Motherland, Day 1

6:53 pm Moscow time. Slept on and off on the flight over; wasn’t intending to, but I think the sight of all that space in the row made me crash. The CIEE group got off the Munich plane together and slowly aggregated with all of the other groups; it took until dinner to get all forty-five of us together, but we managed it. : )

It appears that I’m the one schmuck on this trip who arrived without her checked luggage, but, hey, it had to happen to somebody. (UPDATE, as of 9 pm: apparently there are three of us. I feel less conspicuous now.) God bless Katya, one of the program directors, who took me right through the lost-luggage process and confirmed the addresses I didn’t know yet with the customs officer. I mean, I’m in the country all of fifteen minutes, I don’t know anything except the name of the hotel, and I’m filling out forms for where to send it. Aaaaaaaargh.

The small blessing here is not having had to schlep the giant suitcase around. Thank you a thousand times, Mom, for suggesting I pack another outfit in my carry-on. The luggage is supposed to arrive on the next flight from Munich and be brought to the hotel tomorrow; in any case, I have clothes for a week, if I’m careful. Raggle fraggle razzum frazzum argh.

All forty-some of us seem to agree that the whole “I’m in Russia!” thing hasn’t hit yet. Granted, the expletive-inducing cold helped (even though we were out in it for all of a minute). But it’ll probably take until tomorrow before I realize “oh my God, I’m actually in Russia for the entire semester!” (We really do run the gamut on language skills here. The Russian Language program students were able to decipher most of Irina Borisovna’s welcoming speech, while we have at least six students who don’t know more than “please,” “thank you,” and “My name is ___.” More of God’s blessings upon Jarlath, the American program coordinator, for translating Irina’s speeches for the rest of us.)

Supposedly there are a few card games going on tonight, but after hearing that at least one of them would take place in the bar, I retired to my room to finish blogging for the day. We’re having a rearranging-my-roommate’s-suitcase party, after which I plan to shower, lay down with my mp3 player, and probably be out by ten.

Adventure of a lifetime, day 1. (Though it’ll probably be posted on day 4 or so, depending on the availability of free/cheap wireless.) Let’s see just how much this rocks, eh?