I promise, I'll get some pictures up soon!

For now, just words. Sorry.

The last week has been exhilarating, hilarious, depressing and exhausting by turns. More good than bad, certainly. I feel like I'm starting to get settled into life in Moscow, which is nice because there are occasional moments when I feel like this is normal. At the same time, it means that I've settled into a sort of routine and there are moments where I feel like this is normal. It's... confusing.

ANYWAY the point is that overall, I like being in Moscow. Last Friday all of us went to see the Russian National Dance Show, which sounds like it'd be very serious and ballet-filled when in fact it was a complete farce of a show that grew increasingly bizarre as it went on. I mean it was great--the dancers were excellent and it was a lot of fun. The first half of the show was an approximate history of Moscow, starting with some Vikings landing on the shore and drinking and strutting about with swords. They skipped through the whole centuries-of-serfdom part rather quickly, though there were some charming peasant-ish dancers who seemed to be pretty happy about their lot in life. Lots of vaguely Russian Orthodox costumes as well as plenty of royalty. PLUS there was this one dance in a tea house where this random dancer in a horse costume came in and joined the fun. The history lesson ended with a group of dancers marching in red overalls with various agricultural and industrial tools in their hands with a huge Soviet flag waving in the background, interrupted by a group of ladies in white dresses with umbrellas, interrupted by Yuri Gagarin and a ballerina en pointe, interrupted by all of the above for a rousing finale. The second half, to be honest, was a little long--it was just a bunch of random dances, some old, some new, some downright weird. I'm fairly certain the music was all composed on a computer--none of the instruments sounded real. Plus this random guy would come out in a magician's outfit every once in a while and sing us a song and kind of jiggle around the stage for a bit. Highlights of the half included some dancers in big sparkly fur coats and a pair of dancers in HUGE duck costumes who were chased through a company of other dancers by a guy with a gun that spewed fireworks. It was an experience.

Saturday we went to a market where you had to bargain--scary, considering that I don't really know any Russian yet, particularly numbers. As a result, I only ended up getting a wallet, but I did really need it and it was cheap, so I knew the numbers he was using. After that we went to Red Square and Liz tried to catch a pigeon, but due to various uncooperative Russians, she was unsuccessful. Next time. Lots of pictures of St. Basil's and the outside of Lenin's tomb, wherein lies his mummified corpse (it was closed, but I'm definitely going back). The rest of the weekend I spent sleeping and hanging out and doing a little work.

A note: I promise not to get too political on this blog, but I just want to say that Sarah Palin is truly a national embarrassment. It's come up more than once. Anyway. I'm really enjoying being with all of these International Relations majors, because they're very informed and interesting people. I'm reading a book I borrowed from Elena called Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, which is an autobiography of a man who was involved in very high-level deception in negotiations between US engineering and construction firms and countries whose natural resources were potentially useful to the US (particularly oil in Latin America and the Middle East, but others too). I realized as I was reading this book that I know pretty much nothing about what's happened in the world between WWII and about two years ago; I would say I'm fairly well informed about the current state of things, at least in US politics, but I was frankly shocked at how much of the information in this book was new to me. I'm really looking forward to taking history and PoliSci classes while I'm here and learning more about all of this.

As for Russian, this week has been kind of rough so far. Yesterday was the first time I felt like I really should have just gone to France. It's becoming more and more difficult to keep up in my Russian class; it's supposed to be intensive, but we're moving so fast I can barely keep up. I'm not the only one who's struggling and we only have three more days of intensive (so we'll be going from 5 hours a day to 8 hours a week), so I'll survive, but I'm beginning to realize why Russian is considered a difficult language to learn; all these cases and genders and numbers and groups and other little differentiations that make all the difference. Today was definitely better, though, and the more I study the better I do, so it's only a matter of time.

Also today we went to a bookstore with a big English-language section, which was fun fun fun. Not only did the three of us geek out and peruse books and talk about books and just hold books for a while, but I got to buy school supplies and they are freaking awesome. I still get a little excited about school supplies, guys, not gonna lie. I'm making myself a dictionary of all the words I know in Russian as we go along (basically an organized vocabulary list), an idea I stole from Liz, so I got a notebook just for that and tabs with all the Russian letters on them. This notebook was intended for Russian students taking English, because it says аиглийский язык (English language) on one side and словарь (dictionary) on the other, and it has a little English grammar summary on the inside cover (irregular plurals like "feet", irregular verbs like "to be"), and I like it. It appeals to me that I'm an English(-speaking) student taking Russian and using this book for its purpose, except backwards. I also have those little tabs with sticky backs so I can flag things in my texts. HOORAY I love having the potential to be organized. ALSO I bought a portable tea mug that looks like a Matroyshka doll because Russians drink practically nothing but tea and it'll be awesome to have tea on the Metro when it gets really cold. Plus, it looks like a Matryoshka doll. As if it weren't already obvious that I'm not Russian...

Anyway, I'm heading to Kiev this weekend, which should be great! We're taking an overnight train on Friday, so we'll be in Ukraine from Saturday morning to Sunday afternoon, at which point we get on another overnight train that will get us into Moscow at 6:30 AM on Monday, at which point we'll basically go directly to school. It should be interesting.

пака!