It's official: I'm definitely in Moscow

I went to Red Square today.

It was pretty emotional at first. I couldn’t believe where I was. It felt very surreal, and I was trying really hard not to cry or skip around in joy. We are going back tomorrow for a Kremlin tour, and so I can see all the newlyweds. It’s a tradition for newlyweds to visit Red Square and pay their respects at the Eternal Flame, and they’re all there at the weekend. We walked into GUM, which used to be the state store, but is now a huge fancy mall, where some woman mistook me for a Russian!

After that, we rode the Metro (subway) at rush hour. It was crowded, hot, and smelled like sweat. I like the feeling of being surrounded by so many people. You can’t do anything but shuffle your feet and let the people behind you push you along. Irina helped me pick out an electric kettle (chainik) for tea. Tea is the social activity here, to make new friends, so it’s important to have one. Then we went to Кафе Хаус (Coffee House, I kid you not). Oh and I bought a mug for my tea- it’s an MSU souvenir mug!

MSU (the main building at least) is amazing. This building is HUGE and has everything a person could ever want. In the core of the building are at least 3 cafes, a food shop, and a shop for all the non-food stuff. There are also 3 ATMs, some bookstores, bathrooms of course, a copy center, a shoe repair, a laundry. And I’ve heard there is a gym and a computer lab somewhere, but I have yet to see those. Forget UC’s crowing about the CRC being a building where “theoretically” a student could spend their whole student career- a student definitely could do that here, easily.

So far, I have to say that I am enjoying Russia very much. It’s true that I’ve only been here 2 days, haven’t had to rely on Russian (thanks to Irina and others), and haven’t really done much. Russia is a lot like America in some respects, and totally different in other ways, both good and bad.