universal phenomena + photos

Last night I attended a rehearsal of the MSU Chamber Orchestra!! I got a phone call Monday night from a guy named Sasha who spoke decent English. He said Dima had called him and told him I wanted to join, and gave me directions to a place not far from the main building and said to show up around 7:15 Tuesday night.

I did, and it was fantastic.

They're an authentic Baroque chamber group, and last night there were about 6 violins, 3 violas including myself, 1 cello, and a singer. Since MSU doesn't have a music department, this is kind of the few random students who play a stringed instrument but aren't at a conservatory. Man, music is fantastic, and even though they have different words for "up bow" and "down bow" and "don't take this repeat" and "start at measure 67," it worked pretty dang well. Then at break, it became a game in which everyone drank tea and interrogated the newcomer American (me). In Russian. Which was, quite frankly, terrific, because I'm actually somewhat capable of talking about myself in Russian. Things like "I am from Washington State and go to school in California," "I have played viola since fifth grade," "I am studying physics but still want to play in an orchestra," "I like astronomy and want to become an astronaut." It was a bit of a brain strain, but experiences like that are honestly what I CAME to Russia for!!

I also met a girl named Julia who plays viola. She's 18 and in her 2nd year at some Moscow Art institute. She spoke about the same amount of English as I do Russian, though recently she'd been studying German so it threw her off a bit. And she is awesome! Exactly the kind of person I was hoping to eventually meet. And so I discovered my first universal phenomenon - violists. We're everywhere, yet we're unique in our love of the viola, and we're awesome.

So, that will keep me busy on Tuesdays and Fridays (yes, Fridays) from 7:15ish until 10pmish. (sidenote: here is one instance where I *love* the "ish" on timeframes.) I had to tune my viola a half step down since they're so authentic and Baroque, and I may have to use a Baroque bow and acquire gut strings. We'll see. It's only been one rehearsal, and I don't exactly speak the language.

Today I discovered another universal phenomenon at lunch in the cafeteria in the physics building: physics majors. They had stacked a bunch of empty plastic bottles into a huge tower in the middle of a table:

I don't know what it is about little things like that, but I love it. Another instance from last week - someone spectacularly dropped their tray in the large cafeteria in the main building, and everyone applauded. People are great sometimes.

The latest: we may be moving Saturday. Yeah. With that, here is a picture of the building we're currently living in:

There are 22 floors, and if you count from the top (22) down to 10, my window is the one you can see on the farthest left hand side.

Tonight Laura, Jenna and I ventured out to find an Indian restaurant, and we succeeded! We had Samosas, and I got Chicken Tikka Masala with one of those mango yogurt drinks. We should've ordered family style, but live and learn. It was in a building called Sputnik Hotel, near a huge tribute to Yuri Gagarin. Pretty sweet. Here's Laura with me at the restaurant:

And Jenna with me outside the building the restaurant was in (note "Sputnik" at the top in cyrillic):

After dinner, we headed back to the dorm but first stopped at a convenience store to get some delicious pistachio ice cream. Excellent decision if I may say so.

While I'm in picture mode...here's one I managed to get inside a trolleybus (I spend at least an hour of my life each day in one of these, and usually they are packed with people):

And this was taken near the art gallery we went to on Sunday:

Here's Jeff sitting in a random chair:

Tomorrow is March, which is odd. It means I will have less internet access - I only purchased 1000 MB since we are probably (hopefully?) moving this weekend. It means I had to get a new metro pass and Irina is supposed to give us new bus passes. It means I may begin to hear from summer programs. It means spring had dang well better show up sometime, though I'm kind of dreading the transition from winter to spring since it will be slushy and gross. So it goes.

the rest of the weekend

Saturday: slept in and did two loads of laundry. Around 5pm, things started happening - Irina told us to meet her downstairs to extend our dorm cards, my second load of laundry was done, and Katie texted me saying they were heading to a bar and she'd call when they arrived to give me directions to join them.

Instead of actually getting new dorm cards, they wrote something like "really okay until 2/26." (This took a good 40 minutes.) But today we FINALLY got new cards, good through March 9. Which is not super far away. So, who knows what's up.

I devised a clever way to hang my sheets to dry in the bathroom and felt very clever, and then our entire suite minus Laura's room smelled like wet laundry for about 24 hours.

Katie called around 6 and gave me directions to a bar called 16 Tons. It involved taking the red line metro to the center of Moscow, transferring to the purple line, and going a few more stops. Laura agreed to accompany me on this adventure, and come 7 or so we made our way there (turns out I don't own, or at least didn't bring, adequate "we're going out to a bar or club" clothing, silly me). As usual walked around in circles a bit, but in the end all was well. It was great to see Katie!! I don't know her very well aside from "yeah she's a Mudder in my class," but it was still awesome, plus she had a few friends from her math program with her as well as two Russian girls kind enough to show them around. These people spoke English, the menu at the bar was in English, I had a delicious cocktail of some variety and a fantastic caesar salad, and life was good! We had to head back around 8 or 9 though, because apparently their dorm has a weird "you can't get back in after 11pm" rule.

Their dorm is quite nice, but it's nowhere near a metro stop and they don't use the buses, so suddenly I got a new perspective on my daily commute...at any rate, it was great to meet the other people in the math program! We all chilled until midnight or so, and when Laura and I decided to leave the guards didn't want to let us out because apparently we hadn't checked in properly. I had no idea what they were saying. It was odd being the best Russian speaker (aside from the Russian girls they were with) of that group - none of the math folks knows much if any Russian it seems. Still had no idea what the guards were yelling about, so with Katie's help we played the "dumb American" card and he exasperatedly let us out. weird.

Important Discovery Of The Evening: after midnight, buses only run in the direction opposite of which you want to go. SERIOUSLY. Laura and I wound up walking all the way back to our dorm, which took a good 45 minutes (though admittedly 15 of that was spent standing at bus stops hoping for a bus to come). LAME. and cold, but not as cold as it was last week, or we may have died.

Sunday: went to church! It was fantastic!! Hard to find in typical Anglican/Episcopal tradition, but suddenly there's this cute small cathedral-esque building and you walk in and all these people are speaking English to you with British accents and offering you a bulletin and saying "welcome"! They used the CW (Common Worship) book, not the BCP as in the US, but much of it was similar. The whole service just felt great, I was incredibly glad to be there. I met a few random people, too - a British priest visiting Moscow on sabbatical, a guy from the US who writes a column in The Moscow Times, a Russian named Vincent who is randomly Anglican and speaks good English. Seriously good times, I am going every week if at all possible. It struck me how fitting that it was the first Sunday of Lent...Meredith gives up the US for Lent or some such. :)

Next up was failed logistics a la Russia. The plan was for me to meet up with the group to go to a museum. I took the metro to an orange station that has an underground connection to a green station and accidentally came up at the green station, so I called Irina and told her this and pulled out a map and figured out which direction the orange station was in and started walking. She thought I was somewhere else, and once I was 3/4 of the way to the orange station she calls me for the umpteenth time and says "come back to the green station and meet us down by the trains!" ...so anyway it took until 2pm for me to find her and thus the group. I grabbed Масдоналдс for lunch (hey you've gotta get McDonald's in Russia right?) and off we headed to the Tretyakov Gallery, a HUGE art museum. They claim it takes around 3 hours to go through it, but I only got a bit past halfway in 3 hours, and then we left. Honestly I was past my "look at paintings" saturation point anyway, but DANG is that a huge museum!! Some of the paintings take up entire walls. I even recognized a few and felt slightly more cultured. :) I got an audio tour, and all I have to say is they must pay those people per word. "The pastel greens accentuate the stark contrast of the bold background, enhanced by a bleak portrayal of youthful innocence amidst a chaotic city scene typical of the eighteenth century." BLARGH. Overall, though, it was three hours well spent.

