Right on time (standard deviation: 10 minutes)

I forgot to mention in my last post that my flight to London came complete with a complimentary pair of socks.

About two hours out of Moscow I realized that the time had come for my testicles to reach their full descent so I ordered up a glass of Johnnie Walker Red on the rocks. I had counted on the in flight meal to sober me up before landing, but much to my olfactory dismay it turned out to consist entirely of fish and fish products. So, with nothing in my stomach except four shots of whiskey and a few Worcestershire-sauce flavored pretzel nuggets, my first step into Russia was more of a drunken stumble. I thought at least it might steel me against the cold, but it turned out to be a warm day and at a smooth 2 or 3 degrees Celsius there was no real cold for me to be reinforced by any metal against.

Passport control and customs were straightforward and painless, the people running them at 4:40 in the morning about as interested in making a fuss as the people going through them at 4:40 in the morning. Which is good, because none of the officials appeared to speak English, and my Russian at this point consists of little more than the ability to apologize for my inability to say anything else. The English here in general is interesting. The people who speak it seem to do so at a high level, but I have yet to meet a single Russian truly fluent in English, even among the administrative staff for the program I'm participating in. There is, of course, a very simple explanation for this - almost every Russian I've interacted with has been at least 35; and since the Soviet Union collapsed about 18 years ago most of them could not have even hoped to meet a native speaker of English until they were full blown adults. Taking this into account it is actually quite incredible how good the English here is. Still, in these interactions I've had to seriously curb my use of figures of speech, and there are of course some funny quirks of not quite right English I get treated to every day during class. My favorite thus far: "Here is my e-mail, please use it for back feed."

The program employs two girls to assist its students students in Russian life, and one of them, Ester, was waiting for me at the airport holding a big sign with my name in sharpie (I'd always wanted to come out of a plane to find somebody holding a sign for me; check that off the bucket list). After struggling through a gauntlet of determined taxi drivers, we stepped outside and were picked up by our driver in some sort of a rotting-corpse green, but otherwise badass, Soviet-era automobile. Due to the hour of day there was no traffic and the ride was blessedly short, only about 45 minutes. On the way in Ester explained to me some of the basics of the program and Moscow life. When we arrived, she succesfully talked the guard into letting us into the dormitory, and we went up to meet with the landlady, a Russian woman in her mid fifties (I should mention here that every Russian woman in her mid fifties looks essentially the same and it is exactly what you imagine a Russian woman in her mid fifties to look like). There was an unusual amount of hullabaloo involving the correct way to Xerox my passport and migration card, but after an hour of wrestling with the copy machine Ester and the landlady seemed to reach some sort of accord and I was allowed to enter my room.

Unfortunately there is only one key for each room so entering involved waking up my roommate, Val. I lived with him last semester at Penn State and thus I am familiar with his deep sleeping habits, so it was no great surprise when it took several rings to get him up. It was around 6:45 at this point so after performing the rudiments of unpacking I layed down to catch a quick nap. An hour and a half later I woke up and showered, then Ester (who probably got even less sleep than me), showed up to help me with the absolutely necessary errands before class - changing currency, getting a metro pass, and paying my rent. She then showed me how to get to the Independent University of Moscow from my dorm (about a 40 minute trip via metro), and I made it just in time to be 10 minutes late for my first course.

TO BE CONTINUED