the metro stop is called electric factory; what did you expect the area to look like?

so this past weekend i ended up doing a lot of museum stuff. on friday we went to the mayakovsky museum, which actually turned out to be pretty interesting. it was a lot of installation type art and the ladies that worked in the museum were really nice and helpful, putting up with our bad russian haha. that night we ended up at a nice irish pub type bar called mollie's. they had really good nachos and we stayed there for a while, and then we went to mcdonalds because some people wanted milkshakes before we headed back home.

on saturday we had planned to visit the gulag museum and when we got there it was actually a lot smaller than i thought it would be. there were a bunch of babyshkas that worked there as well and they were extremely excited to take us around and show us everything. they only spoke a little english but they spoke slowly enough in russian so we could understand the tour for the most part. when we had finished looking around they set up a dvd movie for us and we watched an incredibly depressing documentary about various russians who had survived stays in a gulag. i never really knew extensive details about the camps, so it was definitely informative, but we left halfway through because you could only really watch so much.

i was really excited for sunday because we got to go to a soccer match between a moscow team and another russian team who were visiting from the crimea. the fans were crazy for the moscow team, i had never seen so many organized chants at any other sporting event. i bought a scarf which were really cheap, and also since i kind of collect them because i got one for a team in the czech republic when i was there. CSKA, the team from moscow, ended up winning 4-0, so the game wasn't too exciting, but it was still a lot of fun and i was glad i went. when we were leaving, there were literally hundreds of militsiya lined up outside the metro for crowd control, and they followed everyone down into the metro too. the fans were insane on the metro after the game so we got off as soon as we could.

this week so far i haven't done a ton because i have had a cold for the past week, and my foot has
also been hurting for some reason. yesterday, on tuesday, me and a couple of friends went to a part of the city we hadn't been to before to try and find a cemetery that was supposedly pretty well known because it was really old and had a lot of graves of foreigners in german, french, dutch, etc. we got to the area and took a tram to where we thought it was. unfortunately it started to rain and then we realized we had no idea where we were. we asked someone on the street who turned out to be really helpful and he took us to where the cemetery was. and of course, like everything always is in moscow, it was closed. so we were pretty pissed but it was also kind of funny. we decided to take a bus back to the metro, so we found one and got on. i guess we didn't pay enough attention because it started to take us into what looked like a kind of sketchy area of town. it never bodes well when you start seeing massive rusting soviet factory complexes. so we got off at the end of the line and just kept walking, and we eventually found a metro stop. so it was kind of an adventure in the end, haha.

but yeah, other than that i've been kind of taking it easy lately so my foot can get better. i am
going to the american center tomorrow to see if i can start volunteering soon. i am also having
a minor class registration crisis because i have to register online while i am in st. petersburg
(the trip is in less than 3 weeks! wooo) in a hostel, and i don't even know if i will have internet.
but i will find a way somehow, i guess. and then this friday night we are going to the legit ballet,
so that will be fun. saturday is a museum excursion to the museum of decorative and applied arts, which sounds like it will be either really boring or possibly kind of exciting. and then i think
the weekend before st. petersburg is our excursion to the inside of lenin's tomb which i am really,
really excited for.

but yeah, sorry that this has turned into only a weekly thing, i usually have no time/internet so
it seems to always only be posted once a week. also, the postcard situation is still pending
because i never get a chance to go to the post office. eventually, though. but yeah, that's pretty
much all that's interesting for now, so maybe if i get the chance i will try and make an extra effort to update this again before the weekend is over. we'll see how it goes. hope everyone is well!

dima