A few pictures of the journey!

I meant to post these the other day...
overall it has been an incredible experience. It's amazing how incorrectly stereotyped Russians are. I was speaking to a Columbian about how nice Russian people are. They are genuinely care-free and enjoy the more simple things in life. At least from what I have seen, there is much less time spent with TV or internet and much more time spent on walks or picnics. I think a lot of this stems from the fact that so many people rely on public transportation. This means that there is a lot of walking involved to and from the metro and around downtown. For example: when we were moving into our apartment, our friends helped us carry our suitcases during a "short" walk. They were so excited that we lived walking distance from them, and it's a 45 minute walk! I really have enjoyed it, such a different lifestyle. Also, the parks here are stunning. Not in the Versailles, controlled nature type of way, but in the woodsy and simple way. I think there are a few pictures of a park behind my apartment...

like the milk in our fridge: a few weeks past due

So, I've been in Moscow since June 5th. I'm here to work on some research for school and am taking Russian classes in the mean time. Classes are 4 hours a day, 4 days a week. I realize just how much I've forgotten, how much I never knew, and how much I love studying this language. Russian is so unique in its composition, I like to look at it like a puzzle. Doing some quick research online, it looks like English language has lost its case system over years of world domination, but it has about 3. Russian has 6 cases, which means that the endings of the gendered nouns/adjectives change depending on whether they are direct object, subject, indirect, etc. This aspect makes Russian difficult to master, along with its damn reflexive cases. The nice thing is that, unlike English, Russian word order is very flexible (because you can tell the role of each word by the case change!).
    Annywaays, I have a lot of ramblings on Russia to type about...but I'm going to work on secondaries and then go drink beer instead :p My friend from my first Russian program (summer 2010 in Kazan, Russia) is working at a bank in downtown Moscow. We haven't seen each other in 3 years, so we are going to grab some cold пиво and catch up.
     And I am uploading some pictures that I should've done a looong time ago.