In Moscow!

Today, we finally got to go into downtown Moscow… It was amazing! Highlights were:

Boat ride down Moscow River-

Despite the fact that the boat ride was freezing—I’m going to have to purchase a winter coat much sooner than I thought I was going to, I think…--the scenery was so incredible! While we think the loudspeakers were giving us a recorded tour guide in Russian, none of us knew too much about a lot of the buildings and statues we were passing by on the way, which was kind of a bummer. Good thing I have a semester to read up on that stuff on my own. The coolest parts were, of course, seeing the Kremlin—a huge red citadel that we got to walk around later in the day, and St. Basil’s, which I think is the most uniquely beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. A beautiful, tree-dense park with a trail ran alongside almost the entire river (where I spotted my first Russian runner… one of the two people jogging I have seen the entire time I’ve been in Moscow. He was probably American anyway...).

Here's some pics of Moscow:








Sept. 4

An American spy? -

One thing I’ve learned from my travels is that the Amish and angry-looking Russian police officers have one thing (although probably ONLY one thing) in common: they don’t generally appreciate having their pictures taken. As we were waiting in the metro station for a few girls who didn’t get off the subway in time (you’ve got to HAUL it off those things), a group of about twenty or so Russian policemen were gathered together having some kind of pep talk—kind of like the ones you see WalMart employees having at 2 in the morning... but definitely with a bit less spunk. To be honest, the law enforcement in Moscow fascinates me: while they are definitely EVERYWHERE, they all wear huge, quite ridiculous-looking hats, and ¾ of them look about my brother Michael’s age. These last two facts sort of decrease the whole intimidation factor. Therefore, thinking that this big group of policemen in over-sized hats would make for a cool picture, I took one… Oops. Immediately afterward, one of the few older policemen looked right at me and walked right over. My stomach sank so fast, and all I could think was “Oh, my heck… This Russian is about to take my brand new, hot pink digital camera and smash it in front of everyone in this entire metro station.” Luckily for me, he turned out to be really polite and patient about my unintentional law-breaking, and just had me delete that picture. Guess I won’t be taking too many more pictures of policeman.

Getting ridiculously lost

- After getting an email a few days ago from a guy named Bro. Overly (who identified himself as our institute teacher) inviting us to an institute “chuckwagon dinner,” our tastebuds, already starting to miss food from home a bit, couldn’t turn it down, and continued on the metro several more stops to get to it. To make a very long and depressing story short, the directions we were given (or, thought we were given, I should say…) were very, very wrong. Knowing that I probably wouldn’t be of too much help getting us un-lost, I sort of sat back and followed the group as we walked what must have been at least 7 or 8 miles around downtown Moscow.

While being lost for 3 hours may not seem to qualify as a “highlight,” it kind of was… kind of. Not only did we learn how to navigate around Moscow much better (and by “we,” I of course mean “the other people in my group”), but the whitish-greyish pork and beans that were dumped onto our plates when we finally DID find the place, I’m quite sure, would not have tasted as good as they did otherwise. Here is proof that we made it to institute:



Our institute teachers were definitely excited to meet us all, and it was really fun talking with a couple of Russian YSAs I got to meet briefly before we had to catch our metro home.