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Today is Aleksander Pushkin's birthday, and as the father of Russian Literature, it is a big deal (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Pushkin). As some of you know, I took a course on Russian Literature in the spring, where I learned, among other things, that Russian writers love women with small feet. Go figure.

In my last post I wrote that behavior in public is very quiet and subtle. Today, however, I saw to young people standing quite close together and kissing occasionally, which drew disapproving looks from everyone else on the bus. Yesterday, I got on bus 8A to go home, not realizing that bus 8B takes a direct route there and bus 8A weaves around the outskirts of the city for forty minutes (traffic was bad though) before returning to my street. This amused my host family.

Communication with my host family is going pretty well. For example, they understood my question of, "Has your cat ever tried to escape?" And I understood their answer of, "Yes; twice he has tried to jump out of the fourth floor window." The most beneficial thing about my host family (besides food and shelter) is that it allows me to practice speaking without being nervous of messing up my grade or upsetting a stranger.

This next paragraph is more for Jordan people, but, we will have 80-85 hours of class over the four weeks here. At Miami we get 40-45 hours in a class in one semester (so by being here we will get credit for two semesters of Russian). Our time is divided among four teachers and five classes. The first class is Conversational Russian, the second is Russian grammar, the third is Text Analysis, the fourth is Area Studies (taught in Russian), and the fifth is Russian songs, where we have to sing (imagine me singing this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_A7Hu0uKNw). We get 3-5 hours of homework each day, and it seems like one of the five has a short test every day. This paragraph is for Jordan people because they are the ones most likely to find that last sentence to be shocking.

We wandered the city's mall, which had seven lingerie stores. I think that is too many, and it is completely unhelpful in my search for gifts for my family.

Two Russian women were in the French Open final (tennis), which was timely.

I brought with me to Russia three months worth of The Economist that I was unable to read during the school year. It seems like each edition says at least one unflattering thing about Russia, which has made me to (unecessarily) incorporate strategy when reading in public places.

-Brett