Goodbye Moscow, hello ten thousands of kisses!

Long time no reading, I know… But I think we just needed some time apart, figuring out what we really want out of this relationship. No really, I thought I would spare you all the reading for a few weeks, considering I’ve stolen a lot of your precious time already during the past half year. Also not entirely true, I’ve just been very selfish and couldn’t find the time to write anything. Yep, that’s closest to the truth, I’m afraid…

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!