Thus far there hasn’t been much integration, and understandably so: I’ve spent only four of the last twenty-one nights at my host-mother’s, and basically lived as a tourist from my arrival in Moscow until last Sunday. Once my good friend Fritz arrived, we started couchsurfing together, and what was supposed to be only a few days of visiting turned into two weeks. I guess the fact that he was on vacation made me feel like I was as well. But it was just a fake-ation. Somehow I managed to balance sightseeing, going to museums and bars, attending classes, rehearsals, mainstreams, and doing other student-y things for a little over a fortnight! It has, however, proven to be quite the slow start in terms of “full-immersion” or “adaptation” or any of the other phrases mercilessly thrown at students overseas.
In the past two weeks, we met and met-up with a lot of people, made new friends, including Fritz’s знакомые from Turkmenistan:
This strange, elongated first part of my stay in this inebriated mammoth of a city is far from over. I still don’t have a set schedule (the search is still on for a couple of “mainstream” classes with Russian students at RSUH), but I found out today that I’ll be playing in the Gnessin State Musical College’s concert band! Its rehearsals have narrowed down my choices for classes a good bit, so I’ll have a set schedule soon enough.
In other news, our coordinator Will bought our tickets to Vladivostok not too long ago. We leave in two and a half weeks.
For this period of uncertainty to end, I think I just have to figure out what I’m expecting from these next 4 months. I figure everything was great in Irkutsk, so everything should be great in Moscow, right? I’m not used to actually living in such a huge city (cities I’ve lived in include: Salinas, Monterey, Clermont-Ferrand, Middlebury, and finally Irkutsk, whose 600 thousand inhabitants don’t really compare to Moscow’s 10 million…), and I haven’t quite come to the realization that I need to get used to it. Every time I think about it, I’m overwhelmed by the city’s enormity and its fast-pace lifestyle, and I just get the feeling I won’t have the time to do anything. I guess I’m still used to the Irkutsk way of life.
In the past two weeks, we met and met-up with a lot of people, made new friends, including Fritz’s знакомые from Turkmenistan:
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| Plov. Ogurtsi. Various salads. |
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| Mom they tricked me into drinking vodka. |
This strange, elongated first part of my stay in this inebriated mammoth of a city is far from over. I still don’t have a set schedule (the search is still on for a couple of “mainstream” classes with Russian students at RSUH), but I found out today that I’ll be playing in the Gnessin State Musical College’s concert band! Its rehearsals have narrowed down my choices for classes a good bit, so I’ll have a set schedule soon enough.
In other news, our coordinator Will bought our tickets to Vladivostok not too long ago. We leave in two and a half weeks.
 |
For this period of uncertainty to end, I think I just have to figure out what I’m expecting from these next 4 months. I figure everything was great in Irkutsk, so everything should be great in Moscow, right? I’m not used to actually living in such a huge city (cities I’ve lived in include: Salinas, Monterey, Clermont-Ferrand, Middlebury, and finally Irkutsk, whose 600 thousand inhabitants don’t really compare to Moscow’s 10 million…), and I haven’t quite come to the realization that I need to get used to it. Every time I think about it, I’m overwhelmed by the city’s enormity and its fast-pace lifestyle, and I just get the feeling I won’t have the time to do anything. I guess I’m still used to the Irkutsk way of life.
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