Homegurl Takes A Tumble

I can't believe I have been in Moscow for about 4 weeks already. Time goes by too fast. Lately I've been feeling like Moscow is becoming like home to me. But at the same time I still feel like I'm some crazy foreign city and I don't know what's going on. I'm sure as the semester progresses I will feel more and more at home in Moscow.

How's the academic part going? It's actually going great. I have no complaints about the classes so far. Although this week I started to feel a bit overwhelmed by the language. I mean I understand pretty much everything the professors say but when I'm at home flipping through the dictionary or even looking at the new words we learned in class I can't help but feel overwhelmed. There are so many words, so many constructions, and so many rules to learn. But I'm pretty sure I got it. I'm not like cocky, but I'm confident I'll learn it haha Also, I'll give my thoughts about the other students. So far, I definitely only like the Korean and Japanese girls in our class. The Dickinson group has also gone out with a couple of french girls, they're also pretty great. The other American students are just like really weird or sound like tools. My favorite professor is still the phonetics professor. She makes us get up in the end of class to stretch and we repeat some words while we do it, it's actually quite fun haha

I unfortunately have some sad news about homegurl Eleonora. Early this week she fell. She told me she was going down the underpass and didn't see the last step and she went down. When she first showed me her ankle I of course freaked out and said "Oh my god girl what happened?!?!" and few seconds later I realized that she did not understand a word of that. It has gotten better from what I can see. I actually asked her yesterday how was her ankle and she said "Well, I cannot dance, but I will survive" which I thought was hilarious. As for my roommate Chris, he's pretty cool so far. When we have breakfast or dinner together we talk about everything that's going on in our lives. The Dickinson group wants to meet him haha so I definitely need to set up a date. So far the life at home is going well. We'll see what happens next week :)

I'm Loving It

Another week in Moscow has ended. I am starting to get really comfortable here. Although I do think to myself once in a while "oh my god. I am here for a whole year. What did I get myself into?" I'm pretty sure that's completely normal for students studying abroad. But overall, I am definitely loving life in the big Russian city.

This week classes finally started. I have 5 classes and 4 of them are in all Russian. Unfortunately our Dickinson group was separated into two different groups for the Russian classes. I was talking to Kara(a girl in the group) how it felt like forever since we have hung out or something and she felt the same. We laughed when we realized it had only been a day and a half since we all had lunch together at a cafe. I guess that's what happens when you're attached at the hip the first couple of weeks and then you suddenly different schedules. I am happy to meet new people though. In my new classes I met 4 new students, two are from America, one is from Japan, and the other one is from Korea. The girls from Korea and Japan are pretty cool. The one from Korea speaks English but the one from Japan does not which forces me to use my Russian with her. So far my favorite class is phonetics, the teacher is really great and I like what we learn. I'm pretty happy with my schedule.

Things at home changed a bit as well. Someone new arrived at the apartment. His name is Chris and he's from Brown but he's from Germany. So far he's pretty cool. His Russian is better than mine, which means he can talk more with homegurl Eleonora. It's great having somebody else living here with me other than homegurl Eleonora. Not that I don't like her. Other than last week's incident she's been great. Plus I'm still calling her homegurl. It just feels awkward for some reason just having the two of us and the cat. Maybe it's because in the beginning there were three people in the house. I don't know haha The one thing I will say is that she tries to feed us all the time. I'm just like sorry homegurl Eleonora, I'm not a turkey, you can't stuff me. I feel bad sometimes because she says that I must not like what she makes and I of course try my best to tell her that it's not that, I'm just really full or still full from the previous meal. It was actually quite funny, on Monday she called me during classes just because I didn't eat butter brod (like a sandwich?) with breakfast and also I didn't have any tea haha

Last week when the whole coming out incident occurred I was relieved to find such great support from everyone in the group. I am also very thankful to all who sent me emails/facebook messages and such. Your support means a lot. Thank you :)

Photos

As I promised I have uploaded some photos for all to see flickr.com/hotcocoasmoscow :) I will add many more tomorrow. Also I would like to plug my friend Pat's blog moscowinlightandshadow.blogspot.com It's a great photo blog! Also I will definitely make a new post in a few days so look out for that.

