Mother Russia!! Just a short intro...more to come later

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I arrived in "Mother Russia" VERY early in the morning around 4am...it was another 12 hours waiting at the airport as I had a redeye flight to Moscow. The flight was pretty fast though, certainly faster than the flight to Denmark from Moscow. As I made my way to customs and immigration I was a bit nervous as to what questions and interrogation tactics they would be asking me, seeing how my country's government seems to like to fuck with everyone else in the world and the relations between the U.S. and Russia aren't exactly great right now. I was pleasantly surprised that one of the two ladies working the graveyard shift were EXTREMELY nice and even had a laugh about my old 2007 passport picture where I was just a fat mess lol. i said thank you and passed right through no problems and no questions which was a relief.



Margarita, one of the admins at the school I will be working at had the dutiful task of scooping me up so early in the morning and taking me to the apartment I will be living at. She arrived about ten minutes after I got outside and we hopped in the taxi and headed off. We chatted and got to know each other a bit better than the skype messages we exchanged when I was in Vietnam and also traveling. Very young, only 20 years old, but very smart. We arrived at the soviet block about an hour later as Moscow is just huge land wise and I met the two other teachers I will be living with both also very young from the US and still "green" in regards to teaching, but so nice and helpful with everything which I'm glad about! Later in the day we met up with some of our managers and other teachers to test out the metro and check out some malls and shopping centers. Moscow is actually very nice so far, it's a big change obviously from Southeast Asia in a good way. One thing I have noticed here is if locals hear you speaking English whether it be on the trains, buses, walking etc they just stare lol. I suppose it's rare here I'm not really sure as time goes on we will see.



We finished up the day tour around and had to head to the office because some of the other teachers had to get some items for their classes for the next day. I was pooped...i just flopped in a chair and nodded off for a little bit as they finished what they had to do. I did not have any jeans as of yet because, well, I was in Southeast Asia and I can't wear jeans in that kind of heat so the first priority was to buy some jeans which had to wait because Jack, the big boss wasn't feeling great and couldn't meet me to give me the visa reimbursement that day,instead I would go down to the office the next day and pick it up. This coming weekend my manager will be taking us newbies to see red square, the kremlin, Lenin's tomb etc etc which I'm crazy excited about so even though this blog is just writing, I will have some pictures on the next blog I promise. It's not like me to post a blog without pics, but it is what it is for now.



So for now...buen Viaje everyone! See you On here again soon!

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Comments

[D MJ Binkley]

Mother Russia
Glad you've landed. Hope you enjoy the assignment. Keep those blogs coming.