A Leisurely Beginning

This morning we woke up in Moscow – most of us for the first time.  I didn’t find my pillow until this morning so I used my comforter as a pillow, which means I woke up with a crazy case of the shivers in the middle of the night.  But I managed to take care of that pretty quickly, and I actually did sleep for about six hours, which I count as a point for me… take that jet lag!  Of course, I’m typing this at 8:30am, so ask me again in a few hours when my body thinks it’s 4:00am.  It’s sounding like they’re going to keep us fairly busy this weekend, which will be good for getting us on this schedule.  I feel like I want to have so much to talk about right now, but I just don’t have it yet.  Of course, that will cease being a problem almost immediately, but at the moment I’m feeling a little like I’m floating. 

Things I know for sure so far: this haircut is not conducive to the “get-up-and-go” lifestyle of Russia.  Translation: my hair is going to look like a street urchin for most of the month (and yes, I recognize the ambiguity of the syntax here, so if you prefer to imagine my hair itself as a street urchin living on top of my head, that’s your prerogative – and probably not entirely inaccurate either)

Things I suspect so far:  Part of my disembodied feeling probably stems from my lack of internet access…which will, of course, be remedied by the time I’m posting this.  I resent how much we rely on the interweb tubes… but boy howdy, I miss it when it’s gone!

At any rate, we spent the morning on a little walking tour of the supermarkets in the area, and it was a good time watching everyone wander through the grocery store with that “where the hell am I” look.  Having done this before, I am only slightly less deer-in-the-headlights-ish. I led the group down to the school for a brief orientation, which was a hoot.  I walked that path like I had never left.  It was a little surreal.  This evening we'll be having a little mini orientation in which we'll work on ballet positions and classroom procedure.  Sunday is a bus tour, and Monday is go time!  It's actually kind of nice that we arrived on a Friday and have this weekend to get our feet on the ground.  It's weird - I actually don't feel remotely jet-lagged today.  We'll see if that continues, but so far, I'm feeling pretty good!

Another thing I forgot: gifts for the professors.  Looks like they’re getting Russian candy again this year!

And something I forgot to do today: to wear my pedometer.  I really want to include my steps walked in each blog post... so here's hoping that little goal is met starting tomorrow!