A letter home from study abroad
Sunday started at about 1 pm, as a good sunday should. I lounged around
for several hours, enjoyed a scalding shower and got dressed. I met Nancy
at 4:00 at pushkinskaya metro. While I was waiting for her, I spotted a
_very_ tall gentleman wearing a sweater but no coat. I quickly surmised
that he was an american tourist who was at least slightly lost. So, I
pointed him in the right direction. About then, Nancy showed up and we
set off to find "Fuji" a japanese restaurant that was reputed to have good
sushi. Well, we took a wrong turn or two and were definately going in the
wrong direction when we realized that it was 4:30 and we needed to call
the friends we had invited to the circus. We found a payphone and I tried
the trick Alyosha had taught me....To my surprise, it worked. Actually,
it worked a bit too well..the plastic cover of the phone fell off. (I
didn't break it...it just fell) Anyway, we found the restaurant...it
wasn't the best sushi i've ever had and it was by far the most expensive,
but it was damn good for moscow...and they gave us extra ginger and
wasabi. After that, we headed off to red square to meet my friend emily.
(Nancy's friend bailed on us as he had just done his laundry and had no
clean pants.) We were about 20 minutes late, but it all worked out
because she was too.
We decided to grab a snack (we did not fill up on sushi...just
don't have that kind of money) at one of several Pepsi Mobile-Cafes parked
by the circus. The first one we approached had a longish line while one
20 meters away had no line. Emily and I started to walk toward the empty
one and tried to convince nancy to do the same. She protested, "but there
must be a reason why there's a line here and none there..." I came very
close to blurting out that Russians just wait in lines because other
people are waiting in lines...but I thought better of it." Once we got
our food at the cafe w/ no line, a line had formed behind us...proving my
unspoken point.
Nancy needed to go to the bathroom and a guard directed us to an
area near lenin's mausoleum....imagine my surprise when we found _clean_
_free_ public toilets right on red square. The circus was kind of
cool...it was very poorly rehearsed. The hilights for me would have to be
an obscene mime act (don't ask) and a troupe of skateboarding acrobats. .
. oh and there were the typical acrobats on horses...except they were
riding on camels. (two humps if it matters)
The circus let out at about 11:00 and we headed home. When I got
home, I was roped into hanging out with Carrie and several brits until
about 4 am. conversation ranged from bizzare british slang to whom we
hated on our program to linguistics.