Then we headed back to the dorm, I had instant noodles (hooray) for dinner, and did my thermal physics and Russian language homework. Laura used a good chunk of my remaining 3000ish MBs of internet that poofs at the end of the month to watch TV shows such as "the office" and "ugly betty." I mostly just half-listened while doing homework, which I think was more amusing than watching.

Today (Monday, not technically the weekend, but still): slow buses made me late to thermal physics and the first 30 minutes was spent listening to how I should go see ballets at a nearby Children's Ballet center. (The rest was spent discussing adiabatic thermal processes and deriving fun things like specific heat. Somehow doing a full derivation as physics makes it 10 times more interesting than it was in frosh chem.) Then lunch at the cafeteria there - I need to figure out how to order food more effectively - and a bit of last minute Russian homework over at the medical building prior to Russian language class. I like Mondays, I have things to do!

Also, I noticed it is staying light slightly later!! Dusk is closer to 6pm versus 5:30pm!!! This means spring may actually happen sometime before May, which is good.

Think I'll go watch a newly downloaded BSG episode on my laptop and enjoy some more instant noodles. Oh yeah, living the good life here in Moscow, college style. :)

fatherland defenders' day

Happy (belated) February 23!

Here in Russia, Feb. 23 is Fatherland Defenders' Day (День защитника Отечества), which originally means something about the Russian Civil War, but it's come to be popularly known as more of just a "guys' day" (a counterpart to March 8, which is women's day). Let me just say, Russia really knows how to do holidays. None of the US "hmmm I think Monday is something...presidents' day? ah well, I don't get the day off anyhow" stuff.

As such, a few cool things happened.
1) no classes - now there's a concept, unlike at Mudd, when there's a national holiday a university gives its students the day off!
2) I was told that we (the women) were cooking dinner for the guys and wound up being in charge of a salad and dessert
3) there were fantastic fireworks at 9pm

Lack of classes meant no Politology at 10am. And since a typical morning consisting of getting up, talking on Skype, taking a shower, eating breakfast, and getting to class takes a good 2.5-3 hours, I was happy to sleep well past 7am.

Around noon, Jenna and Jessica came down to talk to Laura and me about the dinner we were going to prepare. (Apparently Celina and Nick had decided it was going to happen, and I figured what the heck, nothing else to do anyway and I'm pro-food!) I was a little vague on what all the main courses entailed, but everyone was talking about tons and tons of pasta and sauce and meatballs and chicken, so I figured I'd do a salad. If I was in the US I'd whip up some killer guac...but no can do here. Next best thing - a salad containing avocado, little mozzarella cheese balls, tomato, and red onion. And of course lettuce, and some kind of dressing called "dressing salad sauce" (translated straight from the bottle).

So off we went to Рамстор, the big grocery store only a few bus stops away. Thing is, an excursion to Рамстор (that's ramstore for you non cyrillic readers) always involves most of an afternoon, especially when it's busy. The lines are outrageous, and just getting to and from there is a bit of an adventure, not to mention finding things once inside.

We made out pretty well (except Jenna left her empty backpack in her cart and it got stolen...she had to re-find all the items in her cart and is now lacking a backpack). Got back around 4pm or so, and soon realized no one had procured dessert, so that task was given to me since all I had to do was chop stuff up. They originally wanted dinner to be at 6, which got pushed to 7, and then 7:30, and wound up actually being a bit after 8. It's the Russian Way.

Anyway, it was a fabulous meal!! Everyone loved my salad, we had WAY too much pasta but it was all good, Jessica made those tomato with mozzarella cheese things I love so much, and Советское Шампанское started flowing. (That's Soviet Champagne.) It was great to eat a "normal" home cooked meal. Then right around 9 as everyone was finishing eating and I was about to serve dessert, fireworks started going off everywhere! (Dessert was some kind of chocolate covered cake with foamy cakelike batter and swirls of something resembling cool whip inside, and vanilla ice cream on the side.) Everyone opened up the windows - WIDE - and the temperature promptly dropped to below freezing indoors. But no one cared, because as Jeff put it "we're at the epicenter of a ring of fireworks!!" The view from the 17th floor was phenomenal. Then everyone ate dessert - the ice cream was exquisite - and vodka appeared along with a few silly rounds of "Indian Poker" and around 1 or 2am everyone dispersed.

I managed to meet some people last night, though - a guy and a girl from Oregon (small world!), a guy from Iran, and a girl from France who's been living in Latvia recently. She was awesome, one of those eccentric travel the world and live out of a suitcase and speak 8 languages kind of people.

Now it is Saturday, and today is laundry day for me. I'm actually washing my sheets right now, so I'm hoping they'll be able to dry by the time I want to go to bed tonight. I talked with Katie from Mudd briefly yesterday, and she's going to call and see if anyone from my group wants to join her and some from her group as they're led around to some bars and/or clubs by a couple of Russian girls they met. (I think that's the plan, anyway.) So, that should be an adventure, if it happens.

I think that's a good motto for me. "That will be an adventure, if it happens."

the weather

I think this pretty much says it all, courtesy of weather.com -



Oi.

curlsicles are amusing

Remember, it's a good thing when I don't update this for a couple of days, because it probably means I actually found something else to occupy myself with. (Either that or the internet broke, or my computer crashed, or I froze to death.) But at the moment it's more the "I actually have kind of a bit of a life," emphasis on the "kind of" and "bit."

Thermal Physics! He lectures slowly due to the language barrier, but the class seems to be going somewhere. We meet two or three times a week for about two hours each time. I really need to get my hands on a copy of that Thermal Physics book, though, which is currently Irina's mission, though she has about 20 million other logistical concerns to sort out at present, so we shall see.

Russian Language! It's fantastic to have a course teaching a language that I enjoy learning and that is practical and useful. I actually chatted with the lady on the 9th floor when Laura and I went on a mission to do her laundry. (Okay, so "chatted with" may be a stretch, but work with me.) I don't mind having a lot of work in that class because it's interesting and applicable and even fun.

Other stuff! ...doesn't exist. Well, techically I'm in Russian Studies Seminar, but more than anything that's a good way to see the entire group once a week. All told, there are about 15 of us. Four are not living in the dorm, and four actually speak Russian. (There's an overlap of three there in case you're wondering.) I'm also in Politology, but that's only met once, and it's a course I'm not overly enthusiastic about. But compared to what I've heard about some professors not speaking comprehensible English, I figure I've got it pretty good. That, and all my classes are actually happening. I may be the only one for whom that is the case.

Research, on the other hand, is not happening yet. Apparently the guy that the other guy who I met with was going to talk to over at the Space Institute is in Germany. I feel kinda like I'm trying to dial an 800 number and am on terminal hold. But hopefully, sometime before May, knock on wood etc., I'll be able to at least *visit* the Space Institute, and ideally get some kind of research position there. Stay tuned on that front.

Orchestra is also not happening yet. I saw a poster advertising the MSU Chamber Orchestra at the main building the other day and asked Dima (speaks Russian and lives in the dorms) if he could call the number and see if they want a violist. So far he's been told to call back later...four times. Irina says there's another connection she has with someone who could get me in some kind of musical group, but who wants to bet that'll happen anytime this month? I figure the most extreme scenario is I find myself playing in TWO groups, which would frankly be amazing. I just want to have some group to play viola in, because it dawned on me the other day that I haven't *really* played in two months!! Not okay.

As to the living situation, rumor has it we're going to be moving from this dorm (kind of far from the university) the the university main building. Slight detail...our admission cards for this dorm expire tomorrow. I think everyone's ignoring that fact. There's about another ton of paperwork to be done before we can move, and it's still not completely certain that we WILL move, though it seems to be more and more likely. Only thing is, the longer I stay here the more annoying it will be when Irina announces "okay everyone pack up, we're moving tomorrow!" I've accumulated some stuff (lamp, hot pot, food, textbooks) that will make moving a bit of a pain. But for now, and as always, one day at a time.

Also, it is COLD. Seriously. Today's high was 4F (don't think it quite made it), and tomorrow's forecast is "bitterly cold...dangerous wind chills as low as -25F." Fantastic. Meantime, Claremont, CA has a "severe weather warning" along the lines of "it might rain." ......

