Super-Duper Wacky n' Tacky Euro Adventure

Ok, before my battey dies, I had to put up one more post to commemorate my crazy teacher and the new kids who just arrived. In the left photo, Andy is being nerdy, acting out one of the scenes from the beginning chapters of Master and Margarita and our teacher, Prof. Shupak couldn't be more delighted. By the way, what a cool class! So glad I'm taking the extra four units! On the right the new Muscovites are tired and restless, but nothing will stop our adventures and exploration!

When I heard the good news! Hahaha. Looks like someone's getting their cumuppins, as we like to say in Texas. Well, we really don't say that, but wouldn't it be great if we did?

…but far from pretty. Some might know this saying referring to something else, but I think it is a perfect idiom to describe an interesting little anomaly that greets every student attending the National Economics Academy as they exit the Yugo Zapadnaya Metro; including all fifteen Stanford students abroad in Moscow.

Besides the cold blast of air from a hyper-changing climate, one is greeted by a gorgeous, Oz-like building as soon as they step out of the south entrance of the Metro at Yugo-Zapadnaya. Being escorted by my host parent Iosef on my first day of school, I immediately commented to him how beautiful I thought the building was. And it still is. Among the 60’s and 70’s era mass-population apartment buildings in this neighborhood that have an affinity for beige colors, the modern design and brilliant color jump out at any passer-by. By quick deduction, I was able to imagine when it was probably built: The building is much too modern to be more than twenty years old and the USSR was much too broke and inefficient to be building anything of this nature in the 80’s so it must have been a post-communism wonder of the early to mid nineties. “Yes it is. And it is part of your school.” My heart nearly skipped a beat upon hearing this news. I imagined taking classes in Moscow’s finest technological institution; complete with flat-screen TV’s in every room and a skyline view of the Moscow suburbs to accompany lectures. Surely Stanford students are rightly entitled to such amenities, even 4,000 mi. away from home! Boy, could my imagination have been farther from the truth! “It is currently under ownership dispute,” Iosef relays to me.

Dispute is quite the understatement. This building is down-right abandoned. It is indeed part of the National Economics Academy in that it is on the same property, but that’s about where the acquaintance ends. Only by actually stepping foot on the academy’s property, and seeing it up close, does one get a true sense of this building’s relative destitution: rotting pillars, abandoned construction vehicles, piles of trash that have no doubt been accruing for over a decade now. If one is forced to view this building from outside the academy’s fences, they are spared by only 42 stories of dirtied window panes, that is, if the windows are still there. I am almost embarrassed for the students of this academy as they forced to deal with this grandiose garbage can and attend classes in two soviet-style buildings that are under eternal renovations. But the embarrassment seems to stop with me, as they walk around in their seven jeans and drive home in Audi coops; I honestly get the feeling they really don’t mind that their campus looks fit for a Hollywood set created for a doomsday movie.

I might be spoiled by the fact that Stanford would never let such an occurrence happen on their campus, where I get the feeling half of their revenue is from Asian tourists snapping away at the pristine architecture and landscaping. However, I think it is simply more the case that the emerald green eye-sore is yet another in a thousand tales of extreme post-soviet optimism, and later demise. Talking about the situation with my fellow students, we realized that most building demolitions in the US are a first step in the creation of a newer, bigger, better building appropriate with an economy that can support a population to patronize services there. Even at Russia’s “premier” economic institution, I think one part of that equation still seems to be missing. Much like the lesson Muscovites have long known about with the USSR’s Hall of Economic Achievement (BДNX), this intriguing eyesore teaches us that feigning prosperity doesn’t quite make up for its absence.

The view from the metro stop.
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Boards now take the place of an entire group of emerald windows.
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None of these vehicles have moved from their current position in a decade.
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The falling windows.
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This is the side facing the entrance to the school and the courtyard. How beautiful.
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Today I sadly lost a very good friend of mine. After serving me extremely faithfully since April. My faithful Sony headphones have finally given up on me. After listening to my D-Pod for at least an hour a day for that same time period, I really can't blame them. Oh, will I be able to find an adequate replacement for you dear headphones??? Probably not. you will be sorely missed. As an ode to you, I will reproduce a Russian goodbye (at least what I understood of it) that I recieved from Josh last night:

-Come here, come closer.
-Um, OK
-let me tell you something young man.
*(takes a sip of beer)
-We had fun tonight. do you know that. We had fun. You will go in joy and in peace.
*Burp!
-Wait don't go! Don't go!
-You will find much joy and prosperity in the near future.
-Josh, you're not really drunk.
-Shh boy! let me speak!
*(one more sip of beer)
-May we never forget tonight's wonders. Now go!

I would like to say that we were imitating more art here, but actually Alina just likes to dress up and act uppety some times. Luckily this time around I had a camera on me.
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Life imitating art.
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One of the orthodox churched we visited.
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Thank you Iris for taking this oh-so-flattering pic of me.
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Hmm, questions are sometimes better left unasked
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The other half of the stay-up all night equation
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Why the different expressions?
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A well nuanced argument at 3 in the morning.
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I bought a flower and a beer for Josh. Here he is showing me his gratitude.
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This weekend I got the least amount of sleep one could get in a 72-hour period. Of course this was nothing planned, but frankly I could not help it.

Saturday, after seeing a scary movie complete with the most European stereotypes one can fit into a movie, Fiona and I met up with Josh and Anna to grab just one drink at Silver's. Then Silver's kicked us out and we went to another place. Then we hit Josh's pad for a bit. Then, before you know it, the sun has come up and it's time for our school excursion to the "Russian Countryside" at 8:30 AM. Whoops. Damn that fieldtrip was excruciating running on no sleep. I wish I could write more about our field trip, but frankly I was in much pain the entire time and don't really remember most of it. Here are a few highlights that I remember:

*being woken up to jump off the metro at Yugo-Zapadnaya, the last stop on the line, before the doors closed and I would be lost on the metro forever.
*Picking up three new Stanford kids.
*Beautiful churches with very, very long histories.
*Many things that give one good health
*Fat man bathing in the river??
*Imitating famous Russian paintings.
*not eating for 22 hrs.
*Satisfying hunger through McDonald's. Yes it is very shameful. But where else could I get 1100 calories for four dollars in five minutes?
*Sleep 13 hrs. last night.