So after our last long-distance gathering, I had a few days left before classes started again. What did I do? Can’t you guess? I walked around, visited some churches, monasteries, parks, museums, … and enjoyed the real Russian winter – we’ve reached minus 23 degrees – and for those who are very eager to find out: yes, your snot does freeze without any kind of protection (people are apparently more interested in my snot’s welfare). So there I was, walking around like an Eskimo enjoying my last few days of what Russians dare to call “каникулы”, or “holiday” for foreigners.
All those cultural outbursts of mine will probably sound deadly dull for most of you, but I had a mission and when Sarah has a mission, it is to be taken deadly serious! After the first month here, I decided to draw up a list with everything I wanted to see. To be honest, that list was rather unnecessary, seeing in the end it turned out I’d just copied the whole travel guide. Honestly, I myself thought it rather impossible to visit all those places whilst not forgetting about my supergeekness. But ladies and gentleman, allow me to quote Tom: “Mission accomplished”!
And then classes already started again (let me tell you Vlad, only 1 week of holiday in almost half a year is definitely one of the worst violations of human rights). And then those sleepless nights started to become even more sleepless. I started to think about what else needed to be done before leaving and …oh…oh…ow…Sarah dear, you have a Master’s thesis to write! And yes, the past two weeks I’ve done nothing but going to classes and working on my thesis-to-be--hopefully-in-first-examination-period. Basically that meant spending my days searching for poor Russian professors to become my interview victims, making up an enormous amount of questions on different matters, translating them into Russian, getting extremely annoyed about people’s negligence, and sitting down with my victims listening how they tell me everything except an answer to my questions… Fun fun fun! Now, 10 days before I say до свидания to Moscow, I have had 3 interviews and 2 are (if all goes well, fingers crossed) yet to come. Luckily, us geeks are very prescient and I thus already prepared another 6 pages of questions.
Ha…two weeks of Moscow in only 184 words. I feel like crying…
On Monday Karen and Natalie arrived here in Moscow. These girls are also studying Russian at HIVT and are now in their fifth interpreting year. Respect!!! So they came to visit Moscow for a week and are planning on studying here as well next school year. Yes I know, I am actually not worthy the title “geek” when comparing to these two.
Antwerpian news: I have found a guy to rent my student’s room in the second term, which is great as I was starting to get worried about having to pay for the place another 6 months without actually needing it. Which means: bye bye my dearest student life! L Sad, but нужно…
Well, I’ll probably not be able to find time to write in the next couple of weeks, I’m afraid. Anyway (warning: I am extremely bad in this kind of sentimental talk), it was very nice to share my Russian adventures with all of you! I hope it was a little amusing for you too, apart from all the boring reading. I myself have surely enjoyed every minute of it, although I must admit it is now time for me to go home and collect all those promised hugs and kisses!
Keep those lips wet for me another 10 days!
So that leaves us with the parties. Obviously, we had happy ones, but also a whole lot of goodbye-parties. Lots of students left during the last few weeks, some to come back after the holidays, others never to return at all. A list of every one who has left me and Moscow: Yves, Cedric, Petra, Julia, Sarah, the girls from Gent, the German girls/guy, the Italians, the Finnish girls, and so many more. Honestly, I’ll really miss them all, we had a truly great time! On the 8th of January the 3 last girls from Brussels will return home as well, leaving me on my own to represent our beloved country. My King and yet non-existing government (you see, I’m only gone for 5 months and everything falls apart in Belgium – hopefully not literary); you can count on me guys!
Anyhow, Russian life goes on… Let’s talk about the happy occasions. First of all – “HOHOHO” – Santa Claus came by to tell me what a good girl I’ve been the past year (no surprise, of course) and we thus welcomed Him with a small Christmas party. Considering in Russia Christmas is officially celebrated on the 7/8th of January, the 24/25th of December were just like all other days and I thus had to attend classes (apparently I was the only geek/idiot who thought this necessary, as I was practically all week alone in class…). But on Christmas Eve we saw our opportunity to enjoy a major meal and have a party. When I say “major” I do mean “maaaajor”. Unfortunately, I lost the count on the bottles of шампанское (read: champanskoye > isn’t Russian just too easy for our linguistic heads), but the number of courses reached up to 6½. I admit that “Comme Chez Soi” would provide 7 courses, but seeing we’re only poor students – still wet behind our ears – who have to cook their own Christmas dinner, I’d say we did pretty well. Anyway, the menu:
On the 29th I had to pass on my crown to Maria, моя соседника - aka the girl next door, as it was her birthday. Meanwhile her parents and brother had arrived and we thus all celebrated together. In the evening we went ice skating on Red Square (Maria’s father was kind enough to take a picture of my first steps on the ice, after more than 6 years. BUT: I didn’t hit the ice once, although I must admit I’ll have to work on those pirouettes and double flips…) and had a delicious dinner at a lovely tradition Russian restaurant. 
And then all of the sudden it was already time to say goodbye to a wonderful 2007. On New Year’s Eve we decided to cook ourselves a delicious meal and for the countdown we relied on a bridge to show us all fireworks Moscow had to offer (Red Square was a no-go because of ten’s of thousands other Muscovites who had the same idea). After all those sparkles we were strongly advised to go back to the dorm and spend the rest of the night/morning celebrating there as Moscow is said to be one of the most dangerous cities on New Year, mainly owning to drunken Russians armed with all kinds of fireworks. And it turned out to be everything but an exaggeration, as the day after the newsreader had a hard time struggling through the list of incidents that had occurred that night. [The evil шампанское-creature is to blame for a lack of visual material of this night. Простите меня! – My apologies.]