I am here! I'm not near! Get used to it!

Sorry, my brain is on a little funny.

Oooooh, goodness. Where to start? I've been trying to get to you guys, but we won't have internet access at the college until tomorrow. We were supposed to have it today, but this being Russia, I should have known better than to believe the guy in charge of getting us logins. (The komputerchik.)

Well, the last flight from Moscow to Kazan was bumpy. Pretty much everyone had passed out at the gate while we waited- I don't think I'll ever know how long we were actually there. We filed on, sat down, and mostly passed out again. I couldn't sleep, so I was up for the cake and tea they passed out- each little cup of black tea had a thin, round slice of lemon floating neatly on the top.

So we thump-a-bumped over a few hundred miles of Russia, and landed at the Kazan airport, which was a tiny little thing. We walked down a staircase from the plan onto the tarmac, then into a little building where they loaded the baggage claim by backing a truck into the room, extending a little conveyor belt out the back and throwing each bag onto that, and then carrying the suitcases from that conveyor belt to the big luggage carousel. We all arrived with luggage and some sanity, despite the confusion over our canceled flight in Moscow.

Then they loaded us up on a tour bus, and started the long business of dropping us off. First we had to drive for half an hour or forty five minutes through the rural areas and suburbs, then they started the big circuit that got us all foisted off on various Russians. Some were met by big smily Russian youths who carried their bags off with a shrug, others were embraced by tiny babushkas, and others just sort of trailed off after a family.

I saw a pack of street dogs that were big and hirsuit and fairly intimidating, but safely on the other side of the bus window. That's the only way I've seen stray dogs so far, and from what I've seen that's a good thing. There was one out in the suburbs that I swear was a wolf.

I got off the bus with Olivia and Martin, who is our site coordinator. (Think den mother.) They live in a building not far from me, on the ninth and twelfth floors respectively, which sucks majorly for them because there was a fire there not long ago and both the elevators are wrecked. Yay for cardio? (I walk the stairs, just for healthiness, but I'm on the fifth floor so that's not so bad.)

Some of you might remember me mentioning that living arrangements are an interesting thing in Russia- if you ask an exchange student who they live with, the answer is often a shrug and a puzzled expression. Someone owns/rents the apartment, of course, but often there's a wide array of relations and relations' relations that move in and out, often on a daily basis. One person, I forget who, lives with 'A grandmother and her granddaughter and occasionally the father of the granddaughter.' There may also have been a boyfriend involved.

My own apartment has a fairly fixed number of occupants. My host family consists of and older married couple, in their late sixties-seventies, and their grown son. They're all super nice and very well educated. Ilkam is a piano teacher, Gl'us was a physicist, and Idgei is a mechanic but was trained as an engineer. Ilkam is a great cook, and Gl'us is very thoughtful and funny. He speaks slowly and clearly, because he has a Tatar accent- he didn't learn russian until high school or college, I didn't catch which. Ilkam spoke Russian as her first language, but I think she's equally fluent and accentless in Tatar.

Dad asked me on the phone what Tatar sounds like, and all I could answer was, "Confusion." It doesn't sound that different from Russian, so it can take a couple of sentences of listening really hard and not understanding a word before I realize that people are speaking Tatar. It certainly doesn't help that they'll switch back and forth from sentence to sentence. The same goes for written Tatar- aside from a sort of schwa letter they sometimes use, it's almost impossible to tell which language you're reading if it's in cyrillic. If I sound things out, though, sometimes there's an arabic word that I recognize. If Russian wasn't so damned hard, I'd try to learn a little Tatar whileI was here, too.

The city is one big screaming traffic jam filled with people and dirt. And puddles, when it rains, WHICH IT DOES. Curse you, wikipedia! You lied to me! I ended up buying an umbrella from Martin the other day when it started dumping rain and I still had a big fat walk home. It's so warm, even hot, that you don't need a coat most of the time- just an umbrella. So there are all these tall, skinny Russian girls running around in tiny clothes and tall shoes and carrying little purses, and full sized umbrellas, even in the sunshine.

Which brings me on to the people. There are three age groups, as far as adults are concerned. There are the young and skinny, who are really really freaking skinny- both male and female. It's like living in a city full of supermodels. All the girls are really fashion conscious, but the guys just sort of slouch around in windbreakers. Then there are the middle aged, who are instantly pudgy and weathered and have thinning hair, and gold teeth. I have never seen so many gold teeth in my live. Everyone has gold teeth! And then there are the old men and women who stump around with big bags of things and walking sticks and look dour.

It's so weird here. It really is different- everywhere you look, something is strange. Like the gold teeth. Or the way that the girl who lets you through the turnstile to get into the library looks at you like she wants to kill you and eat your heart. Or the way the library is run, even- you have to fill out request cards, and a librarian fetches your books from the forbidden world of the stacks. Today I was walking up the street to the university, and there was a woman sweeping the sidewalk with a twig broom. And I haven't even ventured into the street markets yet!

Classes just started today, and so far they're good. It seems that I'm in a more advanced group, and the grammar class today went over some of the things I really need to work on, so that seems good. (There was testing yesterday, which was torturous. Four hours of insanely hard, badly conducted tests in a hot, muggy room, and none of us had slept the night before. Eesh.)

As far as I'm concerned, all is well. *knock on wood and spit three times* The food is good, the bed is comfy, the jet lag is minimal but unwilling to go away- I was sooo tired all Sunday, until I was in bed and then could not sleep. The next day, yesterday, I was sooooo tired again, so much so that I was having trouble staying awake and upright and almost walked off an embankment, about a foot to the right of the stairs. I got home safely, though, and slept for five hours, studied and talked to mom and dad, and then slept for another seven hours. And now today I'm crazy tired AGAIN, despite having slept so soundly that I didn't move all night and now the joints on my left side are all frozen up from being slept on for twelve hours.

Which reminds me, due to daylight savings time I am actually eleven hours ahead of you guys. So flip AM and PM and subtract an hour. Is that right? I don't know. I just know that it's something resembling four in the morning at home, and I can sure feel it.

Anyway, it's gorgeous and gritty and strange here, all at once. I've taken a bunch of pictures, and will take more, but I didn't bring my camera cord today so that will have to wait. This internet cafe is really cheap- about a dollar an hour- and only a couple of blocks from the university. There's also an internet cafe near my house, but I haven't ventured in there yet. So, updates should continue with some regularity now, whatever the komputerchik might do.

Now, I shall spend my last ten minutes on the internet doing... something. (I paid for it, so I guess I have to use it. Comics ahoy!) Then I shall go home, and try not to sleep until bedtime, and will instead do the big fat pile of homework we were given today. Woo.

Love you all. Take good care of yourselves! Only about eight weeks until I get home. Mwa ha ha.