I do have some good news, though - Mike is going to try to visit me! It'll probably be in April as part of a trip to visit friends and family in the Netherlands and Ukraine. Details forthcoming. And of course all of this depends on him managing to get plane tickets and a visa, etc.

Among minor accomplishments: I FOUND SALAD IN A BAG!! As well as little balls of fresh mozzarella cheese. So Russia may not believe in corn chips or refried beans, but I'm doing pretty well as far as food is concerned. In my perfect world I'd eat out a bit more, but most other people in the program want to save money and that means just occasional trips to the grocery store. Along the lines of Russian cuisine, I've had borsch, pelmeni, piroshki, juice, ramen, kasha (like oatmeal), and amazing hot chocolate. (I realize that things like juice and ramen sound silly in context, but both are MUCH better than what you normally find in the states. I suppose it's at the cost of no corn chips...)

The other day I sampled two other "Russian" cuisines - Domino's and Subway! Dima, Nick, and I popped into Domino's and ordered a large pepperoni pizza for lunch. It took about 20 minutes, and we got the most deliciously greasy pizza EVER. I don't know, sometimes greasy pizza is just amazing, the kind where orange grease seriously drips everywhere, and this was one of those times. The Subway, however, left something to be desired. The turkey and ham slices were indistinguishable - square and blotchy. No choice as to cheese variety - American straight from the plastic or none at all. I got "that yellow sauce" (some kind of mustard?) and veggies including lettuce, which was white. Odd.

Hopefully somewhat soon I'll be able to meet up with two people here: Katie Eliseo, another mudder studying abroad in Moscow with a group of students from the US doing a program called "Math in Moscow." The other is Snezhana Zheltoukhova, who was the Russian Language Resident at Pomona my sophomore year.

I'll leave you now with this random tidbit: I glimpsed a crescent moon at twilight last night between layers of clouds and it was really cool. Even though I'm 11 hours away from home and no one here speaks English, we really are all on the same boat. spaceship. planet. you get it. :)

stories AND pictures, whoa!

Before I tell you all about today, I thought I'd show you a pile I put together of useful documents when visiting Moscow:


We have the passport, visa, immigration form, and registration paper; student ID, metro card, bus card, dorm residence card; and some rubles. Without one of these things I would likely die, or at least be arrested forever.

Anyway, yesterday I did nothing and it was boring. Today (Sunday) I had a plan: I was going to get up, go to church at 11, eat some food somewhere, come back to the dorm, work on homework, then this evening go to some concert or opera or something with the group.

This is what happened.

Got up at 8:30, talked to Mike, took a shower, ate breakfast, headed out at 10. Took the metro from проспект вернадского to охотный ряд. It was a bit after 10:30 when I got there, and it should be a 20 minute walk to the church, so I set out in search of Тверская улица, supposedly a main street. Turns out I had my directions all backwards and instead of heading northwest, I headed northeast and then (upon realizing I'd gone the wrong way) southish. Still no luck, as I was still headed the wrong way. I walked across a bridge and took some pictures and tried to enjoy not knowing where I was. Here's some pictures I got from the walk:


It's a better picture of me than of where I was, but I was on a random bridge south of central Moscow. The river was pretty much frozen - weird.


I like this one because you get a typical foreign city scene, only *ting* there's St. Basil's Cathedral! Pretty crazy.


So...you'd better yield to all the right-turners planning to drive off a cliff and drown?? Oh, street signs...

Anyway, now back to my story. At any rate, I knew how to get back to the metro stop, and that was all that mattered. By now it was after 11 and I clearly was doing something wrong and it was getting cold, so I popped into ГУМ, the huge department store, and poked around for a bit. It's a 3-story mall, only all the stores are uppity and you feel like you can't walk in them because everything is super expensive and the stores are small and you'd likely be the only person in there. It was still interesting to window shop for a bit, and I grabbed lunch at a sbarro. (Of all fast food places, sbarro and some KFC ripoff seem to be the most prominent around here.) Here's a picture from ГУМ:



By now it was after noon and I just headed back to the dorm. I told Laura my sad story, and we pulled out a map, and I discovered that St. Basil's Cathedral is at the south end of red square, not the north end, which would explain my backwards thinking. Ah well, I'll just try again next week!

A bit of a tangent - I realized yesterday evening that another Mudder, Katie Eliseo, is also in Moscow this semester! I had known this but somehow I'd forgotten until she sent me a facebook message last night. Turns out she's living just the other side of the closest metro stop, so I can take the bus three stops and walk 5-10 minutes and be at her dorm! I haven't done this yet, though, because I haven't been able to contact her other than via facebook and my plans for the afternoon were about to change.

At 2:15 or so, Laura texts me saying "we're meeting at 2:50 downstairs to go to the opera, dress up." um. right. So I throw on black pants. We get down there and it's just me, Laura, Dima, and Jenna - no one else is even going. None of them care about seeing an opera, they just have nothing better to do. (I, on the other hand, think it will be freaking fantastic to see an opera in Russia!) Dima is very good at not telling us what is going on, but it sounds like we're meeting friends of Irina's at the main university building and going with them to buy tickets for this evening. Well, long story short, we got there and decided not to go and came back. (It was a bit more complicated than that, and the full story involves other people wanting to ice skate and a sneak peak at a TINY dorm room similar to what we might have to move into.)

So my day has been a pretty typical exercise in trying to go to stuff and winding up doing nothing. I think one of the girls we met over at the main building is coming to visit us here, though, since she's a high school senior from Minnesota who is Ukranian but speaks Russian. (Didn't catch her name or what she's doing here.) She apparently was friends with last semester's KEI group and has a bunch of stories about how their logistics exploded in their faces, too. So that should be interesting to hear.

Anyway, that's been my day, and I still have a load of Russian homework to do, but it's all good. Laura went off to Рамстор to get some essentials like toilet paper and sandwich makings and I think a light bulb or something. Oh, excitement.

Stay tuned for Week Two: Meredith Actually Has A Week Of Classes, Maybe For Real This Time. :)

one week down, a lot to go

The last couple of days have been all right. I still feel somewhat isolated, but school is beginning to happen, so I'm no longer feeling a bit alone AND bored out of my mind. :)

Thursday, yesterday, included two classes - Thermal Physics and Russian Language. I met the Thermal Physics professor at the physics building at 11am with Irina. He speaks enough English that we'll manage, but it will take some patience on my part. To start, he asked me some questions to make sure I wasn't going into this totally clueless - do I know how to take derivatives, do I know what a harmonic oscillator is, etc. Then he proceeded to whip out the textbook that is used at HMC for Statmech!! He wanted me to look through it and see if it seemed to be the right level, so I just said "perfect!" since Prof. Esin had recommended the book to me and I even thought about acquiring a copy before coming to Russia but it just never happened. So I may actually get a decent Statmech replacement course! All we did after that was find an empty classroom where he could explain Moscow State University to me. It was actually pretty informative. The departments, or "faculties," are very separate and they're pretty adament about the order in which physics courses are taken. After an hour or so, some students had a class in the room we were in, so we wandered around in search of another room in vain. He showed me a library and a couple lecture halls where profs were teaching Optics and Theomech in Russian (weird), and I saw a bunch of students in the halls and stuff. This was the first inkling I had of this being an actual university - it looked like most of these students were actually studying and going to class and stuff!

The upshot of the morning was that it's me and the professor meeting two or three times a week (Monday and Wednesday for sure and maybe Thursday if need be) from 11-1.

The next adventure I delved into was along the lines of "Meredith eats lunch and finally goes to a post office to buy stamps and both of these things are complicated because she does not know her way around nor does she speak Russian particularly well." I've got a ton of stamps now, and I learned it's 22.5 rubles to send a letter to the US and 19 to send a postcard.

