6 Months

Well the 6 month mark has pasted by. Sometimes I can't believe that I have lived here in Moscow for that long. I also just finished my first month of my more intense 12 hour of Russian lessons a week. The lessons are really good. My teachers are tough, and they make sure I do my work. I have learned so much in the last month; however, each lesson I realize I have so much more to learn. I guess it is just apart of the process of learning a language.

It is Summer time here in Moscow. The weather is really nice. It isn't too hot. (This is very good since the apartment I live in does not have air conditioning.) Also the summer is when the huge hot water pipes are cleaned here in Moscow. Each building here has a huge hot water pipe running into it. This pipe provides hot water for the building. This hot water is not only used for the hot water in the faucet or shower, but it is used for heating. The heating system uses the hot water to heat up the flats. In turn the hot water is heated by natural gas. So the heating system is completely centralized. No one has a heating bill. However, these pipes need their annual cleaning. The cleaning crews work on regions of the city at a time. When they are working in your region....you have no hot water....at all. It takes them about 2 or 3 weeks to finish each region. Well, the cleaning crew started cleaning the pipes in the region I live in near Shabalovskaya metro last week. So at best I have one more week of ice cold showers, and at worst I have two more weeks. At first, it was very difficult to take an ice cold shower. Surprisingly, I am starting to like taking ice cold showers. It might sound crazy, but my joints and body feel good after taking it.

Now let me tell you about my latest traveling adventure since the last blog entry. Giorgio, another teacher here at the same school, and I traveled to Odessa, Ukraine. We wanted to visit a place with warmer weather and access to a beach. Some other teachers told us about Odessa, so we decided to go and visit the city. We decided not to travel by bus after our adventure when traveling to Tallinn. Instead, we traveled by train to Odessa. Actually, traveling by train is very common. It is the most popular means of transportation for far distance travel in Russia and nearby former Soviet republics. Trains are reliable and cheap but not fast. Our train ride from Moscow to Odessa was 24 hours long. So in the morning before our train ride, me and Giorgio bought finger foods and drinks for the long ride. Our train did not depart until 6:00 p.m. Then we each went home to get our bags. While at home I had the bright idea of cooking a big meal. I thought it would be good if I ate a big meal just before leaving on the train. This way I wouldn't get really hungry if the finger foods weren't enough. So I cooked some chicken and vegetables before my trip. I was running late, so I turned up the oven temperature to speed up the cooking. Well, this just cooked the outside faster. The inside looked almost fully cooked. It tasted good and it seemed Ok, so I ate it all. Next, I met Giorgio at the train station, and our journey to Odessa had started. Well, about two hours into the trip I got sicker than a Cocker-Spaniel. So the remaining twenty two hours were not fun. (Also we did not get off the train one time. Giorgio and I have learned our lesson after the Tallinn trip.) We arrived into Odessa and checked into the hotel. I still felt terrible. I was out of commission for two days because of the stupid chicken. I stayed in the hotel trying to getting better while Giorgio was sightseeing alone. Finally, I got better on the last two days of the vacations. Two out of four days were aced, so I had hurried to see as many sights as I could. Odessa is a great city. It is a big city, but not the monstrous-sized city like Moscow. It was nice to have a slower pace. On the last day we went to the beach. (Odessa is located on the coast of the Black Sea.) Many people spoke English and Russian, so we had no communication problems. We spoke Russian most of the time on the streets, and people would comment on our accents. I didn’t know this before, but people in the Moscow area pronounce unstressed “o” as “a.” I thought it was a general rule in the entire Russian language to pronounce this letter like this. According to the people we talked to, it is just the people in the Moscow region that pronounce this letter this way. So when I say “Odessa”, I say it as if it were spelled “Adessa.”




(To the left is a picture of a square and garden outside of the hotel in Odessa.)





(Below is a picture of the Port of Odessa from the top of these large stairs that lead down to the water.)









(This is a picture of the Opera House. Unfortunately, they were doing some renovation work when I took this picture, but nonetheless it is an amazing building.)



(Below is a picture of the beach we went to. It is called Arcadia Beach.)
















Now for the lessons learned since the last blog entry:

When going on a long train ride, do NOT try to quickly cook chicken in order to avoid being hungry later on the train. This way you will not be the idiot spending two days in the hotel room while on vacation asking yourself..."Why did I eat the chicken?"