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. :)