Waiting for the bus the other night in the wet and cold, I stood at the bus stop for 45 minutes in all. Watching every single bus in the city pass by except for my bus. However, it was not a bad wait, as halfway through, one of these buses pulled up, in the dark and rain, covered in dirt with very dim lights inside. The doors opened, nobody got out or in, but a large juice box was tossed out onto the sidewalk in front of me by some unseen hand, the doors quickly closed and the bus drove away. Somehow several minutes later that juice box ended up in the road, under the tires of a big bus, at which point it popped and sounded like an exploding tire.

Before I came here I bought some pink gloves. I found them at the Good Will, brand new, and 50 cents. The lady that I'm living with noticed them, and, here, having matching hats, gloves and scarfs is a big thing. As anyone who knows me would vouch, I don't really like the color pink . . . one moring I was on my way out the door and Galina says to me “Laura, you're not wearing your pink gloves today!” “Oh,” I say, “I like the black ones.” “One minute.” She goes and digs in her closet, pulls out a bejeweled Barbie pink hat and scarf set, gives them to me as a “present.” Sweet woman.

We heard the Putin would be in town today to open the new bridge. Coincidentally, today is a holiday and we didn't have classes. So we met up, planned a few other things we were going to do, and headed out on the town. We went to the bridge and didn't see Putin. But it's okay, we still have Moscow.