Russian language class was at 3, and that went quite well, except for the part where the professor didn't show up until 3:30. We actually got a load of homework, and that made me happy because it means I have something do to. (I know, I'm lame like that.) It's so cool to study Russian in Russia. It feels like I just stumbled across an entire country that happens to speak that silly code language I've been studying since 8th grade. :)

Today I had to get up in the morning *again*. So dreadful, I know. But for some reasons mornings aren't quite as bad here, except that I should be getting more sleep since I've fallen into the habit of staying up till 1am and then reading for half an hour and having to get up at 7:30 or so.

...there was just a loud explosion/large object falling noise in the direction of the hallway...

Anyway, today I had my first Politology class. Apparently "politology" is a bad translation of "political science," I think. I got there 10 minutes late because I was totally going to be on time - early even - until I realized I forgot my backpack in my room while standing at the bus stop. Sometimes I can be a real moron. But to my credit, I remembered to get my money pouch, jacket, boots, hat, scarf, gloves, and bus card! *sigh* so when I walked in, he had already started lecturing and I just started taking notes. It went for THREE HOURS. A bit of discussion here and there. We started off talking about empires and as time went on it turned more and more into just discussing current events. I really enjoy classes like this in small doses, but that was anything if a small dose. At least the professor speaks English pretty well and doesn't seem to have a completely backwards view on all things political. I do feel awfully ignorant about the world, though. Names and dates came up that I'd never heard of but it felt out of place to ask when everyone else clearly knew what was going on. Ah well, there wasn't too much of that, and hopefully we'll be doing research papers or something so I'll actually have to get out and learn some stuff, and then I can intelligently converse! The professor really likes talking, though - when class was over everyone awkwardly lingered for a good 20 minutes discussing current events, or rather listening to him talk about current events and nodding. Blargh. Not like I had anything else to do or anywhere else to be, I suppose.

Well Laura just got back from...somewhere...and we're going to go grab dinner in the cafeteria downstairs. Hopefully it's not completely terrible. I have no weekend plans beyond "I think Irina said she's getting tickets for the circus on Sunday," but when I mentioned this to Laura she said that Irina told her she couldn't get circus tickets and instead we were going to some conservatory. Like usual, I have no idea what's going on. wheeee!

picture post!

***okay, I had to redo some of the captions because Blogger ate the first six photos when I was trying to make the photos actually appear. this should NOT be this difficult, but you all should be able to see photos now, so enjoy!***

From 02-2007

This is me freezing my face off in NYC! If you squint, you can see the Statue of Liberty off to the left behind me. It was quite cold, I was just beginning to get sick, and this was before Russia beat good sense with regards to hat wearing into me.

From 02-2007

The original Pooh and company at Donnelly Library in NYC! It's funny how old and patched up they look...nothing like today's Disney toys. Piglet is so small! I do wonder if there's a Roo, Owl, or Rabbit out there somewhere. Who knows.

From 02-2007

Room 222 at the Broadway Hotel & Hostel in NYC. My bed is the top one with all my stuff on it. Weird that I lived here for six nights...

From 02-2007

We just arrived in Russia! This is some of the US group waiting for dorm assignments. It's probably 2pm but we think it's 6am and we feel like we haven't slept at all. Plus I am dying of some weird illness. Anyway, in the back L-R it's Jenna, Jeff, and Celina, and Nick and David are in the front.

From 02-2007

My room! Especially of note: hideous wool blanket, lack of internet connection, and 5 liter bottle of water.

From 02-2007

My suitemate Laura in her room. It's similar to mine only mine is intended for two people so it's bigger and has two beds and two desks. Commentary: Laura is very happy to have a room and has not slept in quite a while.

From 02-2007

Obligatory bathroom photo 1 of 2: the sink. Especially note the random hot water pipe that sticks out from the wall on the right. It's right in the head-banging zone when washing your face, and if you touch it for more than a second you'll probably leave with a burn. Safe.

From 02-2007

Obligatory bathroom photo 2 of 2: the shower. Funny looking but not bad.

From 02-2007

The Kremlin wall! I really liked the texture and coloring of the snow on the red brick and green trees juxtaposed with the yellow up above.

From 02-2007

Me being cold in front of a Kremlin tower. The photographer - who shall remain nameless - didn't frame it very well, because there's a red star made of ruby at the top of the tower and that was the point of the picture. (Well, that and having a picture of me freezing in Russia.) :)

From 02-2007

I love the lighting in this one. We're inside the Kremlin walls now, a few minutes before they shooed us out. You read about those gold onion-domed things, but they're really there and they're quite the spectacle! (I don't know the people in the front, but there are a few from our group in the background.)

From 02-2007

Near the metro station "othodniy ryad." I amazed myself by holding the camera this still while shivering. I'm not sure if this is technically Red Square or not, but just through those brick archways on the left is most definitely Red Square, and that's where we headed next.

From 02-2007

Laura and Jenna posing for the camera in Red Square with St. Basil's Cathedral in the background. So much light pollution, but so beautiful!!

trying to go to class

In Russia, classes take you. They weren't kidding.

Yesterday (Tuesday) I had a meeting with some kind of astrophysics professor to discuss research options. Once I finally found Irina at a cold bus stop an hour after we were originally going to meet, we walked over to the Institute of Mechanics. The professor we met with spoke enough English that we could communicate, and he told me that I could work with him to model accretion disks on neutron stars. He showed me an intresting (but very theoretical and math-based) paper and asked me about my interests. So I told him I leaned more toward the experimental side of things, and I didn't know what kind of opportunities there were in Moscow for observational astronomy, but his project sounded somewhat interesting, because accretion disks are cool. (I did this using a very limited vocabulary, hand gestures, and a few random Russian words just for kicks.) Upshot: he's going to contact some of his colleagues at the Space Research Institute (go here if you're interested). So sometime next week I'll meet with someone from there, and he made it sound like I might be working for a PhD student, but that's fine by me so long as I get to do something interesting!!

In the middle of this adventure, Irina got a call from the Russian Studies Seminar professor informing her that he'd be late for the 3:30 class. So I had time to grab some food at the cafeteria (not particularly special) and met all the other US students in the classroom a bit after 4. (Russian Studies Seminar is the one class we all have to take.) The prof finally showed up, he was actually the same one who I'm taking Russian Language from, and we went through a powerpoint lecture of some basic information about Russia. Things like the flag, the big cities, the population, the holidays. He told us there will be a test at the beginning of each week's class covering the previous week's material...lovely. So it wasn't stellar but it wasn't bad either, and I will definitely learn stuff in that class since I know next to nothing about Russia!

That class was supposed to get over at 5:30 but it ran until nearly 6 since it started so late. Then we had to wait around for textbooks, it was rush hour so the bus was ridiculously slow, we decided to get some pasta and chicken and cook dinner as a group, and we didn't get back to the dorm until after 8. At this point I made a miraculous discovery: THEY FINISHED INSTALLING INTERNET!! Thankfully I had the good sense to go pay for service yesterday since I had a feeling they would finish installation. I paid 640 rubles for 5GB of download (I think, it was kinda vague) through the end of the month. So, hopefully I won't use all that up. :)

Anyway, we cooked dinner and ate in the girls' room up on the 17th floor, and soon it turned into a bit of a drinking party because you can get $2 vodka and one of the guys had a mini-keg. And maybe I'm just a vodka snob, but I'm sorry that $2 stuff is TERRIBLE. Plus this being Russia, the shotglasses were plastic and disposable and probably held 3 ounces.

Then a bit before midnight, David got a text message saying that the Politology class had been rescheduled and was meeting at 9am tomorrow. Great. I was planning on talking to Mike in the morning around 8 for a good hour and then sleeping in...so much for that plan. Got up at 7 and made it to the bus stop around 8:30 and happened to get on the Bus From Hell that decided to make everyone get off just after the university metro stop. So I had to wait for ANOTHER bus, and by now it was 9:15. I've figured out that I need to allow an hour to get to class, which kinda sucks. When I showed up around 9:30 I thought I'd find class in session and be the awkward one out for walking in late. I climbed the stairs up to the fifth floor, turned the corner, and found...the other three students sitting in the hallway. Not 10 seconds later, they all got text messages from Irina saying class was cancelled. What The Heck.

