Arrival and first weekend

Привет, весёлый народ! Greetings from the Motherland! I have arrived in Moscow safe, sound, and ready to begin my academic year abroad at the Russian State School for the Humanities, or RGGU for short (Russians have a ridiculous love affair with abbreviations.). I flew into Moscow after a smooth flight from Boston to London, during which I FINALLY saw, and thoroughly enjoyed, the Dark Knight as well as a film I watched during my freshman year and on which I wrote several drafts of a paper, From Here to Eternity (which I strongly recommend) on Thursday afternoon, and made it to the hotel where I met with the other Middlebury students for orientation. Friday I traveled to my host family. I am living near the University metro station on the red line. The university is in the center of the city, conveniently right on Chayanova street, right next to the central office of Language Link where I worked the last time I was in moscow. My host mom is very nice; her name is Ludmila Alexeevna Grachova, but I call her Luda for short. She has a dog named Platon, but he is perfectly tame. I think he might be one of two dogs that I've met for whom I don't hold an irrational hatred. She showed me how to get to the metro and, naturally, is quite a good cook. I think we will get along well. She has a son about my age, but I haven't met him yet.

Tomorrow morning I will have testing and my passport registered, and then Tuesday classes start. I am taking Stylistics and History with Liza, the other grad student, but then we have to register for one mainstream class this semester, which we take with other Russian students. It's kind of a hassle to track down a class I want to take and get the professor to sign a form allowing me to take the class and have it count for a grade. Some possible classes I'm interested include History of Russian musical cuture and a master class on singing.

Speaking of singing, I returned to church this morning and afternoon to sing at the 11 and 3 o'clock services. Sydney, the director of the afternoon service was particularly glad to see me and complimented me on my voice, saying that I added professionalism to our humble choir. Spasibo, Sydney! :) I was also recruited to join the Moscow International Choir, which meets at St. Andrew's, the church I attend twice every Sunday. (Note the constant use of clauses beginning with which, I am clearly thinking in Russian while writing in English, lol. Russian speakers should understand this grammatical reference, to everybody else I apologize for this compl;etely random digretion.) This time, I won't be working in the evenings so I should be able to sing. The choir meets Tuesday evenings from 7-9:30, and as far as I know I won't have any evening classes on Tuesdays. But I won't know my schedule until tomorrow, at least for my Middlebury classes. The mainstream class I won't know for a while, but I have plenty of time to decide, which is nice.

So with classes and choir starting this week, I have a lot to look forward to. I should be able to make new friends as well as reconnect with old friends I made. I'm going to see my old housemate this week, and sometime soon I need to take a trip to Dolgoprudny to see John and the crew at the Link. For now, just keep swimming. Have a great academic year for those in school. Mom and Dad, have a FANTASTIC time in China! I want to see lots of pics! For my part I'll post lots of pics of my new flat! :) Love you guys! Keep writing and I'll talk to you soon!

"Never give up. Never surrender." The immortal words of Jason Nesbit from Galaxy Quest

Не имей сто рублей, а сто друзей. Русская пословица (Better to have a hundred friends than a hundred rubles. Russian proverb)

"Remember all the love we shared today." (Josh Groban, "Awake")