This afternoon I headed to the State University of Humanities by новослободская (Novoslobodskaya) station with a couple of Math friends. One of their assigned buddies mentioned there was a Russian-American center at this university and they held a Russian-American conversation club once a week! The first meeting of this academic year was today so the 3 of us came along. It was quite nice to be in a room dedicated to American/English things - they had a number of English movies (on VHS may I add) including Black Adder, James Bond, Die Hard and other memorable movies as well as a picture of Barack Obama, map of the US & lots of different academic books.
We 3 were the only foreigners there and the rest of the group were Russian. We spent 2 hours talking to each other, getting to know one another and playing games, both in English and in Russian. We also ate biscuits (I ate far too many.......it's the chocolate...too tempting!) and drank Russian tea. It was a really lovely environment and everyone was welcoming and enthusiastic. We'll be attending once a week and we're also going to have some cultural excursions and fun things like ice skating and bowling, as well as discussing American politics & domestic issues. It's a really exciting prospect and also another good way for me to practice my Russian and make new Russian friends! Also I don't have class on a Wednesday so at least it's something for me to do!
I've decided I'm going to start taking a lot more pictures of life on the subway with my blackberry so I can share this on my blog! I started today! The subway is far too beautiful not to be photographed. The only problem associated with this is that I will draw attention to myself, especially in the tourist frame and I just don't want to get into difficulties with the police!
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| Snap of an incoming train at новослободская station, as well as the chandeliers in the ceiling! |
The subway station at новослободская was really beautiful and had stained glass murals on the walls. All of the murals were centered around a 5 point red star (any guesses why?) and were all incredibly beautiful. There was also a stained glass mural of Lenin sitting at his desk. Each of the stations has a tile print of the line you're travelling on up on the wall - there's only one on each platform mind you! It shows you the following stations, as well as the other lines that you can change onto at these stations. Pretty useful if you can't remember where you need to change and as there's only ever one full map of the Metro in each station, which gets crowded so it's handy!
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| You will notice that the wall is made of marble too.. |