So, that is my story. Don't know what else I'll be doing today, I may go on an adventure to a post office (though I'm beginning to doubt such things exist) but I'm afraid to wander too far lest Irina text me saying I need to go somewhere. Tomorrow I have Thermal Physics at 10am and Russian Language at 3pm, so at least that'll keep me busy. And if Politology really did move to Wednesday, that means I have no class on Friday, which is both nice and weird.

Overall, I just want to immerse myself in classes and research and music and sometimes it feels like all I'm getting is typical American college parties - complete with drama - and standing around in the cold waiting for nothing to happen. Logistic frustrations aside, I'm really doing pretty well. I tend to oscillate between feeling completely out of place and relatively comfortable. Now that I have internet I feel a bit more connected to the world. But it's only been one week. I'm sure as soon as I'm really settled it'll be time to move to the new dorm. Then again, I signed up for an adventure, didn't I? There'll be plenty of academic stress back at Mudd senior year. My horoscope for today put it well: "even if you can't change the world, you can change your attitude." That's becoming my motto.

Oh yeah - and happy valentine's day! It's a bit refreshing to be somewhere where valentine's day isn't a big thing. I bought myself a dark chocolate bar yesterday, and it's pretty tasty. That's all for now.

monday, take 1

Trying this again - hopefully the computer won't freeze this time.

I slept in a bit this morning since my first - and only - class wasn't until 3pm. It was nice, but when I woke up and pulled open the curtains expecting either cold and clouds or cold and clear, I found...cold and smog. ew. Just like at school, only with the added bonus of at least 7 smokestacks in the distance spewing heaven knows what into the air. lovely.

We did get our schedules late last night! Here's mine:

Monday: Russian language 3-5pm
Tuesday: Research meeting 1-3pm; Russian studies seminar 3:30-5:30pm
Wednesday: --nothing--
Thursday: Thermal physics 10am; Russian language 3-5pm
Friday: Politology 10am-1pm

And that is all I know. Well, that plus room numbers and professors' names. (To answer your questions, no I don't know when thermal physics ends, and no I don't really know what "politology" is.)

Tomorrow I'll find out more about the research stuff, so the Tuesday time above is probably just a one time starter meeting for now, but who knows. Laura (suitemate) went into town with Irina (on-site coordinator) today to meet a professor about her biology research and had an...interesting experience. Not all bad, just a bit trying and odd. Kind of like how the medical students found out they can't take the "operate on rabbits" course they signed up for until May because they spontaneously decided to renovate the building and they don't have any rabbits.

But enough about what I don't know yet. Here's what I do know - between Russian supermarkets and the Moscow bus system and my ability to be confused, I managed to be 40 minutes late to my first class today. (The good news is I'm now living off more than bread and cheese spread.) But it wasn't really a big deal. I can't decide if I like the ubiquitous tardiness here or not...I'm afraid I'll come back to the US and start being early to everything or something! yeah, right. :)

Anyway, the first thing I got after quite the bus adventure was a Russian language placement test. So I took it, and he graded it, and I got 37/50, which was not half bad considering Victoria (speaks Russian but doesn't have great writing skills) got 45 and Nick (lived in Kaliningrad for a few months not long ago) got 19. If there's one thing I'm good at, it's not failing Russian tests. Then we did stuff typical of a language class - a couple handouts, a reading and questions about the text, and overall it was quite good. I have a bit of homework, but no textbook yet. Minor concern in the scheme of things.

There was a bit of confusion figuring out dinner tonight, so I wound up just eating back in my dorm room, which was okay but a bit lonely. We all need to work better at navigating the bus system and coordinating our activities. By the way, the traffic in Moscow is horrific. It's like LA meets New York only it's cold and everyone's pissed off about it. I'm not exaggerating here, either. The metro is the way to go.

Well, as always there's more to tell but this lovely computer lab closes in 3 minutes and I need to get some sleep! Someone came into my room today and moved some drawers and a coiled gray cable with no end appeared on my desk. I hope they don't think that's an internet connection...but I suppose it's a good sign because they're working on it. Keep your fingers crossed. Goodnight!

weekend fun

Couple of things before I begin rambling -

1) sorry about the bad characters, apparently Blogger doesn't support Cyrillic, which is lame, but oh well.
2) I really really want to post pictures, but have no way to do so until I get internet in my room, which may or may not ever happen given this place's track record, so please hang in there!

Okay, so, today is Sunday, and I have done nothing. It's been nice. Was thinking about trying to go to that Anglican Church, but I didn't have the info written down and the service was at 11am and the internet room opened at noon. Irina is coming by sometime tonight to give us our schedules for tomorrow (this "handing out of schedules" has been postponed about 4 times now, but that is apparently the Russian Way). Yesterday, on the other hand, was Saturday, and I did the opposite of nothing, which is a lot!!

Saturday was our first opportunity to stop being disorganized foreign students getting ready for school to start and start being tourists. We all took the metro smack dab into the center of Moscow and got to see the Kremlin and Red Square! To start, it was (you guessed it) COLD. This time I had on long underwear and my heavy duty gloves in addition to my doubly sipped down jacket, polar tec hat, and baby alpaca scarf. (Which is wonderful, by the way - thank you again to Aunt Rebecca!)

Let me explain the process of getting into the Museum of Armory in the Kremlin. It goes something like this -
1) stand in line in the cold
2) have Irina speak Russian to buy tickets for half the price a foreigner would pay
3) stand in line in the cold
4) go through a metal detector and be told "continue" even though it beeps
5) stand in line in the cold
6) show your ticket to a person and go inside (not cold!)
7) check your coat and get a little plastic thing with a number on it
8) give the plastic thing to the people handing out audio tour devices
9) scan your ticket at a turnstile and enter the exhibits

Just for reference, that was simple, straightforward, and painless. It's all relative, folks. :) That said, the museum was pretty neat. It would probably have been neater if I knew something about Russian history beyond "it was cold and there were tsars." But that's what I'm taking classes for! There were a couple rooms with snazzy old gold and silver things, many of which were given to Russia by various European countries. (Historical Fact #1: Russia seriously likes gold.) There was a room of armor and swords and guns and stuff. (Historical Fact #2: Russia fought in wars, and it must have sucked because it was so dang cold.) There was a room of chariots, and it had sensors that flashed lights and said "do not touch!" in Russian and English if you got too close. There was also a room with snazzy clothing worn by famous Russians. (Historical Fact #3: Russians have always worn clothes because it is so cold.)

After the museum, it was starting to get dark, so we wandered around the grounds of the Kremlin before they kicked us out. Saw a big cannon and a bunch of gold onion-domed buildings. It's funny because you see pictures of those buildings and you think "sure, Moscow Russia, okay" but seeing them is something else.

Next we headed to a nearby shopping mall for dinner at the food court. It was an experience! The first thing we saw was Sbarro (сбарро in Cyrillic), but the rest were unfamiliar. I wound up eating with a few others at place that serves blini, or crepe-like pancakes with stuff in them. We got four different ones and a dessert (fruit) one and shared. I liked chicken and ham & cheese. Not so much salmon or mushroom. (The salmon had potential, but it tasted...vaguely raw.) On a slight tangent, one thing that I have found about Russia is that they have excellent juice. None of this "hunting through the juice aisle to find one that isn't all high fructose corn syrup" business.

Anyway, then we realized Jeff had left his backpack at the museum, so Irina went to fetch it, and everyone save me and two others opted to get 40 ruble beers. (Remember $1 is about 27 rubles.) It amazed me how the food court had several bars and beer on tap everywhere just as much as it had places to eat. Irina came back a while later successfully, and then we went into actual Red Square. It's all lit up at night, and Felix randomly turned to me and asked "have you ever seen such a night sky?" I looked up and it was purple and orange with light pollution and clouds. "Actually yes, every night at school back home." Oh Claremont. But despite the light pollution, seeing St. Basil's cathedral lit up was something else, reminiscent of Disneyworld only real and without the terrible music being piped in. Sadly I only got a few pictures before my camera's batteries died. After a bit more standing around in the cold, we just headed back to the dorm and had a lazy evening and crashed.

