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!