Pit Stop in Moscow!

  

When I booked tickets, the best way was flight into Moscow and a separate flight into Irkutsk and Vladivostok. Which meant I got to spend a night in Moscow on the way home! I met up with the SRAS Josh Wilson who is based in Moscow. We did a bit of a walking tour/cafe stop in the center. Then I had dinner while he went back to his family. 

Even Lenin had a tree!

The hotel room was weird- it was an entirely internal room: no windows. I mean the bed was comfy and it was pretty sound proof with the airport nearby, so I'm not complaining. It was a long journey back to the US. When I landed in NY, and went through customs, I realized I didn't leave the orange I brought on the plane- so I declared it, so they could appropraitely trash it. Now I realize I could of been a bit tired, but when I got the customs person who deals with agriculture he asked if he could "see" the orange. I thought that was weird, but 7 months of translating things in my head, I just held up the orange. Note that this is after I had alrready offered to give it to him and apologized. He gave me a stare and asked if he could hold it. So I gave it to him. He looked at it, calmly placed it next to him and said he had to keep it (Commentary in my head- duh.) and said I was free to go. 

It was nice to be home in Lexington and get to see and hug Bobby in person!

VSUES Campus

 Here are some miscellaneous pictures of the campus:

From across the street.

yes, that is a plane

Looking up at my dorm room. 

View from my dorm room to campus- normal day

View from my room during blizzard

My side of the room- I had to stand on the chair and the desk to get up in bed. I'm honestly surprised I never fell. 

Roomie's side

Shared fridge and storage space

Arseniev Museum of Primosrskii Krai

Another place I had been really wanting to go to go is the regional museum, or rather Arseniev Museum of Primorskiy Region. It was founded in 1884 to study the region and holds a prominent  place in the city center in a gorgeous building. It traces the regions history from "ancient" history until the modern era. I wish we had some more time to explore, but we had a great guide take us through the place.


As some of you may know, my lung partially collapsed last year. It had been acting up the past couple of days and in consultation with my doctor we determined the cause to be....bitterly cold temperatures.


No seriously. The doctor said that they have heard of people who are recovering from the collapsed lung who have problems with the cold. It is just too cold to be comfortable. So with one of those hand warmers that you get for winter that self warms tucked next to my lung, I set off with the rest of the foreign students to go exploring!

The first part of the museum was olden times- complete with the Chinese (?) statues that had a hidden compartment complete with Museum Cat. This is apparently a thing in Russia. A lot of museums have cats, and I finally decided to ask "WHY?!?!!"

Well there is a superstition that it is lucky if you buy a new home/remodel that there should be a cat in their first. There were actual ads for Realtors that would "put a cat in there before you go in." And something I didn't quite understand about there being a cat in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg.

Of course I had to hold the cat!

Then we moved into the Olden Days portion- you can see the beautiful hand crafted detailed clothes and rugs that they used.

There were tons of cool things that had been utilized in the region for farming or travel. They even had some Soviet era things that were pretty cool. I kinda dug the clothing exhibit- showed lots of the different time periods of clothing.

They even had a "hot water bottle."

Afterwards, a few of the Russian girls that had come along and I went to the pinnacle of Russian cuisine- Cinnabon (yes that was sarcasm.) Which was the first time that I had actually been there. It was interesting and yummy.