another weekend

Last night was an adventure to be sure!

I met up with Katie and a few other people from her Math in Moscow program at the metro университет stop. We took the red line a fair way, a bit past the center of the city, and set off to find a place called Проект ОГИ. A kind of "alternative club" as described by waytorussia.net.

Well if by "alternative" they meant "hard to find and really smokey," they were correct! Thankfully we were following someone who had been there before. We got there around 9pm, had some snacks and drinks, and just chatted for a while. Finding people here who speak English and you can just TALK to is wonderful! Plus Katie's birthday began at midnight, so it was a good excuse to have a fun night. I ordered a quesadilla, and I tried to get it without mushrooms, but apparently that wasn't possible, and I saw why when they brought it out - it was essentially a diced mushroom quesadilla. Oops. Oh well, Katie got to eat a pile of diced mushrooms and I got to eat fried tortilla with bits of cheese!

Some more of the Math in Moscow people joined us a bit later. It's a pretty small place and it's in a basement, so we had to fend random Russians away from our centrally located, relatively large table. I forgot to mention, unfortunately there was a 350 ruble cover charge, but we weren't about to turn around so we just paid.

A bit after 10pm, a band appeared, and they weren't bad. I am, however, terrible at classifying musical genres, so don't ask me what kind of stuff they played. Slightly too loud and in Russian? :) They had two female singers, and three or four guys playing percussion, guitar, keyboard, etc. The singing had a bit of an Imogen Heap edge to it, but the similarity ended there. Anyway, it was too loud to have conversations well, but not so loud that my ears were screaming "leave now or die." So that was good.

They played for a good hour and a half, and then Katie got all excited because it was almost her birthday, and she had to have a shot at midnight as per Mudd tradition. We sang for her, loudly and not in unison or in tune. The place was starting to close down, though, so we headed out pretty soon after midnight. The metro stops running at 1am anyway, so it worked out just fine. I couldn't believe how smokey all my clothes and hair smelled - it was gross! But aside from that, it was a pretty fun way to spend a Saturday night in Moscow.

This morning I went to church, and this afternoon I've done nothing productive. I'm about to tackle Thermal Physics and Russian Language homework. May also grab some cheap dinner from the cafeteria in a bit. Nothing too exciting planned for this week...I'm honestly looking forward to a "normal week," if you can call it that. :)