Oh, before I forget - if anyone wants to try to call me, we do have cell phones now! I claim no responsibility for outrageous international calling fees, I only know that receiving calls is free for me :) Also PLEASE mind the 11 hour time difference from the west coast! My full number is +79267047303. On the phones here you actually dial a "+" but I think just using a country code of 7 will do the trick, and the city (area) code is 926.

That's all for now. Tomorrow I have class - but I still don't know where or when!! Hopefully I'll get internet in my room this week *cross fingers* and starting tomorrow I'll have an idea of how my life will be structured from here on out. That will be good - you all know how I like having things well scheduled. :)

Thanks for the comments and keep them coming! I'll post pictures as soon as I can.

after a full day

So much to tell and so little time!

Yesterday I had my first Russian dinner, at a place called му-му (moo-moo). You guessed it - cow theme. (Karen Brown and family clearly need to come visit me!) It was like a cafeteria in that you get a tray, but not like a cafeteria in that the food was good and you paid per item. I got three times more food than I should have...oops. But it was good to actually eat after days of my stomach not wanting much of anything in it. It's still touchy and I woke up with a cough and scratchy throat today, but I for one am hoping this is the beginning of the end of this dreadful disease.

Right now I'm at the medical faculty building at MSU, we're waiting for Irina to process our passports and visas so we get student IDs and then can validate our visas so they don't kick us out of Russia tomorrow. It's good times.

I don't have much time, so I'll just tell one story for now - In Which Meredith Has A Lot Of Dirty Clothing And Just Wants To Do A Few Loads Of Laundry.

I've gone nearly two weeks without doing laundry, living out of basically one suitcase of clothing. (I left Monday 1/29 but last did laundry the previous Saturday, so I actually packed one pair of dirty pants.) Anyway, point being, two weeks, tons of laundry, running out of pants. Rumor had it that there was a laundry room on every floor of the dorm and you had to get the key from the person stationed on that floor. So once I was up, showered, not sitting on the toilet, and dressed, I headed to find said person. Much incoherent Russian babbling. Finally I got a straight "не работает" - the machine on my floor was broken. Great. So I went up to the 11th floor. Also broken. Down to the 9th floor. In use. Argh! (Each of these discoveries of course involved me wishing I had remembered key words from Russian class such as "laundry.") Down to the 8th floor. Here was a very nice lady who was only mildly frustrated that I wasn't able to understand her well, and showed me to the laundry room. Success!, I thought, hauling my huge bag of clothes.

Not so fast. First, there was only one washing machine, and it was small. (A 5-kilo machine, I was later told, if that means anything to you.) And of course no dryers. And a bunch of knobs and settings that don't mean much to me. So I pick some important clothes to wash, a couple sweaters, a couple pairs of pants, some socks and underwear. Maybe half of what was dirty. Shove it all in there. Guess as to which slot the soap goes in. Start turning knobs and pushing buttons and the dang thing won't start! So out I go to talk to the nice lady, who shows me how to properly slam the door, and informs me that I put the soap in the wrong spot. All is well, I ask her how long it will take and she says 20-25 minutes (I thought?? Numbers are hard to understand when babbled amidst other words).

By now it's noon so I head back to my room to see if Laura is back from the store with food, and hurrah, breakfast time! We chow down on bread, juice, "pizza," and she tries some dried apples and spits them out they taste so bad. She tried to buy cheese to go on the bread but accidentally bought...chocolate cheese. Oh, Russia. Anyway, a good 45 minutes pass and I ask if she'll help me get my laundry since it's going to be heavy and wet and I want to put a second load in. She agrees and down we go to the 8th floor...aaaand the machine is still going. We ask the lady how much longer, and she says 25 minutes. Hmmm? Freaking long wash cycle! Then we suddenly get word that we're supposed to meet up and leave soon, so we head up to the guys' dorm room. Turns out everyone's headed out the door and my laundry is still in the wash, so I go back over there (it's GOT to be done by now) and...no such luck. But I tell the lady I need to leave, so she does something to the knob to speed it up and in a minute or two I am yanking wet clothes out of the washer into my mesh laundry basket and telling her thank you so much, большое спасибо.

Moral: I still don't know what's up with the cycle taking so long, but I need to do another load tomorrow...hooray.

One last funny tidbit. Jeff just made a very apt remark about how time works with Irina (and from what we've seen in general around here) - "it's like in football, where they say '10 minutes remaining' but they really mean an hour." YES. :)

the adventure continues

Today I made it to Russia. Technically speaking it was a combination of today and yesterday, and I haven't slept for more than, say, 3 hours since the night before last, though admittedly my day was 8 hours shorter than normal. (Don't think about that too hard.)

Good news - everything eventually worked out, plus I got to see Rachel Berkowitz for nearly an hour before leaving the hostel!! It was awesome, seeing someone I actually *know*, plus I hadn't seen her in forever to start with. Took the super shuttle to the airport. Met up with 8 or 9 other KEI folks (the few others were either already in Moscow or had booked their flights independently). Aeroflot tried to give Alex a hard time since he was changing all our tickets, but they worked something out because we all got on the plane in the end.

Bad news - I AM SICK. That whole "I have a little upset stomach and then a minor sore throat" episode? On the plane and then afterwards it turned into "Meredith wants to curl up and die and go to the bathroom every 15 minutes." Not lovely. So I got quite my fair share of aeroflot bathroom experiences. Man, the whole trip was just nutty. Everything worked out fine in the end, but each step along the way took four times longer than it seemed like it should have. The plane ride itself was as expected - 9 hours and change. But there were no movies due to "technical difficulties." The food was nothing special, and to me and my upset stomach it was downright abysmal. Oh aeroflot. When we finally got to Moscow, Irina (the on-site coordinator) was supposed to meet us all at the airport, but she was nowhere to be found once we got through passport control and customs. We had an awkward "uhhh does anyone have her number?" moment until finally she showed up, it was noon by now, and we all thought it was 4am. The process of getting to the dorm took about forever, too, just because of the logistics of a bunch of random taxis and cramming bags into corners. By now I was REALLY feeling terrible, so it was all I could do to not throw up in the taxi as we drove all the way through Moscow from Sheremetyevo (the airport) to the dorm.

Anyway, obviously we made it. I don't know the name of the dorm, but it's not the huge Lomonosov building as originally expected because there was a fire/explosion/something bad there last April or some such. Rumor has it we're here for two weeks or so and then we'll be up and moving AGAIN to rooms that are in the huge building and thus more central to everything. Right now it's a good 30 minutes walk (in the -20 C weather) to the main part of the university where our classes will be. But one thing at a time. First, we had to check into this lovely dorm. Let me start by saying, Moscow is not run by computer. It's run by cranky old folks with glasses who fill out way too much paperwork. The process of actually getting a room was unbelievable. We weren't able to settle in until nearly 5pm. SO MANY FORMS. All of which were in Russian, none of which completely made sense. Anyway. Long, painful story short - I got at my Pepto Bismol for starters. And I'm in a suite kind of similar to my suite in South last year, only one of the rooms is a single and the other is a double and they share a mini entrance and a bathroom. And it's on floor 10 of something like 22. Laura is in the single and I have the double to myself! Technically one of the other girls is supposed to be in the room with me but she's staying with her grandmother, so I've been told to "make it look like it's being lived in." er, right.

After all this, we headed downstairs to get dinner (or some meal anyway) at the cafe in the dorm. It's basically bad cafeteria food, only Russian style, so heavy slash unidentifiable. yum. not. I poked at potatoes and buckwheat and what we decided to call "deep fried cheese biscuits." Because, well, that's essentially what they were.

