18

In short, I spent the past week: at a concert of gypsy music, in aleksandrovsky garden, at cafe bilingua, at home, watching the english patient, reading russian science fiction since it's easier than Gogol, reading Gogol's The Government Inspector, playing ping pong, dodging traffic, skirting assembled police officers, listening to old yiddish folk songs, drinking beer in front of statues, learning bass parts for the new band, aimlessly browsing the internet, christmas shopping at the enormous outdoor market at izmailovsky, cursing constant cloudy skies, grimacing at cigarette smoke, playing the ukulele, embracing sour cream, thinking of the U.S.A. in many different respects, trying not to fall into too binding of a schedule that would too closely resemble Davidson, dreaming again of a rural life.  

17

Happy Thanksgiving, all; I'm thankful to report that I didn't spend Thursday evening reading Gogol and eating shchi, for a Middlebury in Moscow alumnus now working for the American Embassy here invited us all to her place to speak English and celebrate everyone's favorite holiday.  The meal was just what I needed, thanks to a few diplomats in the kitchen and the American food store on the other side of the complex (where you can buy Hellmann's mayonnaise and other classics), and the company was also rewarding.  At times it's surprising how little I know about the other students in my program--since all our conversation is restricted to Russian--so I enjoyed the chance to speak English with them very much.  The diplomats were also an interesting bunch, with plenty of international travel behind them, so we got to hear some good stories from a professional path that, by the looks of it, several students in our program intend to look into as well.  

Otherwise, the big news is that I'll be playing bass for a local band here, at least for a little while.  The guy I work for (tutoring English), who's beginning to resemble less an employer than a straight-up benefactor, told his wife, who sings for the group, that I can play bass, so yesterday I went over to their rehearsal and played around the fretboard a bit.  They're a very strange band--to be honest not exactly my style--playing an odd type of medieval pop-rock, but I'm stoked to be playing and practicing my Russian in such a non-academic situation.  Today I'm going to try to go to the big indoor skatepark here.

16

I'm forced to break my internet silence by the snow that has been falling silently for the past 20 hours or so, great flat flakes falling sideways by like a river.  Perfectly silent--that's the first thing my ears, accustomed to the thunderstorms of Florida's summers, noticed, and my face noticed how much more effort is required to keep it out of your eyes when the wind intends to blow it right under your hood.  Make no mistake, Moscow is no more peaceful--Russians, of course, pay almost no attention to snow, except to complain about global warming--but it is darker and a bit more alien, at least until I get used to walking around in snow and an early sunset.  A lengthy ski trip without the skiing.  Fall is beyond reclamation, I suppose.

But really--I am enjoying myself entirely.  A wise friend pointed out to me that my posts here are quite melancholy, something which hadn't occured to me because, unfortunately, I haven't been thinking much about this thing and, it would seem, when I sit down to write something here I unintentionally slip into the half soapbox/half forced irony front that characterizes all internet writing and is the main reason I hate blogs, something I have almost always been honest about.  Of course, I want to share my doings with you all more than I hate blogs, so here we are.  I beseech your patience, that's all.  

My life here is comfortable--perhaps too comfortable--and duly stimulating, and if there are times when it's not exciting as one comes to demand from a semester abroad it's on account of lack of effort on my part.  Most obviously, a lack of effort to go anywhere outside of Moscow's garden ring.  But it's a pleasant inertia, I can't deny that, mostly because it is a grand adventure as it is, being a foreign student in Moscow, and sometimes I'm simply tired.  Tired from Russian all the time, tired from boring classes--that's the plain truth of it: my classes are boring--tired from always hunting for new opportunities to make friends because most of the contacts I have here are unsatisfactory and unreliable.  There's no better Russian lesson, however, and, most important, I've learned the kind of tact that life in the U.S. failed to teach me.  Finally--and please don't worry about me--I don't write much exciting here because, well, exciting means an element of danger, and I don't want you to worry.  Adieu!