Всё будет хорошо

My second week in Moscow is coming to an end so it's time for another post! I feel like the sightseeing has slowed down a bit and now we are slowly being left alone to explore the city on our terms. I am looking forward to the day where we are in full РГГУ mode next week and have our regular classes and everything. It's actually quite daunting haha

Being the only one living in the apartment with homegurl Eleonora is a bit strange. Since James left there is nobody else to help me so you can imagine the many awkward moments where I have to go to my room to get the dictionary. I wouldn't want it any other way though, I came here for the real experience. I was also left alone for the weekend because she went to the dacha(summer home). Today she told me that the student from Middlebury will be arriving tomorrow. I'm actually a little bit excited, the only thing I know is that his name is Christopher. We'll see.

Now onto a more serious subject. I feel like me and her definitely had a falling out today. I decided to ask her about marriage and when people in Russia usually get married. She said now it's usually when people have their careers set. I said it's like the same in America a bit, and then she asked me when I plan to get married. I thought about for a second, "should I lie or should I be completely honest?" and what did I decide? To be completely honest of course... oh what a mistake. I told her how I don't believe in marriage and then I came out to her. At first she seemed completely fine with it, she said oh you know if that's how you want to live your life, to each his own. But as we went on, she was definitely not accepting. I could tell that her stance was that people are made gay or they can change into the "correct" and "normal" orientation. It was quite difficult for me since I am not really anywhere near fluent in the language so it's not like I could defend myself. I simply did my best and flipped through the dictionary desperately trying to find words that would make her understand. Unfortunately there weren't any. We ended the conversation by having some wine, which wasn't bad.

Right now I could be quite pessimistic about my future and also vent about how close minded some people are. But I will not. I am quite resilient, even if I don't appear to be. This experience won't stop me from continuing to enjoy my stay in Moscow. I'm simply gonna take it one day at a time and hopefully всё будет хорошо(vsyo budyet khorosho, everything will be alright).

My First Week in Moskva

Hello everyone! My name is Jonathan and I am a junior at Dickinson College. The main purpose of this blog is to simply share my experience with the world while studying abroad in Moscow. I will do my best to update this often(weekly/maybe biweekly?) and such. Now onto my week :)

The first week in Moscow is pretty much coming to an end. This is definitely one of those moments I'll remember for the rest of my life. I arrived Sunday evening with my friends Kim and Pat. When I got to my host mother's apartment I was terrified. I could barely understand what she was saying to me and plus I was tired. Thankfully the director of the program(Irina) was with me and helped me out a bit. I also met James, the really hot italian guy who lived with Eleonora(my hostmom/homegurl) during the summer. Unfortunately, he went back to Italy today. He was quite helpful since I could ask him anything I didn't really understand. I moved into my room which I jokingly call a closet since it is probably a little bigger than a walk-in closet. Eleonora, James, and I had some tea and I attempted to speak but nothing seemed to really come out. James and Eleonora were just chatting it up and I simply listened. We all finished our tea and I went back to my room to go to sleep.

During this whole week I feel like I have walked around more than I have ever walked in my entire life. It is crazy how big Moscow is and how much there is to see. I have been to the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, Red Square, Manezhnaya Ploshad, Novodevichy Cemetery, various cafes, Tsaritsina Park, a couple of really really really old monasteries/churches, and more. I promise pictures will be up soon, I will do the flicker thing. Our group also has class for a couple of hours starting at 11 am at РГГУ(the university) which is just basically review of Russian and our chance to ask Irina anything about the language. There is a new girl that joined us and her name is Amy, she's from Wesleyan and she's pretty cool. The group is actually really awesome. We will definitely have fun this year.

So far Moscow has been amazing. I am definitely liking it. My favorite place so far is Tsaritsina Park. It is just so huge and pretty. I will probably go there often while the weather is still good. And let's be honest, the situation with racism/nationalism is not the best. During the day I feel pretty safe since I'm always with the group and such. I have only been out at night twice and both times I am just always looking around for any suspicious/angry looking people. So far so good. Let's hope it stays that way. Also, about the coming out situation, I haven't given it that much thought but I do plan on coming out to homegurl Eleonora. I don't know when or how... but it's probably not anytime soon. I need to know her stances on those types of things first, although we did have a conversation about racism in the US which went pretty well. We'll see what happens. But so far everything is great and I am definitely glad to be here :)