класс

Today was my quintessential Moscow day, a day which I've imagined for so long but never thought would actually happen.
I took the metro to the university and had a few classes, as per usual. After classes finished for the day, a few students and I had lunch with a new Russian friend, Vladimir. We ate at ТГИ Фрайдес (TGI Fridays. hah), then after lunch Vladimir drove us to a WWII memorial and park. It was a beautiful sunny day, perfect for driving. As I mentioned before, Moscow drivers are insane. So there we were, zipping through the streets of Moscow, windows down, hair blowing in the wind, listening to remixed Mozart songs. IT WAS SO COOL. After walking around the memorial, we went to the little museum by the memorial and then went on to the park to just walk around. We eventually parted ways and now here I am, sitting at my little desk in my little Moscow apartment, doing homework with the sounds of a bustling city in the background.
'Twas a lovely, lovely day.



Monday was the first day of classes. I was pretty nervous at first, but they really weren't too scary. There are two other students from the Dickinson program in my class, another American, a Korean, and some French people. The thing that made me most nervous was the fact that I'd be learning Russian from professors who would also be teaching us in Russian. That's a lot of Russian! The professors are really nice, though, and they want us to learn so it's not a problem to ask questions or ask for an explanation.
I'm taking four classes taught in Russian: grammar, modern text (basically just reading and learning vocab through reading), phonetics, and a class about Russian mass media. For these classes all the foreign students were split up according to their Russian level. The Dickinson students also have a three-hour lecture class on Tuesdays called Russia Today. Luckily this class is in English, except for a few times when visiting lecturers only speak Russian, which should make for an interesting, fun-filled three hours. Шутка.
I like all my professors, some more than others. The phonetics professor is the most energetic and I think I'll have the most fun in that class; whenever she could tell we were getting tired, she has us stand up and do little counting or speaking exercises while also stretching or jumping. Fun stuff. The most difficult class will probably be Mass Media, which coincidentally also features the most serious professor. She informed us that she is a "conservative, structured person" and that she won't be smiling or act all cheerful in class because we'll be talking about serious topics. Awesome. The topics all sound very, very interesting, though, and I think I'm most excited about this class.


By far the funniest part of this week was yesterday: I returned home and the toilet was gone. Seriously, just gone. My host mom said something along the lines of "the man came and took the toilet and he's bringing another one tomorrow." She then proceeded to give me a pot to use in the meantime.
(pause for laughter)
Luckily today, as promised, "the man" returned and installed a new toilet. Hooray!


I have more to say and more pictures to post, but I need to finish homework and will leave you with this one little tid-bit:
Russia can control the weather. Really. They have these special airplanes, or something like that, which move the clouds and postpone the rain. Apparently this is done for most major holidays, such as Moscow's birthday last Saturday. The weather was indeed very pleasant and sunny, with not a cloud in the sky.