Puppies and Rainbows!!!

Based on the very supportive, but generally concerned, response I received after the last post, I've come to a couple of conclusions.

First, you guys rock.  Way to keep an eye out.

Second...whoops.  I accidentally made my life here sound desperate, difficult and sad.  It's absolutely not.  I assure you, I don't fear that Russians are going to beat me with reindeer sausage every time I step out my door.

It was a themed post dealing with why it can sometimes suck to be a foreigner, and so I focused on the negative things that happen a small percentage of the time.  I actually meant it to be much more lol fat strips Halley sucks lol, and much less oh no Russian Nair Halley's bald and sad and cold!  I'm not, I promise.

Not me.

So in that spirit, I shall make you a blog about happy things I love about Russia.  Prepare to be choked with joy.

First off, I'm walking around in pure history every day, everywhere.  This city has seen the best and the worst (and then some more of the worst) of just about everything the world can throw at a place, and it's still here in full force.  That's damn cool.  Living in America, and specifically southwestern America, I'm used to seeing "historical" sites that are maybe 150 years old (half of my Tucson apartments were older than that, I'm pretty sure).  When I walk around Moscow, I'm standing on some really goddamn old stuff.  Like, millenia and shit.  Awesome.

I was reminded of this when I was at Red Square the other day.  I was walking through the gate right in front of a group of Americans who hadn't been there yet.  Taking your first steps through that gate is a pretty surreal experience, and they were in full awe mode.

"It's like I'm walking through a history book.  Like, it doesn't feel like you should be allowed to be here," one of them said.

Yup.  Exactly.  But I am anyway.  NEAT.

Also, and very unrelated, a guy at a bar sang "If you are going to San Francisco..." to me when he found out that I was an American.  It was pretty sweet.  I hope the next random dude will sing that "Let's hear it for New Yo-o-o-ork" song, cuz that'd be pretty sweet too.

There's a brutal honesty that permeates the atmosphere here.  People don't seem to stand on too much ceremony, and it's refreshing in its own cold-water-to-the-face way once you learn to deal with it.  Yes, the first few times I got yelled at for whatever silly thing I was doing, I was a bit put out.  But then I saw other people get yelled at (public mockery is Russia's favorite form of social discipline), and they all made it through okay.  So now I just move on and stop doing the silly thing, or continue to do the silly thing anyway because fuck you, and I never have to wonder what anyone's really thinking because they're gonna say it.  Which kind of rocks.

Also, they blatantly drink booze on the metro.  All the time.  Admit it, you SO would if you could.

There's a flipside, though, to all this brutal honesty.  Sometimes, the truth is really awesome, and it gets told then, too.  When happiness or love or passion or pride or joy happen, they happen hard.  Everything just crackles and lives and adamantly refuses to be boring here.  YES.

So there's a small sampling of the fantastic that is this country.  It can be hard to live here, and yes, maybe sometimes I feel a littleteenybit sad and cold and bald... but even when I do, I remember that I'm in a place whose Prime Minister is this guy. 

You just can't argue with that.