15

Alas, I didn't make it to Petersburg or any of the small outlying cities after all.  When my traveling mates and I showed up to the train station, the only tickets still available were overnight in an upright position, and we would have had to make the trip twice in three days, so we elected to sleep in our beds.  Secretly I was kind of keen to do it, but it was clear that the other two guys weren't.  Still, I'm quite glad that I stayed in Moscow, because several great, even terrific, things happened over the week or so I was here and didn't have class.  First, and best, of all, I found some work teaching English to wealthy Muscovites' children.  I won't say much  more since such practices are almost certainly unlawful, but it's been great.  Acquaintances in the higher social sphere here, you can't have too many of them.  Otherwise, I did a number of things of interest here in Moscow, including going to see Mozart's Requiem and running in a 30 km cross country race.  Last Tuesday was the Day of National Unity, but the holiday has changed so much with the years that most Russians don't even really know what it means--they're just glad for a day off from work.  I look at a stock ticker outside my window and all the arrows are red and aiming downward, and, however little I know about the U.S.'s financial crisis, I know Russia's is worse.

14

Right--visuals.  This is my bedroom, and it's not really this messy.  I have to keep up the appearance of cleanliness when I'm living with strangers, after all.

The kitchen/dinner table, where I tuck into my victuals every morning and evening.  Eleanora Viktorovna prepares great meals--meals, that is, that consist of more than just one course.  Hot chocolate and tea every time you walk by.
The living room and Grandfather Clock.  These windows face Novoslobodskaya Ulitsa, which is busy pretty much 20 hours a day.

This is the baby Mozart piano in the living room.  If you lift the lid you'll find a bunch of papers, and I think it's too out-of-tune to play either way.

13

The title has changed, for I've moved into my new apartment.  It is, in a word, супер.  Super.  It is quite old, for one, like my university, from which it is only five minutes on foot, but it has aged in a very attractive way and the cares my host babushka has taken with it are everywhere in evidence.  Her daughter and husband are/were painters, and paintings crowd all the walls.  I ought to have some pictures up shortly, but I will hazard a short description of my living space: a small writing table with a lamp stands before a window overlooking Ulitsa Novoslobodskaya, across the street are similar buildings in which people are occasionally seen working, ramshackle bookcases made of furniture odds and ends line the walls under old oil paintings, the walls are some sort of olive, if i recall correctly, an old comfortable irregularly shaped bed not quite long enough for my legs stands opposite the table.  Quite cozy, and a place where I can finally do some work.  

Eleanora Viktorovna has been hosting students for more than seven years, if I heard her correctly, and she has pictures of them all lining the kitchen wall and tales of them all along with breakfast every morning.  Another student, a Polish girl named Monika, lives across the hall from me; we get along famously, for the most part, and she's invited me along to several outings with the other students in her program, mostly British, so my circle of acquaintances continues to expand.  

I feel good.  This week is our fall break, so I hope to make it out to St. Petersburg and some of the small very Slavic cities surrounding Moscow.  Still, expect more from me, because I now have the time.  

12

A number of odd characters on the metro recently. A fellow with no arms, his amputated limbs protruding from a striped t-shirt, an old woman wailing hoarsely with foam on her lips, a young man carrying around an old tinny boombox and listening to loud house music, swarms of dandies wearing all black. Standard protocol is just to bury your head in a book or listen to music that you can't hear anyway because the shrieking of the tunnels is so bad. There are times when the Moscow Metro in the name of V.I. Lenin resembles a nightmare more surreal than frightening, characters from Beckett strolling about. And then you emerge from Okhotniy Ryad, the Kremlin stands before you, a Ferrari is parked behind you, the streetlamps are gilded, the windows you pass reveal a wealth to which you could never even summon the courage to pretend, and in your stomach you are simply perplexed.

11

A frightfully busy week means, I'm afraid, a dearth of posts. Alpinism training with AlpClub and, luxury of luxuries, I've actually had two restaurant-prepared meals this week. Tuesday at one of Moscow's (and therefore probably Russia's) only Indian restaurants with some American students here studying theater, Wednesday with the Middlebury group at an ostentatious Georgian restaurant looking, strangely enough, like a pirate ship with a bucolic Caucasian vineyard inside it. A bottle in a ship. But there was a picture of Condoleezza Rice on the wall, and it's on the Arbat, so it must be well-regarded. I'll make a pdf of the blueprints and post them. It's a luxury to dine out, of course, because it's impossible to eat at Moscow's restaurants on less than $20--no free water, alas, but they're glad to give you Evian--but worth it all the same in good company, because suppers here seldom wrap up in under three hours. And the food is often very well prepared, and the menus are often very difficult to make sense of. But the wheel of fortune gave me lamb soup at the first and some cream sauce chicken dish at the second, so no complaints. Well, only one: the meat at both restaurants--perhaps this is typical--was made more of bone and gristle and fatty skin than flesh. Apparently they don't have the same chicken fattening facilities here that we do in the good ol' sun belt. But tasty, all in all, and, as for the Georgian food, a cuisine I've been meaning to try ever since I read Steinbeck's A Russian Journal, an addition to my list of favorites. None of the Americans here understand why there aren't more Georgian restaurants in the U.S., since they should be able to play the same exotic draw Thai places do and they're just as good.

