Ярославль

Well everyone, I made it to Yaroslavl. Last night I was dropped off at my host family (бабушка). I got my whole room set up and even managed to watch some made for tv movie about the life and death of Princess Di with my Margarita Petrovna. The concept of my vegetarianism came up where we talked about the fact that I don't eat meat and she replied well good, here is some chicken for you and we will have fish tomorrow. Whatever, it's sort of a necessity in Russia to eat meat and I can deal.

Today we are still doing orientation stuff and just generally wandering about the city trying to figure out how to find a mainstream class, where/how to buy phonecards, cellphones, various other necessities. It's nice to feel a general sense of being settled in one place for the next several months and I'm hoping that the honeymoon phase of culture transition will continue to last and I won't dip into frusteration and culture shock too soon.

I'm not sure when our actual classes start at the university (probably Monday or Tuesday). Right now I'm planning on taking the 3 required Midd classes, the one спецкурс по политике (politics) with the Middlebury program and then one mainstream (with like REAL russian students) maybe history or politics or something.

I think my time is running out...