Arrival in Moscow

Yesterday I left Toby in Frankfurt and flew to Moscow! But before I go into detail about that, I would like to talk about my last 2 days with Tobias.
On Thursday, Toby had a meeting in Munster, Germany. We first went to Mirle's home village in the center of the Netherlands where we dropped her off. Once Toby had dropped me off in Munster, I quickly realized how much I had already knew about the city from my history classes at A&M. First thing was the Peace at Westphalia which was signed in their town hall. The second was 3 cages that hung from the main church's spire. These are significant because the held the bodies of 3 antibaptist in the early 17th century as a warning to other antibaptists not to go against the church.




One great thing about traveling in Europe in the winter is the lack of other tourists. The problem with traveling in Europe is that you soon become the tourist attraction. For example, While in Munster, I took a city tour, on a bus, alone. The worst part was that the bus was split in two parts with a hitch thing connecting the two. And I wasn't even in the part with the driver... It was hard to look at things when all the people were looking at you too.



Next we drove to Frankfurt am Main. Toby had another meeting, this one for a venture group he is helping to create. So I had the day to explore. I had a feeling that there wouldn't be too much to do there. At first it had reminded me of a German Houston. But I was luckily wrong and there were plenty of fascinating sites to see. I was able to tour the Goethe House, which was home to the famous writer who wrote such things as "Faust". I also saw a Picasso art gallery which made me feel cultured.





Lastly that evening, Toby, two German guys both named Thomas and I went to the second ever "Hooter's" in Germany. And I can proudly say that it doesn't even compare to the worst Hooter's in the US. Service was bad, (I mainly take Toby and the other guys advice on that since I couldn't understand her) and food was cold. Also, I don't think they really knew how to make my quesadilla properly.

Finally Toby and I said our goodbyes at about 7 am the next morning right before I boarded my flight to Moscow.





Ok, so after I fought my way through the people at customs, I at last was in Russia. I found my driver (who spoke no English) and when to is Soviet styled Лада-(Lada) He was very friendly, asking me questions about where I was from, what I was studying, what type of car I drive. He also asked me some questions I did not understand.
Once at Московский государственный университет имени М. В. Ломоносова - Moscovskii Gosudarstvennii Universitet imeni M. V. Lomonosova or Lomonosov Moscow State University I met up with Irina who is our very nice and helpful coordinator. She helped me get registered for the dorm (I'm on the second floor, which is sad since there are about 10 floors in my dorm and at A&M I never got below third in four story buildings), university, Russia and things like that. She also showed us where we can eat, how to get around campus, and things of that sort. I also got to meet two more of the guys in my program, Jack from NC State and Amitesh from India who recently graduated from UT. Later that night we tried to take some pictures of the university but almost froze to death after almost being ran over.





As you can see, our rooms are tiny, which isn't too bad since we don't have roommates, but the beds are even smaller! Today we explored more of the University and took some Russian tests to see what levels we are at. After looking at our tests and talking to us, they saw that the three of us understand grammar really well but really need to focus on speaking and conversation skills, which is exactly what I wanted. We start classes tomorrow and they will be for 3 hours a day, 5 days a week. So I expect to improve quickly.

Lastly we explored the Moscow Metro. I will leave you with some pictures of the things I saw. Sorry for the long post, but there's just so much that's been going on!