Also, after scouring the RGGU website for her name, I managed to track down my Russian AT from freshman year, Natalia Polishchuk. A marvelous coincidence, really--she works at the same university I study at, which really is quite a small place in the enormity of Moscow. Like being by chance on the same city block among a hundred million. Natalia speaks terrific English--she had a copy of T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland in her office--and she showed me some of her favorite spots around the university; I was glad for the opportunity to talk about Moscow and Davidson with her, because, in particular, she has a unique perspective, being a Muscovite and quite familiar with parts of the U.S. that aren't New York or Miami, and a sharp insight. This morning I sat in on her English class, where they're reading Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine, had the pleasure of explaining who Captain Ahab was and why he's a significant figure, spoke a bit about the election, since they were curious, and, interestingly, got to see language learning from the other side of the glass. They apologized about their English, and I pointed out that my Russian was surely worse.

10

At Makdonalds--thought I'd stop by to check it out since it's the closest free wi-fi.  For old time's sake I ordered a double cheeseburger and a coke.  The cashieress smiled discretely when she heard how American my pronunciation of Coca-Cola is.  The soda was flat, but the dankburger tasted basically the same as those Lewis, Mark, Jeremiah, and I used to pick up at the Atlantic Beach McGnarly's after the dawn patrol.  They have raspberry pies here instead of apple, and the line is always four across and ten deep.  Kids are out front playing rugby.  They ought to be in school, though, so I don't know what's going on.  

9

A page from my travel journal:
"A month has passed, and I cannot stave off the conclusion that my life out here in Mitino is for the most part a pathetic one. Wasted time and physical softening at every turn, leaning upon my friends back home in the U.S. instead of scattering my craven instincts and penetrating the world here, as I so desire to do. Peculiar, because I feel more immediately outgoing, more prepared to play be the rule we should all play by all the time--nothing matters much, even if you do see these people again--than at home, for sure, but at the same time I'm paralyzed by timidity and, so I like to think, language. I can't tell if my inability to converse freely in Russian is truly a stumbling block or another mental fabrication. But enough! I'm convinced that the living situation in which I've been placed here is indeed a net thrown over my spirit. I simply live too far away from the Moscow I came to seek out. The prospect of 90 minutes on the metro and, worst of all, the wretched buses is, at worst, unbearable, and at best makes me content to sit here in my room and scan the same stale words over and over. I know it's the real experience, the real Russia for a large population; perhaps my constitution is simply not ready for it. But don't tell a Sao Paulan escaping the slums that he's living the genuine Brazil behind! It's not a point I'm prepared to be stoic about, for I'd much, so much rather be in the center, or an easy ride away, where the culture draws itself in. I've learned that, in the enormity of the city, people do not step up to solve your problems for you, and I gnash my teeth at the coordinator who stuck me here when other students got the golden ticket, but she's kind and, recognizing in my foul humor the weight this has become for me, wants to help me out. With luck, I'll be in the dormitory or closer to the center soon enough. I love my host parents, but the truth is I rarely see them, so I'm not getting any speech practice anyway, the food is uninspiring and insufficient, and I tire of cleaning the dog's shit off the floor. I will miss plundering their bookshelf for The Little Prince and One Hundred Years of Solitude [in Russian] all the same."

