Kamis, 03 September 2009

The day of the Tomato Paste Pasta

I made it!!! YayYayYay!! The journey was ok. Apart from the fact that they played ‘17 Again’ on the plane. Potentially the worst film ever made. But I survived it.

When I got to the airport my friend Sasha who works for Love Russia picked me up from the airport and took me to my flat. I felt a bit bad because I was so unbelievably tired (4 hours sleep) and still felt pretty gross from all the travelling that I wasn’t really talking much. He put the radio on. I think he sensed my uncommunicativeness (is that a word? if not I christen it a word).

It took about 50 minutes to get to my flat – the airport is nowhere near ANYTHING in Moscow. I made Sasha go and ask upstairs for the key, fortunately they had it. I was stressing that they wouldn’t be in and I’d have to wait for my flatmate to get home 2 hours later :-/

My flat is cool. More Russian than the last one – I have a rug on my wall. My room is big, bigger than any I’ve ever had at uni. Everything in the flat seems to be a little bit broken, so there is a trick to working everything. I like that. Once I’ve got it all down it'll be grand.

I live near Ploshad Illicha metro – if anyone wants to stalk me on google earth. It’s a good location – only about 4 stops from my school and 40 mins walk to Red Square. Pretty sweeeeeeeeeeet.

My biggest stress last night was that I couldn’t get the internet to work. Gah. But after a quick skype chat with the girl who lived here last year we got it sorted :)

Today I’ve been into the school where I will be studying. We had a TEST. I’m pretty sure I failed it. Epicly. Half of it was a speaking test and I didn’t understand the first question they asked me. Not a good start. I’ve totally forgotten all my Russian :( When I came in the summer I was mainly with people who can’t speak Russian so I felt like mine wasn’t so bad. Now I’m surrounded by people who are actually really good at it and I’ve remembered just how bad mine is. That got me down a bit today. I remembered that I am going to spend the majority of this year being laughed at/feeling stupid. Sigh.

Ah well. I went to Red Square with Anabelle and Sana (two friends from Birmingham uni) in the afternoon. That was cool. It’s cool that I can visit Red Square every day. Very cool.

The biggest worry of my day has been the dreaded FOOD SHOPPING. Yesterday I forgot that I would need to somehow feed myself and so had no food. I made do with the biscuits I had bought in England and just skipped breakfast this morning. But on the way home food shopping had to be done… or I would have to have more biscuits for dinner. I got the metro home (an adventure in itself as I got lost – to get to the metro station I need you have to walk through from another station. I did not know this and got VERY lost) and began to look for a shop. I couldn’t find one so just went to a fruit stall and bought some bananas and apples. After deciding this would have to be my dinner I finally saw a little corner shop! Success! Almost. Now the thing about corner shops in Russia is that everything is behind a counter. I had forgotten this and when I walked in was shouted at by a quite scary Russian woman. After realising she was just asking me what I wanted I just said pasta and then pointed at something that looked tomato sauce like. It was tomato paste. And not nice. So tonight I had a dinner of pasta and tomato paste. It was not nice.

And tomorrow is yet another adventure… in which I need to find a hairdryer…

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