Moscow!

Hello, friends!

I'm in Moscow!

I actually got here yesterday, but found out upon arrival at my hotel that my computer charge cord no longer charged my computer, so I hardly managed to do more than email my mom to say I was alive before compy croaked. But today I trekked out to a ritzy shopping center in the north of the city with an Apple certified reseller (no real Apple stores in Russia), where I was helped out by two young guys who seemed somewhat bewildered by my friendliness (oops... not in America anymore) and lack of knowledge of the normal words for electronic devices ("I opened my computer and I found... how do I say this?... that the wire does not feed it. So the battery quickly ended."). Fortunately, the problem was in the "wire," not the computer itself, so we're back in business with a new charge cord.

Moscow! Russia! I have many thoughts. First is that I have found it extremely pleasant to be interacting with people in Russian. I make a lot of mistakes and am often slow to respond to questions (while my brain changes gears, or something), but it is nice to be able to communicate, and have people respond, and not feel the pressure I used to feel to sound like a native speaker.

My main thought about Moscow is that it feels totally natural to be back here. Two years isn't that long to have been away, I guess. Unfortunately the computer adventure took up much of my wandering-around time, so I don't think I'll be able to do much more than stroll down the Arbat, maybe stop in at the Maxim Gorky house-museum (designed by Schechtel, interesting to me more for the architecture than the life of the writer, who I have never read), stop by the American Center to return Amara her Moscow guidebook, and skip town. Next post from KAZAN! Woo!