I wrote this a week ago. For my own delectation, of course, but I figured it would be a convenient way to describe my situation. I've painted a rosy picture for you all, you see, and although this was written at my nadir, when it was very easy to despise everything, there are times when I do not feel like celebrating my surroundings. On the weekends, when I get out into the city and feel free, everything is splendid; but to come back to Mitino and solitude after a day of classroom toil is often simply bleak. So I've decided to move, and in two weeks I will be living near the Novoslobodskaya metro station, a--I still can't process this--five minute walk from the university and immersed in Moscow central. My new hostess and the apartment are what I, at least, have come to associate with quintessentially European, and the room in which I will be sleeping looks out on Novoslobodskaya boulevard, wide windows receiving enough sunlight most of the day to make artifical lighting unnecessary. There's a small desk that reminds me of the kind Hemingway would have labored at standing right under these windows where I can work. And at the thought of what I can do, what I can see, with those three hours not spent standing on public transportation, my heart swells. A new chapter begins.

8

Another day of brilliant weather, supplemented with old guys out doing calisthenics in the park. Last night I forewent the concert, instead opting to see a performance put on by the theater students of Moscow University for the Performing Arts (or something to that effect--basically, the state art school). It's title was Black Square, or From Simple to Complex, and it was brilliant. Completely. Word repetition necessary. High school drama was enough to engender a run first, think later response to student theater, and I usually pale before artistic dance, but this was--well, very well done. For one thing, it was comic throughout, taking a clever and sophisticated approach to an SNL-style framework and using sound effects and music piped in over the black box's speakers very effectively. It was all in Russian, of course--except for one gratefully received scene parodying an English language class in high school--but a lot of it was slapstick and strange, modern dance, and I was glad to feel that I didn't miss too much. That's probably why I liked it so. An example: one short was a young man dressed up as a cockroach, in a brown tunic with feelers sprouting from his head, crawling about and underscoring the absurdity of an insect's path around a room, until the sound of a book comes smashing over the speakers and he wilts. Physical comedy, yes, but thoroughly pleasing physical comedy.

7

Best weather Moscow's seen in a month today. Around 70 degrees, with only a small band of clouds off to the north. And--rejoice!--no class on Fridays, so I went for a pleasant run in the park, even stopping to do some pull-ups on the bar that stands, for some reason, by itself in the middle. There were an unbelievable number of women with strollers out rolling around; sometimes it seems like women out-number men two to one here. The lingering mark of a violent twentieth century. I've been able to get quite a bit of reading done, probably to the detriment of my Russian acquisition, but I excuse myself: those bus rides are long. Just finished Natasha's Dance: A Cultural History of Russia, trying to educate myself a bit, and am working on reading Joyce's Dubliners closely. Also, a slower project, reading Gogol's The Inspector General in Russian. Tonight there are a few good concerts, so I'm headed to the center.

6

Kazan--city of a million in the south of Russia, about 800 kilometers from Moscow, the capital of Tatarstan, a port on the Volga river. I spent a memorable five days there with the Middlebury group, eating Tatar food, wandering the boulevards, riding bicycles, trying to find a bookstore, and, most notably, enjoying my first Russian banya.



