Adventuring seems to be the name of the game this week, which in and of itself, is a miracle since it's too ungodly hot here to be alive. Well, scratch that. Moscow is not as bad as home right now, but when there's no A/C and your window barely opens and it becomes too hot to sleep at night over and over again, straddling the border between sleep and reality gets a bit old. Fast. In order to combat the heat during and following yesterdays final culture lecture, Hannah and I scurried across the street from MGU to our local Soviet store. Soviet stores are non-western food stores. As in everything is behind a counter and the counters are organized by product type. You have to be able to ask for what you want by name, and in some cases, how much of it you want. To the newly Russified foreigner this can be mildly terrifying. And despite having lived in Russia for eight and a half weeks now, I have successfully avoided Soviet stores (mostly because I prefer to do my own damn shelf-picking). Ice cream is probably the least intimidating thing to ask for (and one of the cheapest at only 22 rubles), so with our command of Russian and dire need for morojenoeh, we accomplished our mission. I seriously don't know what I'm going to do without Russian ice cream when I come home. It's definitely one of the things I'll miss.
As usual now, our nights are concluded by swatting moths out of the air in our room (because for some ungodly reason Russian people don't seem to understand the concept of screens) and attempting to fall asleep before 3am in the stifling Moscow dorm heat. Oi. I'll never understand.
Today was more class, more torture over participles (not really), and my individual lesson, in which I talked about the crazy-ass phobias that Muscovites have because of the article my prof. gave me to translate. Some days I just look at her and say "Ludmila, schto eta?" Then she shakes her head, laughs at me, and goes off in rapid Russian (which I follow so well now, it's scary). That's pretty much Ludmila in a nut shell. And she can wrangle all of us. Pretty much why I think she's awesome.
This evening we headed across the other side of campus into the birch forest that is eastern Vikhino to the Kuskovo Estate for a summer evening jazz concert. The estate is beautiful and the music was wonderful: four Russian guys who knew their jazz. Hannah said it was arranged a lot like Coltrane and I second that motion. A wonderful way to spend the evening, if I do say so myself. The insanity began just as the concert ended with the longest clap of thunder I have ever heard in my life. Hannah and I sprinted down the estate stairs and onto the (beautifully landscaped) grounds where we were greeted by 30mph wind gusts. In one of the open garden areas the wind kicked up so hard that we were blinded by leaves and dust and other earthly objects. It gusted so hard just then that I actually grabbed Hannah and turned her towards the wall in a there's-a-bomb-cover-the-person-next-to-you sort of way. Hilarious in hindsight. But in the end I loved it; I've always loved how it feels before a storm. And now it's pouring and thundering away. Maybe now we'll get respite from the heat!
So before I go and do my homework for tomorrow, here's the only picture I have from Kuskovo Estate:
9 days left on Russian soil! Love and Hugs to all! xoxo
As usual now, our nights are concluded by swatting moths out of the air in our room (because for some ungodly reason Russian people don't seem to understand the concept of screens) and attempting to fall asleep before 3am in the stifling Moscow dorm heat. Oi. I'll never understand.
Today was more class, more torture over participles (not really), and my individual lesson, in which I talked about the crazy-ass phobias that Muscovites have because of the article my prof. gave me to translate. Some days I just look at her and say "Ludmila, schto eta?" Then she shakes her head, laughs at me, and goes off in rapid Russian (which I follow so well now, it's scary). That's pretty much Ludmila in a nut shell. And she can wrangle all of us. Pretty much why I think she's awesome.
This evening we headed across the other side of campus into the birch forest that is eastern Vikhino to the Kuskovo Estate for a summer evening jazz concert. The estate is beautiful and the music was wonderful: four Russian guys who knew their jazz. Hannah said it was arranged a lot like Coltrane and I second that motion. A wonderful way to spend the evening, if I do say so myself. The insanity began just as the concert ended with the longest clap of thunder I have ever heard in my life. Hannah and I sprinted down the estate stairs and onto the (beautifully landscaped) grounds where we were greeted by 30mph wind gusts. In one of the open garden areas the wind kicked up so hard that we were blinded by leaves and dust and other earthly objects. It gusted so hard just then that I actually grabbed Hannah and turned her towards the wall in a there's-a-bomb-cover-the-person-next-to-you sort of way. Hilarious in hindsight. But in the end I loved it; I've always loved how it feels before a storm. And now it's pouring and thundering away. Maybe now we'll get respite from the heat!
So before I go and do my homework for tomorrow, here's the only picture I have from Kuskovo Estate:
9 days left on Russian soil! Love and Hugs to all! xoxo
No comments:
Post a Comment