First Day of Class

Hello, America!

Today was good. I managed to get to school successfully, and Svetlana showed me how to get to the metro station by foot in case I don't want to go by bus. I get to walk through a really cool park. It'll be nice on warm days.

School was interesting. Three hours of intensive language classes, but it was honestly relaxing in a lot of ways. There was little pressure to feel bad about making mistakes, and the teacher is hilarious. We spent the whole time going over a ten minute dialogue involving the whole class as characters on an airplane. I didn't understand all of it, but I still feel like I've gotten something out of it. The whole class is oral with no written component (so far), which I think is interesting. It makes you rely on perceiving and understanding phonemes with just your ears a lot more.

«Человек без надежды, как король без одежды!»
"Čelovek bez nadeždy, kak koroł bez odeždy!"
A man without hope is like a king without clothes.


That's a silly little rhyme we learned today. I think we learned a few others, too, but I forgot them.

I also bought a SIM card for my phone today. The carrier is Билайн (BeeLine), and my phone number is:

7-963-963-2008

If that doesn't work, try an 8 instead of a 7 at the beginning. If that doesn't work... I dunno, try something else. But feel free to call me! I can receive calls for free, and you could probably call me on Skype for cheap. Not free, though.

Internet is still iffy. As in, I am still stealing it. I don't foresee that changing. However, the signal seems really stable today. I am getting four bars and it hasn't cut out in the past half hour that I've been using it. Not too bad! I dunno if it's Skype-quality yet, but we'll see.

I feel like there is more to say, but I just don't know what now. It was a good day. I am feeling better about being here every day. Which is to say, I am feeling more confident in my survival skills. Being dropped in a foreign country where few people speak English is probably scary for most people, though.

Maybe I'll write more tonight later! Or maybe I'll study my history text... which is in Russian... ugggghhhhhhfhdsafsa

Edit:
Yeah, as soon as I say I have four bars, it drops down to one for no reason. Possibly with a disconnect in the middle, it's hard to be sure. Such is life!