Anarchy in Tatarstan.
This is a shot of the city's main thoroughfare, a tourist-shop-lined boulevard that I must have traversed at least twenty times. It wasn't, to be honest, tremendously attractive as far as main streets go, but there was something Tatarskiy about it. Vendors selling fezes, most likely. Looking closely you can see the orthodox church that seems to anchor the whole street, the black spire in the middle of the picture.
You might ask why I don't take more color pictures. Between the landscapes and the unashamedly garish paints people choose, Russia is a nation of brilliant colors--to my eyes, at least, far more so than the U.S. Well, this is a picture of a forest near the Volga. The centerpiece of our trip, a bicycle excursion to a dacha out beyond the suburbs, wound through this forest for 20 kilometers. I will say without reservation that, in autumn, the sunlight slicing obliquely through the canopy and illuminating the ash leaves, this was the most fantastic forest I've ever been in. It was like a wood from an old Russian fairy tale, or a scene from Lord of the Rings--an element of fantasy enveloped the whole place. A very Old World scene. We emerged periodically to find a tributary of the Volga, lined with wooden dachas, lying serenely before us. And, alas, this picture simply does no justice whatsoever to the way it actually was. I've found that this is a recurring disappointment, and that's why I stick to b&w. One of the Volga's long, slender fingers. I only saw the mighty river from afar, but the sunlight was pouring down in shafts from holes in the clouds, like a blessing.
I mentioned fezes--Kazan is an interesting place, especially for the capital of a Russian principality, because it's history is in large part Muslim, in addition to Russian Orthodox. This is the city's principal mosque, situated inside its famous Kremlin. When we went inside, after donning surgical slippers to protect the floors, we saw that it is as extravagant as its exterior suggests. Our tour guide, standing there on the left of the photograph, talked so quickly, despite our numerous "please, slowly, please!" that it was hard to make out much of the history.
It was a joy to ride a bicycle again. I ride one everywhere on Davidson's campus, and after a couple of years of doing so walking places seems like a pitifully slow waste of time. It's time to read some Thoreau, I suppose. Here's our group, lined up at the gate while our guide, Rustan, cajoles an old babushka to let us pass.
Apologies for the darkness here: inside Kazan State University, a huge portrait of Lenin holding up a scroll reading "prav" (right, correct). We come to Rustan. As you can see, he's a small man, maybe a shade over five feet tall, and here he's cooking up some shashlik for our post-excursion feast. He lived for a long time in Kamchatka, I believe, and now leads a sort of tourist camp in Kazan. More than anything, he is the type of man you probably associate with Russia, in demeanor and behavior. He called me California, evidently because he thought Florida and California were the same place, and the vegetarian in our group vegeTABLES, stress on the tables. The night we stayed at the dacha was my first experience with a Russian banya, and Rustan ran it. I can't think of a more Russian activity. First we sat crammed in a small room built around a brick oven, in which Rustan would periodically pour water fortified with beer, and endured temperatures that must have been over 110 degrees and air that smelled of scorched beer and sweat. Opens up the pores, he said. I've never sweated so much--even training in Florida in the summer. Every once in a while we would retire to an adjacent room, where there was a hearty selection of meat, cheese, bread, and vodka. This went on for an hour and a half or so, and finally the night culminated in a frozen jog through the 0 C air down to the even colder river, where we all, of course, plunged in, and darted back to the banya. I was apprehensive, to be sure, because I have trouble even with the ice baths at Davidson, but Rustan was right: it really wasn't very cold at all, as long as you got back to the banya hastily. The body works itself up so much that it builds its own armor, I guess. There is a Russian work, kaif, which corresponds roughly to "high," in the sense of "sky-diving produces such a high." Here's to Rustan, and the Russian kaif.
He's drinking from the fountain, I think. Or stealing coins.
A longitudinal view of Kazan's kremlin. Kremlin simply means fortress in Russian, although the one in Moscow is certainly the most famous.
The central tower and the Tatar breaking free from his fetters.
And a final shot: some Moscow statues, pidgeons and their droppings.

5

At this moment I'm drinking a half-liter can of kvass, brand Ochakovo, because I forgot that kvass really doesn't taste all that good and smells absolutely abhorrent. But I actually kind of like it. It's not as sweet as Coca-Cola and tastes like you've been sowing wheat all day. Actually, when I got here someone told me that Coke was thinking about producing its own kvass because its cola was having trouble competing. Coca-cvassa.
More about beverages: yesterday I ran for the second time with the world-notorious Hash House Harriers, Moscow chapter, a self-proclaimed "drinking club with a running problem," British through and through. You're thinking, I know it, that it should have been founded by Russians drinking vodka. (The Moscow chapter does cross country ski in the winter). But no: it is about as British an institution as you can find, and you can read all about its formation here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hash_House_Harriers. The basic premise is a hare hunt: two or three "hares" set off with a bag of flour, marking a trail that's often hard to follow, and the rest of the pack, whoever opts to show up that day, come along later and try to successfully follow it to its conclusion. The Moscow bunch is composed largely of expat British and Americans and Russians learning English, with a few odd internationals here and there, and ranges in "youthfulness" from me to, say, about 55 or 60. So it's not the fastest run ever, you can imagine, and I'm not chalking it up under marathon training or anything, but this group is out of control--wild, notorious for a reason. I've seldom laughed so hard. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
During the run there's typically a game stop, something like tag or duck duck goose, after which everyone drinks some beer, which someone has been altruistic enough to lug along in a backpack. Then we set off again, losing and finding again the trail, and eventually the run's over. I've been able to get a decent number of miles in the past couple of times by circling back at each checkpoint and running back to the front. A habit which, as I'll get to right now, is bound to bite me in the ass in the least competitive running group ever assembled. After the run, when everyone's patting each other on the back, the club circles up in an assembly called down downs. In which there an enormous number of rituals and songs and behaviors and observations and rules (the only rule is that there are no rules) and hilarity and it would be impossible to do it justice here. But, in short, the grand master, with a mad hatter hat, gives out silly awards and penalties, after each of which the offending parties group in the center of the circle and, in time to a pub song, swig a cup of beer. The penalties and the way they are presented, the way the British accent perfectly complements British humor, are, no exaggeration, side-splitting. So many acute senses of humor in one place. Offences, to give a few examples, can include: front-running (yours, truly), putting your hand in your pocket, misleading the group, saying the word "think," and so on into perpetuity. There's really no end to the things you can do wrong, and nobody cares because it's just as much fun to be the offender as it is to laugh at the offenders. By the conclusion even the saints are swaying a bit. The funniest part, of course, is the way the grand master handles the whole thing. The guys who have performed the role so far have been astoundingly funny. The songs are also good: "He might be appreciated by his mother, but he's no use at all to us..." or "Try to drink it down but it goes the other way/ drink it down, down, down, down..." Don't worry, as I'm sure you must: I'm not becoming a dipsomaniac.

