including: Gorky, and Chekov.  The night before Marina sent us an email saying that she had to reschedule from 1pm to 3pm, because she had to administer a standardized test to a student.  The morning of the excursion, however, we received another email from her, saying that she  had become very ill, and couldn't take us. I met Chris and Rachel in the cafe for lunch, and they both felt that we should do something today since our plans got canceled.  Rachel really wanted to see Gorky Park, which is an amusement park, but in the winter they have ice skating and perhaps some other winter related sports.  We went back to her room, pulled up a map, and figured out how to get there.  So we hopped on the metro, and got off at парк-култура which was contacted to another line we needed to get onto called Октябирская.  We could...

Monday February 21 was a day of, unfortunately, more paperwork.  Tara and I met Chris, Rachel, and Trevor nearby Dom Studenta at 10am.  Marina was there and took from us those little gray slips of paper that we picked up last Friday.  We looked out into the corridor and there was a very long line of students.  Marina told us to go get breakfast and that she should be done in about an hour.  Every month, we need to renew our housing.  We are given a Пропуск (propoosk), which I explained in an earlier post, is an addition to our Student IDs which clarifies with a stamp of approval, that we live here. The пропуск expires every month, so that means we need to miss class once a month and miss class to take care of it.  The idea of this upset me, and put me off on a tangent of missing how American universities work where we simply make a payment on housing once, and we are good for a full semester, or in some cases the entire academic year.  Then I went...

Sunday February 20th is a day that I don't think I'll ever forget.  I woke up in the morning feelin' like P Diddy- ok I'm done, I promise...*Cough* anyway, I woke up in the morning knowing that I was supposed to meet a man named Josh W. a member of SRAS for a walking tour of Moscow.  Everyone else, the night before was out partying, so I honestly did not know who was awake/alive at the time, and I had been given instructions to meet him at a specific metro stop.  Not growing up in a big city, but a simply small town, I was totally new to the idea of public transportation, and the metro completely overwhelmed me.  I emailed Josh, telling him that I would love to come on his tour, but there is no way that I could possibly get to him by myself.  He promptly replied and gave me his interns phone number, and said that David would meet me at the school and make sure I would get there no problem.  After sending out multiple text messages, facebook messages, and em...

February 16th, as you may have guessed simply needed it's own posting, these next couple days should catch me up to our lovely and frigid, present day Moscow. Thursday February 17th was nothing special.  I had Чтение и Понимание Текста again, which to my surprise managed to kick my butt...again.  It's the only class out of all of my Russian ones, that seems to give me any problems.  We had a little test in which the professor said a bunch of random words and we had to write them on paper.  That I had no problem with.  Then, she wanted us to find synonyms for these words.  Well, that's where I failed, lol.  I forgot my dictionary, and even if I knew what some of the words meant, I didn't know any synonyms for them.  So instead, I decided to use them in a sentence.  That was the best I can do considering we had no way to prepare for this in advance or know what to bring to class for it. After that class, I had my other English elective whic...

Something I had failed to mention in my earlier posts was that, whenever we had somewhere important to go, we'd meet up with Marina, she would never tell us what it was, what to bring or anything that could possibly make our lives a little bit easier.  I would get a text message from her saying "Meet us in the front of your security sector at 10am."  Nothing else, like bring a jacket, because we are going to be going out into the freezing cold, or bring your passport and Справка ( a spravka is basically a piece of paper saying that we live here, it's an addition to our student ID) because you'll be needing it to do more paperwork.  Such is Russian culture.  Monday and tuesday had gone by without any problems, but now, well, the drama begins. Wednesday February 16th Today had to be the longest day of my life in Moscow thus far.  I started out the morning with waking up at 7:30am.  Everyone has a mandatory class called Russian Studies Seminar.  It's n...

As the title suggests, I'm going to do my best to recap that last 2 weeks, however, this may end up being multiple entries, but we'll see. One of the things I was most upset about was the fact that I did not have any internet in my room.  Before I left, I had talked it over with my parents and my boyfriend, Marcus.  They all agreed that Russia has done a good job of playing catchup with the rest of the of world, and that they should have wifi.  Unfortunately, the only wifi I could get in the building was in a little cafe in the basement of the dormitory.  My roommate Tara, however, was smart, and brought an ethernet cable with her, and was able to plug her laptop in, and the internet worked fine for her. February 8th, consisted of, don't be surprised, more paperwork.  Marina took all of us to the building where we would be having our classes. There we met the dean in which he had to create student IDs for us.  That process took at least 2 hours.  O...

I have been in Moscow for now 2 weeks, and ever since I got here, I've been thinking...gee, I should start a journal or something.  But, I guess you can say that I was simply too lazy or too busy trying to take in everything and get used to my new home.  Now however, I have plenty of free time and everyone from home is still sleeping considering the 8 hour time difference.  Anyway, the best place to start is at the beginning, so before I start to get ahead of myself, let's look back at February 4th 2011. First here is some simple information.  I traveled with the KEI program through my University - SUNY Albany.  I'm a second semester sophomore, and have been studying Russian for 6 years, going on 7.  I started back in 8th grade, so technically I'm a senior in my major Russian language, but still a sophomore when it comes to my second major - Criminal Justice.  I am not fluent in Russian, and that is why I came, to make a difference for myself.  ...