Hana and I woke up early on Monday (7:45 which is earlier than I planned on waking up here since my earliest class is at 10:00 and if there's any cliche I can get behind it's the one about beauty sleep) and went for a walk/run around the small park right next to the university. We've been slowly easing into exercise, and walking around the city a lot has prevented me from getting too out of shape, but it was a little bit of a challenge to run for an extended period of time. Then, we made an extremely leisurely breakfast (eggs with little chopped up pieces of hot dog..which is way tastier than it should be when I think about it) and since I didn't have class I made an extraordinarily long to-do list, as I am apt to do when I'm feeling particularly motivated.
In order not to bore you with the details of my day, I will write down a quick list of the things I did:
- Finally got around to studying in the library on campus. It's gorgeous and on the very top floor (great for working on stairs!) and in order to study inside you have to leave your bags in a little locker. The library itself isn't huge, but what it lacks in substance it makes up for in style. Also, I didn't exactly have a need for any books so I didn't look around too much but there were paintings and huge windows and it was really quiet.
- This might not seem like a huge accomplishment, but Hana and I (with the help of Maxime at dinner) made and ate three square meals. For two people who have been prone to eating bags of chips for dinner, this is a big deal. We even tried to get creative with rice noodles at dinner!
- My favorite part of the day was taking the metro to the Arbatskaya station. We traveled there to go to what we heard was a GIGANTIC book store, and it was very very true. On the first floor were school supplies (of which I was in desperate need) and on the second there was a fairly substantial Foreign Language Book section. This is a relief to me because I finished the two books I brought with me within the first few weeks and have missed American novels more than I thought I would. I've had far more free time and less internet connection than I'm used to at Beloit.
Today was much the same in that we woke up early for a walk/run and a healthy breakfast. I've also turned into an avid tea-drinker, which is a shocker to me.
After that I had Grammar, and for some reason today I was on fire. We're working with my favorite case, the accusative case (which has nothing to do with confrontation, surprisingly) and I answered most of my questions correctly and even got an enthusiastic "Very good!" from my professor. I was feeling very optimistic about my intelligence and was very excited for Speech, but unfortunately the class got canceled. (Ok, to be honest, I wasn't that upset).
Finally, in a stroke of inspiration I started making a very complete schedule of due dates for my Moscow in Transition course for Beloit. I've planned dates and started brainstorming ideas for my final paper, which is supposed to be primarily observation and some research over the course of my time here. I submitted my idea, which has to do with the way beauty in women is treated here, and would involve experiments with getting into clubs (with face-control, especially) and observing the culture that surrounds women and their appearance. I also want to look at the way that Americans view Russian beauty, as I have been interested in that for longer than I realized.
Anyway, it's getting late and I have some tea to drink and a movie to watch.
I'll post pictures of my weekend later, as I am going to Victory Park!
Emily
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