Here is the tour of Yusupov’s Moika Palace: We entered the palace and walked into this round room with the white grand piano in it. After sitting down (most of us anyway), our tourguide, Alisa, gave the intro talk. This is a photo of almost all of us in the program. The only people not in it are...

Our train arrived around 10am and I woke thirty minutes earlier to wash my face, get dressed, and eat some food. This was a good idea because when we stepped off the train we met our tour guide and off we went. No time to drop our stuff at the hostel. Into the bus and off to explore the city—reminiscent...

This week 9/14 – 9/18 was shortened to 9/17 because Thursday night we boarded a train to St. Petersburg. Not much happened this week except for Austin’s Birthday in which we went to FAQ Cafe, pronounced like F*ck, and the Russians ordered a few dozen bottles of champagne, chacha, and vodka....

Saturday we left the dorm and got into a tour bus to drive around Moscow. Actually, it turned out we were just driving to parking spots and then walking around Moscow, to much disappointment for some of us, who stayed up late and thought we could rest on the bus. The first thing we saw was something...

We woke early Monday morning  (8am) to get to the IUM which is 2 metro stops away, and then about a 10 minute walk. My first class was Basic Algebra at 930. I’m auditing this class to review what I learned last semester; plus, the professor, Igor Vladimirovich Artamkin, is pretty cool and the...

So my first week ended with an invitation to Ester’s Dacha, a country house <pronounced dah-cha where ‘ch’ sound is like in chair>. These are cottages within train distance of Moscow that the Moscovites own and use when they want to get away from the city/smoke/pollution/asphalt/cement...

On September 1, a girl from our dorm, Natasha, took us for a walk to the monument/park that reminds me of the Washington Mall. It’s pretty close to our dorm, it takes about 15 minutes to run there and about 7 minutes to run around the circular monument (this run has become part of my weekly exercises,...

I am in Moscow now. Settled into dorm with roommate Michael. On the way here I learned that smoking is very cool. Check out Munich’s exclusive Smoking Club inside the airport: Smoking Club It was almost irresistable to pick up a pack of camels and get my cool on inside the club with the lady who...