Holy Jet-lag, Batman!

Friday, September 2, 2011

[Yup, that title was just for you, Mom haha]

(A sign on the way to Yaroslavl from Moscow.  Yaroslavl is on the top, 136 km.  Moscow on the bottom, 115 km.)

We finally made it to Yaroslavl!!!  It was a few hours drive from Moscow and the scenery was filled with open fields, trees, dachas, and randomly placed churches all throughout.  I thought the driving here was just bad because we were in Moscow, but it appears that it may be the entire country that has crazy drivers.  They seriously have no fear….one car looked like it was playing leap-frog with the cars in front of it.  And there were cars coming towards it in the opposite direction, too!!  Needless to say, we had a few close calls where I thought we were going to run over a car or a car was going to bump us!

The ride through the city of Yaroslavl for the first time was exciting, but full of nerves for everybody.  We were all anxious to see where we would be living and with whom we’d be living for the next couple of months.  I was one of the last people to be dropped off.  Of the eleven of us in the group studying here in Yaroslavl, there were three people to left after me.  I’m just thankful I wasn’t the absolute first or last.  One thing about my host’s apartment is that it is on the fifth and sixth floors of the apartment building, and there is no elevator.  We had to carry my bags (including my quite large and quite heavy (Oh yeah! Just one pound below the limit!!  That’s what I call packing like a pro!  Thank you, Mother.  I have no idea how I’m going to pack to come home without you!!) suitcase) up all the flights of stairs.  It was quite the workout! 

I found out about my host before we left Moscow, however.  Her name is Tatiana Arkadievna Kutimova, or Tanya.  She owns her own small business and she lives in a really nice apartment.  It has two floors, which I think is pretty  uncommon in Russia and I have a fairly large room all to myself with a desk an end table, a smallish bed, and a closet built into the wall.  The walls are painted to look like the sky.  They’re light blue with clouds painted on them.  Also, the key that Tanya gave me for the apartment looks like it could open a castle!!  It’s huge!

According to Anya, our Coordinator, my apartment is the furthest away from the University.  The information I received says that it is a 30 minute commute via public transportation (I would have to take a bus and a trolley) or a walk that would probably take 40 minutes (clearly, they don’t know how I walk…I bet I could get there quicker by walking than I could by public transport, but that’s a theory to be tested later on in the semester).  Hopefully, I’ll be able to do both; walk to university on the nice days and take public transport on the days with bad weather.

I feel like I have so much free time since arriving in Moscow, but I’m sure that will change once classes and homework start, so I’m getting all of my blog entries written in anticipation of internet access.  Then, I can simply post them up.  Well, the free time and the fact that I’m still feeling the jet-lag a little bit.