Weekend's Over - Work Begins

I have had a great Saturday and Sunday exploring Moscow. Obviously there is too much to see and do in a weekend, but that is the great part about being here for another month, is that I will have time to go back and explore what interests me in more detail.

I have become obsessed with the city's Metro system. It is an awesomely designed system that moves about 7 million people daily. I am focusing my attention in the coming weeks to several of the stations that were built during Stalin's regime. These stations are full of Soviet realist artwork, slogans, and architecture that will help me teach one aspect of Stalin's propaganda. I have already started building a website and in the coming weeks will begin adding notes and photographs of what I find at each of the stations. Prior to, during and following WWII, the stations were built deep underground (one is almost 200ft.) to also serve as a bomb shelter. The depth is emphasized as one rides the escalators up or down onto the platforms.

Moscow is 8 hours ahead of Cape Cod. Plus, the sun doesn't set here until 10:19 p.m. It begins getting light again around 3:30 a.m.  It is making it difficult for me to go to sleep. As I write this, it is 10:02 p.m. I am normally asleep by 9 p.m. I'll be up until midnight. Here is a picture of last night's solar menace.

Walking throughout Moscow the past two days I've noted that it is beautiful in parts, and gaudy in others. The city puts a high value upon parks, monuments, flowers, and trees where the ancient city walls once stood on a ring road in the central part of the city. Other parts of the city are a mixture of ultra-modern, 20th century and ancient. Advertisements, wires, and whatever are placed everywhere in spots. (See pictures below.) More on the details of the city in the coming weeks.

The Work Begins: Tomorrow I begin classes and they cannot come sooner. These are the major reasons why I signed up for this program. I have been getting anxious to begin because it has been almost a week since I began the journey from Providence. Tomorrow is my first Russian language course and contemporary Russian political policy course. I hope they are everything I expect.