Already Learning

Well, we made it. The flight was long and barfy and American Airlines might have the least comfortable operation out there. But nevertheless, after 10 lllooooonnnnnngggggg hours we made it into Moscow. So far, I have learned two things:

1. With the difference in latitude, the days are longer and the nights shorter in the summer. How did I not think of this? The sun is up until about 11pm and rises at...well I have no idea, but I bet it's about 3 or 4 in the morning. Either way, after being ridiculously tired, I still managed to wake up this morning at 8am...sigh.

2. Moscovites, and probably all Russians, have no care for organized lines. Three different occasions when we Americans have been waiting patiently in line for our turn to go through customs or enter a door or whatever, a Russian person came right to the front of the line and shoved their way through...what're ya gonna do though? Can't speak the language!

Overall, very nice to be here though. Traveling over was a bit trying on everyones patience. And I also experienced my first day of complete sunlight. Our flight arched up North and flew over Greenland, so we didn't have a minute of darkness from sunrise in the states on May 30th to sunset last night on May31st.

When we got in, we met our hostess, Marianna, who is a very nice lady and has taken care of us by showing us everywhere we need to go. It took us an hour and a half to make it to the dorm, but we drove through the city and caught glimpses of the Kremlin and Red Square already, which was amazing! But since we got in at about 12:30pm Moscow time, there wasn't really any time for us to just relax because classes started the next day. So we spent the next half day working off of about 2 hours plane sleep, which roughly converts to 17 min. of real sleep, and had to walk around and do ballet positions and shop for food and be tourists a bit.

Around midnight all of us headed off to our dorms (or in Rob and my case, to our BUNK BEDS) and passed out. Been a good first day here in muzzah Russia.

Oh, and we also a really long line of Russian soldiers who were apparantley squashing a communist demonstration. Good for them, but it looked pretty creepy to seem them out on our first day here. And secondly, we discovered what looked to be Crab-flavored Lays potato chips!