Next it was off to the turn-dollars-into-rubles place, followed by a convenience store. It's hard to get the hang of rubles. It's roughly 30 rubles to the dollar, so you're like "I have 1000 rubles!" but it's not really all that much. We now have essentials such as bottled water and toilet paper.

All I know for now is that I'm relatively glad to be here, more or less in one piece. Hoping I don't go through all my Pepto Bismol during week 1. Classes don't start till Monday, so we're likely going to be sorting out logistical things between now and then, and going through some kind of orientation. Who knows. At this point, it's all one big unknown, but you know what, I have a bed and water and toilet paper and even laundry detergent, as well as a few pretty good friends it seems, so it's all good.

What else can I say...stay tuned! I'm going to get some sleep. In a bed. YES.

NYC, part 4

Today was COLD. I know, I'm not in Moscow yet, but still. Trust me. I also got sick. Not deathly ill or anything, just upset stomach followed by sore throat, and deciding to venture out into the COLD (16 degree Fahrenheit plus windchill that takes it down to 0 Fahrenheit) weather was probably not the best idea ever.

Oh well. I just reserved a super shuttle to the airport because I don't want to deal with hauling all my crap through the subway. $51 for three of us. lame, but probably a good idea.

I find it ironic that in the last 24ish hours I've gotten 2.5 ideas of where to find people I know. siiigh. But, I'm ready to get out of here. Feeling more like going home than heading to Russia after this nutty week, but so it goes, so it goes.

I did manage to see the Statue of Liberty today, though there was no way I was going to pay $12 to freeze my hands off (no seriously, I had on gloves and they were painfully numb). Then I went to the library and saw the original Winnie the Pooh! That required some serious subway navigation skills.

Now I'm going to go chill, rest, nibble on food, take tylenol and/or cough drops. le sigh.

NYC, part 3

So far today:

-determined it was below freezing when my hair turned into "curlcicles"
-nearly froze my ears off
-went to St. John's Cathedral for the 11am Choral Eucharist
-ate Indian food for lunch
-got back to the hostel
-went to David and Nick's room on the 6th floor and am managing to steal wireless
-am attempting to get last week's BSG via torrent, it's currently...3.1% downloaded. yeah.

Not feeling like doing much. Want to go to the NYC Library and see the original Winnie the Pooh (thanks to Aunt Pam reminding me that I once told mom "if I ever go to New York I will go to the library and see Pooh!"). Am debating going to art museums (Met, Guggenheim, MoMA), but they all cost money and are on the east side of Manhattan. Would like to visit ground zero still. By the way, it is odd that "ground zero" is now code for "where the WTC used to be." Probably don't want to bother to go to Ellis Island because it's cold and costs money, but I want to at least *see* the statue of liberty. I'm assuming that's possible.

The internet is cool!! :) Anyway, that's all I know for now. I'm kinda ready to be done with this phase of the adventure, I think. The church service was neat - the cathedral is GINORMOUS and as a result everything echos like crazy. An organist's nightmare, but makes all the chanting of "the Lord be with you" "and also with you" etc. really beautiful. Also makes incense okay since there's so much volume for it to diffuse into and you don't get a coughing fit. But to me, cathedrals like that are places to visit and smaller parishes are places to come home to.

NYC, part 2

Today was Wicked.

As in, Wicked the musical, and “wicked awesome.”

I could see how one could begin to justify living in New York City if it meant going to Broadway shows. On the other hand, this place is still nutty, and it’s probably a much better place to visit than to live! I’m afraid I’m still very much from eastern WA. :)

Really all I did today was saw Wicked. Though beforehand I had an excellent lunch involving an avocado/tomato/mozzarella wrap and a mango smoothie. At the show, I got a sweet shirt that says “defy gravity.” It was LONG, and I had an EXCELLENT seat, and the whole thing was simply fantastic. I’ve always loved The Wizard of Oz, I had a Dorothy phase just like I had a Winnie the Pooh phase and a My Little Pony phase. This musical incorporated all this great stuff from the original story and just ran with it. So many good songs, such an amazing production. (And yes there was a viola in the pit orchestra! If I had five lifetimes, one of them would definitely be spent as a violist playing in pit orchestras.) It’s just too bad that normal people who don’t live in New York can’t see awesome musicals like this very often. All the more reason for Hanford High School to keep up the drama program!!

It got over a bit before 5 (yes it was nearly 3 hours long), so I wandered down a few blocks to Times Square. Silly me, I thought it was an actual square, like one block with a “this is Times Square” sign, but it’s more just a few-block-chunk of obnoxious advertising with a bunch of people walking around. This odd, flashing blob of consumerism made the rest of Manhattan seem relatively, well, normal. So, now I can add Times Square to the “been there, done that” list. Made me wonder how much power is used each day just to light those silly ads…sigh. I also contemplated trying to see Les Mis tomorrow but they didn’t have any reasonably priced tickets and I figured, well, I’ve played in the pit plus seen it done twice professionally (in Seattle and LA) plus I just splurged on Wicked, so I think I’m good for now.

And now I’m back at the “Broadway Hotel,” which is code for “hostel on 101st street,” and I’m lamenting at the impending $2 for 20 minutes of internet. My roommate situation has changed a bit – minus Franzesca, plus Oliver, a guy from France who thought he was checking into an actual hotel and not a hostel, so we’ll see how long he actually stays here.

All in all, I’m really enjoying myself pretty well. Trying not to think too much about how very odd my situation is. That’s all for now.

NYC, part 1

I need to get out of New York because everything costs too much money! If I was going to school I’d have something other to do than “hey I’m bored let’s pay $20 and go to a museum” and I’d also have some food around to eat rather than “hmm I’m hungry let’s pay $10 for lunch,” etc. Plus, rumor has it the rest of the world has internet access, not to mention cell phones. *grumble*

That said, I’m really doing my best to enjoy the adventure that has come from being stuck in New York for 5 days and 6 nights. I now know the difference between Manhattan, Brooklyn, Bronx, and Queens (though my adventures have been limited to Manhattan thus far). I bought a weeklong unlimited metro pass and have learned how to navigate the New York Subway. I have a new appreciation for all the angst Holden Caulfield felt subjected to. And aside from a growing pile of laundry and a distinct lack of shelves, life is good.

Yesterday (Thursday), David, Nick and I went downtown to visit the folks at KEI. I was baffled by 10 story buildings, 12 elevators in said building, and 5 lawyer’s offices on the same floor as the KEI office. New York is nice to visit, but I’m beginning to realize that when my gut tells me I probably belong in the western US, it is correct. Anyway. The first thing the KEI folks (Eduard – head of the program, Alex – in charge of the Russia stuff, Sarah – friendly newbie) do is order pizza for everyone. And then they present us with our passports and visas (valid for entry beginning 2/6/07). And then they give us a folder packed with New York City tourist info and proceed to rattle off long lists of things there are to do in the city. *brain overload!!* I start coming up with my own list of things I’d like to do, and they’re kind enough to let me borrow a laptop and poke on the internet for a bit.

Meredith’s “I’m stuck in New York and need stuff to do” list:
-New York Philharmonic concert
-St. John’s Cathedral service
-“Wicked” musical performance
-eat Indian food
-Natural History Museum (esp. IMAX and planetarium)

At this point, I reflect for a moment and realize that the only things keeping me from doing all these things are 1) no one I know to go do stuff with and 2) don’t want to spend an insane amount of money.

Response to 1): I’ve always wanted an excuse to go do random stuff by myself and not feel awkward, why not now? Response to 2): I’ll do my best to get student discounts and eat cheaply.

I begin to discuss how I would love to attend a New York Philharmonic concert with Sarah, and she says something like “you know, I would like that too, let’s see what they’re playing and if it’s not too expensive maybe we can both go!” Ten minutes later we have $14 tickets for that night’s 7:30 performance!! It was SPECTACULAR. Her boyfriend came too so she got a third ticket at the last minute and I wound up sitting by myself, but it didn’t matter.

