Monday May 20, 2013.
Today I started the course with 16 very talented very serious members of the Higher School of Economics at the National Research University. Great cross section of disciplines ranging from languages to history to economics to finance to political science. It is going to be an intense 2 weeks but a lot of fun as well. It is fascinating to work with people who speak English, very well, as their second or third language and I feel wonderfully intimidated. On a down note I left this morning and forgot my camera, but I did learn how to take the bus (Bus # 30, count six stops, get off the bus). It cost 13 rubles to ride one way (42 cents). I also figured out to write down where I was going on a piece of paper because so far my vocabulary has been limited to hello (zdravstvutye), good morning (dobrey utra) and good afternoon (dobre dyne)....and those are my phonetic spellings not how the words look in Cyrillic.
I do know that I live at Uinskaya 34 and that I take the bus (6 stops as noted) to Studencheskaya.
My wonderful NRU-HSE faculty host, Dr. Permyakova, also loaned me her 11 year old daughters cell phone, complete with pink case with jewels on it, as a local back up so I am all set to explore. Tomorrow I am going to try to walk the route to the university, only a couple of miles, but I have yet to figure out all of the turns. Game on.
It is interesting, and almost wonderful, how little English is spoken outside of the university classroom. Helps me remember that it is not the only language in the world.
So, tomorrow I hike to class, with camera and street names in hand, and more pictures to follow.
Oh, the food is wonderful. Tonight I had a dish made of beets, herring and radishes, and lots of little meat pies that remind me of pierogies and I have to get the name of them. Every day for lunch is a wonderful soup or broth. Today it was a cold beef broth with onions and some other really good stuff I did not recognize. As has been my life travel creed, if it is served I will eat it.
So, with intent, I am continuing to follow that one comet across the skies and it continues to lead me to adventures and other good stuff.
~later
Today I started the course with 16 very talented very serious members of the Higher School of Economics at the National Research University. Great cross section of disciplines ranging from languages to history to economics to finance to political science. It is going to be an intense 2 weeks but a lot of fun as well. It is fascinating to work with people who speak English, very well, as their second or third language and I feel wonderfully intimidated. On a down note I left this morning and forgot my camera, but I did learn how to take the bus (Bus # 30, count six stops, get off the bus). It cost 13 rubles to ride one way (42 cents). I also figured out to write down where I was going on a piece of paper because so far my vocabulary has been limited to hello (zdravstvutye), good morning (dobrey utra) and good afternoon (dobre dyne)....and those are my phonetic spellings not how the words look in Cyrillic.
I do know that I live at Uinskaya 34 and that I take the bus (6 stops as noted) to Studencheskaya.
My wonderful NRU-HSE faculty host, Dr. Permyakova, also loaned me her 11 year old daughters cell phone, complete with pink case with jewels on it, as a local back up so I am all set to explore. Tomorrow I am going to try to walk the route to the university, only a couple of miles, but I have yet to figure out all of the turns. Game on.
It is interesting, and almost wonderful, how little English is spoken outside of the university classroom. Helps me remember that it is not the only language in the world.
So, tomorrow I hike to class, with camera and street names in hand, and more pictures to follow.
Oh, the food is wonderful. Tonight I had a dish made of beets, herring and radishes, and lots of little meat pies that remind me of pierogies and I have to get the name of them. Every day for lunch is a wonderful soup or broth. Today it was a cold beef broth with onions and some other really good stuff I did not recognize. As has been my life travel creed, if it is served I will eat it.
So, with intent, I am continuing to follow that one comet across the skies and it continues to lead me to adventures and other good stuff.
~later
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