Sept 3, 2009

As you can surmise from the fact that I’m writing this, I made it to Volgograd safely and without major incident. My flight from Atlanta to DC was fine, and I even got seated in the Economy Plus section, where the 5 extra inches of legroom were nice, but not really necessary for such a short flight. Sitting around the DC airport went okay, particularly because I was able to purchase a day’s worth of wireless access and thus say goodbye, again, to Adam and James and whoever happened to be online at the time, as well as kill time watching my own choice of TV. DC to Moscow was fine, but long. It was no great surprise that I got very little sleep.
When I arrived at the Moscow airport and got through security (the lines are longer but the process shorter than in the states) I soon became very grateful for my cell phone. No one was there to greet me, but I was able to get in touch with Volgograd, who confirmed for me first that there was someone on the way, then that that someone had had car troubles and a new driver was on the way. Crises averted, though sitting around the airport while dead tired is not much fun.
I found myself dozing off over and over the whole afternoon as I was shuttled between the airport, the school office, the apartment where they let me nap, the school again, and finally the train station. Even with that napping, I still fell asleep almost immediately when I got on the train at 7:30 in the evening and, short of maybe 2 hours of waking up and reading for a bit, slept straight through until 11:30 the next morning when my compartment mate finally decided I really needed to wake up.
As soon as I got off the train at 5 pm, I was greeted by Elena, one of our administrators. She took me to my new apartment, which happens to have been Sarah’s apartment last year. It is comfortable and close to the school, as well as a number of other things. It will have a washing machine starting Monday and internet access in about 9 days. The only thing I’m worried about right now is learning how to use the oven . The stovetop works fine and is easy to light, but I can’t figure out how to turn on the oven, and the landlord had no clue. I know Sarah used it last year, so I’m confident that it will eventually work out.
Classes start on Monday, so between now and then I’ll have lots of free time to settle in (and look around for internet for the coming days). It looks like the teaching staff will be sort of staggering in this year, coming at a number of different times. I hope this doesn’t make our schedule really tough at the beginning before others get here. Right now it looks like I’ll be teaching mostly exam prep courses. I’ll let you know more when I know more.