4

It was a thrill last night to explain why the statue of liberty is green. Of course, I had to look up the word for "copper," and the grammar of my explanation probably went something like this: "Because it's from copper, and when rain goes copper will become green." But, acuity aside, it stirred up the patriotism lying in a leafpile somewhere in my torso, and I was able to imagine, probably for the first time, what that statue means by its stance there, the first--if only symbolically here in the jet age--American structure arrivals see on their way into the harbor. Most of all I wondered how the statue must of appeared before it patinated.

I've found that young Russians, too young for the cold war, are usually pretty eager to quiz me about the U.S. They ask sharp questions. "Do you drink vodka there?" I mentioned something about Grey Goose. Konstantin had never heard of the stuff, and stuck to Smirnoff and Stolichnaya, he said, among a billion alternatives. He thought we mostly drink whisky. "Do you agree that Russia has the prettiest girls?" I stuck up for the American South and the Mediterranean but conceded a three-way tie. "What do Americans associate with Russia? Fur hats, vodka, Stalin?" I added snow and ice fishing. "Elvis. I love Elvis, man." Graceland, TN. I've been there.

It's a natural question because, it's true, American culture has sowed its seed. Widely, and not always in a manner conducive to the general good. Like an oil spill, the crappiest and most slippery constituents travel furthest, and I don't really know what to make of American Pie in every theater and a MakDonaldz on every street corner. One impression I certainly get is that it would be fairly easy, at least at this point in Russia's economic swing and compared to in the U.S., to make a killing here. I might be wrong about that. But my instinct is that it wouldn't even take very much creativity, just killing off some principles. Chick-Fil-A, for example. I don't think the world needs any more fast food restaurants, but Russians would dig Chick-Fil-A, for sure. Of course, it might be easy to reap the profits if you manage to start something up here, but I imagine it's a nearly impossible task to get approval through official channels, that is to say, the Kremlin. Now that I think about it, perhaps that's why the things that do traverse the Atlantic (some part of my brain is flashing "low culture," but I don't want to say it) are what they are: they're slippery enough to diffuse around the barriers. But enough of this. I apologize: my rants are always unapologetically elitist. Tomorrow I plan to run for the second time with the Moscow Hash House Harriers, so I should have some good yarns to spin.

3

At long, long last, I hear, I have a few frames of Moscow for you.  A small, small slice of the big village.

