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.