Saturday night. What an adventure. Let me start out by saying that it all worked out in the end. But one of the Russian students who lives in our dorm, Yurri, invited us out to the rock concert. Now Yurri was supposed to work with us this summer as one of our russian buddies but ended up getting accepted to a program in the US so he will be leaving on July 10th for the US and he obviously cannot be here with us. He speaks incredible english. He actually went to high school for a year in Orange, MA through an exchange program. So he called a taxi but since it was raining the taxis were taking forever so we decided to take a bus. We get off the bus after a couple of stops and we start heading down the road toward this bar. To his defense he did tell us it was kind of an underground club. HOWEVER, we left the street and we were following him down a dirt road. Now dirt roads are not super uncommon in Russia so we are thinking ok like nbd. Until we turn into the grassy yard. Basically he was leading us to this old house with an overgrown lawn and blackout windows. Sima, Megan, and myself all looked at each other at the exact same time and had that he is going to take us into that house and murder us all feeling. BUT to our surprise we walked into the house which had a bouncer and it was actually really cool. It had a great atmosphere and it was a cool place to hang out. Definitely somewhere worth going back to---just taking a cab the whole way.The rock concert was interesting. The actually sang a few songs in english. But the lead singer was like FEELING the moving and writhing all over the stage. Hysterical to watch so I obviously recorded it for your enjoyment. Please look at his mouth.
So Sunday...Since I missed that day we did more of the same stuff as saturday. We went and bought a month bus pass and when back to the giant 24 hour Russian BJs which we still managed to forget some things at when we went shopping. We also began our exercise regime. Megan is our work-out coordinator and we have spots around the side of our dorm that we will work out in - hopefully everyday we will see what happens once we get into the swing of things for real. Exercise for the sake of exercise is just not something they do in Russia so we get some stares and curious looks when we are doing our cardio or strength exercises with therabands but were making it work since we don't have access to a gym. Pretty uneventful day. Kind of hung out ands relaxed and got used to being here.
Today was a busy busy busy day. We got up to met at 9:30a. Getting up early is not early because it feels like the middle of the night. What does not help is that is is legit light out until after midnight and it is bright out until like 10p. Then the sun rises at 4a so its just weird.
So we visited Megan and Sima's internship sites today. Megan is going to be working at and STI (sexually transmitted infections) clinic and Sima will be working at an HIV clinic. We did that until about 12:30p and then we came back and made some eggs for lunch
and had a salad. We then got picked up at 1:30p to go sight seeing which was super fun.
We went to a monastery first. It was built in the 1000s by a man named Yarslov who the University we are working with here is named after. The monastery has been destroyed but rebuilt and remodeled since. It is so beautiful. There is one piece of original building left and there is a bowl in the center that you lean against and make a wish on and it will supposedly come true. However, while we were making said list a monk came over and spoke with us. Well since I obviously don't speak very much Russian I was clueless to what was going on.
Megan and I thought he was praying for us when in reality he was scolding us intensely about what we were wearing and what not. Sooooo interesting. We left shortly after that because we were afraid of him haha. On the right is a picture of the bell tower entrance to the monastery and below is a picture of the chapel in the corner that was just incredible.
Our next stop was a wooden architecture museum. It was just incredible buildings resembling old buildings that were common in Russia different time periods. They were all made with out nails and they were just incredible to look at. I really have no words but the picture that I am going to include in this blog is a 500 year old church and it was just an incredible building. But we did learn that the Russian iconic onion dome was originally done for acoustically reasons but now since it is so widely recognized it is just continued in the buildings today. But I am off to bed and up early tomorrow for a long day of more orientation. We are going to see my clinic and apparently going to the med school graduation haha.
With Love From Russia,
Jess
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