Sunday, February 15, 2009

My Address

A couple of people have asked me for my address, so I'll just post it here for reference:

Sara Schwalm
Center "GRINT"
Ul. Unosti 5/1, Block 6 office 35
Moscow 111395
Russian Federation


I hope to hear from you! I promise I'll write back, even if it doesn't arrive. :) (Yours should arrive here though)

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Where are the razors?

Today I went to the store to look for a razor. I looked up and down the "beauty products" aisle where they had shampoo etc. I found lots of types of shaving cream, but no razors. That's pretty dumb, right? Well, there was nothing to be done so I finished my shopping. Upon checking out I noticed something odd; there were razors hanging by the cash register next to the gum. Razors in the check-out line? With the gum and chocolate? How are these things even related?!? Someone may see the logic to this, but I don't.

Russia: 1 Sara: 0

Quest for the Missing Monastery

On Friday, we headed out in search for Donskoi monastery because our teacher had talked about it in class on Wednesday. He told us the metro station and so we headed off in the afternoon. It was very cold that day (and getting colder) in Moscow. I had a brain freeze from the weather. I can't understand how people survive even worse weather than we've had this past week. I am a desert girl at heart I guess.

Anyway, we followed the rudimentary directions that we were given and we ended up walking and walking and... walking. No monastery. We saw the "fake monastery", which we were supposed to look out for, but never found the actual monastery. We asked a couple of people where it was located, but to no avail. Their directions I'm sure were correct, but they were too vague for us to follow successfully. So, after a very long time of walking in the cold, we decided to give up and go to Kruzhka. Stephanie and I had blinis with sour cream, cheese, and mushrooms (so good!). She is the other resident vegetarian, which is cool. At Kruzhka (which is an excellent bar because the beer is so cheap; 50 rubles for .5 litres... less than 2 dollars!) we all had lots of beer and vodka shots between us. We debated everything from vegetarianism (I am innocent! I did not start that one) to what was the best sport on earth. A thoroughly fun night. This week I'd like to try Lisya Nora (The Fox Hole), which is a pub with cheap beer on tap and apparently a good atmosphere. I think I might go tonight if I can get people to go. Class has been so hard lately! It's driving me to drink. ;)

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Второй Семестр начинает

Привет мои друзья!

I am back in Moscow for part II of my adventures (ok, "adventures" might be more accurate). I arrived last Saturday and mostly I've just been settling in and fighting jetlag (and losing, by the way). Monday was the first day of school. Last semester, I had requested to have Ludmila again since she is such an amazing teacher. However, she is still teaching Level II (the higher the number the lower the level, so she teaches one level below the highest). She's a challenging teacher, but I was afraid I wouldn't be learning enough. I thought about this kind of belatedly, so I've been kind of stressed, since the last thing I want to do while in Russia is waste my time where language-learning is concerned since this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. The first day we did go over some new material, but there was so much vocab that the new people didn't know (and that I didn't know upon arriving either) that class was a bit slow. I talked to Natasha, the head of GRINT, and she said wait out the week so we'll see.

We took the same placement test that we took at the beginning of last semester. Last time I missed 26 and this time I only missed 5! And they were stupid mistakes, so I guess that goes to show I've learned a lot, which makes me happy, since I've really been trying.

Last night we went to a traditional Russian choir concert at the theater near Mayakovskaya metro station. It was really a great performance. They also had traditional Russian dancing, which I wasn't expecting, but loved. Traditional Russian dancing is SO cool. It's very lively and they always do these crazy things that I couldn't imagine doing with my body, let alone that quickly.

God, I hate jet lag. I am sitting here after drinking coffee (albeit watered-down instant), yawning like crazy and it's only 5:24pm. Bah. I will leave you with this quote from my Russian Today lecturer:

"If you manage to study hard every semester until you graduate, you will be as hard as a nut!"