Josh's First Day at School

I started school on Monday of this week, and my life got a lot busier. Thoughts about my daily routine until August when I start "real" school and not just language classes can be categorized by the commute, the class, and the homework. I am quite frankly overwhelmed by what I don't understand in class. The teachers speak very quickly and I come home with more new words to learn than there are hours to learn them, but such is the life. Below Nikki could not resist snapping the motherly picture of me on my way to school. Although I honestly think this was my 3rd day of school, but who's keeping track.

The commute.

So I have done this 5 times now, so I may not have the same motivation to continue it in a few weeks, especially if the weather predictions are accurate much more into the next week, but for now I am committed to the walking commute. It takes me a little over an hour each way, so I spend two hours a day walking. The Icy sidewalks, and the speeding cars, and the sidewalks (that don't appear to offer any more protection than any other intersection) and the dog poop on the route are all inherent dangers. The weather has cooperated for the first week. It was never much above or below freezing and usually drizzling or snowing lightly. With that said it is supposed to be a high of -12 C today and into next week it will be colder so we shall see. Here is a picture downloaded from google maps that shows our respective commutes, so that you all can visualize our daily routines. I think my commute is about 3.5-4 miles each way and Nikki's is about 1.5-2 miles, so with any luck we should stay in pretty decent shape.

In other news two of our shipments have arrived and on my commute home on Thursday I actually saw with my own eyes our beloved car sitting in the Consulate courtyard, awaiting tags and processing by the local authorities, that should be complete by the end of this week and then we will be auto mobile.

We also took our first trip on the ST Petersburg Metro yesterday, I was quite surprised with its efficiency and ease of use, but I can definitely see how in rush hour it would be quite a challenging to move around in.