Hectic Traveling/Study Abroad Classes

Oh, this week has been fun. I flew out of Utah on Tuesday morning at 8. But the day didn't start there. I had to pick up some last minute things from Walmart and I also went out to 'breakfast' with my lovely fiancee B. I don't know if i can call it breakfast. It was at 4 am... But ihop is always delicious even if we are the only ones in the restaurant. (This is not an exaggeration. It was only us and the three workers). So, I got to the airport around 5:30 am. We were aiming for six. You should always be at the airport at least two hours early for an international flight. But, we took less time at Ihop than anticipated. We sadly parted and I promptly ran into my program facilitator JP and his wife KP in the security line (I had already checked in online. I love that option). We got through security pretty fast given that its was 5 in the morning and then we waited. We were the only ones there for at least and hour. I guess no one else has heard that they should be there two hours early? Then we figured that since we had a layover in JFK no one considered this the international flight. We met up with 6 other  The SLC --> JFK flight was easy enough. I slept most the time (I had only slept two hours the night before). When we got to JFK though we had some problems. The security line for the international line was longer than I've ever seen it before. Even some of the workers were talking about their surprise. About half our group missed their flight but they just got bumped to the later flight with the rest of us. Then we gt to take a 12 hour bus ride (that should've been 6) to Niznhy Novgorod. It's a huge holiday week here so EVERYONE is heading out to their dachas. I slept most of the time so it wasn't miserable. One of the stops we made had squatty potties though! Total flashback to Japan, but not really because these were super dirty and disgusting. We arrived in Nizhny aroud 5 am and met our hostesses. I promptly took a shower and fell asleep... again... All in all it was about 36 hours of traveling...



The next day we had "classes." But, not really. It was more of an introduction to the program and then we walked around the city a bit.






Friday we had our first set of classes and it was HARD. Not that the material was super hard but, we had a 3 hour language class first and my brain checked out from overload after about two and a half hours. I'm happy I lasted that long. It was a little overwhelming but I learned a lot. We had lots of fun learning to compliment one another. I was told to compliment R and he flexed as I looked over so, I told him he had nice arms but, the word for arms and hands in Russian is the same and so Teacher T gave me a weird look and told me it would be better to say he had a nice figure. So, I told R he had a nice figure. Everyone was laughing at this point as R continued to flex and show off. Then we had an overview of our Russian culture class from Teacher B and we went home. After hanging out with Sh and Sa for a little bit, I once again promptly fell asleep around 7 o'clock. I have been so tired lately.