Here's a view of my street, looking south (I think) toward the center of the city and my apartment.  Moscow has an incredible diversity of cars: steering on the left, steering on the right, Japanese, American, Italian, Russian, Yugoslavian, sedans, smartcars, Hummers, military caravan vehicles, armored Mercedes, tanks.  They're all incredibly dirty all the time, however--a reminder of how sooty the air is.
I was starting to wonder where the Moscow impoverished live before I found a few shacks set up on the church's land.
And here's the park, an immense stretch of lawns and trees and brick paths, that rolls lazily by my apartment building and continues to wind its away I don't know how far.  One of these days I'm going to make it a long run and try to reach the end.  Here you can see a few other older walkers and, if you look closely, a little girl feeding an enormous flock of pigeons.
Here--I couldn't resist--is the casino Десперадо, which means, you guessed it, Desperado.  English and French words are apparently very good commercial draws, although you get the impression they became kitsch hip a long time ago.  For example, I see a lot of handbags and t-shirts that say things like: "Alternative x choose the only necessity alternative lifestyle.  Every thing is the best choice for everyday life."  It makes for a jarring effect in an otherwise completely cyrillic universe.
A look down the street that runs behind the building.  On the right you can say the entrance, the podezd, that goes up to my apartment.  
The neighborhood orthodox church.
I have a funny story about this place.  My hosts, Rodion and Olga, have a large black dog of some Italian stock named Stanley, and one evening we all went out for a walk in the park.  My Russian is still not good enough to keep up with native speakers in conversation with each other, and probably won't be for some time, but Rodion definitely told me, as we approached the lake, that to swim in it would be to risk falling extremely ill.  Then, having stopped somewhere along its shore, he began to throw a branch in for Stanley to fetch.  Nothing out of the ordinary there, I expect, but the next minute he was in his underwear and making for the center of the lake.  Had to take advantage of the warm weather, he said.  The funniest part of the whole thing was how, as Rodion swam out farther and farther from shore, he would call Stanley out to him, and the dog would dutifully and loyally make his clumsy way out there.  Rodion's head was floating out in the middle of the dark lake, whistling and calling, and Stanley's head would slowly, painfully slowly, progress until they met.  Finally, at what must have been the deepest point in the lake, it took the dog a comically long time to swim all the way out.  It's odd, come to think of it, how much watching that dog labor all the way out there had me in stitches, but it was certainly a very merry time.  Sure enough, the next day came the rain and the cold.
My address.

This photograph doesn't do the scale of the neighborhood justice.  Maybe if I had some kind of special lens.  Standing in the park, however, this cluster of apartments seems more like a mountain range.  Mine is sort of behind the yellow structure in the center.

Yes, an old Soviet facade.  This was a crazy place, maybe the craziest place I've been so far.  It resembled a park, or maybe a promenade, and all the main structures were these old Soviet monuments and pavilions.  But at ground level it was a flea market.  Capitalism gone wild.  Shirtless dudes rollerblading all over the place and merchants selling every kind of knockoff ware.  The place gave you quite an incongruent feeling in your gut--a good symbol, perhaps, of the direction Russia's taken in the past twenty years.  

2

No photos today--a slow, cold rain has persisted straight through four days and it doesn't appear to be departing for another two or three. If it's raining when you wake up and look out the window, bring an umbrella for the day. Earthworms are drowning all over the sidewalks, although the pariah dogs are the truly pitiful victims, shivering under all the bus stops.

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I've been in Moscow for nearly a week now. I live in the city's northwest corner, in a neighborhood called Mitino, with my hosts Rodion and Olga, two generous and lively young Muscovites who run a company setting up weddings. Weddings, I've been told, are a big deal in Russia--much larger in scale and duration than "American weddings." Four semesters of college Russian under my belt and I can converse somewhat freely on weddings and other useful subjects, although it's still certainly necessary to carry a little dictionary around the city in my back pocket. Plus, thieves might mistake it for a real wallet. Altogether, my Russian is good enough to know that my hosts are very funny, and I can always expect a laugh and a cup of tea when I return home after classes.
On this subject: I'm studying with Middlebury College at the Russian State School for the Humanities, abbreviated (in Russian) RGGU and called simply "er ge ge oo." It's certainly small by American standards--it occupies about a block--but it has a pleasantly stern Soviet air, and I feel in its age it's quite loosened up, like a miserly father who spoils his grandkids. My classes, 90 minutes a piece, are Russian grammar, Russian stylistics, Russian phonetics, Russian culture, and a literature course, which will likely be on Gogol. The classes are completely in Russian, of course, and the professors--and this is probably the most devilish part of this whole enterprise--range in their speed and clarity of speech from slow and distinct, explaining words that we probably don't know, to, as far as I can tell, simply treating us (the 7 students in my program) like the real Russian students walking around the place. But, all in all, they're an entertaining bunch, and they have the experience to realize that simply trying to avoid getting your toes stepped on on the metro is homework enough to start with. No class on Fridays, so I ought to have some photos up in the next few days.
Oh, and for the curious--when I got here it was a splendid 30 degrees C and sunny, but summer departed three days ago and on its coattails were 10 degree temps and drizzle. No, no snow yet, don't worry.