From Pennsylvania to Moscow

Perhaps you have read about the politics class I'm taking here in Moscow, and if not, to update you, I had to write a 10 page midterm paper on a topic of my choice.  This topic of course, would turn out to be something that interested me and be what I really want to learn from the course.  For my topic I chose to write about the layout of power among the president, the prime minister, and the Federal Assembly.  All of my information comes directly from the Russian Constitution, government websites, and wikipedia when I couldn't translate the Russian websites into English.  It wasn't a difficult paper, however I definitely feel like I have a much better idea on how the government works, which is important for everyone to learn if they plan on keeping an active part on what goes on in their society.  Without further adue, here it is, enjoy! The Distribution of Powers Within the Russian Federation           ...

Today is March 22nd, well, the 23rd now.  An hour ago I was exhausted and ready to fall asleep after a long day of museum touring and shopping for groceries, so what could have possibly got me in a mind set to all of a sudden, not be tired anymore? Before I get on with the punch line of this little story, we went, meaning Rachel, Marina, and I, to the Pushkin museum, and the other museum dedicated to Pushkin.  To my surprise the metro station we got off at was located directly in front of Christ the Savior Cathedral! So, if you are ever here in Moscow and want to take the metro to the cathedral, it's the red line and station: Кропоткинская.  It brought back some nice memories of marching in a parade last May with a flag simply to big for me, baring a picture of St. George with the words "Вера и Дело" (Faith and Deeds) written underneath. I put those memories to the back of mind as we were approaching the smaller of the two museums. I was very impressed and after being t...

Tuesday March 15th, I expected more than anything else to be very relaxing.  I slept till 11am, and had lunch plans with some friends from Albany.  Bob and Pam are a very sweet older couple whom I had class with my freshmen year.  They work in the SUNY office here at МГУ in the main building.  They help students from America come over here to study.  Joe told me they were here and since September and that they would love to see me. We were trying to figure out a time and place that we could meet to catch up, and at last we figured it out.  We had a lovely lunch in the cafe downstairs, and decided that we would have to do this again sometime soon. After saying goodbye, I went to the building where I had classes to meet with the Dean so I could prolong my visa since it would expire March 24th.  It took him about 30mins to scan my passport, visa, immigration card, student ID, and other various important documents.  I sat there staring at my purse ...

Sunday March 13th The night before proved to be quite horribly loud and annoying until about 6am, so no sleep for me!  The hostel we stayed at was really nice, however, the walls were super thin, so all the sound would travel right into our room.  There were about 6 people sitting in the kitchen drinking, singing, shouting, doing typical drunk Russian things.  It sounded like they were in the room with us, and it didn't seem to matter to our hosts in the least.  Guess it's just that Russian mentality. We "woke up" at 10am, got breakfast at McDonald's and I made the mistake of buying 2 chicken caesar wraps.  You know how in the US snack wraps are really small, and you need at least two to get filled up? Well, in Russia, they are made big, and one works just fine as a meal.  The second one ended up in my purse, which I decided would work as a snack for later in the day. Our first stop was St. Isaac's Cathedral. This beautiful cathedral is now a museum op...

Saturday, March 12th As the title suggests, we went to The Peter and Paul Fortress.  To get there we got on the Metro which is much smaller than the Moscow Metro and isn't nearly as beautiful, it did however seem to be deeper, or perhaps the escalators simply weren't as steep, because going down on them felt like it took 5 minutes.  Which doesn't sound like a lot, but it definitely is when it's an escalator.  To get to the  fortress we had to walk through a little park which must be beautiful in the summer, or simply when the grass is visible.  The park was loaded with interesting statues and monuments of women and children in different poses, sometimes holding things like lutes or harps.                               When we first arrived at the ticket booth, Rachel spotted a poster that said Modern Dresses of the 18-19th centuries.  Marina asked everyone if they wanted to see it...

Yesterday,  Thursday March 10, was a day of plenty to do and not enough time to get it all done.  I had a ton of laundry that needed to be done, and had two classes to worry about all before heading out to St. Petersburg around 8pm.  To top it all off, the night before at 11pm Josh from SRAS sent us an email saying that Joesph Biden was coming to МГУ to give a speech on the relationship between Russia and the US.  I was so excited, and there was no way that I was going to miss this opportunity to see and hear our Vice-President speak. We had to send our passport numbers and information to the embassy to get in.  My good friend Joe had emailed me about it as well.  The boys and I spoke with out Political Structure professor and he gave us permission to skip class in order to go to this event. We went to the new library and headed to the building to the right of it.  Surprisingly, security wasn't that bad.  We went through metal detectors at the ver...

Have you ever gone out shopping only to find out when you got to your destination that it was Black Friday?  And when you got there, you decided that you had simply gone too far to leave, so might as well stay and get what you need and get out?  Well, that was me. Last night I met Chris and Spencer for dinner, only to find out that I didn't have class today or Tuesday! Yay...what the heck am I going to do with myself? I'll tell you what, NOT eat mystery meat! I decided that first thing in the morning I'd go to Ashan for groceries and cook myself a good meal. I should have done my research and found out why there wasn't going to be class. When I left the dorms at 1:30pm, I noticed that there were a lot of people out on the streets, and even more selling flowers and little trinkets.  Then it clicked.  Even though today is only the 7th of March, the 8th is National Woman's Day.  This holiday is very much like Valentine's day or Mother's Day except all ...

Friday, March 4 Turned out to be a very good day.  I woke up nice and early to get to class for 10:50am.  I had Russian language and Практический with Мария, the nice blond lady.  We are doing a big review on verbs of motion, which I am thrilled about.  It's very intense in that we need to use them with prefixes.  Prefixes determine how you are moving as in: leaving, exiting, moving through or around, from behind or in front.  Sounds complicated, right? You have no idea.  To make this fun and interesting, Мария (Maria) printed out the story of "Goldilocks and The Three Bears."  It was in Russian of course, but whenever a verb of motion came up, we had to choose the correct one and put it in.  We read through the story once, got all the correct answers, then Мария tells us to close our notebooks.  She looked at one of the Italian girls at the other end of the room, and tells her to start telling the story. She starts out by saying, There ...