Second Week

The second week in Kazan has been a good one...after September 1st, we really only had three days of class, culminating in a grueling grammar, reading comprehension, listening and writing exam. I've been sick, but I'm getting better. Things are beginning to fall into place...we will likely start sambo classes next week, we'll be going to some kind of team-building camp with the freshman class of the university later in September, we should be starting our university classes soon, and we might be doing some volunteer work with Russian kids. I've also found out that there is an orchestra at my university, and that the conductor is "strange."

Maybe conductors are like small children...the same in every country.

Yesterday I went to the Kremlin for a film-and-music festival. The films were pretty good; the music less so. We went to this awesome bliniy place on Bauman Street (bliniy are a kind of Russian pancake-type thing). Then we went to the park, played some frisbee, and continued an epic grass-throwing war that's been going on for days now. Then we got dinner and went home.

Just when I think I have the public transportation system figured out...it turns out the buses stop running at 10. This I learned last night when I got off the bus and walked a friend part of the way to her home, since she didn't know exactly how to get back from that bus stop. Then by the time I got back to the bus stop, the buses weren't running anymore, and people were flagging down the other kind of the taxi, the unmarked kind. So I ended up walking home from there. This being-a-gentleman business is harder than it looks. But life goes on. I got home and had shoma, which is a really good Turkish burrito-type thing. And today I'm going to see a string quartet at the Kremlin.