More Pics and Red Tape

View of the Cathedral of Christ the Redeemer from the Moscow River. This was a church that was blown up under Stalin's orders in 1931, and was finally rebuilt in the mid-1990s at huge costs. Hopefully I'll get to see the inside at some point.

These were random locks all over the side of one of the bridges crossing the Moscow River. I have no idea what they are for or why they are there. Some kind of superstition maybe?

View of outsie the Kremlin.

Ah, Peter the Great.

Aslan?

Beautiful door on the Church, with detail above.

Alexander II.

Views from my window. Russians love to park anywhere.

One of our resident Kazaks. We call him #66. The sign next to him says not to smoke. But the babushka was asleep, so he (and the other Kazaks) didn't care.

So, these guys are from Kazakstan. Yes, they've seen Borat. (Ha!) And they kept trying to offer me vodka...and more vodka...and more vodka...geez theses guys can drink a lot.

One of the Kazaks playing chess with our Jeff. I'm not sure who one.

In the kitchen, making dumplings?

Random plants hanging around on some floors in our building.

I just had to. Come on. It's a Black Russian...in a CAN. It didn't taste all that great, actually. They have other alcoholic beverages in a can too, even a Gin&Tonic. The most expensive beer here is a Corona. Go figure. I've tried a Baltika 7, which I thought was pretty good. They have 8 different kinds of the Baltika, but I don't think I'll be trying all of them anytime soon. Maybe eventually...slowly.

So far, I still haven't taken the language course (due to much Russian red tape, blah blah blah), but I have learned 'piz diz' (the 'i' as in 'ee')--I don't know how you spell it, but that's the closest to the sound I can come. Basically, there's no translation. It's a swear word, that has been described as useful in many situations. Like when two cars hit each other head on and cause a 20 car pileup--piz diz! You can come up with your own.

We are going to be moving into our new dorms soon....I think. They are much smaller, but are all singles. So, we'll see how that works out. I can't go into the Moscow University library, even though I'm a student, unless I have some kind of pass, which apparently take a lot of papers and more Russian non-sense to get. So, I'll probably never get to see the inside. Typical Russia.

I went to a pretty big bookstore yesterday in Arabatskaya and got a Russian propaganda poster book, which is pretty cool. It was a bit more expensive than I wanted, but was worth it because it was the only one that had the English translation of the posters. Learning the language without the language class is slow, but being surrounded by it is helping a lot. I can understand general conversational stuff, but can't speak it. I'll get there.

I'll post some stories later about life here in general. They'll be awesome, I swear. :)