The Longest Day

Greetings from Moscow!

Yep, I am here, after one mildly pleasant plane trip and another incredibly long and uncomfortable plane trip, followed up by a nice bus ride through Moscow (most of which I slept through).

The longest day? Uh, yeah. At the time of writing this post, it's 12:06 pm on June 2nd in Waco. Meaning that I have now been awake (with a sum total of about 2 hours' napping throughout) for 31 hours. Wheeeeeee. I don't even feel tired anymore.

The only interesting part of the air travel was the flight attendant who kept speaking to me in Russian, despite my blank stares and mistaken use of "you're welcome" in place of "thank you." (Also, at least a third of the times she talked to me were to tell me to put my seat belt on. #accidentalrebel)

Once we actually landed in Moscow, went through passport control (a completely silent affair; also, note: don't take pictures of passport control), collected our bags, and got on the bus, things got more...Russian.

A few things I noticed from the part of the bus trip where I was conscious:

• It is so smoggy in Moscow. The air is colors. 
• There are actual passenger trains on the train tracks. Wowzah.
• At least near the airports, there are these huuuuge blocks of very uniform apartments. Some of them look to be nice and new, while others look...not-so-nice and not-so-new. 
  
  
  
  
  
  
• The traffic was terrible. (At least for the part I was awake for.)
• I saw lots of familiar car dealerships. Toyota, Kia, etc.
• Fun fact, in some places the sidewalks are also for parking cars. 

Anyway, at the end of this bus ride was our dorm! It is way different from American dorms, but I had a very pleasant sleep last night regardless.

The front of our dorm. The sign says "Higher School of Economics" and then below "National Research University."

This is my room. Mine is the top bunk...putting the sheets on was an adventure.

Also, the sun is up a lot. I think it set around 10 pm last night and rose again around 4:30 this morning. 

Author's note: I wrote most of this last night local time in my extremely sleep deprived state. The finishing touches and publishing are this morning local time. It's now about 8:30 am on Tuesday.