Red Square and Starting to Beat the Culture Shock

Yesterday was a big day for me, not only did I get to go sight-seeing, but I also got to meet all of the other interns and a few of the Language Link teachers. Being around other people that speak English and that are in the same boat as me, was a huge boost to me and made me feel much better about my situation...more importantly it alleviated some of my home sickness. It makes me excited to start training tomorrow, so I can A) have something to do and B) Not being alone in the apartment all day.

Before I get into talking about how awesome Red Square is, and how party crazy Moscow is. I finally went grocery shopping. I'd been putting it off for 3 days, and tonight I finally manned up and went to the supermarket, frankly grocery shopping deserves its own post but I don't want to write two posts today. Moral of the story: I'm thrilled that Russia has a taste for Nestle and Dannon. They have all sorts of Nesquik things, such as cereal (which I bought), chocolate dipped blonde sandwich cookies, and ice cream. Dannon of course is all yogurt, but there are some neat flavors like chocolate coconut, and some weird other ones, but it made buying yogurt easy. I bought a small loaf of bread for 18 rubles, which is basically 65 cents. It's easily some of the best tasting bread I've ever had. The milk however comes in cardboard boxes that are just stacked in the middle of the aisle. Oh and I bought a Pepsi, that was probably the highlight of my day, having something that "American" just totally did it for me.

Alright, Red Square: Two other interns and I met at Plushad Revolutsii, which is a ridiculous station, it's filled with all of these awesome bronze statues:

 whenever people walked by the dogs, they would rub its nose...

I think there's something like 32 statues, but only 8 different types, there's a lot of repeats. The metro in Moscow is really a work of art, I'll put all of my pictures on Facebook from Red Square and Revolutsii.

Well I put all of the pictures on Facebook for you lovely individuals to enjoy.

So Saturday with all of the Interns we went to a "cafeteria style restaurant", and I went again today for lunch...fail. For $10 I'd expect to the food to at least be better than Micky D's. When we left the restaurant today after lunch we ran into some interns that had gotten these awesome sandwiches from a street car for 25 Rubles...less than a dollar.

Back to Saturday though, after 5 hours at Vokzal we all went to an apartment to continue festivizing til about 4am. At 4am, it was decided that the plan of action should be to go clubbing. So what do you do in Moscow, when the Metro is closed and you want to go somewhere? Take a Gypsy cab. I couldn't get any pictures of it, but let me assure you, it was as sketchy as you'd believe. The 18 of us took a caravan of Gypsy cabs across the city for the lump some of about $3.50/person, or $14/cab. To those of you who don't know what a Gypsy cab is, it's just a regular guy who picks people up, and for a negotiated price drives you somewhere. The "cab we were in must've been 30 years old, with not seat belts in the back. I wasn't overly worried until I noticed the driver buckled up...when a Russian where's a seat belt, you know it's bad news. It wasn't though, we arrived at the club as a group, and hung out there until last call, which in Russia is about 6:30 when the Militzia come in.

I had had huge plans for being a tourist on Sunday, and seeing the Redbull Flugtag, but getting home at 7:30 killed that dream. I think all of us that went out slept until 5. I'm glad for the first time ever that last call in Portland is at 12:45.

The Post You've been waiting for

This year I got the best birthday present I could've ever asked for, well actually three unforgettable presents.

1) I know understand the meaning of the term culture shock.  It's not every day you get the chance to wake up in a country almost completely opposite of your own. It also isn't every day when you place your order at McDonald's, you need to use the picture menu.

 

Story time, and this leads into my second birthday present. This morning I was supposed to meet with a Language Link rep at 10:15am. I left the apartment a little before 9:00 to make sure I had plenty of time to get where I was going. Well I got on the metro, a little tentatively I may add. Without a cell phone I was traveling into the depths of the Moscow Underground (More on my bricked iPhone later). So I started at the end of the purple line, and had to transfer to the gray line, then get off a Novoslobodskya Station. Well low and behold, I missed me transfer stations a couple times. I finally got to  Novoslobodskya, which is beautiful I might add...here's some pictures 

This looked really cool

 There were ten of these, all different

Well I got to the station, and the company rep was gone. So at this point, I was beyond stressed and I just decided to go home. On the trip home I finally started to get the hang of the metro. It's neat to see all of the different people that come onto the metro and how differently they all dress. In America, we all dress somewhat similarly, but in Russia, it's as if everyone went to Marden's at came back with something different. I'll have to take a picture next time I'm on the metro so you can understand. The ride home was uneventful, but I was still totally fried, and starving...then in the distance, my salvation:

So yeah, I had to order off the picture menu, because apparently a Quarter Pounder with Cheese has another name here. Yeah, I was that homesick the only thing that could help me was the golden arches. So I finished my walk home to my building. Well I got home and my host Nataliya told me Language Link called wanting to know where I had been. So I called the company and had to turn right back around to get to my meeting. This time around, it went much more smoothly....Sort of. I got to the right station, but I couldn't find anyone that looked like they were waiting for me. I must've spent a half hour looking, and finally I decided to call the company on the pay phone. Well, turns out the pay phones only take calling cards, good news was; there was a kiosk right out front the sold them...however the girl didn't speak a lick of English. So I spent about 15 minutes asking people if they spoke English and could help be buy a phone card. So I bought my phone card and called the school, the company rep had been downstairs waiting for me. So the rest of that trip was totally uneventful, and I made it home in one piece with a new found understanding of why Russians looks so downtrodden on the metro.  

At this point I forgot what the 3rd birthday present was, it might be my iPhone not getting any service because it needs to get unlocked again, but it won't restore. So I have to wait until tomorrow to get a working phone. Tomorrow I'm going sight-seeing, so that should be awesome. 

Here's some more pictures I took today:

Sunrise from my room

 Novoslobodskya

 The escalator up from Novoslobodskya, it's probably 300 feet 

 A cool picture of the lights going down the escalator at Novoslobodskya