The Second Time is So Much Better

I rode the Metro home today by myself. It’s strange how the signs make sense to me this time around. It’s my first day of three months in Moscow, and I’m not a bit scared. “Just look like you know where you’re going and you’re pissed off” was Mika’s advice to avoiding the cops. Not a problem; I do that anyway, even in the States. This woman tried to talk to me about how the world is going to end soon this morning. I told her that I don’t understand Russian very well. Muscovites don’t seem so cold and standoffish anymore, even though I still don’t understand most of what they say. Is it a change in Moscow, or a change in me? We bought lunch for less than $4 at a well-stocked modern supermarket. Way off the perspective radar of the average American, Moscow has changed and is still changing.

My host family lives in an old and cozy apartment. Yan, 30, is a biologist, and his wife Eugenia, the online journalist, was born the day before I was. Their 11-month-old Dunia is exactly what you’d expect of an adorable Eastern European baby, blond-haired and blue-eyed, and Liessa, the 3-year-old German Shepard, never gets tired of fetch in the narrow corridors.

As always, I want to take all the classes that are offered, not the least because they are being taught by the very people that advise the top of the Russian government. Was that Putin’s office who called Dr. Mau during his introductory talk? Wow, that’s heavy. That’s how Stanford rolls.

So despite the unstable electricity that’s making my laptop behave all funny and the possibility of getting jumped by racist skinheads, I’m very optimistic that this quarter abroad will be everything I wanted it to be. Welcome to Moscow.