What a country, What a weekend
I had a pretty awesome weekend. Friday night the three of us (Tess, Mike, and I) went to the ninth floor of their dorm for a birthday party of a fellow foreigner. There were about 20-30 people just hanging out and talking. Thankfully pretty much everybody speaks english. There are only a few of us who could converse in Russian. But we finally decided to go out somewhere and there were 19 of us were willing to go. I rode in the elevator with about 6 Italian girls and a Swede and an American. The Italians were making a big "to do" about me being the only guy in the elevator and they asked me if I knew any Italian. Conveniently, I had just learned a great Italian word a day earlier. For whatever reason, the learned the word for Unibrow, which in Italian is Monocigilo. I told them the word and they all almost fell over laughing. Well later that night, from halfway across the club I hear, "Mononcigilo, we are going to the bar" All the Italians now call me Monocigilo. Anyways after many hours of watching russians trying to dance to some sort of techno, we went back to the dorms. We I got to my floor I heard people in our dining areas so I stopped by and saw my new roommate and 3 russians drinking vodka. I did two shots of vodka because I had to and they gave me more beer and I also ate some sort of dried, salted slices of squid. It was so nasty but I just kept eating it. Needless to say I didn't feel so well the next morning but I did manage to run around the park. Yesterday Tess's grandparents again took us out for the day. We went to a famous cemetery and saw lots of headstones. Then we went to an amazing restaurant on the red square and had a great meal. Then it was on to the ballet. Now I'm sure most of you know that I'm not a big fan of the ballet and this performance didn't change my mind at all. However the theater was impressive and I was able to get a movie clip of the theater with my camera. And so that was my weekend. Today I am trying to do laundry and it looks like I'll have to wash it all by hand. Good times!