Train

These past few days were a holiday weekend for Russian's, and thankfully for us as well. Defender of the Fatherland Day, colloquially known as Men's Day, is celebrated on the 23rd of February. You can check out Joey and Isaac's blog for more info on the holiday.

In celebration, we were invited to Stas' dacha and bathouse (or banya), located in his hometown. Being carless and busless, we travled by train. Tickets were cheap (100 rubles for students) and travel was a peaceful 2hr ride, interspresed with the marketing speels of the vendors who ride the trains selling everything from dvd's to cucumbers.

Moscow State Zoological Museum

On Sunday, Isaac, Sergei and I took a trip down to city center to check out the Moscow State Zoological Museum. For fifty rubles you get three floors of some of the strangest, and most majestic, albeit dead, members of the animal kingdom. Enjoy the pictures.

Behold Dish One for the Cultural Exchange Dinner!

This Wednesday MSAU is having a cultural exchange dinner. Where in addition to us, Chinese, Russian, Turkish, and French students at the school will cook a traditional dish and perhaps perform a traditional song or dance. With a surplus of peanut butter, Joey, Isaac and I decided PB&J's would be an easy dish. And besides, what could be more American? However, in an effort not to have our dish seem like a cop out, we've decided to make a second dish, perhaps hamburgers. As for our traditional song or dance, Joey suggested the Hokey Pokey. Much better than the National Anthem, I think.

Learning the Language.

At some point soon, one of us will have to get our Russian tutors to pose for a picture. Their names are Vera and Liudmilla (American spelling), and they have done what I thought was the impossible: they are actually teaching a class of five students, none of which have identical Russian language experience, and who come from two different countries with different native languages, Russian language. And with noticeable progress each and every day!

Happy Birthday Guillaume

Yesterday was our French classmate Guillaume's 23rd birthday. In their typical generosity, our Russian classmates prepared a birthday dinner celebration, which included a fine dinner of spaghetti with cake and tea for dessert. They even bought a present for him: a mock military style ushanka. After the meal we played Charades for several rounds, but with three different languages spoken between the group, it was an English vocab only game.