Week 1

Apologies for the length of the first few posts, I wrote them as newsletter type emails to friends and family before Bran (sister) persuaded me to blog them as well.

So, survived my first week in Moscow. Currently have horrible cold that went round my whole class which involved a very embarrassing collapsing in supermarket episode during which everyone was convinced i was pregnant and obviously i didnt know enough russian to tell them otherwise, but apart from that I'm actually having a pretty cool time. The weather's been loads nicer and warmer than in England so have done lots of wandering round exploring.

Got to the apartment with only a couple of minor hiccups. Rapidly rediscovered my eastern European queuing skills (shove through wherever possible, regardless of how many people are in front of you) at passport control, then got a swift induction into insane Russian driving:
1. You must overtake (and undertake) in the smallest gap possible, to show off both your machismo and your car's acceleration ability. I majorly regretted the decision to sit in the back of the car at this point.
2. As in Greece, if there is traffic, the hard shoulder is an entirely acceptable extra lane
3. A new rule for me: if the hard shoulder has also ground to a halt and you are in an SUV, you may also drive off the tarmac and up/down the embankment to dodge around cars selfishly hogging hard shoulder
4. When sitting in traffic it is also acceptable (when in an SUV) to get out, open the boot and take stuff out, before getting back in and driving on again
Also amusing along the way was driving past an ancient lada, mysteriously leaking water from the back seat door, with a woman in the passenger seat playing with an extremely fat cat

But yeah, got to the flat and then discovered that my flatmate was out and the driver didn't know where my set of keys were so I sat outside for ages till flatmate thankfully showed up. Apart from that it was all pretty easy and straightforward. Flat is nice and full of ikea furniture. Flatmate is a total deadloss though, he speaks almost no English and seems to spend most of his time in his room on the phone to Japanese friends. Hopefully I'll be going out a bit more next week though so it won't feel so lonely stuck in here in the evenings. All the shops and stuff round here seem to be open 24/7 and the metro station is 2 minutes away as well. (also 1 minute away from a pirate dvd shop if anyone has any requests)

The classes have been pretty good. On the first day i got there early and as i waited german after german arrived and I got terrified that i was the only nongerman in the class. They all speak English though and eventually an American woman showed up as well. I've got two teachers, one who speaks only Russian (who we had for the very first lesson) which is a bit terrifying and we spend a lot of those classes with blank expressions on our faces as she tries to explain grammar to us. The other one speaks lots of English though and is really friendly, we have lots of giggles in those classes. It's been pretty hard work, but I feel like I've learnt a lot already so it's all good.

On the first day we got given a tour round part of the centre. Started with a metro ride and got a 3 month metro card for the same price as a 28 day bus pass in oxford so at least one thing here is cheap. The metro stations are amazing, insanely deep (with crazy fast escalators) and really ornate with statues and mosaics and stuff all over the place and each one is different so looking forward to getting to see some more of them. The trains also arrive every 45 seconds so you never have to leg it to get on one and they're never crowded, even at rush hour, TfL could clearly learn something from the Russians. Amusingly the tour guide/teacher felt it necessary to point out the TNK-BP offices as well as more usual tourist spots like Pushkin's house (trivia which is probably meaningless to most of you). After that she showed us where the fans of the Russian equivalent of Nirvana hold vigil every night and the first Russian Starbucks (logo disappointingly in English, but Cyrillic version is also on the wall)

I've also been to red square and done a little bit of sightseeing. Was really surprised how beautiful and colourful a lot of the centre is. I'd kind of had Moscow down in my head as one of those big grey concrete cities but actually there's been so much reconstruction and renovation around the centre that everything looks really nice. The streets are all really wide (to make way for the insane amount of traffic) so everything feels quite open.

Met up with my friend Nastia from Vilnius as well. We didn't get on when we were being teenagers in middle school, but 9 years has obviously done a lot for our ability to find stuff in common. She's been really helpful and told me how to get a mobile number set up and we spent most of Saturday sitting in cafés talking and generally catching up. She offered to let me stay at her apartment if the living with a family thing is too much to take. I don't think it'll be necessary, but nice to know I've got that to fall back on if it's awful.

So yeah, all in all its been pretty good. I think I've been having a much better time than one of my classmates who is from a really small town in germany and has never really travelled before, she's busy being terrified of the traffic and the number of people and how big everything is and at not understanding anything, but so far the culture shock I was expecting doesn't seem to have appeared for me so I'm busy trying to be encouraging to her and going places with her so it's less scary for both of us. Spent most of this afternoon sitting in a cafe chatting with her as well...

More sightseeing tomorrow I think. According to the map I live just down the road from Patriarch's Pond (setting for the opeing of the Master and Margarita for those who have read it. for those who haven't, you should, it's one of my favourite books) so I'm gonna go check that out, and then do some more wandering round the centre so more pictures to follow shortly.