One long post

привет, my friend!

After 3 days without posts, I'm back! Many things went on:

Wednesday and Thursday: I was at the Golden Ring , which are towns about 200km (~130 miles) northwest from Moscow. There are beautiful churches there: one of the towns (Vladimir) once was capital of the Russian principality and Suzdal was larger than London and Paris around 1200. Here are some pics form Suzdal (I didn't have my camera with me on Wednesday), the first one is a church and the other a convent.

On Friday I went to see another apartment, which I didn't like. Therefore, I decided to close the deal on the one I'd seen on Monday. It's just 3 metro stations away from city center, and 8 stations from work. I'll give a thorough description of the 'crib' once I move in -- probably by the end of next week.

Also on Friday, I went out for a happy hour with the Kellogg Alumni Club in Moscow, since the president is an expat from work. There were 6 other guys, and they were all really cool. In fact, one of them had worked in Portugal and Brazil, and could speak Portuguese (with a Portuguese accent) fluently. We went to a brewery, and had 1-meter long sausages -- yum!

Today (Saturday), I went on a tour called "Orientation to Moscow", whose intend is to show non-tourist stuff to foreigners who will stay in Moscow for a while. My other goal was to get to know some people who are in the same situation as I am, but unfortunately all others that were supposed to come cancelled.

I ended up walking around town with the guide, whose father was Jewish (but her mom was Russian) -- she told me a bit how it was like being Jewish during soviet times (a lot of anti-semitism), but I will touch on the subject when I take the Jewish Moscow tour sometime in the fall. She took me to a local farmer's market, where whole pigs were sitting on shelves and entire lambs (not just the racks!) were hanging from the ceiling. Gross!

We also walked by one of the synagogues in Moscow, and there was a statue of the Jewish writer Sholom Aleichem. Since my mom went to a grade school named after him, I decided to take a picture of the statue.

After we parted, I walked around the Arbat neighborhood and found a) a bookstore that sells books in English b) a sport store that is 24 hours a day (!) and c) a mall that is outrageously expensive.

I will now work a little bit, and then go to bed. Tomorrow I may go to the VVTs, I will explain what that is after I go there.

пока!