The conductor was Esa-Pekka Salonen, who is basically my hero now (I’ve seen him conduct the LA Phil before and he is AMAZING). First they played Ravel’s Le tombeau de Couperin, which was quite good, though I’m not a huge Ravel fan. Then came the world premiere of Salonen’s Piano Concerto!!! It was THE premiere. Not one of those “we played it last weekend but it’s still the world premiere” things. This was the 100% first ever performance of a FANTASTIC piano concerto, it even had a nutty viola solo, I was completely blown away by the whole thing. Salonen conducting the world premiere of his own piece with a pianist he’s been collaborating with for years, Yefim Bronfman. A-MAZ-ING. Then we got an intermission, whew. The final piece was Musorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, which is a terrific piece of music. I’m quite certain I’ve played parts if not all of it before, possibly in CCO? Well, whatever, this was fan-freaking-tastic. The ending of that piece was so majestic, so loud, I kept getting a rush like you do when music or movies have spectacular moments. We’re talking a completely full stage (there were 12 violas!), chimes, percussion, brass, winds, strings, everything. Best. Fourteen. Dollars. EVER.

So that was Thursday. Then came Friday (today). Slept in a good bit which was nice. Headed out with David and Nick to the Natural History Museum, but they agreed to first accompany me to the Wicked box office to see if I could get a ticket for a performance this weekend. SCORE!! Not the cheapest purchase in the world, but I have been dying to see this musical for years, the seat I got looks excellent (though I’ll admit it’s all they had left), and I’m going to see Wicked tomorrow at 2pm!!!

Next it was on to the museum. The guys had actually already been, but they still wanted to see the planetarium show since it was closed when they went before. It was called “Cosmic Collisions.” We all went to that, and it was pretty good but not spectacular. Someday I want to help make a fantastic planetarium show. Then I went to the IMAX film “Roving Mars” and the guys headed back to the hostel to take a nap. It was all about the Spirit and Opportunity rovers, and though they didn’t say much that I didn’t already know, it was very well done and I love seeing things on the IMAX screen! I spent the rest of the afternoon exploring the museum. It was interesting to see which exhibits were popular. Most folks loved the animal exhibits, especially Ocean Life and North American Mammals. There was an excellent “Hall of Biodiversity” that showed how humans negatively impact animals’ natural habitats. It was sad to see so few people in that part of the museum – it’s much happier to learn about whales and grizzly bears than face the fact that we’re seriously messing up our planet. But anyway. It was also funny in the “Cosmic Pathway” section, how every time it referred to the universe being 13 billion years old the number 13 was on a little metal circle that had been added in later.

So, I feel a little lame sitting around doing nothing on Friday night, but on the other hand I don’t care. The guys ran off to some nightclub that goes from 10:30pm to 4am…really not my thing. Don’t know what I’ll be up to tomorrow night, either, or Sunday afternoon/evening, or Monday. Probably visiting a laundromat on Monday, actually. How fascinating.

aaand I just got a new roommate! Oh hostels. His name’s Lou and he’s from LA, only he’s been studying abroad in France. I love it – the German foreign exchange student trying to find an apartment (Franzesca), the movie producer apprentice from New York on her way to LA (Jewelle), the token male stopping in New York for the heck of it (Lou), and the displaced Washingtonian just trying to get to Russia (me).

Enough for now. I think I’ll watch some Firefly and contemplate how odd life can be sometimes.

hello adventure!

Well damn, this adventure has gotten off to a rock rolling start!

I’m sitting on a bunk bed in a hostel on 101^st street in New York City right now. It’s 7:21pm on Wednesday, January 31, 2007. Here with me is Franzeska from Germany. She’s studying abroad in New York and has to live here until she can find an apartment. She seems really cool and her English is excellent. Also staying in the hostel are two guys on my study abroad program, David and Nick. I haven’t gotten to know them very well yet (in fact, Nick ran off to an Incubus concert) but they seem like nice guys. They’re both from Oregon – west coast represent!

Right, so, you probably want to know WHY I’m in a hostel in New York and not on a plane to Moscow. Funny thing, that.

It goes something like this. Aunt Rebecca and I left her house this morning at 8:30 so I could catch my plane at Reagan airport. I left my cell phone at her house (can’t use it in Russia anyway) and didn’t think to check the voicemail before I left. I got to JFK with no problems at 11:30. Then came the fun game of getting my bags and hauling everything through the nuttiest airport ever from Terminal 9 to Terminal 1. (Remember that I’m used to an airport with 5 gates…and this place has numbered TERMINALS.) I find something called an airtrain and ride that in a circle to get where I’m trying to go. By now it’s a bit after noon, and I’m hungry having eaten only toast several hours ago. But there aren’t any food places readily apparent and wandering really sucks since I have 2 50-lb bags, a 25-lb backpack, and a 15-lb viola to lug around. So I get honey roasted cashews and apple juice from a newsstand for like $7. Read my book for a while. Alex (the guy from KEI) is supposed to show up between 2 and 3 with our passports and visas, so I keep my eye out for him (though I don’t know what he looks like) and any other students who should be congregating here.

Time passes. I read my book. I eat my cashews. And it’s around 3:15 when it strikes me that wait a second, Alex has not shown up, I see no one who looks like they’re with KEI trying to go to Moscow, I’d better look up Alex’s phone number and find a pay phone and call him and see what’s up. (Meantime I have a conversation with a random old guy about how they screwed up his Russian visa and it didn’t start being valid for a few days after he was intending to fly there.)

Just as soon as I open my computer to find Alex’s phone number, a guy comes up to me and asks “are you Meredith?” rather urgently. I look up and say “yes!” It’s Alex. And the first thing out of his mouth: “I’m afraid I have some bad news.” Uhhhhhh lovely.

Long story short(er) – Russian bureaucracy SUCKS. Like, a lot. They arbitrarily decided that student visas won’t work for five business days after being issued, and given as how they were issued yesterday (Tuesday Jan 30), that means none of the KEI students can enter Russia until February 7. We have now all been rebooked to leave JFK the evening of next Tuesday, February 6. Meantime I had the option of flying back to DC and continuing to crash with Aunt Rebecca, or staying in a hostel here with random people and bumming around New York for a week. Either way KEI will pay. I had to decide quickly and figured what the heck, I’ll go with option B.

So here I am. Eduard and Alex (both from KEI) drove me out here and paid for the hostel and then left. I think we’re supposed to meet them at their office at noon. (We being me, David, and Nick.) I don’t know where said office is or how to get there, but the other two guys have been here for a few days so they’re the resident experts (they were actually intending to do a New York stopover since they’d never been here before).

I wish there were people I knew here. Like, anyone. I know if Mudders weren’t at Mudd I’d probably know some people in New York, or semi-nearbyish, but I racked my brain and Aunt Rebecca’s brain and neither of us could come up with anyone we knew in New York for me to crash with. So off to a hostel I went. Got here around 5:30 or so, and David and I went and got some dinner while Nick went off with some random guy from Brazil to the aforementioned Incubus concert.

People here are nuts, by the way. For one they all have protected wireless networks, so it’s going to take a bit of creativity to actually post this blog entry. There are taxis everywhere. People honk just for kicks. They act like living in a big city is normal or something, and it’s no big deal to be rude to everyone else. I’m sorry, and I know I’m from Richland of all places, but people need to CHILL OUT.

I have NO F-ING CLUE what to do with myself for the next five days. So anyone who knows anything about New York, help me out?? I seriously am clueless. Like I said, I wish I had someone I knew here. Anyone. Another Mudder. Mike. Dad. Lynne. Rebecca. Pam. Dad’s former college roommate’s long lost brother in law. But so far, no such luck. Thing is, doing touristy things for a couple days is swell and all, but I just had a day of being touristy in DC surrounded by two days of travel and I’m ready to *be* somewhere already, you know? Half of me wants to just say screw it and go back home. But that half is being told to shut up and enjoy this crazy adventure we call life. Silly me for leaving my cell phone. I just knew all that good airplane karma was going to turn around and bite me in the butt. :)